No, it is inconsistent with the Character of God, given the circumstances to ask me to do such a thing.  I would conclude this clear voice was attempting to decieve me.

Sure, it does work on that, but those very things are offered as "evidence" for a God (and since God can't be shown to exist directly, they only have these indirect connections that they claim are "God Spoor".

Are we supposed to just throw up our hands and say, "Yer right! I can't say nothing about that revelation you just had, so go ahead and kill them babies!"

Or, "You're right, we can't say anything about your religious feelings, so we should hedge our bets and allow prayer in school and make our women wear burkhas".

In the end, we are still responsible for creating the world we live in. (And as one who is leaning towards Determinism, I don't know if any of us could change anyhow. )

Thats an intersting approach.  She asked Abraham to slaughter his son - what if Abraham thought as you did?

You therefore 'know the mind of God'.    So whats her ultimate purpose?

Reasoned, I enjoy discussing with you.  You have a coutesy that I aspire to and wish I could match.  I disagree with most of your fundamental views, which itself leads to stimulating discussion.  So let me suggest that you seem to have abandoned some of your more broad assertions here and are 'coming down' to one 'banker'.   

"We can tie morality to thought "    -  so we all argue.
"and even posit that these particular thoughts are a product of the forces of natural selection" - which acts upon our genetic inheritance - matter in your parlance.
"but then there is a gap in the framework between natural selection / evolution and a source from pure matter"  -  so your basic argument is still the question of 'how did life arise'.  The problem here is that even if we assumed some 'designer' you have no better an answer to 'how' than the non-theists, merely another step in the regress.  But the non-theists have a multitude of research programs and theoretical investigations - we even have the multi-million Ventner claiming to have synthesized life*.  Your conjectures (you as a scientist are well aware of the distinction)  have no lines of investigation, no experimental proofs one way or the other - just the 'feeling' and traditional thought.

I do counsel you to get back to your good ol' theoroclastic ways and at least look to the effects of of your concessions above.  Explain to us how the 'spirit' or 'souls' form thoughts and breath them into our brains, how these numinous things are beyond our reach, how any empirical approach is bound to fail, then explain how they proceed from god and interact in a different universe, how god and souls and the spirit have certain attributes relationships and properties (none of which we can actually apprehend), explain how we can of course devine these things by special powers that god has given us (alone out of the animal kingdom), and how although we have no idea of his purpose we 'know' that he has given us the 'chance' to fail.....  its all so much more fun than simply waiting for what the effects of 2,000 years of empirical enquiry will have on human knowledge compared to 2,000 years of theology.




 *I know, I know, it doesn't prove designership one way or another - though I'm sure you will jump on the fact that (if it happens) the created life will have been 'designed' by humans.   Just like EVERY experiment is so 'designed'.

Just for clarification puposes, what is Ventnors synthetic life experiment supposed to prove that would support a Materialist premise on the answers to the origins of life and abiogenesis that seems to have our resident materialists all but declaring "victory"?

Certainly you would know the many difficulties this premise faces in attempting to answer even the simplest of these concepts......I would consider him irrelevant to the discussion... especially when you take what he has done in consideration:

The team was able to construct an artificial chromosome of 381 genes and the DNA sequence they have pieced together is based upon the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium (pictured). The original bacterium had a fifth of its DNA removed and was able to live successfully with the synthetic chromosome in place.
The man-made organism, dubbed Mycoplasma laboratorium, still relied upon the intracellular machinery already present to carry out tasks such as replication and metabolism, and in this respect the entity is not an entirely new life form. Though the potential may be phenomenal, at the moment all there is to go on is a scientist's word, and in science facts are the only language of proof. We will be waiting with baited breath for an official announcement

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/genetics/craig-venter-claims-artificial-life-has-been-created-307958.php

He didn't "create" anything....he "modified" an existing bacterium that retained 80% of it's endogenous DNA.
F

"You continue to want to make a comparison to alternatives as if you believe your alternative represents a better explanation".  Not quite.  I make comparison of alternatives in order to find out which represents a better explanation.  Having done that, I present the alternative that does so according to certain standards of evaluation.  These standards I have published here - you may go and look at them, and help me refine them if you find them deficient.  Indeed, I have expressly and often invited you to do just that, but for some reason you do not appear to want to examine HOW to reason (rather ironic given your nick).

And, speaking of ironies, let me just repeat for any uncommited reader that, yes, this quote comes from reasoned faith - "You continue to want to make a comparison to alternatives as if you believe your alternative represents a better explanation. "

I doubt it since, like angels, demons and spirits, these things are fiction.   We may have problems defining 'life', but at least we have some sort of consensus as to what it looks like.  The atomic bomb was possible since the beginning of time, but conceivably possible from 1905 - but not practically possible until the 1940s.  I am not claiming that life creation is yet even at the 1905 equivalent.  It is however certainly not fictional - whatever you may wish.

I should add that it is an interesting philosophical problem to 'account for' the concept of fiction.  However, I have no wish to start a thread on it... we can all see the way it would go.

1.  "the spark of life comes from God...there is no logical or scientific reason to believe otherwise"   WHAT?   OK  there is no logical or scientifi reason to believe.  There are plenty of reasons to believe otherwise - mainly the reason that the 'spark of life' has NO connection with any corpus of scientific theory, and it is as 'logical' as fairies and witches.  Just because you can invent a fiction does not make it in any way connected to reality.

2.  Disagreements can be futile if the sides do not wish to discuss.  Non-theistis have a vast back story of empirical knowledge about the world and associated theory.  These are open to discussion and debate, examination and revision.  What do you offer?