Q: Creationism/Evolution/"Young Earth"

[brandymac27]

You need faith to believe in God because there is no proof that God exists. If there was, you would not need faith.

And if you have faith, you don't need proof.

[Vicious]

And if you have faith, you don't need proof.

Yeah, but they can't keep that faith personal. They need converts to spread their religion.

[Vicious]

"On the other hand, she's still brainwashed, she's still delusional as far as the teachings and influence of this cult, and she certainly is going to benefit with professional help and deprogramming."

Wouldn't they all.

[techboy]

Number 3 seems to me like a supernatural event. If I encounter something that died, I sure as heck am not going to think that that encounter is a normal occurrence.

By itself, it isn't. There are many naturalistic explanations for such experiences. One sometimes mentioned is hallucination or simple delusion. That doesn't fit when all the facts are considered (the empty tomb is a real defeater for these, as well as the fact that the disciples had no frame of reference within their beliefs for this kind of thing, while they did have other beliefs that could have manifested if they wanted to exalt their dead leader), but it does show that it's not a supernatural event in and of itself.

The historian can faithfully record that the early Christians believed that they had encounters with the risen Jesus without commiting to why they thought so (which is where the supernatural comes in), just as a modern historian could report that many of David Koresh's followers thought he was Jesus without taking a position on whether or not he was.

Can you list these procedures and criteria or paste a link(s) where I can find them/information regarding this?

Sure. Here is a decent overview by Dr. John S. Kloppenborg.

The criteria listed in the link are the ones used specifically by Jesus historians, and have been developed over the past century or two to determine specifically what is knowable about the historical Jesus. I can understand your skepticism when it comes to Biblical scholars and possible agendas, but there are a few things I think you should keep in mind.

1. They are simply more specific versions of the general tools used by all historians. Earlier, I quoted Professor A.N. Sherwin-White (again, here's his Wikipedia entry) from his Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. Keep in mind, he wasn't a theologian or Biblical scholar. He was an eminent classical historian. On page 186 he writes:

Subtle techniques of source-criticism have been evolved for the detection and elimination of various types of bias and anachronism, whether of the intermediate or of the original source, or of the writer who actually survives and transmits his work to us. To judge by what is so freely published, we are satisfied with our methods, and believe that a hard core or basic layer of historical truth can be recovered from even the most deplorable of our tertiary sources- be it Diodorus or Florus or even the Epitome de Caesaribus. The basic reason for this confidence is, if put summarily, the existence of external confirmations, and the working of the synoptic principle. From time to time external contemporary evidence of a sort less warped by the bias of personalities- e.g. the texts of laws and public accounts- confirms the conclusions drawn from the critical study of literary sources. Hence we are bold to trust our results in the larger fields where there is no such confirmation. Equally, the criticism of sources tends to reveal the existence of a basic unitary tradition beneath the manifold divergences of detail in rival narratives, which is often the product of their particular bias.

The "subtle techniques of source-criticism" Professor Sherwin-White is referencing here are standard tools of the historical method, useful for sources far worse than the New Testament texts.

If you go back and look at my original presentation of my argument, you will note that another scholar I rely upon heavily is Michael Grant (here's his Wikipedia page again) and his Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels. Grant wasn't a theologian or Biblical scholar either, he was another eminent classical historian.

You will also note that as I cite his support for a fact, he makes use of the tools of source-criticism Professor Sherwin-White references, and which are listed in the Kloppenborg article. You can see, for instance, in one of my quotes that he argues for the historicity of the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimethea using the Criterion of Embarrasment, among other things.

So we're not talking about some special discipline invented by believers to make Jesus look more historical. In point of fact, it's probably the opposite, which brings me to...

2. The historical criteria used by scholars to determine facts about the life of the historical Jesus were heavily influenced by the 20th century school of "form criticism", which is actually much more skeptical than historical analysis of other personages. Professor Sherwin-White discusses this on page 187 (actually, this is a continuation of my previous quote):

So, it is astounding that while Graeco-Roman historians have been growing in confidence, the twentieth-century study of the Gospel narratives, starting from no less promising material, has taken so gloomy a turn in the development of form-criticism that the more advanced exponents of it apparently maintain- so far as an amateur can understand the matter- that the historical Christ is unknowable and the history of the mission cannot be written. This seems very curious when one compares the case for the best-known contemporary of Christ, who like Christ is a well-documented figure- Tiberius Caesar. The story of his reign is known from four sources, the Annals of Tacitus and the biography of Suetonius, written some eighty or ninety years later, the brief contemporary record of Velleius Paterculus, and the third-century history of Cassius Dio. These disagree amongst themselves in the wildest possible fashion, both in major matters of political action or motive and in specific details of minor events. Everyone would admit that Tacitus is the best of all the sources, and yet no serious modern historian would accept at face value the majority of the statements of Tacitus about the motives of Tiberius (1). But this does not prevent the belief that the material of Tacitus can be used to write a history of Tiberius. The divergences between the synoptic gospels, or between them and the Fourth Gospel, are no worse than the contradictions in the Tiberius material.

Michael Grant also makes reference to (I'll bold that part for emphasis) and rejects the too critical approach of form-criticism:

A short way back, exception was taken to the view that everything the evangelists say must be assumed correct until it is proved wrong. Should we, therefore, accept the opposite opinion, which has been locked in an agonizing struggle with it for two hundred years, that all the contents of the Gospels must be assumed fictitious until they are proved genuine? No, that is also too extreme a viewpoint and would not be applied in other fields. When, for example, one tries to build up facts from the accounts of pagan historians, judgement often has to be given not in the light of any external confirmation- which is sometimes, but by no means always, available- but on the basis of historical deductions and arguments which attain nothing better than probability. The same applies to the Gospels. Their contents need not be assumed fictitious until they are proved authentic. But they have to be subjected to the usual standards of historical persuasiveness.

If you look at the criteria, and the way they are applied by Jesus scholars, they even today take the approach more classical historians like Grant and Sherwin-White soundly reject as too unduly skeptical.

So, if anything, the fact that I am using the criteria of Biblical scholars to establish my historical facts shouldn't make my case weaker in your eyes, it should make it stronger.

3. We know that the criteria used work, because where we can have external confirmation, things match up. Professor Sherwin-White continues on page 188:

The objection will be raised to this line of argument that the Roman historical writers and the Gospels belong to different kinds of literature. Whatever the defects of our sources, their authors were trying to write history, but the authors of the Gospels had a different aim. Yet however one accepts form-criticism, its principles do not inevitably contradict the the notion of the basic historicity of the particular stories of which the Gospel narratives are composed, even if these were not shored up and confirmed by the external guarantee of their fabric and setting. That the degree of confirmation in Graeco-Roman terms is less for the Gospels than for Acts is due, as these lectures have tried to show, to the differences in their regional setting. As soon as Christ enters the Roman orbit at Jerusalem, the confirmation begins. For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. Yet Acts is, in simple terms and judged externally, no less of a propoganda narrative than the Gospels, liable to similar distortions. But any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted.

This is a conclusion elaborated upon in mind-numbing detail by Colin J Hemer, a classical scholar, in The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. It really is detailed, so I'll spare everyone muliple citations and cite a summary by Dr. William Lane Craig in The Evidence for Jesus (great article on this topic, by the way):

The book of Acts overlaps significantly with secular history of the ancient world, and the historical accuracy of Acts is indisputable. This has recently been demonstrated anew by Colin Hemer, a classical scholar who turned to New Testament studies, in his book The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. {5}Hemer goes through the book of Acts with a fine-toothed comb, pulling out a wealth of historical knowledge, ranging from what would have been common knowledge down to details which only a local person would know. Again and again Luke’s accuracy is demonstrated: from the sailings of the Alexandrian corn fleet to the coastal terrain of the Mediterranean islands to the peculiar titles of local officials, Luke gets it right.

Okay, just one example from Dr. Hemer's book to give you an idea of the "fine-tooth comb" Dr. Craig is talking about. On page 228 we find:

14:6 The implication is that the crossing from Iconium to Lystra involved a passage across a linguistic and administrative boundary from Phrygia to Lycaonia, a fact reflected in onomastics of the district. Thus, to take a rare example of a Phrygian name in the New Testament, Apphia of Colossae, in Phrygia (Phlm. 2). This name, in variant spellings, is common in inscriptions of Phrygia and rare elsewhere, even allowing for possible confusions with feminines of the nomen 'Appius' of Rome. (26)

And so on (I left out the Greek names because of a lack of a font for them here, and laziness)... Hemer lays out dozens of detailed comparisons to the external historical data just like this, and as Dr. Craig notes, they all match up.

Quoting again from Dr. Craig's article:

The judgement of Sir William Ramsay, the world-famous archaeologist, still stands: "Luke is a historian of the first rank . . . . This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians."{7} Given Luke’s care and demonstrated reliability as well as his contact with eyewitnesses within the first generation after the events, this author is trustworthy.

Anyway, I hope that answers your question.

[skinfan133]

Well, I've seen people scoffing at concepts like the Universe being created in the span of six, eight-hour work days (with lunch breaks), or of the Earth's water raining sufficient to flood all of the land area of the planet, simultaneously, for a month, before obediently flowing back into their assigned oceans.

I've probably scoffed at them, myself. It could be claimed that I just did.

But I've never heard somebody claim that their disbelief of things like that translates in any way to proving a negative, let alone proving the non-existence of God.

If somebody were to make such a claim, I'd probably scoff at them, too.

Richard Dawkins?

[AzSkinsFan63]

And if you have faith, you don't need proof.

Then once you have faith it will be proven over and over so many times through answered prayer that you'd be a real fool to not believe.

and then the Truth will be known to you.

So with faith comes conviction or it should anyway.

[Vicious]

Then once you have faith it will be proven over and over so many times through answered prayer that you'd be a real fool to not believe.

and then the Truth will be known to you.

So with faith comes conviction or it should anyway.

It is that unwavering conviction and feeling of "Truth" that allows followers of the cults to be organized and used against other groups or to fight social battles by those that interpret that "Truth" for them.

[Spear]

Philosophy is all about plausibility, and I find it to be far more plausible that a being capable of creating space and time itself (in a very real sense, there was no "before" the Big Bang, as best we know for now) would be able to impact said space and time than not.

Our native dimensions of space and time expanded out of the big bang, but it stands to reason that there is some analog to space and time in which our universe resides -- outside and on top of it. After all, without a time reference, nothing can be in a causal relationship with anything else and therefore the universe could not have been caused.

String theory backs me up, but I really don't want to open that can of worms.

As far as the high plausibility of a hyper-sophisticated entity flipping up its skirt and farting space and whizzing time (if you'll forgive the metaphor), I don't know about that. I do, however, subscribe to Occam's Razor and if I'm confronted with figuring out what started a fire and my potential culprits are a spark and a dragon attack, I'll go with the spark.

I believe you are making a basic mistake here (and with the missionary example, which I snipped for brevity). Just because God knows what we are going to freely do, in no way changes the fact that we have free will. One way to describe omniscience is that God holds to every true proposition, and does not hold to every false proposition. If I were to choose differently 13.7 billion years later, God would simply have known that all along.

To go back to my simple example, the fact that you know in advance (have perfect foreknowledge, as God does, just in a limited fashion) that I will choose steak over liver 100% of the time in no way means that you are taking away my free will when you offer. You just know what I will do.

Determinism has too many meanings -- some of them contradictory. It was a mistake for me to try to apply it.

The point I was trying to make is that a conscious choice is a caused event. Caused by knowledge, brain configuration, brain chemistry, the probabilistic nature of electrons firing through synapses, etc. These are analogous to the forces acting upon a coin being flipped that cause it to land heads or tails. In that sense, I fail to see the significance in the concept of free will. It seems to be nothing more than a meaningless construct.

]Looking at it in a more sophisticated manner, there's a famous thought experiment in philosophy known as Newcomb's paradox. Dr. William Lane Craig writes about it in his Divine Foreknowledge and Newcomb's Paradox:

Given that God foreknows what I shall choose, it only follows that I shall not choose otherwise, not that I could not.

To me, that distinction is irrelevant. A coin could have just as easily landed tails, instead of the heads we observed. No one would argue that the coin has free will. "Given that God foreknows how it shall land, it only follows that it shall not land otherwise, not that it could not."

Wait a minute. Is there a place in Hell reserved for defiant quarters?

[techboy]

I do, however, subscribe to Occam's Razor and if I'm confronted with figuring out what started a fire and my potential culprits are a spark and a dragon attack, I'll go with the spark

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."- Albert Einstein

You talk about sparks versus dragon fire, but I think you're being unduly optimistic about just how insignificant the cause of the universe could be.

Consider the attributes that any cause of the universe must have. From the Q&A article by Dr. Craig where I originally pulled the LCA's formulation:

Besides that, premise 2 is very plausible in its own right. For think of what the universe is: all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause must be a non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time. Now there are only two sorts of thing that could fit that description: either an abstract object like a number or else an unembodied mind. But abstract objects can’t cause anything. That’s part of what it means to be abstract. The number 7, for example, can’t cause any effects. So the cause of the existence of the universe must be a transcendent Mind, which is what believers understand God to be.

And, from Dr. Craig's The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe (which is actually a defense of the KCA, not the LCA, but it pertains here):

Given the truth of premisses (1) and (2), it logically follows that (3) the universe has a cause of its existence. In fact, I think that it can be plausibly argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal Creator. For how else could a temporal effect arise from an eternal cause? If the cause were simply a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions existing from eternity, then why would not the effect also exist from eternity? For example, if the cause of water's being frozen is the temperature's being below zero degrees, then if the temperature were below zero degrees from eternity, then any water present would be frozen from eternity. The only way to have an eternal cause but a temporal effect would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time. For example, a man sitting from eternity may will to stand up; hence, a temporal effect may arise from an eternally existing agent. Indeed, the agent may will from eternity to create a temporal effect, so that no change in the agent need be conceived. Thus, we are brought not merely to the first cause of the universe, but to its personal Creator.

This part, I think, is devastating to your case, since even if we grant that there is an "analog to space and time in which our universe resides -- outside and on top of it.", that analog is either finite, which brings us back to the same situation, one level up, or it is infinite (unlikely), but still has to be personal, for the reasons listed above.

When we're talking about an eternal, uncaused, personal mind that has enough power to introduce matter and energy into the closed system that before this had no matter and energy, the spark doesn't cut it.

I'm taking the dragon. Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

The point I was trying to make is that a conscious choice is a caused event. Caused by knowledge, brain configuration, brain chemistry, the probabilistic nature of electrons firing through synapses, etc. These are analogous to the forces acting upon a coin being flipped that cause it to land heads or tails. In that sense, I fail to see the significance in the concept of free will. It seems to be nothing more than a meaningless construct.

Then as I noted before, that's not a critique of God. This view would hold equally true in an atheistic universe.

Personally, I find this view to be self-defeating. If the world were deterministic, how would we know it? Even if it was, we'd have (be forced) to act as if it wasn't.

I find that line of thought as useless as pondering whether or not we can trust our senses. Maybe not (and there's no way to be sure), but the only way to go forward is to assume we can and act upon it.

A coin could have just as easily landed tails, instead of the heads we observed. No one would argue that the coin has free will. "Given that God foreknows how it shall land, it only follows that it shall not land otherwise, not that it could not."

A coin does not choose which way to land. We can choose how to act or if we can't, we have to act as if we can, so there's no practical difference.

As for the concept of Hell in a deterministic worldview (for quarters or us), if that happens to be so, what can we do about it? Once again, I find that we are forced to proceed under the assumption that free will holds.

[Spear]

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."- Albert Einstein

You talk about sparks versus dragon fire, but I think you're being unduly optimistic about just how insignificant the cause of the universe could be.

Consider the attributes that any cause of the universe must have. From the Q&A article by Dr. Craig where I originally pulled the LCA's formulation:

For think of what the universe is: all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause must be a non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time.

I'll grant "Beyond space and time" (ours) as a requirement, but I reject the rest of that statement. Obviously, a number didn't create the universe (I think number theorists are autistic on some level), but that statement unduly allows for no other alternatives. As I've mentioned previously, string theory presents solid alternatives and as I've also mentioned, I don't want to delve into string theory. Please don't make me.

As for Einstein's quote, I believe that the implication of a single omniscient omnipotent presence outside and within the universe has far-reaching complications that extend to and pollute every corner of human understanding. God is not a simple answer. Conversely, I do not believe that the native universe is as complex as it may seem to some. Especially if we dismiss the ability of a deity to tamper with it, it can be wonderfully simple and paradox-free.

This part, I think, is devastating to your case, since even if we grant that there is an "analog to space and time in which our universe resides -- outside and on top of it.", that analog is either finite, which brings us back to the same situation, one level up, or it is infinite (unlikely), but still has to be personal, for the reasons listed above.

A similar situation one level up, not the same one. It could be more complicated, with more dimensions, but more likely it is simpler, possibly flat. Up one level from that it could be simpler-still. Eventually, you may get to a realm that is so uncomplicated and featureless that its version of time may loop back on itself, halting the infinite regression.

Unfortunately, this is all beyond our horizon and we'll never know for sure. But it is plausible.

When we're talking about an eternal, uncaused, personal mind that has enough power to introduce matter and energy into the closed system that before this had no matter and energy, the spark doesn't cut it.

The energy (not the matter, as matter is simply a coalescence of energy that can be observed happening naturally) was always in the universe. There was never an empty closed system.

And the amount of energy is only impressive from our diminutive perspective. Shrink us further and have us inhabit a battery and we'd all be praying to Duracel. One level up, with a larger Planck scale, all the energy in the universe could very well equate to a spark. It's plausible.

Then as I noted before, that's not a critique of God. This view would hold equally true in an atheistic universe.

And as I noted before, I was not attempting to critique God, I was attempting to delegitimize the Christian concept of judgment. If "free will" is a high-level confluence of low-level events like any other natural occurrence, then it seems to be a poor basis on which to hang salvation vs damnation.

Personally, I find this view to be self-defeating. If the world were deterministic, how would we know it? Even if it was, we'd have (be forced) to act as if it wasn't.

No argument there. But we're not talking about our perspective, we're talking about God's. To him, I think the concept of free will is irrelevant. It's a construct of man that artificially sets us apart from everything else. But, again, free will and cause-effect are transparent from our perspective.

I find that line of thought as useless as pondering whether or not we can trust our senses. Maybe not (and there's no way to be sure), but the only way to go forward is to assume we can and act upon it.

I never meant to imply otherwise. Human consciousness is what it is, however we choose to define it.

A coin does not choose which way to land. We can choose how to act or if we can't, we have to act as if we can, so there's no practical difference.

Again, from our perspective, choice is real enough. It doesn't matter to us what low-level events led to a decision, we hold each other accountable for our actions as peers.

But God is not a peer. From his perspective, we're no different from coins flipping. For him to hold us accountable seems pointless.

By the way, is anybody left to find this discussion interesting? If it's just become a masturbatory exercise, I see no reason to continue.

[techboy]

I'll grant "Beyond space and time" (ours) as a requirement, but I reject the rest of that statement.

I don't see why. The cause can't be physical or material. It created matter.

On another note, in all of your musings you never really addressed potentially the most devastating critique, which is that the cause must be personal. Again...

Given the truth of premisses (1) and (2), it logically follows that (3) the universe has a cause of its existence. In fact, I think that it can be plausibly argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal Creator. For how else could a temporal effect arise from an eternal cause? If the cause were simply a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions existing from eternity, then why would not the effect also exist from eternity? For example, if the cause of water's being frozen is the temperature's being below zero degrees, then if the temperature were below zero degrees from eternity, then any water present would be frozen from eternity. The only way to have an eternal cause but a temporal effect would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time. For example, a man sitting from eternity may will to stand up; hence, a temporal effect may arise from an eternally existing agent. Indeed, the agent may will from eternity to create a temporal effect, so that no change in the agent need be conceived. Thus, we are brought not merely to the first cause of the universe, but to its personal Creator.

As I've mentioned previously, string theory presents solid alternatives and as I've also mentioned, I don't want to delve into string theory. Please don't make me.

I'm not going to make you do anything, but M-Theory is not even close to being established experimentally, so it's hardly a refutation. At most, it's a plausible alternative, should a person find it plausible.

God is not a simple answer.

It all depends on how you define simple, but my point was more that your proposed alternative is too simple.

The energy (not the matter, as matter is simply a coalescence of energy that can be observed happening naturally) was always in the universe. There was never an empty closed system.

You caught me being sloppy in my language. Oops.

No argument there. But we're not talking about our perspective, we're talking about God's. To him, I think the concept of free will is irrelevant.

Only if He chooses that it not be so by direct action. But, both the steak example and Dr. Craig's response to Newcomb's paradox show that free will is not undermined by simple foreknowledge. The rest is up to God, but there's no logical contradiction here, either implicit or explicit, as you suggest.

By the way, is anybody left to find this discussion interesting? If it's just become a masturbatory exercise, I see no reason to continue.

I think this angle is played out. I know that I've started to repeat myself. Besides, I'm taking my wife to Paris and Normandy tomorrow, and I can assure you that as much as I take discussions like these seriously (the "few minutes" I promised Brandy ended up being 45, and I think I spent 6 or 7 hours on my "evidence for God" posts intitially), I will not be checking in very much over there.

So, to misquote Davy Crockett:

You may all go to Hell and I will go to France.

[WVUforREDSKINS]

[Spear]

I don't see why. The cause can't be physical or material. It created matter.

The physical and material may not be exclusive features of our universe. Reasonable analogs could easily exist "one level up."

On another note, in all of your musings you never really addressed potentially the most devastating critique, which is that the cause must be personal. Again...

I could not discern what significance "personal" is meant to carry. I need some clarification.

If he was trying to say that the cause of the universe is exclusive to our universe, I would very much doubt that.

I'm not going to make you do anything, but M-Theory is not even close to being established experimentally, so it's hardly a refutation. At most, it's a plausible alternative, should a person find it plausible.

I was not trying to refute the God alternative, I was trying to refute a logic statement that seemed to arbitrarily narrow a large field of alternatives down to a paltry two as its basis. Why did he exclude M-branes from the discussion, among others?

It all depends on how you define simple, but my point was more that your proposed alternative is too simple.

And that's what your intuitive bias tells you. But it's impossible to say where to draw the line of abstraction. Just as I can't rightly say your notion is too complex, you can't rightly say that mine is too simple.

Only if He chooses that it not be so by direct action. But, both the steak example and Dr. Craig's response to Newcomb's paradox show that free will is not undermined by simple foreknowledge. The rest is up to God, but there's no logical contradiction here, either implicit or explicit, as you suggest.

In the sense that you can not undermine something that is inherently meaningless and without substance, I agree.

I do not cede the point, but I would just be repeating myself by issuing a serious response.

I think this angle is played out. I know that I've started to repeat myself. Besides, I'm taking my wife to Paris and Normandy tomorrow, and I can assure you that as much as I take discussions like these seriously (the "few minutes" I promised Brandy ended up being 45, and I think I spent 6 or 7 hours on my "evidence for God" posts intitially), I will not be checking in very much over there.

So, to misquote Davy Crockett:

You may all go to Hell and I will go to France.

I applaud your dedication and hope you have a nice trip.

[Predicto]

Remarkably silly (and totally unsubstantiated) chart that proves nothing

Sure is a good thing that scientific minds have had the guts to question their understandings and assumptions, and thus advance our knowledge for the past 2000 years. Otherwise, we might be as ignorant as people who lived 2000 years ago.

[PeterMP]

Sure is a good thing that scientific minds have had the guts to question their understandings and assumptions, and thus advance our knowledge for the past 2000 years. Otherwise, we might be as ignorant as people who lived 2000 years ago.

The scientific method wasn't established in Europe until the 13th century when Bacon started working on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#Emergence_of_inductive_experimental_method

Oh and the Bible doesn't say the Earth is a sphere. It says circle. There is a difference. In fact, a circle is FLAT.

"He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,

and its people are like grasshoppers.

He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,

and spreads them out like a tent to live in."

Some of the others are questionable too. "Science" of the middle ages didn't disagree w/ obvious Biblical statements.

[WVUforREDSKINS]

Sure is a good thing that scientific minds have had the guts to question their understandings and assumptions, and thus advance our knowledge for the past 2000 years. Otherwise, we might be as ignorant as people who lived 2000 years ago.

I don't think you understood.

[techboy]

I could not discern what significance "personal" is meant to carry. I need some clarification.

"Personal" implies the conscious choice of an agent. Dr. Craig puts it slightly differently in Beyond the Big Bang:

Suppose we go the route of postulating some causal agency beyond space and time as being responsible for the origin of the universe. A conceptual analysis of what properties must be possessed by such an ultra-mundane cause enables us to recover a striking number of the traditional divine attributes. For as the cause of space and time, this entity must transcend space and time and therefore exist atemporally and non--spatially, at least sans the universe. This transcendent cause must therefore be changeless and immaterial, since timelessness entails changelessness, and changelessness implies immateriality. Such a cause must be beginningless and uncaused, at least in the sense of lacking any antecedent causal conditions. Ockham’s Razor will shave away further causes, since we should not multiply causes beyond necessity. This entity must be unimaginably powerful, since it created the universe out of nothing.

Finally, and most strikingly, such a transcendent cause is plausibly to be regarded as personal. As Swinburne points out, there are two types of causal explanation: scientific explanations in terms of laws and initial conditions and personal explanations in terms of agents and their volitions (Swinburne 1991: 32-48). A first state of the universe cannot have a scientific explanation, since there is nothing before it, and therefore it can be accounted for only in terms of a personal explanation. Moreover, the personhood of the cause of the universe is implied by its timelessness and immateriality, since the only entities we know of which can possess such properties are either minds or abstract objects, and abstract objects do not stand in causal relations. Therefore the transcendent cause of the origin of the universe must be of the order of mind. This same conclusion is also implied by the origin of a temporal effect from a timeless cause. For if the cause of the universe were an impersonal set of necessary and sufficient conditions, it could not exist without its effect. The only way for the cause to be timeless and changeless but for its effect to originate de novo a finite time ago is for the cause to be a personal agent who freely chooses to bring about an effect without antecedent determining conditions. Thus, we are brought, not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its personal creator.

And again, I think this quote is in some ways better because the examples such as water being frozen provide concrete visuals for what he means.

Given the truth of premisses (1) and (2), it logically follows that (3) the universe has a cause of its existence. In fact, I think that it can be plausibly argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal Creator. For how else could a temporal effect arise from an eternal cause? If the cause were simply a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions existing from eternity, then why would not the effect also exist from eternity? For example, if the cause of water's being frozen is the temperature's being below zero degrees, then if the temperature were below zero degrees from eternity, then any water present would be frozen from eternity. The only way to have an eternal cause but a temporal effect would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time. For example, a man sitting from eternity may will to stand up; hence, a temporal effect may arise from an eternally existing agent. Indeed, the agent may will from eternity to create a temporal effect, so that no change in the agent need be conceived. Thus, we are brought not merely to the first cause of the universe, but to its personal Creator.

Why did he exclude M-branes from the discussion, among others?

He doesn't exclude M-branes from the discussion. He just didn't mention them in that particular article. He covers them in the above linked article, though:

We come finally to the extreme edge of cosmological speculation: string cosmology. These models are based on an alternative to the standard quark model of elementary particle physics. So-called string theory (or M-theory) conceives of the fundamental building blocks of matter to be, not particles like quarks, but tiny vibrating strings of energy. String theory is so complicated and embryonic in its development that all its equations have not yet even been stated, much less solved. But that has not deterred some cosmologists from trying to craft cosmological models based on concepts of string theory to try to avert the beginning predicted by standard Big Bang cosmology.

The most celebrated of these scenarios in the popular press has been the so-called ekpyrotic scenario championed by Paul Steinhardt.[xvi] In the most recent revision, the cyclic ekpyrotic model, we are asked to envision two three--dimensional membranes (or ‘branes’ for short) existing in a five-dimensional space--time (Fig. 9). One of these branes is our universe. These two branes are said to be in an eternal cycle in which they approach each other, collide, and retreat again from each other. It is the collision of the other brane with ours that causes the expansion of our universe. With each collision, the expansion is renewed. Thus, even though our three-dimensional universe is expanding, it never had a beginning.

SORRY THE PICTURE IS COMING SOON!

Fig. 9: Two three-dimensional membranes in an eternal cycle of approach, collision, and retreat. With each collision the expansion of our universe is re-invigorated.

Now apart from its speculative nature the ekpyrotic scenario is plagued with problems.[xvii] For example, the Horava-Witten version of string theory on which the scenario is based requires that the brane on which we live have a positive tension. But in the ekpyrotic scenario it has a negative tension in contradiction to the theory. Attempts to rectify this have been unsuccessful. Second, the model requires an extraordinary amount of ad hoc fine turning. For example, the two branes have to be so perfectly aligned that even at a distance of 1030 greater than the space between them, they cannot deviate from being parallel by more than 10-60. There is no explanation at all for this extraordinary setup. Third, the collapsing and retreating branes are the equivalent of a 4-D universe which goes through an eternal cycle of contractions and expansions. In this sense, the cyclic ekpyrotic model is just the old oscillating model writ large in five dimensions. As such, it faces exactly the same problem as the original: there is no way for the universe to pass through a singularity at the end of each cycle to begin a new cycle and no physics to cause a non-singular bounce. Finally, even if the branes could bounce back, there is no means of the physical information in one cycle being carried through to the next cycle, so that the ekpyrotic scenario has been unable to deliver on its promises to explain the large-scale structure of the observable universe. These are just some of the problems afflicting the model. It is no wonder that Andrei Linde has recently complained that while the cyclic ekpyrotic scenario is ‘very popular among journalists,’ it has remained ‘rather unpopular among scientists’ (Linde 2002: 8).

But let all that pass. Perhaps all these problems can be somehow solved. The more important point is that it turns out that, like the chaotic inflationary model, the cyclic ekpyrotic scenario cannot be eternal in the past. In September of 2001 Borde and Vilenkin, in cooperation with Alan Guth, were able to generalize their earlier results on inflationary models in such a way to extend their conclusion to other models. Specifically, they note, ‘Our argument can be straightforwardly extended to cosmology in higher dimensions,’ specifically brane--cosmology.[xviii] According to Vilenkin, ‘It follows from our theorem that the cyclic universe is past--incomplete’,[xix] that is to say, the need for an initial singularity has not been eliminated. Therefore, such a universe cannot be past-eternal.

I do not cede the point, but I would just be repeating myself by issuing a serious response.

Yes, we are simply repeating ourselves, and I have a trip anyway. Just thought I'd leave you with a little food for thought.

[AzSkinsFan63]

It is that unwavering conviction and feeling of "Truth" that allows followers of the cults to be organized and used against other groups or to fight social battles by those that interpret that "Truth" for them.

And Jesus first words said in the Olivet discourse.."Be careful no man deceive you"

seems to me that most of the followers don't read the book they just follow!

Guys like Jim Jones and David Koresh..plus many others...too many to mention. Are they not like the false christ's predicted in the Bible?

So the dangers you speak of are real and also Biblical.