ClimbingPanther

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it's not polite to spray with your mouth full

why do you ask?

exactly how it sounds

classic, minx. life is so much better with funny people!

Well?

Wow! It's usually the leg that breaks. He sounds like a lucky guy and I'm glad he's OK. Hope he gets mended in time to salvage some of this winter.

dude we killed the thread

OK, you're right foreknowledge does, in a sense, preclude actions which were not known, but you also admit that foreknowledge itself did not "control" the action. Choice controls actions, foreknowledge just knows the choices. Just because the outcome is known to some being does not necessarily mean that being controlled the outcome. Jim, that wasn't mixing science & religion, it was just illustrating that foreknowledge doesn't exert control. It's the LACK of choice which is the illusion

So, this isn't a perfect analogy, but I think it has some validity: If foreknowledge by itself precludes a person from performing a given action, then foreknowledge is, as you say, exerting a controlling force on the person and eliminating free choice. Can foreknowledge actually exert a controlling influence? Foreknowledge of the products of a chemical reaction has no bearing on the result of that reaction. The reaction proceeds according to the physical laws which govern the interactions, with no place for the input of foreknowledge. A scientist who does a certain reaction 100 times will know the product of the 101st reaction, while an ignorant person will not. However, the reaction will proceed the same way regardless of who performs it. The reaction is not free to proceed differently just because a being doesn't know how it will proceed. Therefore foreknowledge does not actually exert a controlling influence. It is, simply, foreknowledge.

correct, I misspoke and didn't edit fast enough

Prior knowledge does not imply causality lack of choice. You are capable of better reasoning than that, I've seen it before. You need to explain how foreknowledge precludes choice before you use that assumption to support your conclusion.

Yeah, no kidding. First, it's quite possibly illegal to repost that like you did, and second, you didn't say where you got it from. I know you can do it!

Why aren't the evolution proponents complaining about their peer's ad hominems? Shoot the 5 arguments down, not the person who proposed them. Nobody's perfect and everyone is capable of both truth and fallacy.

Why? you will not beleive it, may not even read it. According to evolutionary theory, starting with the chaos and disorder of the Big Bang and the simplicity of hydrogen and helium gases, the universe created itself. This is clearly a violation of natural law, namely the Second Law of Thermodynamics. According to this law an isolated system can never increase in order and complexity, transforming itself to higher and higher levels of organization. An isolated system will inevitably, with time, run down, becoming more and more disorderly. There are no exceptions. Contrary to this natural law, evolutionists believe the universe is an isolated system which transformed itself from the chaos and disorder of the Big Bang and simplicity of hydrogen and helium gases into the incredibly complex universe we have today. This is a direct violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. If natural laws are natural laws, the universe could not have created itself. The only alternative is that it is not an isolated system. There must be a Creator that is external to and independent of the natural universe who was responsible for its origin and who created the natural laws that govern its operation. I can read this well enough to know you don't understand science very well. The Second Law takes way too much abuse from creationists. Entropy is a thermodynamic property, not some visual property of neatness and complexity. If you don't know what that means and why it does not preclude evolution, don't worry about it, but don't use it improperly in an argument or you will not be taken seriously.

You're right on. When was the last time you felt God breathing down your neck like some sort of cosmic Chairman Mao? He is certainly not micromanaging your every thought and action. That's what people try to do. Speaking, of course, under the assumption that the Bible is correct, there have been times when God was much more physically apparent, even in the flesh as a man, performing miracles no man could reproduce, and people STILL didn't believe. God knows we'll believe what we want to believe and is not unjust in keeping a lower profile than we would like him to. For interested parties, "Finding God in the Questions" is a seemingly (I'm not finished yet) well written book that addresses many of these issues far more eloquently and critically than the average trite response.

I was referring to your distaste for initiatives, while I think they're sometimes necessary to reign in legislators who are WAY off route or had one too many :brew:'s

At least Ted's gone on record opposing such measures. OK, Oregonians, make your voices heard, especially to the legislators not sponsoring this bill so they have some constituency feedback to back them up in opposing this. CBS, hypothetically, if this goes through, would you still be opposed to an initiative seeking to repeal it? Not that it would pass or anything.

sweeeet! sicko

Shame on you if you haven't picked this up yet, especially John Frieh because I know he's got good taste in classical: [from an earlier post]

favorite new vocabulary word!

It's a conspiracy with computer makers since very few people need the computing capacity currently available, so people have to get a new computer they shouldn't need if they want to upgrade windows. no thanks.

And on the weekend when you're supposed to be climbing? So, are you going to work for Microsoft to begin a new line of daily security patches for Vista?

Not to make light of a death, but this happened 10 years ago...