$10,000.00 challengegreenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread |
After reading all the rhetoric in a thread below about evolution, I decided to prove to one and all that GOD truly does exist. If anyone can prove this simple experiment does not prove the existence of a higher power I will pay them $10,000.00.Go out tomorrow by yourself and go into any establishment or friends home and steal something. But, don't get caught of course and don't tell another living soul what you have done. Make sure its something that you really would like to have. Let that character defect of greed help you pick out this item. This is very important.
Take the item home and determine its value, then multiply its value by 10. Sometime in the following week or two stay very aware of any unfair losses to you or your household. You will find that God is just and this higher power will serve you your punishment 10 fold for this theft.
Go out tomorrow and give someone in need $10.00. You have to give this $10.00 to them with true compassion and from your heart. Within a week or two this will come back to you, again, ten fold.
This is GOD. And GOD is just. This is as much a part of nature as the air that you breath and the gravity that holds you to this planet. Its true that what goes around, comes around...You reap what you sew. This is GOD, this is nature.
If people would only take the blinders off or were intelligent enough to be aware of what is happening around them every moment, they would see that GOD is everywhere and everything.
By the way I was bankrupt in 1987. With true humility I say to you today that I am a self made millionaire. My higher power gets all the credit as I have allowed GODS WILL TO BE DONE IN MY LIFE. Its not my belief, but, a KNOWLEDGE that GOD opens the eyes of the true believers.
The self-willed, self-seeking, self centered minds are kept closed as they must reap there just rewards. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that GOD is just.
May Gods Will Be Done,
Mike Kessler
P.S. This topic has everything to do with Y2K.
-- flierdude (flierdude@netscape.net), August 26, 1999
Great post. Romans says that "that which is evident about God can be seen in what He has made." This article originally appeared in the Christian Standard, October 17, 1982. Darwin in Fantasyland Roger Chambers Do you know whats doing in the world of Darwin, dinosaurs, and DNA? I dont mean textbook stuff. Evolution, of course, has long existed in two general theories: (1) The well-groomed scenario in schoolbooks, seeping scientific certainty, and (2) the state of perpetual, if genteel, war among the Exalted Poobahs of Neo- Darwinism. These fellows do systematic violence to one another. Theres not a significant particular of the theory that has escaped the ridicule of the evolutionists themselves. They smash theory with speculation, destroy hypothesis with conjecture, and obliterate supposition by shooting it with assumption (and try to keep their voices down so the creationists wont hear). Now its worse. Darwins family is breaking up and some of the children are leaving home. Not since Origin of Species (1859) has there been such a brouhaha among the fossils. Its a revolution in evolution. Can you believe it? Darwinism, old and new, is on its way to the garbage can that body of "scientific truth" that has for generations separated thinking men from the intellectually unwashed. If youre a creationist, however, dont get too excited; its not evolution thats going, only Darwin. Hes being replaced by the new magic. Ill explain. Darwin did not create evolution (the theory evolved), he made it respectable by describing a mechanism of change: natural selection. By this he meant that the environment kills some animals quicker than others. (Neo-Darwinism defines it that some animals have more offspring than others.) This simple fact became the effective agency of evolution. "Differential mortality," given enough time, has within its blindness and brainlessness the wherewithal to make encoded DNA out of dirt, Shakespeare out of slime, and music out of mud. Natural selection, according to the textbooks, has all the creative power and wisdom of God if there was a God. With Darwin, evolution became the rage; everything had to be thought of in evolutionary terms. Scientists noticed, however, that Darwin hadnt said enough about change. He had outlined only the survival of the fittest; nothing had been said about the arrival of the fittest. Darwin failed to explain where nature got the collection from which to make her selection. For a while some evolutionists fiddled around with an earlier theory of change: Lamarckianism. Lamarck said that giraffes were born with longer necks because mamma spent so much time straining for the greenery in the treetops. Evolution limped along with Lamarck for a while. It got a new shot of scientific respectability from the emerging science of genetics. Gregor Mendel and Hugo de Vries demonstrated that changes in reproductive systems produced variety within kinds. De Vries coined the word "mutation" (change). Evolutionists landed on the mutation with both feet and Neo-Darwinism was born. Mutations, it turned out, are the raw material for natural selection. Neo-Darwinism promised that tiny changes (microevolution) will gradually accumulate into the new kinds (macroevolution). Evolutionists happily filled the textbooks with examples of microevolution (black moths, blind fruit flies, et al.) and assured one and all that evolution was now proved. Creationist scientists have been pointing out that (1) there are no undisputed transitional forms in the fossil record, (2) the overwhelming tendency in genetics is against change, (3) gradualism is a totally inadequate explanation for the complexity evident in the biological order, (4) the mathematics dont work the theory is magnificently improbable, and (5) all the "evidence" for macroevolution consists of complicated descriptions of what might have happened extrapolations from microevolution. The standard response of the evolutionist establishment has been to declare that all non-evolutionists are, thereby, nonscientists. School children are told to believe that the evidence is there because "all scientists" say its there, like the emperors new clothes. But thats not what theyve been saying to one another. Challenges About 1940, University of California geneticist Richard Goldschmidt (The Material Basis of Evolution) blew the whistle. He said it was time to admit the true nature of the fossil record and admit the failure of theoretical gradualism. He said paleontology couldnt find the transitional fossils for a very simple reason: they arent there. Goldschmidt held that the theory should be brought in line with the evidence; it should think of quantum leaps rather than tiny changes shading into one another over the vast stretches of time for example evolutionists should admit that a reptile laid an egg and hatched a bird (the "Hopeful Monster"). If that werent enough, Goldschmidt explained that minuscule rearrangements in the cells and genes couldnt produce what is found in nature. To support this point, he challenged fellow evolutionists to explain in detail the gradual evolution of eighteen structures, including the comparatively simple feather. No takers. Evolutionists dismissed Goldschmidt as a lunatic; they shouted even louder that the emperor (secular humanism) is indeed clothed in scientific truth. In the past three decades, evolutionists by the hundreds have bailed out. The fight for creationism is being led by some of the worlds finest scientists. Evolutionists pretend that the creation-evolution debate is a case of Elmer Gantry, a sweaty consternation, shouting absurdities at Albert Einstein. Not so. Example: I have before me a copy of a speech by Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London and editor of its journal. It was presented at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (November 5, 1981). Title: "Evolution and Creationism." Patterson dropped a bombshell by announcing that he woke up one night with the realization that "I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it." He went on to demonstrate that evolution is "an anti-theory that conveys anti-knowledge." Now the latest: Evolutions new wave is being led by Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. As editor of Natural History, journal of the American Museum of Natural History, Gould has been reworking evolutionary theory. In May 1977 he pointed out that "the rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology." In June of that year Gould predicted the vindication of Goldschmidt the revival of the "Hopeful Monster." Evolutions popedom let out a scream that could be heard all the way back to the late stone age. Gould wisely backed off, disavowed any connection with Goldschmidts thesis, and proceeded to restate the basic hypothesis in different language. With Gould, gradualism is out and natural selection has nothing to do with macroevolution, i.e., exit Neo-Darwinism. He does not, of course, solve the genetic problem: why and how a new species springs up. He simply asserts that it does. You should know two things about all this: First, that as evolutionism follows Gould, it is tacitly admitting that the creationists have been right all along about the nature of the evidence. Second, the Neo-Darwinian gradualism saturating schoolbooks and course outlines is officially nonscientific. Gould overcomes the scientific absurdities in evolutionary theory by simple declaration. Mutations have the demonstrated inability to jump puddles; now, by Gouldian fiat, they vault over oceans. He is the fairy godmother of evolution, who waves his magic wand over Cinderella's coach and turns mice into horses. Gould's magic words are not "bippety-boppety-boo"; he prefers "punctuated equilibria." One more thing: Gould troubled himself to testify in Arkansas, where creationism lost its shirt in court. It appears he wants to enforce textbook evolution by law while he and his friends debate whether their private version is science. An essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education (April 14, 1982) warns evolutionists not to debate creationists. Evolutionists always lose, it seems, because their adversaries are "incredibly well prepared" and they "know how to manipulate the media." Thats the plan: Dont debate; legislate.
Remember the words of Hilaire Belloc:
Bit scientists who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh! Let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about
Confusion to the enemy!
-- Duane Schwingel (duane@mytalk.com), August 26, 1999.
-- Y2KGardener (gardens@bigisland.net), August 26, 1999.
Y2K Gardener I'm with you all the way
-- Daryll (twincrk@hotmail.com), August 26, 1999.
Mike,I worry that putting God to the test is dangerous. I believe in God, but I'm not certain your experiment will work. So I am willing to take on your challenge of giving someone in need a $20 bill (after all, I stand to make $US 10,000.00 if I don't get my $20 back 10 fold). How shall I demonstrate that I did not get my $20 back 10 fold-- if I believe that this experiment has failed? How will I collect the $US 10,000.00? I think we better hold off until you set up a trust account for this amount, terms of demonstration, and have your lawyer send me a confirmation of the account balance, terms of demonstration, and terms of the experiment. I will provide contact information when you email me. If I should win, I will spend half of it on my personal preps and half of it on Y2K educational initiatives in this region.
Sincerely, Stan Faryna
-- Stan Faryna (info@giglobal.com), August 26, 1999.
I'll have a thousand bucks worth of this action!!!Seriously, flierdude, your point is very well taken, what goes around comes around. I speak from experience.
Peace.
-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), August 26, 1999.
flierdude- My stepfather told me this some time ago, and I thought it was unlikely. I believed the world was too unjust for things to work like that. If you're paying attention however, you will see it is true. BTW this only applies if your actions are from the heart.
-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), August 26, 1999.
You know maybe there IS something to what flierdude is saying. It just occured to me that yesterday I saw some little kids waiting and sweating, in an out of gas car in our company parking lot while their dad scrounged some money and gas. (He had told me that his car had broken down) I bought a couple of cokes for the kids and resumed my job. On my way home, traffic was so horrible I decided to stop at Tacoma boys fruit stand to kill some time till traffic cleared. I walked out of there with TWO (normally $15.99 each) boxes of slightly overripe tomatoes (perfect for freezing for later use as tomato sauce)for $1 a box, and 10 kiwi fruit, 3 perfect giant mangos, and two perfect giant heads of lettuce for a grand total of $4. I got home in time to find out the man delivering the cord of hardwood firewood was charging me thirty dollars less than I had expected to pay.
-- Ann Fisher (zyax55b@prodigy.com), August 26, 1999.
flierdudeI think the method you use to demonstrate your point indicates a few errors in the meaning you are trying to point out.
In life there are synchronistic principles that flow with time. Call them islands of meaning in the flow of your life. A good way to look at this properly is if you love something in life and devote time and attention to it the "flow" will develop relative to the time you spend on the subject in question.
In your example above it would not be the value of the item that was stolen but the fact you took something that was someone else's. The material aspect has no "meaning" on the spiritual side.
Say you devote time to something, it is not the something that is inherently important it is the process of growth in achieving the goal that has the true meaning. In your example you used theft as a means of demonstrating your point. It is not what has been stolen that will determine the path but the process of stealing.
What you seem to be trying to say is that you example shows that this is God. It only is an indication of a higher order. This may be an example of universal conditions that "God" set in motion but it is not "God". This example is more like a "law of god" than "God" himself.
I do believe in what you are trying to say but find the manner in which you say it is contrary to the principles that are inherent in the subject manner.
-- Brian (imager@home.com), August 26, 1999.
Nice idea, Mike, but God's existence can not be proven. If it could, why would it be difficult to believe in Him and His love? It wouldn't. In fact, once a theory or idea is proven it becomes knowledge and ceases to be belief. Isn't this life a test of our faith in God? Again, knowledge requires no faith.I have a question for you. How does a generous, honest man become a millionaire? By the way, that was Jefferson that you quoted.
-- Klar (klarbrunn@lycos.com), August 26, 1999.
I have a question for you. How does a generous, honest man become a millionaire? By the way, that was Jefferson that you quoted.-- Klar (klarbrunn@lycos.com), August 26, 1999.
Klar
I'll try that
The person has the right concept at the right time. Timing is everything. Just because you are honest and gentle doesn't mean you won't make money. You just operate under correct principles.
Now the question, if a person has a million dollars does that mean they will have correct principles? It is a matter of character not money.
Of course then a person could discuss the meaning of money and have as difficult a time as figuring out Y2K :o)
-- Brian (imager@home.com), August 26, 1999.
Flierdude,You are very kind, and I will accept your $10,000 with thanks. But, Please send it directly to the Turkish Earthquake appeal rather than to me personally.
My claim to your offered prize is as follows. You have offered to pay $10,000 to anyone who can prove that your suggested experiment does not prove the existance "... of a higher power." You do not require evidence of anyone having actually carried out the experiment, but merely proof of a non proof. (or proof of a negative). For this purpose it is necessary to differentiate between "proof" and "evidence". I shall show that while this experiment may be evidence, it is not proof.
In order to Prove an asertion to be correct it is necessary to first show a direct relationship between the cause and the effect. It is neccessary to show that there is no other possible cause that will give the same result, and it is neccesary to show that the cause will always give the tested outcome. Therefore, if your experiment is to prove the existance of a higher power then you must show that:
a) Only a higer power will always reward and punish in the manner that you have suggested.
b) there can be no other possible explanation for the losses or gains to be made following the experiment. and
C) the experiment must be repeatable, and work every time. You have not met any of these criteria, therefore your experiment does not "Prove" the existance of a higher power, it is merely evidence.
However, to prove that your experiment is not proof, it is only neccessary for me to give an example of some other entity that will reward and punish in the manner that you have suggested, or provide an alternative explanation, or show that the experiment is not always repeatable.
a) If your assertion that only God can do this, then you are discounting Man. However mankind is also able to establish good and evil, and reward or punish in a suitable manner. After all that is what a justice sytem is all about.
b) I have no doubt that you are well aware of the proverb "Like attracts Like", or how negativity attracts negativity, while a positive outlook attracts others with a positive outlook. This is just human nature at work, and explains why people will naturally assist people who are already assisting others.
c) There is no evidence that the experiment is repeatable, but plenty of anecdotal evidence that it isn't.
Please note that I am not getting into the argument of whether there is a God or not, I am merely commenting on what is a suitable standard of proof.
Malcolm
-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), August 26, 1999.
flierdude,I agree, what goes around....comes around. I once donated $100.00 to our local EMT. Never donated that much money in my life before to any organization. Don't know why I did it...just did. A few days later my spouse came into some unexpected money...lots of it.
-- anti-chainsaw (tree@hugger.com), August 26, 1999.
-- Duane Schwingel (duane@mytalk.com), August 26, 1999.
Here's a better way to "prove" God. Discover the covenant between God and Israel, not Jews,(Judah was the Southern Kingdom, Israel was the Northern Kingdom).Some things about Israel...
1) Israel would become a Great Nation and a Great Company of Nations.
2) God divorced Israel. Then came back and redeemed Israel and took Israel back as wife.
3) God said that Israel would be Christian.
4) Israel would inherit the waste or desolate places of the world, and spread out to the North, South, East and West.
There's more, if you are interested in a fascinating study try it. However you have to dig deep and you don't get any money. Different kind of treasure.
-- Mark Hillyard (foster@inreach.com), August 26, 1999.
Would you be the Mike Kessler of Colorado Springs Real Estate fame, or some other line of work?
-- just (curious@curious.curious), August 26, 1999.
Hmmm...this must be the trick the Mafia uses! They go out and do a good deed, like break someones kneecaps that refuses to make extortion payments, an Viola! They somehow come into mysterious profits of hundreds of thousands of dollars!Must be why I heard that thug chanting God is Great! Allah Akbar!
-- Jesus wept (@ .), August 26, 1999.
ok--- I'm---say 6 years old and I'm sleeping.I've been a good kid--helped mom and dad etc. All of a sudden the ground shakes and the buildings tumble and everybodies dead.
Man is belief expressed--If you believe something strongly (from the heart as you suggest) the subconscious-which is pure infinite intelligence goes about proving it!
-- David Butts (dciinc@aol.com), August 26, 1999.
This is not GOD - this is Karma.
-- (dot@dot.dot), August 26, 1999.
A strong `yes' to all who point out that God is not to be proven via material means. The universe does follow certain rules, of course, what Brian calls the higher order, indicating, hinting, God's existence. Then there's God itself, which can only be either guessed at (faith) or Known (Certainty).
-- Mara Wayne (MaraWayne@aol.com), August 26, 1999.
I fear God and do what is right because of not wanting the wrath of God. Jesus teaches goodness and forgiveness and love thy neighbor. God is not to be tested or toyed with, ever. I know a few very wealthy persons who became that way by being very dishonest and hurtful to people. They don't seem to be shelling out more than they have for compensation. I want to believe they will have to pay for their actions, but for the average good Joe, serendipity is all we can expect from our life on earth. Our reward is waiting for us in heaven. world.
-- Carol (glear@usa.net), August 26, 1999.
How about you just give me the $10,000 "with true compassion and from your heart?" Within a week, God will have rewarded you with $100,000. Everybody wins.
-- (daverhodes@mmf.spam), August 26, 1999.
From what I read in scripture and from my own experience, one does not always receive their rewards in this life for good deeds done here. Despite a life of giving to others with great joy and even some abandon, I have nothing much in earthly goods to demonstrate that God rewards us here and now. I do have the satisfaction of knowing that I have tried to follow Jesus' example and commands to love God with all my heart and my neighbor as myself, and of knowing that this pleases my creator and Lord. I also believe His promises that my rewards will be received in Heaven. If we do good to receive rewards, then we somehow taint our deeds with greed. Yes, I have wished that God worked differently, and that I didn't have to scrabble so hard to just survive (never mind prepare for Y2K!!), but I have also accepted that He said, "My ways are not your ways and are past finding out."
-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), August 26, 1999.
This topic has nothing to do with Y2k. Can the FM please be more diligent in deleting off topic posts.I don't want to waste my time reading it if it's not obviously off topic.
Thanks Tim
-- Tim the Y2K nut (tmiley@yakko.cs.wmich.edu), August 27, 1999.
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