Q: Should creationism be taught in shools? -- A: YES!

Here is a recent article in which a leading British education expert states


Now, my purpose is not to poke holes in that idea but rather to present the following solution which up until now, I've not heard anyone put forth.

I, F69, formally wish creationism to be taught in the classroom. But only if we also teach evolution during bible study.

For if lack of scientific support is enough for a theory to end up in a science classroom, then lack of religious support should be enough for a theory to end up in a biblical classroom. Thus, in my proposal, if a biology class spends one week, one hour a day examining creationism as an alternative to evolution in schools, then the bible studies must dedicate an equal amount of time (6 hours) to presenting evolution as an alternative to creationism in church.

How about it creationists? Doesn't this seem like a peaceful and equitable way to resolve our differences?

Just can't keep your finger out of the religous / science light socket can you.

And of course I will grab hold. Shocking......

Why does Creationism or ID need to be taught in science class, why not as a social studies lesson, or philosphy topic? Hell throw evolutionism in to these studies also.

So yes teach all manner of things, let our youth sort it out. Just do not teach unprovable topics in our science classes.

Ken

Teach them that nobody knows or has the answer.

it should be presented as an existing theory, nothing more

I would rather discuss the merits of this proposal rather than the merits of teaching one or the other.

I agree with everything you say Nard (including the light socket. ), but what I want to see here is what would happen if we presented this as a proposal to the creationists. After all, irrelevant of how WE feel, THEY want it in the classroom and I offer this as a compromise. I'm curious to see what happens when we do the ol' revers-a-rony and try to get OUR teachings into THEIR schools!

But that would be wrong..

really phemox? you know exactly what happened? did you experience it? Granted I am more on the evolution side than the creation side, but I agree with fastlane69 because i think people should be exposed to all views and be given the chance to choose for themselves instead of just taught one theory or the other.

Knowing exactly, down to all the details, what happens is not quite the opposite of claiming 'nobody knows', that was all I was saying.

I do not pretend to know everything at all, I just think people should be educated about what we do know.

Sure, there will be parts of or even entire theories that are 'questionable' to some extent, but in search of truth I do not think we must get sidetracked by silly theories like supernatural unicorn spaghetti monsters and creationist insta-cadabra-bang-and now there's life-talk.

That probably sounds way less respectful than I meant and for that I do apologize, but I really do not take people very serious when they believe God is trying to fool us all by putting 'fake fossils' in the ground and made this earth 4400 years ago in 6 days or so. Sorry, but science has shown already that the earth is far far older and that life evolved.

Apart from an overwhelming lack of evidence that this creation happened of course. Again, I apologize for my bluntness, I'm a bit pumped today I guess,

Cheers

Please let's not devolve this discussion into which viewpoint is right and which is wrong. As you can see, my proposal doesn't presuppose either is right or wrong, merely equality in teaching.

Let's talk about if this is a feasible idea. If so, how do we get the message out. If not, what are the obsticles.

Me too :P lets throw on some boxing gloves

It would, to me, be a far more fascinating experiment to not teach these ideas at all and see what people choose to believe on their own.

[edit]
Oh uh, more on-topic: it'll never work. Public schools in this country conform to policies set by universally adhered-to laws that are enforced by one body. There too many religious faiths, not to mention offshoots, you cannot just say, "LEMME SPEAK TO THE LEADER OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" and discuss a change in the teaching policies in their youth groups.

[edit#2]
To be more serious, I do think that if we're going to teach things of this nature in schools, we should give our children a complete education. It's also the democratic way: for our public school system to only teach an admittedly narrow range of belief structures is, as far as I can see, unconstitutional, not to mention horrific.

sounds good

no one should just 'accept' this or the other based on other people's ideas.
if you base your life ideas based on other people's experiences, how do you know for yourself if you're right, if you haven't experienced/thought about it yourself

so teach that everything in science is theory, as we know it is (it's only right, some think of some theories as fact, when they're theories with evidence {or sometimes without sufficient evidence})
and teach every major thiest/athiest/whateverelse idea, let ppl analyse for themselves rather than treating them like idiots

also teach an unbiased philosophy so that they all can analyse it
an unbiased education sounds good

Your comparing apples with oranges. Noone is forced to go to Bible study, whereas we are all mostly forced to send our kids to public school.

If bible study were required for all people then yes I would agree that we teach evolution there also.

you won't believe it but in atheist europe religion and bible lessons in public schools are very common. which isn't really a bad thing...

Yeah that's true, and also budhism and such religions are often teached. Not so very extensive, but at least some basics.

let's make it a school subject called "ethics" that covers all mono- and polytheistic religions, atheims and its many manifestations, superstition, bla blu and everyone will be equally unhappy, at least they are equal by then and equally "taught".

Agreed ^^.

But there is one thing everyone keeps mentioning: The Bible. If everyone should be taught how it dictates, whats stopping every other religion to be taught?

Thus if the bible is taught, isn't it only fair that not only evolution but every other religious belief of how we came to be also be taught?

Cheers
Adoado

True, it's definitely not all that bad. Mainly because they cover a lot of different kinds of religion. Even atheism got debated eventhough our teacher was Christian (the European way).

What they did not do though was explain certain problems with religion. Mind you this was a Christian school I attended to, so it doesn't surprise me all that much.

But if we're going to talk about evolution and even it's problems as far as there are any, which I'm sure are discussed in class nowadays anyways, then we need to talk about the issues with religion as well.

I have yet to come across a book used in schools that claims to have full knowledge of the evolutionary processes.

Cheers

Nope, I do not agree

Education is neither a right nor a privilage
Education is a duty
Since parents are obliged to send their children to school , they should also be forbidden to expose their children to false theories

But that you ought it to be a false theory doesn't mean it is a false one.

I got also teached about the spontanious birth of life beings from dead objects like a bag of garbage. It's definately a false theory, but at that time a logic one :P
This is what they saw, what they observed, Mice spontaniously came to existence at places with garbage. Who says that what we saw so far in science is what we think it is?

The point of the 'spontaneous birth' of life was that it had a quite clear cause that wasn't 'spontaneous'... lol. Seems you've missed the point there?

Cheers

This is an old trick , which I was expecting from a fundamentalist but it is not your case as far as I know

The trick is :

arise a lot of doubts about everything , make a confusion and , finally...
the Bible claimed ...full stop...

The situation is not so drammatic
Of course some theories which are accepted nowadays might be refuted in the future but we are talking about advanced studies
The school must teach only those theories which have been proved beyond any reasonable doubt , evolutionism included

Yeah, that's the psychology behind it all. Confuse people, scare them, make them unsure about their own ideas.. then bamm!! shoot loads of Bible-talk on them and they will fall for the trick.

I think schools could use a bit more psychology classes as well, as a lot of people do not seem to understand a great deal of human psychology.

in case anyone has missed so far in the various threads in hilbert's, i'm a Christian. but Creationism should not be taught in school science classes. it makes sense to teach the most popular scientific theory, and teach why, so kids can be tested on what the theory is and why the theory could work scientifically.

many schools (at least here, anyway) give kids religious options for different subjects, and that's the perfect context in which to discuss Creationism.

otherwise, if you want to teach Creationism, why teach it from the Bible? i'm a Bible-believer but from the perspective of someone who doesn't, why choose the Biblical account over that of other religions?

@those trying to have a psychology discussion on the evil motives behind religions: stop.

@those who continue to say that evolution from a cell as the origin of all life is proven fact: stop.

this isn't your thread, guys.

julz

I agree to give kids different religious options but I dont agree about " different subjects"
Do you mean that in Australia some schools are allowed to teach the kids that evolutionism is a false theory while creationism is the true one ?

If I understood correctly, this is , in my opinion, an abuse of the concept of democracy

Here in Europe, religious people can run schools but they are not allowed to choose the " subjects "
Obviusly you can not prevent the teachers to have some influence on the student, this is democracy but they must follow a common programm

This is what I meant, in my previous thhread saying :

Education is not a right, it is a duty

Nobody should be permitted to teach false theories

absolutely not. science is still compulsory, and only evolution and the big bang are taught in that (with regard to the origins of life and the universe, anyway). but we can do religious studies as well, separately.

julz

Thanks
This is absolutly, right, of course

Didn't sound too confusing to me, rather quite logic . My intention was not to cause any confusion at all or play mind tricks, and I can assure you that my final word certainly won't be 'The Bible!' . Anyway, I do support the teaching of false theories, at least let children know they exist and how and why people would think like that, rather than focussing on 'the one possible theory'. (I hope) it helps evolving an open minded society, with respect for other ideas, even if they seem silly.

Small problem, bible study is not a class in school

Why does it matter if the christian belief of creation is taught? How much flak does Greek mythology or Egyptian teachings get when brought to the table?



That also leads to the question of why is a theory, which has yet to be proven with little evidence (two skulls which could be birth defects [I know it sounds far fetched, but it does happen ]) treated as if it is scientific fact. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but the scientific thing to do in proving a hypothesis is finding enough evidence to prove the theory, if there isn't enough proof, it isn't made law and is discarded. Why then is evolution treated as a law? Simple, it's an easy answer to questions, which really means "we don't know". If I am wrong about the evidence give me more please.

As for biblical texts, there are texts that date back to the times they speak of, it's not just stuff that some catholics wrote up, the texts were dug up out of caves, if carbon dating will be used on skulls use them on the artifacts. There are also writings by Roman officials such as Pilate among other people. As for creation, there is spacial evidence that such a thing could have happened, it has been examined more and more lately by select scientists. There are facts that prove that our solar system was designed to harbor life on this planet, things just seemed to be perfectly put into order to allow life on this planet, and for us not to be continually pelted by comets and asteroids (which Jupiter blocks). There is enough evidence in this area to at least consider the subject. Who is to say that the big bang (also a theory, but i accept the possibility, being a theory and all) wasn't the creator himself doing such a thing? The question is, why Isn't most of this stuff taught, or at least examined in a scientific way?



I'm not sure that a church would teach evolution, but I agree that both should be taught in school. I also think that most biblical studies should be history, and perhaps creationism as science, as well as evolution's (and by evolution I mean the original theory, adaptation) facts. Evolution isn't taught much in school either, so i think it would be fair that both be taught in science. I think it should be up to the pupil to decide what they will believe.

I like that, however, I do think that if theories such as evolution and the big bang are being taught, why shouldn't creationism? As it is, there isn't much scientific evidence to PROVE evolution or the big bang (send me links if I'm wrong, but from what I've studied this is what I gathered), so why not teach another subject that doesn't have huge scientific evidence either.

I don't mean this to say that the big bang or evolution is false, I don't know that, I just think if theories are to be taught in school, so should religious theories. We learned about native american, Greek, Egyptian, Roman, and some Chinese religious beliefs, why not christian? It seems to be such a threat to scientific beliefs. I personally believe that the earth took billions of years to create, on that note though:

The Bible doesn't say that God just up and created the whole earth from scratch, it says that the earth was already there, but without form, meaning it was rugged with no life. Which means the earth had been there a while, no one said the earth just popped into it's position in space in seven days...also when the bible refers to days it refers to 1000s of years, possibly more in the seven creation days, hebrew translation says that God "began to create" on each day, why does that sound so odd to so many?

(sorry for double post)

There are tons of scientific evidences in favour of evolutionism and none in favour of creationism
Thus, evolutionism must be taught and creationism must not
As simple as that

It's just not Science!

@AlbertoT: please leave links to support it.

@LarryLaffer: funny video

These kinds of statements are plentiful when discussing evolution. Basically because there is "a ton of evidences". Alberto has said it so it must be true. Thats great science.

Or they just make ad hominem attacks against creationist ideas and personal attacks and mocking against Christians. They do this because they know that they have no evidence whatsoever.

Starting with the fact that they cant explain where matter came from,leading to the next impossible obstacle of life evolving from non-living matter I have found that every link of the ladder of evolutionary theory is far from proven.

From abiogenesis you proceed to the sheer impossibility of eukaryote evolution w/sexual reproduction and then asking why no new phyla have emerged since the Cambrian period? The missing fossils, stasis vs. punctuated equilibrium, its all really the biggest, most convoluted deceit in human history.

The ONLY reason why scientist dont want to accept creation is because creation demands a creator and they dont want to accept a God because they dont want to accept responsibility for their own morality. If they can erase God, then they think they can erase their own sins. However, their own sin becomes more and more apparent as they twist truth further and further to fit the ridiculous lie we know as evolution.

A link ?

Would you ask for a link for the Mendel's laws or the Newton's laws or ...

Evolutionism, a part for some details, is no longer a matter of discussion

agreed Nitro, but the problem also stands with alot of the "religious" (not christian, religious) leaders that claim christianity, but babble on at how many people are horrible sinners and offend, the issue is that this is wrong as well, and has lead science to completely disassociate science from christianity, and the same on the end of "religious people".

There is one problem though, the first rule of science is to seek evidence until any theory can be made law, or simply stay theory. Take the law of gravity for example, we don't know how gravity is "completely" controlled or why some things have gravity or not, however, the fact that gravity does exist makes it law, further testing can prove so, making it a law. Evolution on the other hand has not had "solid" proof that supports the theory, mainly because most of the bones that have been found are in different rock layers, and alot of the supposedly older ones are found above supposedly newer ones, meaning that the newer ones disprove that the creature evolved. For example, horse bones were found in rock, and other bones as well. The bones "seemed" to evolve from a three toed animal to a single toed horse, however, the bones were not found in the correct order, suggesting that the evolution could not have happened to that animal, because the one-toed version (hence the one we know today) was found in older rock forms that most of the ones in the supposed chain of bones. To me that sounds as evidence being twisted.

The problem is, when it comes to evolution, alot of the "facts" that are used to prove it, disprove the idea altogether, however, discarding the real facts, the evidence is put on display as if it were true evidence. The problem is, small bones cannot be used in the case unless the whole skeletal structure has been found, simply because the bone could have easily belonged to another creature, and with years of decay which still happens to old bones in rock, you cannot properly date the evidence, we can only use rock layers as a time frame, and I doubt that rock layers will switch around when the times change, so if it's found near the bottom, it existed at that time.

I do agree that the fact is that PEOPLE do not wish to believe what facts are placed in the way, simply put, there is plenty of evidence to support that God does exist. For instance, there are real medical reports of tumors and cancers being removed, without scarred tissue or any sign of surgery. When such cases are reported, the people were either: A) Christian, and praying B) Not a christian, but christians were praying for them C) Christian, praying, and other christians praying. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's enough to base a theory on, and enough for scientific tests.

I do agree, however, with adaptation. Adaptation was the original theory, and does have evidence to support what has happened over the years, there is proof that depending on where something lives, it "adapts" to it's surroundings. This however, is different than an entire species turning into another species, or moving to another genus.

The problem is what Jesus summed up in a story; If people do not believe now, there is nothing that will make them believe. The fact is if God just opened up the heavens and said "What's up? I'm God." You would still not have everyone believing, there would be those that would try to sum it up in scientific terms as just an "unnatural phenomenon" while those that did believe in it, their generations below them would begin to throw it away and say "I didn't see it myself, I don't believe it.". The problem is, this already happened, this generation is still saying "I didn't see it myself, I don't believe it." despite the evidence shown to them. Simply put, they Won't believe until it is proven soon.

On-Topic: I still think that creationism should be taught in school with evolution and the big bang, simply because if a theorem such as these can be taught, why not our beliefs taught as a scientific theory as well.

Comparing Laws to Theory is like comparing apples to a human being. Laws are proven, they have significant support, such as the earth is not flat. Theorem have yet to be proven as facts and do need evidence to support them, if it is still a theory it has yet to be decided as truth or not.

For the law of gravity, I could drop an object and see it fall, I can also see that the moon rotates around our earth and all nine planets around the sun, and even if that was inconclusive enough, I could get pictures that prove they have been rotating and that a force was keeping them there.

For genetics I could find evidence linking specific genes to certain actions, appearances, etc. to conclude that genetics determines how a living thing is composed.

Yes, I need evidence for evolution, simply saying that there is evidence doesn't create evidence. Using evolution as an excuse doesn't work either.

Excellent point, but it's all about what offends people when it comes to this.

I don't think Christians would like it when we would treat their religion as a mythology just like all the others. Basically this is what you're asking for, if you'd want it to be taught in the same manner.



Evolution is treated as theory, not as law. But it currently still is the 'best there is', so yeah I can see why you think it's considered 'law'. There's plenty of evidence to prove most aspects of evolution, but not all. There are definitely things that aren't known yet.

We should be glad that science in general admits this and treats evolution as theory based on facts.. but not as flawless law. Many critics of evolution seem to totally discard this uhm paradigm as if it doesn't exist and as if scientists pretend to know everything.



Many of this is questionable at best, it's pretty unlikely that the Bible has any true historic value. There's actually more evidence for the contrary. Sure, some texts are old, but that doesn't mean that the stories told are really historic. Apart from that, the first texts that do seem to be authentic are at least 150 years after Jesus written down and some of the stories predate the Bible itself by a long long time... so, how can a story happen twice? Or even more often as many other cultures seem to have a similar story, predating the Bible by many years. Or was the Bible inspired by for example Sumerian mythology? I think the answer is dead obvious.



While I'm not sure about what exactly you are hinting on here, it still doesn't mean it has anything to do with divine creation as mentioned in the Bible. It basically means we still have plenty to discover. Don't forget that from a logic point of view, there has to have been a moment in time where there was nothing before something. At least.. I think so. Perhaps it's too difficult to grasp a scenario in which there has always been something, but still.



Complexity of a system is no proof for divine creation or intervention. In fact, there's no proof for design here, it just turned out to work as it is. In hindsight it doesn't say anything about whether it's coincidental or designed.



There are as many theories as there are different ideas on the subject to be honest.

In our schools a lot of theories are actually being taught during religion classes. Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Christianity and so on. I'm sure the Spaghetti Monster got left out on purpose because it's mocking the whole thing (it did get mentioned during classes about 'agnoticism' I think, not sure), but we've even been taught about the Intelligent Design theory. I think this is great, but we've never been taught 'creationism' as a serious alternative to evolution for good reasons!!

Cheers

You will never accept the evidences for the simple reason that you dont want to accept the evidences
For example what you said in the last post is completely wrong

Darwin himself claimed that evolutionism should be refuted if even one only advanced organism should be found in an ancient layer but despite what you said , this has never happened

Getting back to the original topic

Creationism must not be taught at school being refuted by the vast majority of scientists
Fundamentalists may be disappointed but they must accept the rule of democracy same as anybody else

Nobody is allowed to remain ignorant because ignorant people are a danger for the society

I cannot speak for other countries, but in the US it has nothing at all to do with democracy, it was the ruling of the Supreme court. So the idea of 'rule of democracy' is a joke.

And of course the Supreme Court is very knowlegeable about how matter came into existence. I guess the supreme court also knows how the first life evolved?

It is ridiculously stupid to leave the questions of the universe in the hands of scientists, but it is exponentially a billion times infinitely stupid to leave questions of the universe in the hands of some partisan politician rigged supreme court judges.


Democracy does not exist in the US, it was originally designed to be a self-leveling republic system with 'checks and balances', each governmental branch was supposed to be held in check by the other. the original framers of the constitution and government of the United States intended that no single branch of government should get total power, yet the Supreme Court makes these decisions irrespective of the will of the people.

First off, I'd like to say that I like debating with you PHeMoX, you do consider facts well.

Responses are in order from paragraph:

It is true that we would not like our religion taught as mythology but that's not what I meant, I was just comparing our religion with some other religions. Of course I say this dismissing the fact that Buddhism DID go through quite some problems in China.

That depends on who is speaking the evidence. There are times when questions are asked in science and select people say "Well Jimmy, it must have been evolution. Ha ha ha." *sarcasm abounds* and these are the "closed minded views" I refer to, but I guess basing the majority on a few idiots is like basing the whole Christian belief system on the idiots who continually persecute things every year. (simple fact: spore was one such criticized game, which I think is ridiculous :P )

One problem with this though, if you count most of the old texts as "questionable at best" you could say the same of these old bones found in rock, or any of our old history that has been recorded. I also don't agree that there is more evidence to the contrary, because they were stolen from the Jews doesn't mean that it is questionable. In fact, books from the bible make up the Torah, and it is over 3000 years old, that actually means that such books that are in the Torah, have been proven that they were written at their supposed time. I think it's also safe to assume that if the books we grabbed at first are legit, that the Catholics did not "make up" other texts, on the contrary, they refused to put certain books in like "the forgotten books of eden" because they considered them to be fiction (I don't agree with the assumption, but anyway). That sounds like more Evidence to support the bible.

I never said that everything was here to begin with, the bible says that God came from another place, meaning that God was not in the physical domain, when God decided to come over He began creation.

Mere coincidence is not what I would call scientific, also I would fear if it was coincidence, simply because coincidence could lead to destruction. The evidence I refer to is more than just Jupiter, I think it would have taken more than just coincidence for our solar system to be "designed" for us.

It's great to hear that they have religion as a subject, and they give you freedom of choice. The fact is when it does come down to it, we don't fully KNOW, I believe what I do because of personal experience as well as evidence that has been in the bible. It just comes down to one thing, there is only one absolute truth, let us just hope that you can accept it in the end. Just remember what I have said when the news reports that thousands upon millions of people disappeared in an instant.

We are not talking about the universe

The original question is :

Should creationism be taught in schools ?

In other words :

Is a biology teacher allowed to claim that evolutionism is nothing else than a theory while creationism might be a possible alternative ?

The answer is : no

The scholastic programms must be decided by a scientific commitee and they must be the same for all the students, all over the country
Fundamentalists may be disppointed but the plain truth is that 99.999 % of the experts believe in the evolutionism thus evolutionims only must be taught in schools

Nobody prevent religious people from claiming that universe has been created by God in seven days provide they made well clear that it is just a matter of faith without any scientific evidence

This must be valid for government owned school but also for private schools, run by religious people

One again

Education is not a right
Education is a duty

Hi again,

Just popping in to correct a wide misconception about what the word theory means in the scientific world. When people say The theory of evolution it's not something that someone came up with and put it out there.. In contrast of how people casually use the word theory, in science it has a bigger substance than the word law or the word fact. So the word theory is pretty much up high in the chain, like this:

Theory
Law
Hypothesis
Fact


The way the rest of us use the word theory is like scientists use the word hypothesis, but to them a theory is something that complies with all known facts and observations of the universe, something that has withstood a lot of testing and debate and the test of time and also something that is able to make correct predictions that may be testable through experimentation. The theory of evolution holds no less validity than the theory of gravity and the theory of electromagnetism.

Laws are only a subpart of the theory it belongs in. If sometime in the future the theory of thermodynamics collapses then the laws of thermodynamics will collapse as well.

Facts on the other hand are a dime a dozen and they're not as important in the scientific community. They refer to simple things like, water always flows downstream in rivers. They're just observations that withstood the test of time and are now a fact, but they don't explain anything. A theory in science is much much bigger and important than a fact.


Just clearing this out.. Of course this doesn't mean that a theory is automatically correct. No amount of experimentation can ever prove a theory right but a single experiment can prove it wrong. But in terms of how far our understanding of the universe goes, theories is pretty much the best thing we have.


As for the topic question I'll have to say I couldn't care less. In my country we get taught about the bible in schools and in turn we were never taught about evolution but yet we have nearly 0% of creationists in Greece (the right winged Christians as Jimmy Carr calls them..). Christians here just don't take the bible teachings all too literal, so i think there's more than the education system to attribute to what the kids will end up believing in. In usa on the other hand, the theory of evolution is actually being taught in schools but Intelligent Design only became a subject in a few schools just recently, yet that's the country where most right winged Christians live in..

putting hypothesis above fact was a typo, right? or did i misunderstand the arrangement of your chain?

julz

You're saying that the reason evolution should be taught in school because the majority of experts believe in evolution? And I suppose if these "experts" believed the earth is flat or that the solar system revolves around the earth you'd have all the books change theories?

You cannot base what should be taught on democracy, if an unproven theory has right to be in books and taught that way, so does our belief. It has just as much right to be there as you do to post in this forum. Besides, your estimation is wrong, it is not %99.999. See this page here, pay close attention to Darwin's statement. You seem to forget that Darwin wished to retract his theory before he died, but it had already gotten out into scientists hands. Darwin's original theory on Adaptation can be proven, I fail to see any evidence that can be counted "applicable" in evolution's stance. As I said before, give me links, if you think I won't read them and at least consider them, you are wrong.

As for the seven days, I said, according to a book I read on that, the original text states that God BEGAN FORMING the earth in seven days, it does not say he just up and CREATED the earth in seven days. Too many people get this mixed up, the word says that the earth was void and without shape, meaning no life, and he BEGAN to FORM the earth and create life, the earth was already in place at this time, there was already a moon rotating, and nine planets in the solar system.

The academic experts have tested this concept of evolution again and again. With scientic methods. Using facts and knowledge. What speaks for it, what against it. And then they counted the things together. Very often one and one is two.

That the concept itself gets proven again and again is the normal science way, and doesn't mean the concept is generally wrong. There is always the chance that a concept fails, even when it is a very small one. And even the maker of a concept has the right to proof it from time to time. Disprove it by an experiment or new facts may change a concept completely. Proove it by facts and experiments steel it. That's how science works. Always check again. That's also a kind of evolution by the way. In the end, when an apple always falls down then there is a very high chance that there is gravity.

Or with other words: when so many species acts by evolutionary rules then there is a very high chance that there is evolution.

You don't like this theory? Then disprove it! Bring me the facts. Do so and you will even be a famous person. Err, no, "God is almighty" is not a fact to disprove the evolution theory. "The bible says" neither.

There is a difference between knowledge and faith. Knowledge can be proven. By experiments. Trial and error. You can calculate it. Faith can not be proven. You have to believe. There are no facts, no knowledge, no checking the concept, just faith and dogma. Thinking not allowed.

There are countless examples where the faith collides with provable facts. I just remind at the flat earth concept here. May everybody by its own decide how to handle that.

But i would say keep the teaching in the hands of people that teaches current proven and repeatable knowledge, not faith. This knowledge may even be wrong. But when it is, it will sooner or later corrected by somebody. That's science. Facts is what counts.

For me creationists are medieval fossils that tries to turn the wheel back to keep their power. Faith was and is a way to control people. And that is why it shouldn't be teached in school. We've seen a countless times where it leads to. Rejection, crusade, witch tracing, war. In the name of god.

Julz: It's not a typo, it's just how scientists use the words in contrast with how the rest of the world uses them. To me it's fine that when common folk say "I have a theory" they only mean "an educated guess", but when we pick up that word from a scientific context like in "The theory of evolution", then this is where all the confusion begins. Check out this video for more.




Again, natural selection is unproven in the same way that gravity is unproven. Both theories have gone through much testing before they could be called theories, and they both came out successful.
If anyone manages to disprove natural selection even in theory or through experimentation, this person will probably be awarded with the nobel prize, but so far (for 150 years) this hasn't been done, thus the theory of evolution stands. On the other hand, there's no nobel prizes waiting for the person that disproves the literal meanings of the bible because even a 9 year old can do that. And that's the reason why evolution deserves a place in schools more than creationism does.


It's actually a bit ironic when people will automatically assume that we have perfectly explained stuff like gravity, while with natural selection we're just making wild guesses ; whereas in fact the opposite is true. Particle physicists have absolutely no idea how gravity works and our standard model of physics does not even mention gravity. We have some speculation about a particle called graviton which enforces gravity but this is as certain as when we thought there was something called ether that carried out light. And with the LHC experiment almost ready to begin, there's a bigger chance that the theory of gravity will need serious changes, than the theory of evolution.




That site is propaganda at its greatest. Here's what they have quoted out of Darwin's book, On the Origin Of Species:



I traced down that quote in my book, and here's the full passage:




Don't blindly buy into everything you read on the internet.




This is yet another propaganda started by a christian called "Lady Hope" who wrote an article on a newspaper claiming she had visited Darwin on his deathbed and he had converted to Christianity. In reality, no one from Darwin's circle know who this Lady Hope is, no one saw her ever come in the house and Darwin's children strongly refute the whole story. Charles Darwin was self-proclaimed as an agnostic and there's no evidence of ever changing his mind until he died.

no, because scientists don't "believe" that something "is". Scientists base their knowledge on proven things. Facts. Not just some pipe dream.

Same here and thanks. I definitely like a good open minded discussion instead of aggressive mud fighting as if we're still chimps.



The Chinese government has banned a lot of religions, that's sort of unrelated to how people look at that particular religion there. China basically has no freedom of religion, so it's difficult to say what the average Chinese thinks of Buddhism or any religion for that matter.




Not really as history has shown time and time again that historic documents are often quite unreliable. Mainly because the one who lives is obviously the one able to write history. Many kings in the past have bragged so incredibly much that it's difficult to take them serious when it comes to counting taxes (something that's difficult to brag about when it's simple documentation for government purposes).

When it comes to these stories (or myths if you will), it's incredibly difficult to even start sorting out truth from exaggeration, facts from fiction. What I said was that archaeological research does not support many of the stories. If you find only one chariot in the Dead Sea, where hundreds or perhaps even thousands should have been... something tells me the story is wrong.



And the Jews stole it from the Egyptians who stole it from the Sumerians. There's a whole line of religions using the same old stories. Christ-like main characters included!



Yes, the Torah is older, but again it was based on the ancient Egyptian religion(s) and other religions. The fact that the books are old doesn't really mean a thing to be honest with you. Also, apparently it doesn't make your eyebrows frown knowing that Christianity copied so incredibly much from the Torah?

[ quote] I never said that everything was here to begin with, the bible says that God came from another place, meaning that God was not in the physical domain, when God decided to come over He began creation. [/quote]

I know you never said that, but in my opinion simple logic demands an answer to this paradox. I'm very open minded about this though, as the universe doesn't have to make sense according to logic or be still tangible when going down the rabbit hole deep enough so to speak. There are several points from which we have to admit that 'we just don't know yet'.




The coming into existence of our universe wasn't a coincidence. Forget about people that talk about 'chance' and 'chance of life to come into existence'. It's pretty much valueless crap as long as we do not have more answers. Like for example is our planet the only one with life? And so on and so forth.



I respect that, but I use a different definition for 'evidence'. It's not an attack to you or anyone else, but as said before I don't think the Bible is that much of a 'valid source' for itself to be counted as true evidence. I think you have to look into the research that has been done to try and find cities or prove events from biblical times... you'll be surprised how incredibly little has been found to be even remotely (read: can't rule out whether or not it happened or not) accurate,

Cheers

Hi Guys,

Great debate going on here, so different to most of the rest of the internet

I'd just like to mention a book that I have just read called "The Moses Legacy" by Graham Phillips, in which the author attempts to recreate the bible in history, specifically Moses. According to the author Moses was two people spread across several decades, and the Mountain of God is not Mount Sinai, but a much more ancient site in the ancient kingdom of Edom (Eden anybody?). To me, it's these authors who show little or no religious or scientific bias that can go a long way to proving (or disproving) the origins of our religions and the Bible in particular.

As for Creationism, I personally would not like my son to be taught this UNLESS it is stated that it is a theory NOT fact (in my opinion not likely due to the religious bias of a lot of Creationists), just as most Science teachers that I have known have stated that Darwin's Theory is just that a Theory.

I hope I haven't butted in too much, but I thought I would put in my tuppence to the debate.

Thanks for a riveting read, keep it up

Shando

PS: I've just joined the community, and am looking forward to making many interesting things with Gamestudio (I'll definitely be upgrading when I have some spare cash, and the Aussie Dollar has recovered a bit against the Greenback !!!!!!).

Welcome to the forums.



Yeah, I've heard about that theory before. It's definitely something that sounds quite plausible to some extent and interesting for sure. In a somewhat similar fashion there have been many more studies about biblical characters, for example about the importance of Mary.

Edom doesn't seem to refer to the biblical Eden though, but instead to early Jordan in the middle-east. I have to say though, depending on how far you look into the history of the entire group of biblical stories... Eden can mean many things, from a certain place between the constellations, to just about any random good looking and fertile place on earth,

Cheers

didn't we just listen to a lengthy lecture about the difference between fact and theory?

Nobody is free from bias. Its just the impression they try to create. The idea of the Bible being true is not even in the realm of possibility for these 'scientists'. The idea of evolution being true is a foregone conclusion in todays science. No research whatsoever is being done to investigate any other alternatives. Evolution is accepted with 100% faith in all disciplines, while more mathematically solid models such as gravity and particle physics are constantly being tested and retested. Why dont they question or test evolution? Because in doing so they have to admit the possibility of a creator, which therefore makes them accountable for their actions.

agreed, It's more or less become a scientists' religion. The reason I speak so harshly against it is because of this reason. As for gravity, one mentioned that gravity is not proven.....Gravity is a LAW not THEORY you can see the effects of gravity very plainly, but evolution is theoretical and has not been ABSOLUTELY proven. Being a theory is not problem, there are lots of theories like the Big Bang, that sound great, but too much faith shouldn't be put in them as they are theories. The only things that are absolute (and not entirely absolute) in science are laws. We know that laws work, we don't necessarily know how, but we know they work. This is the difference between theory and law. Although a theory cannot be said to be false upright (depending on evidence that supports the theory and how valid the evidence is) it can't be totally discounted, however, it can't be totally proven either. Evolution is one such theory that the evidence is questionable, and cannot be proven 100%, the fact that other considerations such as "this may be another creature that died out" or "this one could have had problems in birth" are not even looked into is what bothers me, the moment the bones that are used as evidence are found, they are counted as being evolution without second thought.

This is NOT open-minded science! The reason such people as Darwin and Einstein are counted as great scientific minds is because they didn't just see evidence and immediately think "well, this must be this theories explanation...well, we're done here". NO! E=MC² was not developed in a short time. It took continuous equations and testing to see IF it COULD be possible. The equation and theory attached to it are pure genius, but it is still theory because it cannot be proven with modern day science, so there is not ABSOLUTE that you could go back in time IF you could go lightspeed. Einstein theorized well, and was one of the most genius minds that we know of BUT, that being said alot of his work is theory. E=MC² contributed to making the atom bomb, so once again, although there is evidence to support the equation, since all grounds around it cannot be covered it is a theory.

Like I said, a theory is not a bad thing but, it must have evidence AND must be tested continuously, or it stays a theory and is never proven nor disproven. I'm just saying the evidence is questionable, and it is. It's about as questionable as most of our early AD and BC history.

@PHeMoX: to answer some stuff, I may not post much more here, but if you have more you wish to debate, we will

"Same here and thanks. I definitely like a good open minded discussion instead of aggressive mud fighting as if we're still chimps."

Your genius is showing

"China basically has no freedom of religion, so it's difficult to say what the average Chinese thinks of Buddhism or any religion for that matter."

Then you're kind of agreeing with me

"Not really as history has shown time and time again that historic documents are often quite unreliable. Mainly because the one who lives is obviously the one able to write history. Many kings in the past have bragged so incredibly much that it's difficult to take them serious when it comes to counting taxes (something that's difficult to brag about when it's simple documentation for government purposes)."

That COULD be said about history, however, on that side. It supports the idea of having creationism and bible history. We teach alot of BC and early AD stuff, it's just as questionable as you say the bible is.

"If you find only one chariot in the Dead Sea, where hundreds or perhaps even thousands should have been... something tells me the story is wrong."

The question is, how did that one get there? Sombody was just drivin' along and "Hey, what's that water doin' over thar...come on horsey, lets go fer a swim" ( lol ) The Dead Sea isn't exactly great at making "fossils" (so to speak) and that did happen a LONG time ago.

"And the Jews stole it from the Egyptians who stole it from the Sumerians. There's a whole line of religions using the same old stories. Christ-like main characters included!"

That depends on the literature, some early books (old testament) were in and around Egypt and Sumeria, however, books such as the Gospels were written by Jews in Israel. MOST of the bible was written by Jews, not all, but most.

"Yes, the Torah is older, but again it was based on the ancient Egyptian religion(s) and other religions. The fact that the books are old doesn't really mean a thing to be honest with you. Also, apparently it doesn't make your eyebrows frown knowing that Christianity copied so incredibly much from the Torah?"

Not at all, Judaism and Christianity are more-or-less the same religion, the Jews just didn't accept Jesus Christ, they are still waiting on their king. Other than this difference we both serve the same God, "Jehovah" "Yahweh".

In fact, Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy make sense to have been taken from the Egyptians, Moses was an Egyptian turned Jewish. His line was Hebrew, but he lived in Egypt, this also supports where they were found.

"I know you never said that, but in my opinion simple logic demands an answer to this paradox. I'm very open minded about this though, as the universe doesn't have to make sense according to logic or be still tangible when going down the rabbit hole deep enough so to speak. There are several points from which we have to admit that 'we just don't know yet'."

True, but I would rather believe what God and the Bible says. Simply put, God is something you have to experience to truly believe, and once you have it opens your mind to what he says.

"The coming into existence of our universe wasn't a coincidence. Forget about people that talk about 'chance' and 'chance of life to come into existence'. It's pretty much valueless crap as long as we do not have more answers. Like for example is our planet the only one with life? And so on and so forth."

I agree, that is why I do not agree with evolution, evolution relies on "chance" as being why everything came about. Forgive me, but this place is TOO perfectly designed to be mere chance, it took more than a single cell organism to asexually reproduce and "Magically" change under conditions that are scientifically impossible. I also agree that other planets may very well harbor life, it is closed-minded to think outside the box.

"I respect that, but I use a different definition for 'evidence'. It's not an attack to you or anyone else, but as said before I don't think the Bible is that much of a 'valid source' for itself to be counted as true evidence. I think you have to look into the research that has been done to try and find cities or prove events from biblical times... you'll be surprised how incredibly little has been found to be even remotely (read: can't rule out whether or not it happened or not) accurate,

Cheers"

Simple, there are many explanations in the bible for where the places are:

Eden, it mentions being centered around a river that splits into 4: Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. - It is logical to suppose that Gihon and Pishon could have dried up over time, or been filled in or cut off. Tigris and Euphrates are still there today. This places eden near Iraq.

Canaan, this is modern day Israel, it also encompasses Palestine and Lebenon. In the bible God promised this land to the Israelites. The Jews used to own most of this land until (current day) Palestinians decided to fight for it and get the land. There has been religious warfare there ever since, it is the world Epicenter for warefare. Of course, no one can foget the Six Day War in which the Jews were outnumbered extremely and Divinely took back the area. I say divinely because of the ratio of numbers and days. Simply put, the Arabs were Pwned. It makes since that war has been going on there for so long because the entire area they were promised does not belong to them.

Are there more places you wish to ask about?

That science theorys never get proven is another obscure argument in an obscure discussion, just showing your ignorance. It is simply not true. The concepts gets proven, that's for sure. Whole student generations in all countries becomes exactly that to do. Prove it, try to disprove it, convince me from it or from the opposite.

What you absolutely seem to miss is how science works. How should you, you believe, and don't care about knowledge and facts. A concept is the best as long as there is nothing better. When there is something better, this better concept, this theory, becomes the best.

Every concept is called a theory by the way. That the earth is round (okay, ellypsoid) is still called a theory. Gravity is still called a theory. Don't play with words when you don't understand them.

Big Bang theory has not been disproved since, err, 50 years? I don't know. But it is currently the best. Evolution has not been disproved for 150 years. It is currently the best. Even and especially compared with the concept of creationists. There is noting left when you really start to proof the concept of creationism. All facts are against it. All facts points in direction of Evolution instead.

That the earth is flat and the sun circulates around the earth has been disproven. Not longer valid. And the Vatican has finally agreed that the earth is round - in 2001! They have denied as long as possible to keep the dogma of the almightiness. That's how religion works. That the earth is just a few thousand years old has been disproven - the Vatican still denys. Creationists still denys. As long as possible. To keep the dogma of the almightiness.

Another favour trick in such discussions here is to mix half true things with facts and prominent names. Like throwing the word Einstein into the discussion (honestly, did you even understand what you have written here in that context?). Ooh, look, he mentions Einstein, so Einstein must be at their side. Which means he must be right. A cheap trick. Or just to write half of a comment. Ooh, look, that he said. And when you read the full comment you find out that he said the exact opposite. Another cheap trick.

Cheap tricks. That's how religion works since thousands of years.

I'm sorry but I don't think you truly understand my point here. I'm talking about the stories, the content itself. A lot of the biblical stories are far far older than when Christ ever existed, older than when Christianity ever existed... even far older than Judaism! We know this because most of the stories were written down by other a couple of different cultures from before the time of Jesus so to speak.

The whole genesis story was copied almost word for word from Sumerian myths, the idea of a half-God with superhuman powers turning water into wine, walking on water, a world wide flood, the Kain and Abel brother fight story, the virgin birth of a child, and many many other stories came from much older myths.

It's really quite impossible to even deny they've been copying and pasting a lot in the early days. Too much details are exactly the same. The Christian religion, like most religions do actually, just took all the interesting stories and made them their own. I don't understand why you think this makes the stories more reliable instead of less reliable to be honest.

It's quite clear that a lot of stories, having even the same names for many of the characters involved, can not have taken place twice in history. The reappearance of these stories in different cultures are proof for their popularity through time, but when it comes to historic value in terms of when, where and íf it all took place the way it was written down... it couldn't be more questionable.



Before you continue down this road.. keep in mind that in our view your religion hasn't been proven 'absolutely' either. The same is true... there shouldn't be put too much faith in it, as it's also a 'theory'. No offense, but I don't agree with the assumption that science is a religion though, it's based on evidence, reproduction of results and rationality, not mountains of faith, hope and wishful thinking.

As said in other discussions and probably repeated here too I don't think it's even possible to prove anything as 'absolutely' true. Absolutism in my opinion is clearly theoretical in nature, we can only go with what we know and we can't rule out all the other, infinite, possibilities. Our knowledge and what we consider to be 'facts' is largely based on the 'likeliness of a theory to be correct'. That's all there is to it. The nature of knowledge is relative.

Anyways, the topic of absolutism vs. relativism could easily fill a whole new debate with many many many pages.



Historic documents often give a very one-sided view of things. I never claimed all our history books in school are correct, quite the contrary.

The written documents aren't the only clue to what happened through time though. As said before archeology, geology and many other disciplines of science simply do not support the biblical stories.

When a king exaggerates it's power and influence in a text and brags about having erected 4000 pilars in his honor and name after a successful battle and we only find about 150 pilars scattered through the area.. then that certainly says a LOT about the validity / accuracy of the king's story. This is only one of many examples, in the case of the pilars it was unrelated to the Bible, but the story of the hundreds or even thousands of chariots that supposed to have crossed the dead sea is basically exactly the same...



Actually evolution doesn't rely on chance. But there's no need to apologize, but I do think it's flawed reasoning. Something doesn't become 'scientifically impossible' just because people think it's incredibly complex and therefore must be designed. Complexity itself is certainly no evidence for design.

Usually the more we think a certain system is complex, the less we really understand of it. A lack of knowledge or simply a vast amount of knowledge needed to comprehend the system makes it so that we consider such a system to be almost too complex.

In reality we might know a lot of said systems, but struggle with the entire picture. That's exactly the case for our existence, the theory of evolution and all the other questions around this all.

It's also more or less just a matter of opinion whether you think the entire system is 'perfect'. After all many beings have to die before a species arrives at it's next evolutionary phase so to speak. It's a very aggressive way of progress.



It ís open-minded actually. It's how science works. It's erroneous to think scientists rush to conclusions considering their theories as facts too soon. Yes there are things that can't easily be proven, but there are also many things that have been proven to be correct and factual. (Of course, as in 'extremely likely to be correct'. But never forget science deals with theories that are either 'valid', 'invalid' or 'pending research'. It's a bit more complex than just saying 'okey, I give up, my theory must be right'.)



Why exactly did you mention the atom bomb here? It's quite likely that Einstein knew more or less exactly what could happen with his theories. Some argue he was out for revenge having lost family in the 2nd world war, but he probably hoped the atom bomb wouldn't be used for real. Even many things concerning the hazardous nature of radiation might have been known also, but you can only know for sure when you test in practice. That's what science is all about.

You could also have mentioned the atom power plants that were made possible because of all this,

Cheers

You're mixing up my words, in what part in the last post did I say "theories never get proven"? Simply because you read this wrong, I need not answer more on the first paragraph, as for the second:

I'm not 100 percent sure what you're trying to say here. I have stated facts on the side of theories, once again, read the post. I never said anything bad about theories.



Forgive me, but....are you serious? You call gravity a theory....you call the earth being an Ellipsoid a theory...

First off, gravity is called, get this: The *LAW* of Gravity. Gravity is not a concept, it is scientific LAW there is a huge boundary between law and theory, and since I've already posted a long one on this, I'll simply post the scientific process (method) and the definition of scientific law:

1.Ask a question (how did it happen?) [unless you are proving an existing theory, skip to step 3]
2.Research (make sure it hasn't already been disproven)
3.Theorize (make a hypothesis)
4.Test it (make sure the hypothesis is possible)
5.Check the results
If hypothesis is correct (and results can be duplicated):
- see 4 at least one or two times, then:
Report the results, if results are right, the theory is made a law

If hypothesis is incorrect, or at least somewhat true:
- see step 4 and repeat until theory is proven or disproven

A couple of references for the scientific method:
Here
and Here

As for what a law is:



A couple of references for the scientific (natural) law:
Here
and Here

wait a minute...it says nothing about whether we can understand the law or not...it says that if it occurs every time when certain conditions are met...then it is law. Correct me if I am wrong, but in certain areas of this earth I can drop a ball and it will fall, well, I guess that makes gravity law. The results will always (under the conditions mentioned) be right. That IS LAW.

let's test the earth being round...well it seems that if the earth is round and you go into space and see it, and take pictures, and if we don't fall off "the edge", then that must also be right every time you check it...that must also make it law...hmmm...

I don't mean to be too much of a jerk, and I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings. You guys, to be "scientifically-minded" seem to forget about the BASICS of science.



Tiles...you didn't read one of my previous posts...




Umm...what? Apparently you didn't actually read what I wrote...perhaps you should look it over again...



I'm gonna have to ask for proof



I didn't say this to be a bad thing, as I said in that same post:



This is what a theory is...I never said that it can't and won't be proven, I also said that it can't be discounted either.

[PHeMoX]Historic documents often give a very one-sided view of things. I never claimed all our history books in school are correct, quite the contrary.

The written documents aren't the only clue to what happened through time though. As said before archeology, geology and many other disciplines of science simply do not support the biblical stories.

When a king exaggerates it's power and influence in a text and brags about having erected 4000 pilars in his honor and name after a successful battle and we only find about 150 pilars scattered through the area.. then that certainly says a LOT about the validity / accuracy of the king's story. This is only one of many examples, in the case of the pilars it was unrelated to the Bible, but the story of the hundreds or even thousands of chariots that supposed to have crossed the dead sea is basically exactly the same...[/quote]

I was using history as an example as why biblical things should be taught as history, they don't have to say if it's true or not, I just think that the bible is a history book that should have the same right as "old questionable history" ( lol ) in school.



If an event does not have a catalyst that is "someone" or "something" then it is chance. The thing is, we could even say that aliens caused life on this planet, but it would lead to the same old question; how did they get here? My point is, there is alot of chance involved when talking about the subject, there is also alot of questionable theories about how life sprouted and evolved. Alot of the theories are scientifically impossible.



I was referring to the fact that we aren't still trying to disprove our own hypotheses in evolution. That is the point of testing, to try your best to disprove the hypothesis that you started, whilst keeping an open mind about the hypothesis, if it doesn't agree with other science then there is something wrong with either the hypothesis, or the science that it is comparing to.



I was mentioning it as an example for the equation, I was simply stating that even though it has research that works, the ENTIRE theory cannot all be proven at this moment with modern day science.

Well, I'm backing out PHeMoX. I'm repeating myself to alot of users pointlessly (excluding you, you seem to be the only open-minded guy on the side of Evolution :P ) and it's annoying. This post as will also be done the same way. Either way, my conclusion for whether creationism and biblical history should be taught has already been stated multiple times. Most of this is off-topic anyway . Well, enjoy the debate!

The law of gravity is still a theory



Ah, so he didn't create the universe, not even the planets? Your god is just a local god?

Still collides with the age of stones and fossils. Which is provable. And so fact. No provable facts available about the theory that a local god has done some modifications at a piece of rock though.



Have.

Hey,

First off, I'd like to agree with Shando69. Although not perfect, we do manage to keep the discussion on a much better level than what we all witness everyday under youtube comments and other much more juvenile forums, which is why I'm happy to contribute here and listen to what people have to say. Then again, believing that we'd come to a unanimous scientific result from a forum discussion is ludicrous so I don't expect the impossible. As a forum I think we're doing alright here and I cherish the community we have.




I beg to differ.. I think that the literal stories of the Bible have been the MOST researched and tested hypothesis EVER, by scientists and non-scientists alike. Every story in it that could somehow be validated today has been exhaustly researched in order to find a faint of proof in them. For the story of Noah and the Arc we found that there indeed has been frequent floodings of the Eufrat river (i doubt i've spelled that right..) using geological evidence. For the story of Moses, there is still undergoing research on trying to find any evidence at all that thousands of people walked across the desert for 40 years. For the story of the sea splitting in half for the Jews to walk through, we've been scourging the dead sea for Pharao's Chariots that supposively drowned (we have found 1 chariot, although people were expecting thousands of them. It's not proof one way or another i'm just saying we've been looking..) Again with Sodoma and Gomora being punished and being turned into columns of salt(i'm doing a literal translation from greek), we've looked and we indeed found traces of salt. I'm not saying something is proven or not, i'm just saying that humans have indeed been looking... a LOT.

Science will always investigate everything, no matter how crazy it sounds. Do you know that the CIA actually had a program were it investigated Remote Viewing (telepathy) and what benefits it would ripe from it? 8 million dollars of US tax payers money went into this. After they found no proof on this concept, telepathy leaked into the rest of the world and is now used by Mediums and Cold Reader scummers. But the point is that if you are familiar with a term, be it a miracle from the Bible, or telepathy, telekinisis or whatever, chances are that Science has already tested this a lot of years ago.



Evolution is being tested everyday and as I've said, if someone manages to disprove it there's a Nobel Prize and 1 million dollars waiting for him, so the incentive is there but no one has been able to do so for 150 years. But saying that people believe 100% in evolution is very wrong. Ask me, I'm a strong advocate of evolution and have actually based my career on it by focusing on a similar model on IT. Am I 100% sure evolution is correct? Of course not.. Until 1905 everyone believed in Newton's theory of relativity until Einstein came along and corrected it. Scientists never believe in anything 100% which is why maybe the "word" theory got its bad name from. I've only known religious people that believe in something 100%.




Hello mp_developer,

You still seem to be a bit confused about law and theory, but I can't blame you ; Most people are, and I was too before I was corrected by a scientist.

This is what you mean i think... Since, if we drop an object and it falls, we can OBSERVE gravity at work, you call this a law. And everything else we can OBSERVE, like the earth moving around the sun, that's also a law in your mind, but if we are to speculate something then that's a theory until it can be proven.

There are many things wrong with the above paragraph. First of, a theory can NEVER be proven. That's why I said before, scientists are never 100% about anything. Now, the effect that if we drop an object it will fall down, this is an observation; a fact if you will. The problem is that this observation does NOT explain anything. It's just data to scientists. It does NOT explain why it falls, IF it will fall in any place on the planet, if it would fall 4 billion years ago and if it will fall 4 billion years from now. It's only an observation.

If you were to explain WHY the object falls, then you make a hypothesis "it falls because the planet acts as some sort of a magnet..". After exhausting testing and debate, if your hypothesis stands then it becomes a theory. Forget laws, they don't matter.. They are just subparts of theories. A theory can NEVER upgrade to something better than a theory. A Law is not above a theory, it's just part of it.

So, while the fact that some objects fall down has never been disproven (you can't really disprove facts, as I said they're just data), Newton's theory of Gravity, and in derivation, Newton's LAW of Gravity have been disproven by Einstein's own theory of Gravity that it's not the planets themselves that act on the object but time and space which skew around the planet.




This is all very correct until your last sentence. It should read like this:

Report the results, if results are right, the hypothesis is made into a theory


I checked your references. They seem to got it right, I think it's you who are confusing the terms. I think what you want to say is "The fact of gravity", meaning the phenomenon where if we drop something like an apple, it will fall to the ground. We certainly cannot dispute that, but the questions WHY it falls down, or HOW we humans were created will always be subjects for dispute.

Now the reason why a fact is not important whereas a theory is, is that a fact only shows that object X falls down when dropped in location Y, with conditions Z, whereas a theory tries to explain the phenomenon universally. I hope this is clear.




Actually E=MC² was developed in just a couple of months. And sure, you can't prove if you can travel back in time or not, but you can make predictions using Einstein's theories and successful predictions is what give theories weight. If the Bible made accurate and scientifically testable predictions as well, I'm sure it would also carry a lot more weight than it carries now.

Here's a quote from one of my Einstein books:



If Einstein's theory had failed to predict the position of that star, we wouldn't even know his name today. Still, that does not prove that General relativity is 100% correct, because even though it made an accurate prediction that could not have possibly be luck, it still may only be partially true. You can't prove a theory, ever.

About the atomic bomb and Einstein, what happened was, Einstein was worried that Facist Germany might develop an atomic bomb using Einstein's latest contributions to the scientific world. So he wrote a letter to Roosevelt warning him about it, resulting in what we all already know. Einstein had no further involvement in the development of the atomic bomb other than that letter.




True, but since we can measure the shape of our planet using instruments, we can also call the Earth being round as a Fact. People prefer to use the word fact on things we can measure since they are more absolute than the word theory. Yet, the fact that the Earth is round which can be measured as data today validates Pythagoras's theory that the Earth is round when he predicted it 2600 years ago.


Cheers,
Aris

Please name one atheist or agnostic scientist who is actively questioning evolutionary theory and in the process of testing alternatives.

me

Given the fact that it is part of the science education to try to disprove the concepts you can ask every biology student.

Given the fact that it is part of developing a theory to permanently try to disprove it you can also ask every biologist that actively deals with the evolution theory. Quick google search, just to show a name: Franz Wuketits, austrian biologist.

That is the difference between faith and science. It is surely not part of the christian education to try to disprove the concept

Just about every scientist that deals with the subject in whatever way, does. There are also skeptics among the scientific community, so really there's plenty of people trying to test the theories. It's true for most if not all scientific theories.

If you want specific names, how about Stanley Miller and Harold Urey? They did experiments on how the very first of life might have come into existence. They succeeded in making amino-acids, the building blocks of life. And while I fully admit they haven't been able to recreate life itself just yet, their experiments have been a major step forward.



I'm sorry, but again you're missing the main point. If actual evidence suggest a story is wrong, then a story obviously becomes questionable at best, entirely wrong at 'worst'.

There are plenty of cases where archaeological or geological evidence simply disproves a certain event all together (for example the biblical flood, there's no geological evidence whatsoever that it occurred even though such events would definitely leave their marks and traces within a geological context).

I wouldn't mind if people learn about these stories as there's a lot more value in them in terms of moral issues, social problems and so on. It's great literature. But... it's extremely questionable if it's historical accurate at all. It would simply be wrong to teach these stories as if they truly happened and are 100% accurate.

I agree that old history can be quite inaccurate also and in my opinion teachers should pay more attention to this. Especially when it's a known fact that a certain historic event might have happened differently. I personally think that history should be taught with an open mind, it should make student think about the events. Contrary to what people tend to think, the recording of our history in whatever form is never objective and it should not be treated as if it is. Just my 2ct.

By the way, for those who talk of 'chance' being the cause or motor behind life and it's evolution in general. There are a lot of very tangible causes that kick-started the development. For example the mere existence of cosmic radiation or more accurately UV-radiation definitely caused early microbes to be bombarded with change causing mutations. For those who doubt the time frame of evolution, it's a good idea to look at the circumstances of early life. One puddle of microbes constantly bombarded with UV-radiation, I don't think that has much to do with 'chance',

Cheers

I have no problem with any theory being taught in school, as long as it is taught as a theory, not fact. I have no more of a problem with Creationism being taught in school as a theory than the Big Bang or Darwinism, but until they are law, they all need to be taught as theories, not facts.

And as long as they are just theories, they should be treated the same, because any theory is just that, a theory. Even though some theories seem to be more plausible, it doesn't make them any more of a fact than any other theory.

you still seem to have a wrong idea about what a scientific theory is. creationism is no theory and so of course it shouldn't be treated the same in school.

Evolution, whether it is right or wrong, was developed by the scientific method and thus belongs in a science class.

Creationism, however, was not developed by scientific methods and does not present hard evidence and thus does not belong in a science class. Teach it in a philosophy class or a culture class or a religion class. But not a science class.

Here is a entertaining little read:

Theory of Creationism?

Not like any of these threads or post within them ever changes what someone already considers to be the facts (about what a scientific theory really is or anything else for that matter), but I will play along for a bit.

I found this part interesting:


Of course scientists redefine the term "scientific theory" to their own purposes! They did this so that every theory would go through so much scrutiny that any unfounded idea can't become theory.

A scientific theory has several demands for this purpose, testability is one of them. Can you test parts of Creationism? No. Can you test parts of evolution? Stick some bacteria in a petri dish, make their environment hostile. Examine them for several generations and make any note to any genetic change from generation to generation.

And then there is the issue of evidence. Evolution has evidence. You can see the progression in the fossils. The problem with Creationism, is we can't prove a negative, so we can't say that God didn't create the world 6000 years ago. But there is not enough hard evidence to conclude that he did. Evolution may be incomplete, but there is more evidence pointing to that conclusion, than there is for Creationism.

And one last point, unrelated to this article, if we do teach creationism in a school, why do we teach Judeo-Christian creationism? I believe that the world was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Are they going to teach that view point in a science class?

First, you are stipulating that creationism says organisms can not genetically change over time. This is not entirely true.

The creationist position is basically that genetic changes can occur, even to the point of speciation or possibly even higher order changes, but changes never occur such that one kind of animal becomes another kind.

Now, if you can put some bacteria in a petri and it changes into a frog on it's own, you might be on to something.

Now, just because many fossils look similar is nice and all, but does it really prove anything? Has any human ever actually seen any animal change into another animal at birth or even thousands of generations of births? I want to meet the scientist that saw that happen naturally. Fruit flies multiply like crazy, let them fornicate like mad in laboratory as long as you like, let me know when one turns into a rodent please. You can even nuked them with radiation, change their environment, whatever you like. Oh wait, we are talking about "theory" not "law", I almost forgot that.

Using your logic for "scientific theory" above.

Since humans haven't created life from any non-living materials like carbon material and water and there hasn't been any other proof found that it actually happened that way, then obviously it could not have happen, and thus the any "theory" that includes that life started from some "primordial ooze" is not a theory at all. Since I don't believe it happened that way, and has no proof to support it.

Since humans didn't see some creator create the universe and life, then obviously it could not have happen, and thus the any "theory" that includes a "creator" is not a theory at all. Since I don't believe it happened that way, and has no proof to support it.

Since no humans saw the big bang, then obviously it could not have happened. But the universe is expanding so the big bang must be fact, or maybe the creator just created a expanding universe, wow this theory stuff is confusing, anyway since no one witnessed what really happened it is not really a theory at all.

Does that kind of logic sound familiar to you?

It should, it is exactly the logic you are using.

I am not here to discuss what theories are more plausible.

The discussion of the thread is whether Creationism should be taught as a theory. And yes, I still think it is just as much of a "scientific theory" as any of the other theories listed here.

I think this line from the link I posted before sums up best why some are so against Creationism as a "theory",
"Close examination reveals that evolutionists’ out-of-hand dismissal of the creation paradigm is due more to their own tightly held religious predispositions—which range from humanistic naturalism to outright atheism—than to matters of empirical science."

What is funny, I would really expect the Creationist to be the ones trying to dismiss Evolution as a theory and not have it taught in schools, but it seems the opposite seems to be true. Although, I am sure there was a time when Creationist did just that. Humans are quite silly really, if you think about it. Humans have always thought they know more than they really know, and I am guessing that will never change.

Until next time, when we meet in a parallel universe,
Later,
Loco

It sounds really strange to me that someone actually tries to 'disprove' the term 'scientific theory'.. How do you do that? If scientists coin up a term, then that's what it means.. If creationists want to make their own term, let them call it 'cuckoo theory' and define that as to whatever they feel. But under the original term, Creationism doesn't cut it to be called a theory because of the reasons we explained here a million times before. In short: It's just not science

The "Miller experiments" (including the original Miller–Urey experiment of 1953, by Harold Urey and his graduate student Stanley Miller) are performed under simulated conditions resembling those thought at the time to have existed shortly after Earth first accreted from the primordial solar nebula. The experiment used a highly reduced mixture of gases (methane, ammonia and hydrogen). However, it should be noted that the composition of the prebiotic atmosphere of earth is currently controversial. Other less reducing gases produce a lower yield and variety. It was once thought that appreciable amounts of molecular oxygen were present in the prebiotic atmosphere, which would have essentially prevented the formation of organic molecules; however, the current scientific consensus is that such was not the case.

The experiment showed that some of the basic organic monomers (such as amino acids) that form the polymeric building blocks of modern life can be formed spontaneously. Simple organic molecules are of course a long way from a fully functional self-replicating life form; however, in an environment with no pre-existing life these molecules may have accumulated and provided a rich environment for chemical evolution ("soup theory"). On the other hand, the spontaneous formation of complex polymers from abiotically generated monomers under these conditions is not at all a straightforward process. Besides the necessary basic organic monomers, also compounds that would have prohibited the formation of polymers were formed in high concentration during the experiments. Further, according to Brooks and Shaw (1973), there is no evidence in the geological record that any soup existed.

"If there ever was a primitive soup, then we would expect to find at least somewhere on this planet either massive sediments containing enormous amounts of the various nitrogenous organic compounds, acids, purines, pyrimidines, and the like; or in much metamorphosed sediments we should find vast amounts of nitrogenous cokes. In fact no such materials have been found anywhere on earth."

Sorry, a lot of so-called scientific theories are just "cuckoo theories" in my opinion. Not to say all scientific theories being taught in school are "cuckoo theories", but some take a little bit of truth and mold it, as you said, to whatever they feel.

Normally, people assume that Creationism is unscientific for 4 reasons. First, it is not testable; second, it assumes supernatural powers; third, it is a dogma, based on a holy book; and fourth, it is rejected by scientists. However, from all those reasons you can not really conclude that Creationism is not scientific.

Creationism is just as testable as Evolution theory. From lots of scientific observations, such as DNA sequences and the fossil record, you can very well retrieve sufficient evidence whether all species were instantly created at the same time, or not.

A scientific theory does not automatically exclude supernatural powers. The nonexistence of supernatural powers is just an assumption: we see no hint of their existence, therefore we assume that such powers do not exist. However, if a world were governed by witchcraft, demons and gods as in some science fiction novel, you could do science in such a world as well.

That a theory is based on a holy book is also not an reason for being unscientific, because that book could happen to be correct. If people would worship Newton's Principia Mathematica as a holy book, it would not make its content unscientific.

Being considered as false by all scientists is also no reason because that happened to heliocentrism also.

The main reason why Creationism is considered unscientific is that it lacks two of the four requirements of a scientific theory:

External consistency: the theory may not contradict other established scientific theories; it must lend itself to being fully integrated into the whole of science.

and

Explanatory power: the theory must be able to either fully explain states of affairs hitherto unaccounted-for or serve as an instrument to derive them from more basic states of affairs.

http://unendliches.net/english/naturgesetz.htm

It also lacks of evidences. And creationism relys at a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a ...

I can't believe I'm having this discussion again...

First of all.. Because I don't think anyone wants to see me go in one of those monster rants about theory>law again, please read any of my previous posts here, just so we all mean the same when we use those words. If you're bored to do so then at least watch the first 2 and a half minutes of this video. I know it looks like evolution propagandish stuff and I don't care much for it myself, but these people are explaining the terms in question perfectly..

Now that we're up to date.. I also don't mean to imply that what actually happened was natural selection and NOT creationism, or visa versa. Or, if any of these topics should be taught in school (I've already expressed my opinion on this earlier in the thread). The only thing I have a problem with is calling Creationism a theory.

You can't just go around calling everything you like a theory. Even if we decide to ignore the fact that absolutely no-one from the scientific community accepts Creationism as a theory, there's a few simple reasons why it's not. For once, creationism can be disproven. And even though no theory can actually be proven, one CAN be disproven, as jcl said by seeing how well it fits into our current most generally accepted cosmology. As I've mentioned twice already, there's a Nobel prize and a hell lot of money waiting for the person that manages to disprove evolution. Right now, no one has. For creationism, there's no prize, because there's probably a billion acceptable ways to disprove Creationism as a scientific theory.

Ok so i took 5 minutes to come up with one of those ways.. I haven't googled it or anything, i just wanted to show how easy it is to do so.. Feel free to correct me if you like:

I looked up Creationism in wikipedia and saw there are many different schools of it.. The most popular one is called Young Earth Creationism and it says that 47% of Americans hold this view, and almost 10% of Christian colleges teach it. It implies that both the Earth and the entire Universe are less than 10,000 years old. So... my argument is this:

Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second. Our Galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter so even if we assumed that Earth is right in the middle, then by looking up at the sky or with a telescope, Young Earth Creationism dictates that we should have only been able to see 10,000 light years away from earth, demonstrated here in my l33t mspaint skills:



So if the universe was created 10k years ago, the light from any other stars further away than 10k light years away from earth wouldn't have time to reach our planet at all. This includes the bigger part of our galaxy as well as all the other billion galaxies out there with their billions of stars in them. However, we are able to see stars which are 13 million light years ago, thus proving that our universe is at least that old. Of course, there are other ways to prove that it's actually a lot older than that.

Now what do I win? Nothing. If this was actually a theory, this would be huge.. But since it's nothing but, as wikipedia puts it, a religious belief; using science to disprove it means absolutely nothing..

There's also other ways to separate stories from theories. A theory must be able to predict things. With the theory of General Relativity you can predict the position of stars at any given time. With Newton's theory of Gravitation you could predict the movement of objects in most situations(but not all of them as Einstein showed). The theory of Evolution predicted a lot of behaviors in microbiology which at the time was non-existent. Give me one thing that Creationism predicted..

Finally, I found this case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005) where the outcome was pretty much the following:



Not that a decision by an American court actually means anything but I liked how the outcome was: "ID not science. What's it doing in schools?".

Anyway... I know you're just being the devil's advocate here saying: "Christians once suppressed science, we're now doing the same", but that's not the case. When Copernicus wrote his heliocentric model he feared for his life and almost didn't publish his theory. According to Church doctrine, the Earth had to be at the center of creation. Saying otherwise was heresy. But christians aren't hunted down for believing in their God. It's just that this subject doesn't belong in schools. Especially in United States where there are people from so many different religious backgrounds.

Even in my school (I'm from Greece), I remember these two Albanian students in our class, who were forced to leave class and stay outside during our religion module (the kids were muslim and their mothers didn't want them to participate in the class). Now, being in a foreign country and be different than everyone else is difficult enough without the school alienating you by excluding you from class. Just my two cents worth..

Cheers,
Aris

Creationist friends , please once again

One thing is to claim that a theory is incomplete an other thing that it is false
A theory , any theory, is not supposed to explain everything.
If so, you should refute 99 % of the scientific theories

Evolutionism is considered a valid theory beacause it is consistent with all the available evidences
Creationism is considered a false theory because it is not consistent with some available evidences

If you want to be taken seriously , you must prove that :

a) At least one evidence is not consistent with evolutionism
Example : A fossil of dino's with the fossils of a modern mammal in his belly

b) All the evidences are consistent with the creationism

I emphasize the terms " at least one " and " all"

firstly, it would be better to say that many flavours of creationism are considered unscientific. not creationism in general. assuming current scientific theories are correct, God could have set everything in motion -- been the "first cause". while i'm definitely not arguing that God has to be a first cause, it does have explanatory power and is externally consistent.

having a second look, though, it does lack Falsifiability, which jcl omitted in his example of creationism because his choice was of a specifically falsifiable flavour (i like how those three words sound together).

what's the point of this? the school didn't exclude them from their class. their mothers did. if their mum's felt that science was bad for their religious beliefs and asked that they left the class during their science module, is the school excluding them, or are their mums?

as i've already said, though, i don't support creationism being taught in science classes. but i'm sure no one would object if a student asked the teacher "what caused the first event in the universe's creation?" and their teacher said "we can't be sure... maybe time didn't exist; maybe our universe is part of a more complex system beyond our perception that caused the big bang; or maybe God did it."

julz

Why? Creationism is in general unscientific. That's fact.

Nobody would never argue about this kind of claim, but a teacher should not be allowed to claim that a litteral interpretation of the Bible might be a possible alternative because this has been proved to be false beyond any reasonable doubt

The original question was not
Should the atheism be taught at school ?
We are not in the Soviet Union
The question was
Should creationism be taught at school ?
The answer is no.
I am happy to see that you agree

I apologize for not having time to read this thread. I don't know if all of you are familiar with the following website:

http://www.icr.org/

I thought some may find it interesting.

smitty

The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.
Proverbs 3:19

I definitely believe that Creationism should be taught in schools. Darwinism is just a theory. Why shouldn't Creationism be taught in schools?
I was taught Darwinism in school, but I was not taught Creationism. I believed in Darwinism until I asked God (not man) to show me the truth. Now that I know that God is truth and His word is truth, I cannot believe that I ever believed in evolution. I can see now that it takes more faith to believe in evolution then it does to believe in God and His word. Man tries to make everything so difficult. God wants us to come to Him with the faith of a child.
1 Corinthians 1
18For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

19For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

20Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

21For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

22For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

23But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;

24But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

25Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:

27But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

28And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

29That no flesh should glory in his presence.

30But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:

31That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

Sorry for the long posts, but this is even a better passage explaining why unbelievers reject Creationism:
Romans 1
20For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

21Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

22Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

23And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

24Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:

25Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

26For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

27And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

28And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

29Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,

30Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

31Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

32Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

You provided us with a perfect explanation

" God wants us to come to Him with the faith of a child. "


Nothing more to add,everything being clear

Because darwinism theory is provable true. And creationism is provable wrong.

Creationism as a theory is certainly proven wrong but Creationism as a religion, such as Smitty believes in, is neither right or wrong. I think Creationism as a religion should be dealt with in schools in religion class. Many Americans still seriously believe in Creationism and there are many websites about it so it has still some impact on American culture, and should be a topic in religion class, or social studies.

i think that's how it gets handled in most european countries. probably it's better to have religion classes in public schools than leaving them to some obscure sunday schools.

I do not believe that Darwinism is proven to be true or that Creationism is proven to be wrong. If we evolved, then why are we not still evolving? I think it takes a great more faith to believe that we evolved, than it does to believe in the Almighty Creator. How sad it is for those who have no hope in anything but this life. How wonderful and marvelous it is to have a personal relationship with the God of this universe! He loves us so much that He created us and the earth for us, but He gives us a free will to believe in Him or reject Him. He loves us so much that even though we reject Him over and over again, He is patient and long-suffering and desires us to come to Him.

The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9

We love Him because He first loved us.
1 John 4:19

Yes, we have to come to Him in faith. That is the first step that He requires, and unless we seek Him with all our heart, then we can never know Him. And just believing in God is not good enough.

You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! James 2:19

The demons believe that there is one God, but they rebelled against Him too. It takes more than just believing that God exists. For most of my life I believed (or thought I believed) that God existed. It was not until I started to search the scriptures for myself and ask God to show me the truth, then I discovered that JESUS CHRIST IS THE WORD AND HE IS ALIVE!

John 1
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. 8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9 That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

I challege everyone to read the gospel of John and ask God to show you if it is true, but you have to truly be seeking Him with all your heart. You cannot fool God. He knows your heart and whether or not you are truly seeking Him. God will not force Himself on anyone. You have to willingly invite Him into your heart. I think we all have to first come to the point where we allow God to humble us and show us that He is holy, that we are sinners, and that we need the Saviour. Otherwise we continue in our pride believing that we are basically good, and that we can make it through this life without Him.

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Hebrews 4:12

I pray you will seek Him with all your heart. I know He is true and faithful and His word is true and faithful. Keep seeking Him with all your heart and you will find Him.

Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
Matthew 22:37

By the way, if you read the gospel of John and are truly seeking the truth, then God will show you that Jesus is God.

Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”
John 8:58

May the LORD show you the truth.
smitty

No one says that evolution stopped. If it happend in the past it also happens today. And have you not read the post from LarryLaffer? He showed that Creationism can not be true because when the universe were younger than 14 billion years, we could not see most of the stars that we see now. The reason is the speed of light.

That does not mean Evolution must be true, but it means Creationism must be wrong. At least in the scientific sense, its a classic example of a falsified theory. Its ok if you still believe in it, but this is then a religion and not a theory.

By the way, I'm also a Christian but dont think that your Bible quotes contribute anything to this discussion.

Tobias, I know that I am not as intelligent as many others on this forum, but this is what God says about the wise and the foolish:

1 Corinthians 3:19
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness”;[a]

Footnotes:

a. Job 5:13

Although I am very impressed and even slightly intimitaded by how intelligent other people may be, the truth is that God is mainly concerned with our hearts. He wants us to have faith in HIM.
How are we still evolving? I believe that God's creation took 6 literal 24 hour days just as He says in His word. I believe the flood made the earth look older. Regarding the stars, God can do anything.

But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Matthew 19:26

True Christianity is not a religion. Religion is man-made. Religion is man trying to get to God man's way (by works). True Christianity is a personal relationship with the living God which is only possible through Jesus Christ. It is God's way, and it is the only way. God reached down to us, because we are incapable of reaching Him on our own. Creationism is neither a theory or a religion. It is the truth that can only be known when you come to Jesus Christ by faith, admit your a sinner, ask Him to forgive your sins and come into your heart and life and make you His child.

smitty

Smitty, you are right that God is concerned with our faith, not our intelligence, and besides I would never say that you are less intelligent than many others on the forum.

The problem is this: There are tons of different scientific observations that all confirm that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, and the earth is 4.5 billion years old.

Of course God could have make it just looking this way, but that would mean that he intentionally deceives all scientists, and does this make any sense to you? Not to me.

God not only speaks to us through the Bible but also through His creation. The difference is that the universe was directly created by God, but the Bible was written down by fallible humans.

So it is much more likely that there is a mistake in the Bible, or in your interpretation of the Bible, than a mistake in God's creation.

Tobias, I believe that God wants us to believe Him and not what man says.

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. Psalm 20:7

I believe that the bible in it's original context is inspired by the Holy Spirit (God breathed), inerrant, and was written by prophets who were filled with the Holy Spirit and guided by Him what to write for God's divine purpose. I believe that the KJV is a just a translation (I have many Christian friends who disagree with me on this) and is not inerrant or written by the prophets who were given the original revelation by the Holy Spirit, but I do believe that God can use translations to preserve and reveal the truth of His word. I agree with you that God speaks to us in three ways: His word, His creation, and His Son Jesus Christ. Yes, man is fallible, but God can and does use anyone and anything He chooses to accomplish His purpose. I am not asking anyone to believe me, but to read the word of God for themselves and ask God if His word is true. God does not make mistakes. It is man, not God, who fails.

Tobias,

There are many scientists who believe the literal interpretation of the bible. Man loves to pick and choose which parts of the bible he wants to believe if any. If the bible is God's word, then it is all true. God cannot lie.
Titus 1:2
in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began,

Ouch. They have really brainwashed you.

Religion is not science. And creationism is religion at its best. It is fanatic religion. And has nothing to search in school.

God reveals Himself through His word (Jesus Christ), His creation (created by Jesus Christ) and through the Son of God (same as God), Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the Word. Jesus is God. Jesus is the Creator of all things.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
John 1:1-3

Tiles,
I have not been brainwashed by anyone. I was not brought up to believe in Jesus Christ and I never even read the bible or attended church until I started reading it on my own. I decided that I could not believe man because eveyone believes differently and that the only truth would have to come from God Himself if He existed. That is when I started seeking God with all my heart and asking Him to show me if the bible is true. I agree with you that religion is not a science. Again I say that religion is man made. It is man's way of trying to reach God on his own. Creationism is not a religion, and neither is true Christianity. It is not fanatic at all. It is God reaching down to man. God loves us. He wants to have the perfect relationship with us like he had with Adam before Adam disobeyed God and sinned entered the world. It has everything to do with school. We all should be allowed to have that choice. That is all I am saying.

Ah, i see. You live in your own little world. Nothing wrong with that. But that has even more nothing to search in school.

Tiles, no, I do not live in my own world. I live in this world, but I am not of this world, at least not since I accepted Christ as my Saviour and Lord. My home is indeed in heaven and I am just a sojourner here. My purpose is to glorify Christ by telling others, and when God is through with me, then He will take me home. I am just saying that everyone has the right to be presented with creationism in schools and decide for themselves.

School is made to teach current approven knowledge, not fairy tales.

And yes, you live in your very own world.

There is no Einstein, here in this forum
Sorry if my previous post may sound offensive, it was not my intention

What I meant was :

Either you think that science and religion must get along or religion must prevail on science

In the former case you must accept a non litteral interpretation of the Bible
There is no way to defend the creationism from a scientific point of view
This is the position of the pope , who is not known, for sure ,as a liberal
In the latter case I dont see why creationism should be taught in a scientific course

Tiles, Darwinism is not proven knowledge just because some people believe it. God's word is not a fairy tale just because some people choose not to believe it. I live in the same world as you do (for now) and many people agree with me. Why is it that people want to silence what they do not believe? I am not saying that Darwinism should not be taught even though I will be honest and say I wish it wasn't. If man wants to worship the creation rather than the Creator, then God will allow him to do so. He says he will give him over to a reprobate mind. But why are people so much against the possiblity that maybe they are wrong and that the bible could very well be the truth?

Alberto,
Thank you for your kind words and apology. I don't know if your apology was for me, but if so I humbly accept it. I am certain your apology is sincere. I for one have taken no offense at anything that anyone has said, especially you. I am the first to admit that I am not as smart or clever as many of the people who post here. The reason I use the word of God is because His word will not return to Him void. God's word is true. I do not believe that science and religion get along, but I do believe that science and the bible get along. Here again is one of my favorite websites:

http://www.icr.org/

I believe the bible literally, and I believe that since it is God's word, that it goes along with science perfectly since God is perfect and true, His word is perfect and true, and He is the One who created everything including science . I do NOT believe we evolved from apes or anything else, and no one can prove that we did. I do not trust the pope or any man, only Jesus Christ who is the One and only true living God, the Creator of the Universe, and the only way of salvation for anyone who will come to Him. I believe Creationism should be taught in schools because it is the word of God and His word is true.

We still have remains of a tail.
Our DNA is similar to apes and even to any creatures, too.

Evolution is proven. Creationism is disproven.

Lukas, maybe you have remains of a tail, but I don't and have never seen a human who does. Evolution is NOT proven, and Creationism is not disproven.

http://www.icr.org/article/459/
The Rapidly Unraveling Thread between DNA and "Human Evolution"
by Frank Sherwin, M.A.

I'll read your link later, I currently have no time.

However, the remain of a tail is the coccyx. I have never seen (alive) humans without one.

Lukas, I figured that was what you were referring to, but nothing proves that is the remains of a tail. The following is another good article when you have the time to read them. They are not long articles.

DNA: A Stew-pendous Creation
by Frank Sherwin, M.A.*
http://www.icr.org/article/3137/

Lukas, This article is a little longer, but I hope you and others will take the time to read it.

Evolution and the Human Tail
by Duane Gish, Ph.D.

http://www.icr.org/article/210/

I'm an American Muslim, born in Germany, I grew up Christian, and later became an Agnostic. In 1996 I accepted Islam. I say this only to explain that I may be able to add a new perspective on this matter.

I think one of the biggest problems in this discussion is that Evolutionism and Creationism are somehow percieved to be mutually exclusive. This is probably due to the historical context in which these theories evolved. In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for a lot of persecution of Scientifically minded people, including Galileo, as well as anyone who dissented from their views. Later this caused the scientific community to seek to undermine the validity of Christianity, by putting a literal interpretation of the Bible up to scientific scrutiny.

In the Muslim world, no such division ever took place, the sciences were encouraged in the Quran, so science flourished for a long time in the Muslim world, and actually helped to revive the sciences in Europe, leading to the Rennaisance. The idea that God(Allah) caused the universe to evolve over time, is perfectly in accordance with the teachings of the Quran. One important reason for this is that while the Quran does mention the heavens and the earth being created in 6 days, the word for 'days' in Arabic can also mean 'periods of time'. There's no problem scientifically in understanding the evolution of the universe to have occurred in 6 time periods, so again we have harmony between religion and science.

In regard to the Christian view, it is quite possible that the English translations of the Bible, are not quite capturing the exact meanings of the original Hebrew text. Perhaps in ancient Hebrew, days means "periods of time" too. Muslims believe that prophets were sent to all people, including Moses, Jesus and many others. While we hold that the Torah and the Gospel were divinely inspired books, we also acknowledge that some tampering and missinterpretation has occurred to the texts over the centuries. The Quran warns us of this phenomenon, which is why such great pains were taken to preserve its original text.

Back to the topic, I think the facts of evolution should definitely be taught in science class, but some of the conclusions, which are not scientific, should be avoided. The idea that evolution should lead one to believe that there is no God, is a stretch, and probably stems from the historical controversy I mentioned earlier. I don't think God can be proven or disproven scientifically, but it is a matter of personal experience. I can easily prove the existance of God to myself, and I can offer some convincing arguments for others to consider, but I know they do not stand up to scientific scrutiny, nor can they be measured by scientific means. It's a personal choice, ultimatly that I've made to believe.

I don't think schools should leave out religion either. Religion is a powerful force in our society, and we need to understand how other peoples beliefs cause them to act. Perhaps creationism could be taught, as suggested earlier, in a sociology class, or social studies, as part of the lesson on Christianity.

There were a couple other things I'd like to address, which came up earlier in this discussion...


Their moms didn't keep them out of science class, they kept them out of "our religion module", which was probably Chritianity.

Also, someone mentioned how Religions try to confuse people first, then offer a clear solution i.e. "the Bible Says...". I think this is a human problem, not a religious problem. Yes religions have been missused, and are missused to this day, to justify horrible things. We Muslims are as guilty as any of this, but so are many other philosophies, like nationalism, secularism, and even Darwinism.

I hope this helps...

Dooley, thank you so much for your comments. The Hebrew is literal 24 hour days.

Dooley, you may find this article of interest.

Do The Days Really Matter?
by Kenneth Ham

http://www.icr.org/article/689/

i didn't say their mums kept them out of science. i simply gave a similar example to show why neither the school nor the topic at hand can be blamed for "excluding" those kids.

though i understand the misunderstanding. i wasn't very clear.

julz

One word to the word "theory". In science everything is a theory. Don't mix that with unproven or untrue. It's most of the time the opposite.

Science is no religion my son. This is not a "believe in". And it is of course not "some" who "believe" in Darwinism. It's "just" the majority of humans plus ALL scientists.

Every new bit of knowledge and facts proves the darwinism true. And not a single one has disproven the Darwinism theory in 150 years. Because ALL facts points in directon of Darwinism. I think we can pretty well talk of it as proven knowledge. If not that what else is? What's next to deny because it doesn't fit to a 2000 year old religion? Gravity? Isn't mentioned in the bible. so kill gravity, KILL ...

Genesis disproves itself in the very first sentences. ALL facts speaks against it. Please. The Universe fulfilled with Water? Who has drunken it then? Isn't longer there. And it doesn't fit to what we can see with telescopes like hubble anyways. Doesn't fit to whole modern science. Man made equal to god? Does he have pickles and flatulence? What is he eating? While at it, HE? Who found out? And how?

Creationism is just another try to get the control over people back by selling religious fairytales as facts. This try is so cheap, but there are still people that believes in it.

What comes next? Back to The earth is the middle of anything? Back to Witch burnings? Back to crusade? Killing in the name of a god is THE specialty of religions.

Tiles,

Darwinism has never been proven to be true no matter how many times you or any scientist says it has been. Not all scientists believe in Darwinism. There are many scientists who believe in Creationism. Did you read any of the articles I linked in my earlier posts? Creation Science is true because the word of God is true. Just because something is "science" does not necessarily make it true. Every bit of knowledge and fact as you claim does not prove Darwinism, because it has never been proven to be a fact. Nobody has ever disproven God or the bible even though many have tried, so Creationism is not a disproven fact. It takes faith to believe either one, and I still say that it takes a great deal more faith to believe that everything just happened and that we all evolved from slimy, creepy things and monkeys. The bible makes much more sense to me, and I don't have to be a brain surgeon, rocket scientist or nuclear physicist to see it. Man is not equal to God. God made man perfect. It was man who disobeyed God and failed. Creationism is not a fairy tale. It makes perfect sense because God is perfect. It is not a way to gain control over anyone. God is already in control of all things. He is sovereign in everything. He does not force us to choose Him or believe His word. He wants us to come to Him in faith. Yes, man is sinful and has always done great evil in the name of God, but we cannot judge God and His word by man. Tiles, I ask that you just read the gospel of John and keep asking God to reveal Himself to you. If you truly seek Him with all your heart, then He will show you that He is truth and His word is truth. My prayer for you is that you will want to know the truth that there is a God, that He is holy, that He cannot have sin in his presence, and that the only way to have our sins removed is by asking Christ to forgive our sins and save us through his atoning blood and resurrection. I am pleading with you not to harden your heart to His love for you. I pray the Holy Spirit will draw you to Christ and show you the truth. Keep asking God. He will show you!

Let me put it this way. If you had kids and for some reason the nearest public school was teaching strictly about the Qur'an in their religion module, wouldn't you pull your kids away from it (I'm not talking about senior high school years when it doesn't matter if they're been taught Scientology or whatever since no one really pays attention. I'm talking mostly about ages 9-14 or so..)

Anyhow. I'm not a very strong supporter about either way myself. I'm mostly concerned about semantics (what theory means) than anything else really..


@smitty, please stop posting bible quotes, no one's reading them anyway. Mind you a christian troll is no better than any other troll.

Tiles,

If you have not checked out The Institute for Creation Research, then here is the link again:

http://www.icr.org/

Untrue. Every little fact points in direction of Darwinism.



Untrue. They just argue about details of evolution theory.



I`ve read the whole propaganda more than once before. I know the creationistic methods of lie, faking and quote out of context. Ratter methods.

Just to remind: You shall not lie!



There is no god.



You cannot argue away fossils. And you have obviously absolutely no clue what you are talking about.



There is no fact for the existance of a god. Not a single one. That is why it's called faith. Else it would be called knowledge.

Nearly every little sentence of the Genesis collides with nowadays science and facts. It is Provable wrong.

Larry, I was not aware that it was against the rules here to post the word of God, or are you just trying to silence the truth? How do you know that no one reads them? I think it is rude of you to call me or anyone a troll or any other name.

That's creationism job ...

You can't be serious...


I have only one more thing to add to this and of course you're free to believe whatever you want:

No one really knows if there's a God or not. That's why I've explained above that a scientist is agnostic by nature. That's because there's not real evidence one way or the other. Natural Evolution (I kinda hate the word Darwinism.. like it's a cult or something... and people who believe in General Relativity should be called Einsteinism) and the Big Bang theory only theorize on how the universe was created and how all this condensed energy expanded into our universe, but even the law on conservation of energy does not even attempt to explain how this energy was introduced to our system in the first place.

Now, even though scientists don't really know if there's a God or not, they can certainly pick up all religious literature such as the Bible and the Qur'an and disprove the hell out of those. So if you try to put the bible under the same testing that Natural Evolution is being subjected to, it will fail catastrophically on every level.


Cheers,
Aris


Now let's lighten up the mood a bit:

Tiles,

Here are some articles about fossils.
http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=home...ord_any=fossils


I have to get ready for work now. I pray God will show you the truth!

Love, grace & peace to you all,
smitty

Well, like it or not, when you're spamming these forums with massive copypastas, be it from the bible or the latest edition of comsopolitan, you are indeed trolling around and that's frowned upon in these forums. Take it as a word of advice, use your own words when you post and reference any quotes you want through links and you'll at least gain a little more respect this way.

Friendly,
Aris

I know God exists because He lives in my heart. He has shown me that He and His word are true and faithful. I have no doubts about Him or His word. Take heed of His words, my friends!

Kiss the Son, lest He be angry,
And you perish in the way,
When His wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.
Psalm 2:12

Larry, thank you for your advice. I will try not to post anything to lengthy in the future.
Take Care.

Smitty

Reminds me of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_falling


smitty:
I read half of the first link you gave me and then stopped.
Sorry, but this is just rubbish. For example:

Yeah. But WHY do chimpanzees eat the same food, breathe the same air, and drink the same water? But they could also eat other food. This is just an evidence for Evolution!

Btw, I also think Bible quotes are really annoying. And if the Bible is really the onliest source for Creationism, it surely can't be called "scientific theory"!

I've stamped on a quote about this myself:

It's not Gravity, it's Intelligent Falling. Angels are pushing from above. ..

Good stuff

Again time to remind you, you shall not lie. That's a sin. You already have. Time for a few ave marias, isn't it?

Faked articles is lie. The by you linked articles are highly manipulated to fit Creationism. They leave away facts, they manipulate, they quote out of context and introduce hair-raising solutions just for the sake of fitting to creationism. This is propaganda and war material from soul catchers.

I can show you a by creationists quoted Darwin statement. Must even be in this thread. Quoted in a way that lets Darwin say Evolution Theory is wrong. Nothing different with the by you given links. Lies. Fake.

Lying that way should be against law in my opinion. It's Swindle. It's bogus. It's highly unethical. And done by an institution that says from itself that it is the source of all ethics ...

This is a very popular opinion but it is false
Galileo has never been persecuted by the Catholic Church

Galileo was asked to prove the validity of the Eliocentric theory in front of a scientific (not a religious ) commitee of jesuit scientists but he failed

He used the argument of the high\low tides but the jesuits demostrated that tides do not depend on the movement of the earth

The famous sentence that he pronounced
" Eppur si muove " ( Nevertheless it moves )
has been understood as :
" I am right but you have the power "
On the contrary Galileo meant
" You may be right about the tides but I am right about the earth "

The positions of the Church was :
Since the eliocentric theory can not be proved beyond any reasonable doubt then the Bible must prevail, which is a quite reasonable position

The sure evidences of the eliocentic theory came only some hundred years later
At that point the Chatholic Church immediatly admitted that the Bible must be considered infallible only for ethics and religious matters

This to say that modern fundamentalists are much worse, from this point of view, than the Chatholic Church of the middle age, 150 years after , they are still insisting that Darwinism is not a proved theory
Unbelievable

"I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence."

-Bobby Henderson, the Flying Spaghetti Monster's prophet

Since you think I am a liar, you do not believe in God, and you think the bible is a fairy tale. I will not waste any more of my time or yours. I will continue to pray for you.

Mark 6:11 And whoever will not receive you nor hear you, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!”

...

You've missed the point, it's not about whether or not the Bible is a fairytale. It's all about how much faith you and other Christians put into the book as if it's not a fairytale. Frankly, most evidence points in a totally different direction.



I wouldn't know why religious people always say this, I often wonder if they truly do, but perhaps it makes you feel better saying it anyway...



Good, but you should really be aware that fear tactics won't work on people that do not believe. Besides, isn't God all about forgiveness, righteousness and what not? After all, you believe in Jesus Christ and what he did, but at the same time you condemn the non believers as if you're, uhm no disrespect, God itself,

Cheers

Phemox, I will reply to you. I believe the bible is the word of God, not a fairy tale. That is why I put so much faith in it. Yes, I will pray for you. I am not condemning anyone. I am only telling you what God says in His word. It is up to you to believe it or not. Yes, God is forgiving, but He is also holy and righteous and will not allow sin in His presence. That is why Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead. I know I am a sinner and that it is only Christ's atoning blood and resurrection that saves me. It is God and His Word (Jesus Christ) who is the judge, not me.

John 3
10Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

11Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.

12If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?

13And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

14And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:

15That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

17For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

18He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

19And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

20For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

21But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

1 John 5:13

13These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

while it's a good example, it is still strictly me excluding them from it, assuming i would pull them away from it. i don't think i actually would pull them away from it. i'm not a huge fan of protecting kids from the world; more helping them grow in such a way that they can deal with it. if they're protected from other belief systems and then step out into the big bad world where they make Muslim friends who try to convert them and all they can say is "how come i didn't know about any of this?" that would be bad.

righteousness = punish all the sinners! forgiveness = "accept me as your friend and i'll forget all your sins you've ever committed, and ever will commit." that's Christianity in a nutshell.

julz

Good for you. I don't like overprotective parents either. Mine totally let me make my own mind about the uncertainties in our world. Even though my mother believes in the christian God and my father was also an active communist in his youth, I didn't learn about any of this until I was over 20 because until then they never ever spoke a word to me about either religion or politics. I was completely free to make up my own mind about these two subjects whereas other children don't have this opportunity to choose for themselves (it's so easy for parents to accidentally brainwash their kids..)

However, I don't like that you described your kid's mulsim friends that try to convert him as "the big bad world". In the same sense, smitty now is also the big bad world for trying to convert all of us (and any young non-christian kids lurking these forums) into christianity.



smitty, enough with the bloody quotes. You know, I was about to finally go buy and read the bible, but now with all these spoilers that you threw in this thread you completely ruined it for me :P The Passion by Mel Gibson was also a major giveaway for me (the jesus dude dies???).

Hmmm, I'm the big bad world for presenting what I believe is the truth? Interesting. So we should only expose people (especially children) to other things and not Christianity? Typical left wing free thinking. Larry, you can still read the bible. I'm certain that like all of us there is plenty there you do not know. Yep, Jesus died, but the great thing is that He is Risen! You can always read the ending (Revelation). That way you can find out what will happen to you in the end.

I was not taught Christianity as a child at home or in school, but I thank God for bringing people into my life who were not ashamed or afraid to tell me about Jesus and the bible. Looking back I suppose I was searching all along and did not realize it at the time. It was not until I was an adult and started reading the bible for myself that I started to believe it instead of the theory of evolution which I had been taught.

No, you didn't understand the point I tried to make.

Btw, please don't categorize me in any left wing-right wing b*llshit..




It was a joke smitty..

Quote: Btw, please don't categorize me in any left wing...
Well, if the shoe fits...

I am right (wing) and proud of it!

Quote: It was a joke smitty..
I know you meant it to be a joke, but you failed miserably.

That's just the american way of thinking. We don't even have the notion of left wing or right wing in my country. No person is exactly the same as the one next to him. Like Chris Rock puts it, there are some things I'm conservative about and there are some things I'm liberal about. If you label yourself one of the only two available choices (apparently) instead of forming your own opinions on things that concern you, to me that sounds like sheep behavior.




I'm sorry that didn't do it for you... How about this one?





Goodnight,
Aris

Btw, Larry, when you say enough with the bloody quotes, do you mean bloody as a cuss word referring to all of God's word or just scriptures relating to the blood of Christ? I know it is all convicting, so you probably mean it as a cuss word in regards to all of scripture. It never ceases to amaze me that people who do not believe the bible seem to be so afraid of it, because it just may convince them or someone else that it is true. I don't fly off the handle when people post about the theory of evolution. I just want equal time for Creationism.

that was an expression, which i probably should've put in quotes myself. my mum uses it a lot and i assumed it was fairly common, but perhaps not. "stepping out into the big bad world" describes the point when one is suddenly completely independent of one's parents/caretakers. i intended "the big bad world" as the context in which a young adult might get their very first taste of Islam if they are too sheltered.

i didn't realise your parents' varied backgrounds! and i'm glad while we can disagree on religious issues we can agree on issues of life-application, ie: parenting .

julz

That's right, I am one of His sheep, and eternally grateful to Him for that!
John 10
25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me. 26 But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you. 27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. 28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. 30 I and My Father are one.”

AlbertoT



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

"Galileo was eventually forced to recant his heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house arrest on orders of the Roman Inquisition."

In terms of the Inquisition, your right, this hardly sounds like persecution. It's not like they pulled his fingernails out or anything. (sarcasm)

For Smitty, thanks, I will look up those links you pointed to. I would also advise you not to quote so much scripture in your posts. There's nothing wrong with it, and I'm sure your intentions are good. However, since the subject here is a scientific one, and since science uses the language of logic and reason, it might be more helpful to approach your perspective from that angle too. Scripture will be very useful when determining what your beliefs are, but take an example from Paul. He didn't just quote scripture, he used his wits and argued his point with reason and logic too. My point is that an atheist will be more likely to see your point through a reasoned argument, rather than through a direct quote from the Bible. Since he has already decided not to believe in the Bible, it will have very little effect on him.

Back to the topic...

I think there's an important idea that's missing from this conversation. While I'm no scientist, I do try to approach knowledge somewhat methodicaly. I really think knowledge begins with admitting that I don't know. How can I learn, if I already think I know it. I see both sides of this debate making this mistake. Science is supposed to always leave room for new ideas, but with regard to the Intelligent Design argument, it seems that many of the most prominent scientists have really closed the door on even discussing it. They seem to be as fundamentalist about darwinism as any Christian or Muslim is about religion. There's a documentary about this phenomenon called "Expelled: no Intelligence Allowed", I would recommend it to anyone interested in this debate.

The Creationist side also tends to completely ignore the other sides arguments, and instead fixates on a very literal translation and interpretation of scripture. This is particularly un-helpful when the scripture in question is the Bible. No disrespect to the Bible is intended here, but it has a lot of contradictory material in it. For the record. I happen to believe in a lot of what the Bible teaches about God and the prophets, and morality in general.

Furthermore there's an important aspect of this debate which is not being brought up. There's a big difference between the concept of 'Creationism' which has a top-down approach to science, based on Biblical teachings, and the concept of 'Intelligent Design', which many scientists actually argue is becoming apparent through the study of nature. Of course strict Darwinists will tell you that these scientists are merely 'Creationists' in disguise, I must disagree. If scientists are supposed to be agnostic, as one poster had mentioned previously, they must admit that they don't know whether there's a designer or not. Therefore concluding that there is a designer, could be just as scientific as concluding that there isn't. An Agnostic is someone who believes that metaphysical realities can neither be proven nor disproven.

Huston Smith once wrote about this, explaining that science is the study of observable phenomenon, so it really has no bearing on religious beliefs. God, angels, devils, etc... are by definition things which are unseen, and not part of the observable universe. Therefore it is unscientific to try to come to conclusions about them through science.

At the same time, as a Muslim, I believe God (Allah) placed signs of His existance throughout creation. Therefor the study of science, without bias, should lead to the truth. I also think that a scientific mindset can help us determine whether a particular religious scripture is true or false. Since scripture is part of the observable universe, it is to some degree subject to scrutiny by science.


Again, I hope this helps...

When you have a ball, round, green, touchable, proovable not just by you but a ton of other people, and then somebody comes and BELIEVES it is square and blue instead, would you discuss with him? Or wouldn't you call the ambulance?

When you, as a scientist, having a ton of proofs for evolution, having proofs for the age of the earth, have facts over facts, stuff that NOBODY is able to DISPROOF, and then comes a creationist and says that is all wrong, because he BELIEVES the earth is just a few thousand years old because an old book is saying so, would you discuss?

And adding to that the creationists even play with dispatched cards. They twist facts, they quote out of context until it fits, they lie, they betray. That all to reach their goal that creationism gets teached in school at the same level than it would be science.

Would you discuss with people that twists the word in your mouth? Would you discuss with religious fanatics? Nothing else are creationists.

Still nothing learned from the history?

Have a look at smittys reaction. He impends us that we end like sodom and ghomorra because we are not willing to listen to him. That are the arguments of religion. Listen to us or you will burn in hell. We have the only wisdom. And don't even think of something else, or we will kill you, in the name of the god of love of course.

While at that, nice little god of love. Burns down whole towns and kills people. That for free will, heh ...

o.O Do you want to say that you are a Nazi??

Right wing is not synonymous for Nazi, in fact, Nazis were socialists and that's usually considered to be left wing politics if I'm not mistaken,

@JulzMighty:



A lot of religious people are quite phobic from other religions, they maintain a big distance, do the 'they are different and must be wrong' finger pointing and there's usually an amount of ignorance about said other beliefs.

The system works better because there's this social control and peer-pressure, but also because it's often quite closed towards other belief systems,

Cheers

I'm protected from many belief systems by virtue of distance and communication. As an example, I have no idea what some tribal guy in the deepest jungle believes. But if I encounter him and his belief, I don't just go, "Wow! I never knew that!" and then consider converting. :P

There are some things about evolution which are like you say - provable, and contrary to the Bible's teachings. However when it comes down to some of the most important areas, like how life actually began, evolutionists still admit that they don't know. This is where Intelligent Design comes in. Let me repeat that the idea of Intelligent Design is different than Creationism. Intellignet Design does not mean that evolution didn't happen, it's simply an alternate explaination of HOW evolution happened.

On your other point, unfortunatly entire villages of people do burn down in this world. If we believe in God, we have to accept that God allows suffering to happen, and it's really not hard to understand. Suffering is part of life, a part we would probably prefer to do without, but part nonetheless. Suffering actually has a very useful purpose, the pain of touching a fire is no fun, but without it, you might not notice your hand burning off. So for a believer, suffering is just a tool which God uses to teach us about the consequences of our actions. If horrible things can happen in this world, and this world was created by God, then horrible things could also happen in the next world too.

Or we can choose not to believe in God. Either way we will find out the truth when we die...

You mentioned two arguments in your post that are often heard from religious people:

You were talking of biogenesis, not evolution. Evolution is a theory of how life evolved, but not of how it began. Science indeed does not know yet how it began, but that does not mean "Intelligent Design" has any merits: There are at least ten different plausible scientific theories about the start of life. None of them requires an intelligent designer. We just have not enough observations yet to determine which of the theories is correct, or if another theory is required.


More often than not, suffering is not a consequence of our actions. It is caused by diseases, earthquakes or other natural catastrophes. In this case it does not teach anything - besides, the people to be taught are already dead. So why would a God cause suffering?

AFAIK left=communist, right=nazi. I have never heard that nazis are "left". When people are talking about nazis, they often talk about "radical right-wing".
However, I don't think (hope) that smitty is a nazi as he doesn't sound like one (no nazi paroles etc). But the "right" confuses me...
If "right" doesn't mean nazi, what does it mean then?

http://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2

In the USA, "right wing" does not mean Nazi. It's largely tolerated and you can even become President.

Ok, I see.

I would like to apologize to all of you, especially to Larry. In some of my earlier posts I was not behaving Christ-like by some of the things I said. I have asked the Lord to forgive me, and I am asking Larry and the rest of you to forgive me, too.

Is this commentary on our gloriously stupid leader who we voted for twice?

But JCL is correct. In the USA, right-wing is considered the hard-core, bible thumping, conservative, Republican view point.

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Politics/story?id=6418908&page=1

Dooley, thank you for being so kind. I understand what you are saying, although I believe God's word speaks for itself.

Most of my relatives in Europe died in concentration camps.
I may be many things, but a Nazi is not one of them. By right wing, I meant that I do tend to be conservative in my thinking and beliefs. Also, I believe I am right wing because I believe to be on the right side...the Lord's side which is always right.

Not that it matters much, but Hitler definitely was more interested in a state-planned and very much controlled economy than in a deregulated libertarian economy. Controlling German interests has always been top-priority.

Together with Hitler's view on the future and the socialism involved, I would probably have put Hitler a lot further to the left of center instead of right of center. Just think of the almost communist-like vacation resorts they had planned for the future.

In my opinion Hitler and Stalin had a lot more in common than the diagram suggests. Actually, the article admits they are further apart depicted in the diagram because of their difference of opinion on economy, but that difference really isn't that huge.



Don't take this the wrong way. I know you'll deny having superiority feelings about your beliefs, but it strikes me how you keep implying, however jokingly, that you are religious and therefore must be right.

Cheers

Thank you for explaining it better than I could. If there's an area where we don't have the answer i.e. biogenesis, why should we not consider all possible explanations? Why is there an immediate dismissal of Intelligent Design. My earlier explanation was that this negativity to intelligent design is based in the historical context of religious persecution of scientists like Galeleo, and other later scientists who proposed teaching evolution. My point is that dismissing Intelligent Design is not a scientific stance, where all options should be considered, but rather a reactionary stance based on past missdeeds of the church. Now however, the persecution is directed the other way, and although it's not as bad as the Inquisition, it's still unbalanced and unfair to the proponents of Intelligent design, especially those who really do approach it scientifically.



So you are arguing that because suffering exists, there cannot be a God. I hear this argument a lot from people who do not believe in God... But that does not make it wrong. However, if we examine it logically, it doesn't add up. I maintain that God's existence is hidden from us. We cannot prove or disprove it scientifically. Science is limited to things which appear to our senses and can be observed.

The existence of suffering does not prove or disprove God's existence, it just indicates that if there is a God, then it must be a God who allows suffering to go on. My view of this is that such a God might also allow for the existence of Hell, so I believe the safest bet is to bet on God. I may be wrong, but if I am it won't make any difference, I'll be dust. If, however, I bet on no God, and I'm wrong, I'll regret it forever. This is the basic logic I use to arrive at belief.

This is not however, the end of it. Let's assume for the sake of argument, that God does exist. If so, He surely could make Himself apparent to anyone He chooses. (please note I don't believe God is a Man, it simply sounds better to me than calling God 'It' or 'She') Anyway, I don't think God remains a simple 50% bet for people who choose to believe. They begin a relationship in which God may choose to reveal Himself to them. If you think this is un-scientific, you're right. The movie 'Contact' addressed this very issue, when Jodie Foster's character asked Matthew McConaughey "can you prove that God exists?" His response was "Do you love your father?" She said "yes", and he asked "can you prove it?"

My point is that a lot of people, scientists included, have concluded from studying nature, that the complexity and beauty in it has led them to believe that there was an Intelligence behind it's design. Why can this not be taught? This is different than Creationism, which takes the Bible literally, and imposes itself on any scientific discovery.

Phemox, I am not a religious person by any stretch of the imagination, nor am I superior to anyone. I know that I am not as intelligent as most of the people on this forum. I do not believe I am right because I am religious. As I have said before, religion is man-made. What I believe in is not religion. I believe in God/Jesus Christ and that the bible is His word. Man has made religions out of it. I put no stock in man or religion. Yes, I know I am right. I have no doubts that God is true and His word is true. It has nothing to do with me at all. When I realized that I was a sinner and that if I was wrong I had everything to lose, I asked God to show me if Christ is indeed the truth. The bible says that when we accept Christ as our Savior, the Holy Spirit seals us and indwells us forever. I did not know that at the time, but after I asked Christ to forgive my sins and save me, I began to read the bible and understand it, when before it made no sense to me at all. This is why I know I am right, because it is the Holy Spirit who enlightens and illuminates the word of God for us. Like I said, it has nothing to do with me. I am nobody special. I am just a sinner who deserves to go to hell, but I am saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. It is so simple that even a child and even I can understand it.

Because it is disproven.

Dooley, I just want to say that I really enjoy reading your posts.

Answer: "Yes, I can use a polygraph."

That's an interesting point of view, but Christianity is no different from other man-made religions. I can see how you think of your belief as something incredibly personal though.



I'm not questioning what you're saying here, but technically you're not right, but simply very convinced. The same is true for me, but with an opposing opinion.



Perhaps, but it's also a great part of what makes skeptics so weary.

Besides, the real 'simplicity' lies in the fact that it's not possible to actually provide proof of God's existence itself and as a result we will never know, or as I would say it doesn't change the extreme unlikeliness of God's existence or influence.

When it comes to simplicity, it only makes sense that if there really was a God, he would make himself known,

Cheers

My God man! Even Richard Dawkins admits that there may have been some intelligent source for the first living cell, and he's about as staunch an Atheist as there can be. How can you so confidently claim that there is no God?

There's a big difference in saying "I'm an Atheist, I don't believe in God" and "God is disproven, and can't exist." I've never heard anyone claim this. Do you leave no possibility for the slight chance that you might be wrong?

When was God disproven, who conducted the experiment? How was this accomplished, and which scientific body funded and approved this research? What were the control subjects in such an experiment? The Devil and the Spaghetti Monster? I want facts...

Sorry for sounding so outraged, but really? God was disproven?

The theory of evolution is not a fact, although many insist that it has been proven. Evolution requires faith too. Man cannot prove that God exists. God requires faith. God says in His word that without faith we cannot please Him and that it is only by faith we are righteous and can be saved. His words, not mine.

Evolution IS proven. Believing in evolution is not faith, it's knowledge. Believing in creationism requires faith just as the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Actually, you're mistaken, Dawkins only admits the possibility, as the scientific approach of the subject simply demands that. An open mind, a lack of evidence. Lack of evidence isn't proof of the opposite.



One fact, when it comes to logic and rationality is that the whole God thing makes the least sense of all theories out there. Especially considered the overwhelming lack of evidence for divine intervention and of course the psychological aspect of religion(s).



Actually, big chunks of the theory have been proven. In fact, so much has been proven that it has become the leading theory among several.



Nope, these are still your words. You can't justify things by stating someone else said it and you're only acting in name of what that other person or being said.

History shows thát often leads to violently scary things. :P

Cheers

Actually it is. Religions are work based. Religion is man trying to reach God through good works. Christianity (true Christianity) is not a religion, but a relationship. Man is incapable of reaching God on his own, so God reached down to man and provided a way for us to be reconciled with Him.



Yes, I have a very personal relationship with the One and only true and living God. This is only possible through knowing Jesus Christ as my Savior. Of course this relationship is available to all and anyone who is willing to humble themselves and call upon the Name of the LORD to save him.



You and others may think that I am just simply very convinced, but God has revealed Himself in His word and continues to do so. He is alive and His word is alive. Yes, you may say that the same is true for you, but one of us is wrong.



Everyone will know one day, but you can know now. It is up to you.



He does make Himself known to anyone who seeks after Him.

Just because it is the leading theory does not make it true.



God says it, whether you believe Him or not is your choice.



Yes, man is evil and will use anything for evil. God will use it for good.

@PHeMoX:actually, he's not mistaken. "may have been" = "only admits the possibility". what you're saying isn't any different to what he said.
@HyperGraph:how do you know that tribal guy isn't going to pull out an incredibly logical and reasonable argument? and it's not necessarily about converting, but perhaps losing faith in your own beliefs. it's also about being a light to others, being able to defend the faith for their sake.

julz

That wasn't the point (but I suspect you know that). I was only saying that just because someone has not encountered the idea does not mean that they will instantly cave into it. There are billions of people on this planet and many of them have a variety of beliefs. We cannot be exposed to them all (nor would most of us want to be). Therefore, just because someone is not exposed to the belief does not mean they will instantly buy it. They might. They might not.

... any way, this looks to be an interesting discussion, though the latest posters (including myself) should go back and read the original poster's intent for this thread. I believe he asked us not to debate the merits of creationism/evolution, but about whether both should be taught in school and why.

well, yeah, that's true.

EDIT: a little slow, that was in response to your first response: shelter from other beliefs doesn't mean someone will cave in. what is also true is your next post -- i completely forgot this was the "should creationism be taught in schools" thread!

I think if evolution is going to be taught in schools, then it should be taught as a theory since that is what it is. Creationism should be taught equally side by side. Neither can be proven and both require faith, so why not teach both and let "freethinkers" decide?

It is being taught as a theory because it is a theory. All scientists will say "evolution is a theory."

But Creationism is not a theory by scientific standards and thus should not be taught in a science class. It goes against what we learn about the scientific method.

Evolution does NOT require faith, it requires evidence, which we have.

And if creationism is taught in class, it better NOT be only the Christian version, but also the Hindu, the Islam, the Judaic, the Shinto, the Buddhist, the Pastafarianism, the Scientologism, all faiths. Can a school reasonably teach every single faith out there?

There is but one science and many religions.

Science is not true unless it is proven to be true. A theory is a theory. Since evolution is a theory, then it is NOT a fact. Since evolution is NOT a fact, then it DOES require faith. Therefore, evolution is a "religion" and NOT a science. There are many "religions", but only one truth. Truth is truth. There cannot be more than one. If evolution is taught in schools, then biblical creationism should be taught the exact same way...as a theory. It should not be one-sided.

Evolution is backed up by scientific evidence, not faith, that makes it a scientific theory and thus valid for teaching in a scientific class, as a theory.


What makes Biblical creationism better than the creationism theories of all the other religions? Last I checked, the First Amendment is in place to keep the government from establishing any religion and by teaching biblical creationism, they violate that by showing judeo-christian religions favor over other religions. What about hindu faiths? Or shinto? Or any other religion? How can you say that your religion is better than theres? The United States of America is not, and should not be a Christian nation, but a multi-religion nation, as was the intentions of the Founding Fathers (who were agnostic deists btw).

You may believe that the Judeo-christian god is truth, and thats fine, but not everyone in the US believes this. And this is yet another reason why we do not teach creationism.

The USA is founded on the belief that anyone is free to believe what they want. Having public school teachers teach the beliefs of any one religion violates that.

Creationism, as well as all other religious topics, belongs in social science classes, where these things are taught objectively.

Separation of Church and State was created with the intention of keeping the government out of the church, not the other way around.

Evolution is still just a theory and therefore not an exact science.

Where do you think the laws in the USA came from? That's right, the bible.

Actually they come from philosophers like John Locke . . .

Most of the constitution writers were agnostic deists.


Yeah and all the parts of evolution were developed scientifically.

I will say it again. Where do you think the laws in the USA came from? The bible.


Goodnight.

About 99% (just a guess) of all science is a theory. After a theory comes a law. Very little is considered a law in science (Second Law of Thermodynamics, etc). So virtually everything you do or know from science is from a theory. A theory is very close to a law (in most cases). So things that are considered a theory are usually true in virtually every test and can be "as good as" a law.

Certainly the Bible was referenced for law, as were other documents. But the Bible is not the basis for US law. For example, we don't have laws ordering the execution by stoning of disobedient children, adulterous women or homosexuals. Yet these are biblical laws, correct? We also do not have laws that demand the worship of God, forbidding the making of idols and keeping the Sabbath, right? And yet these are a part of the 10 commandments? I don't believe that we have laws against coveting, either. So what are we left with? Don't steel, don't bear false witness ... but are these really "biblical"laws? Aren't they laws that are "common sense" that are found in just about every country on the planet and have been in most civilizations throughout history? So what of our laws is "biblical"?

Again, the Bible was certainly referenced. Yes, many in the early stages of the USA were from a variety of Christian denominations (Quaker, Baptist, etc). But many of the Founding Fathers were deists and this is well substantiated.

well.. i give up. from the first time i posted here since now I had but one goal in my head. bring to light what "theory" means and what "law" means.. not change people's beliefs, no nothing.. that was my sole objective.. Apparently, I failed.

Cheers and enjoy your sciolism,
Aris

I have to agree with Hypergraph here, Smitty. The Constitution was influenced by many different sources. I'm sure it includes the Bible, but many, many other sources were referenced as well. The very idea of Democracy was Classical Greek in origin. Roman law worked its way into much of Europe as well, and the idea of a Representative Republic was pretty darn Roman. Then later, a lot of political ideas which came out of the Enlightenment, which was a clear move away from religious law, towards rational thinking and logic, worked there way into the Constitution. I realize that these are historical tidbits, but it's pretty well documented. I learned about it in High School, so I'm sure anyone could find out more with a simple Google search.

Yes, this thread was about whether creationism should be taught in schools. The reason I think we keep going into the argument about whether evolution is proven, or whether creationism is disproven etc... is because both sides are claiming that the other is not proven, in order to support their point i.e. that creationism should/shouldn't be taught in schools.

I have tried to explain that there is another option, one which is scientific, meaning it is arrived at through observation, logic and reason, and it is called Intelligent Design. Many scientists have concluded that it is not, as Darwinists have claimed, completely irrational to believe that an intelligent designer may have had a hand in the creation of life as we know it. Intelligent Design does not use the Bible as its source of scientific observaton, as do Creationists.

I have a question for each party, which I hope will help them understand that they are not infallible in their understanding.

First to the Creationists: If the Bible is the complete, unaltered, and perfect Word of God, as you claim, why does the geneology of Jesus as presented in Matthew 1:1-17 completely contradict the geneology of Jesus as presented in Luke 3:23-38? To be more specific, how can you claim that the whole Bible is true, when Luke says that Heli was Joseph's father, while Matthew maintains that Jacob was Joseph's father. Okay, Heli was Jacob's nickname... fine. Now go down the list, and explain why Matthew lists nine (9) fewer generations between Zerubbabel and Jesus than Luke? Keep going, it does not end there. Anyone who looks at these two geneologies can see the contradiction. It's obvious and no amount of explaining can make it go away. Just for the record, I actually believe in much of the Bible's teachings, but claiming that it is 100% God's Word, is making God look like a fool. Furthermore, the geneologies are presented as those of Jesus, whereas neither mention Mary, his biological mother, but somehow assume he came through Joseph, who was not supposed to be his biological father. Please explain this.

Now for the evolutionists: You often site Stanley Miller's experiment in 1953 as having succesfully demonstrated that life could have emerged by chance from some sort of primordial soup. Whereas, what he did was to form a few amino acids, from chemicals which he know were required to form amino acids. He did not have any reason to believe that amonia would have existed in the alleged primordial soup, yet he used it in his experiment anyway. Moreover, an amino acid is not alive, or even close to being alive. An average protein consists of about 500 amino acids, which must be strung together in a very specific way in order to be useful for a living organism, i.e. inside a cell. Today we know that the cells themselves have mechanisms which assemble these proteins. The chances of such a protein being assembled by chance is about 1 in 10 to the 950th power, that's basically zero. Mind you, a protein is not alive either, it's just a type of molecule which occurs in living organisms. Probability states that it's more likely for a 747 to be formed by a tornado racing through a junk-yard. My question to you is that with the complexity of a single cell, isn't it more likely to assume that something intelligent put it together? If you found a wrist-watch, would you spend your life trying to prove that it assembled itself by chance? A cell is millions of times more complex that a watch, is there any logic in assuming that it formed randomly?

No Larry, your efforts were not in vain. I think you explained it pretty darn well, and you have enlightened me to the important distinction between the terms. Thanks.

I said Creationism is disproven. A fine difference

And another excellent example of quoting out of context, twisting and mixing facts.

No that's not true, but I'll accept your explanation. I was referring to Intelligent Design, not Creationism. Saying intelligent design is disproven is the same as saying God is disproven. As I've explained in previous posts, there's a huge difference between Intelligent Design and Creationism.

I did not intend to quote out of context or twist your meaning, and I apologize if it came off that way. I actually agree that Creationism (i.e. Biblical) is disproven, so I guess we agree on that bit.

Yup, consensus at that point

@Dooley:

Intelligent Design isn't a scientific theory either. It just replaced the word "god" by "designer".

And the first cells surely weren't as complex as modern cells. They ENVOLVED and became so complex!
Of course first simple cells were able to be assembled by chance!

This is a knot, to be sure. From what little research I have done in the past, there seem to be several accepted views about why they are so different. The most commonly accepted seems to be that one genealogy is from the father's side (Joseph)and one from the mother's (Mary). The Luke passage is generally considered to be Mary's descent and I think this comes from where it says:

And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,

In verse 23. The phrase "as we supposed" is taken to mean that people thought that Jesus as the son of Joseph, but he was not. Thus, the rest of the line would be Mary's

While this may be commonly held (if I remember correctly) it seems to be a real stretch to me .



This is not really a problem when you consider both the era in which this was recorded, ancient mindsets and all of that. It was very common to list only significant names in a genealogy and to skip names of less significance and who was considered significant would be up to the one compiling the list. Words that are translated "begat" and "son of" and all of that generally are used to show relation and not to be taken literally. So someone may be recorded as the "son of" a particular person and actually be the grandson or great-great grandson.

I am not saying these are acceptable excuses, but this is what little I remember and I really don't want to do the research. I have better things to do .

Dooley, thanks for the encouragement. My posts take a lot of time to write so it's nice to know that at least one person is reading them. From now on I'll be putting a tl;dr (too long; didn't read) statement under all of my posts, for all the other readers out there who are suffering from ADD

Just to clear my stance to all of this (again), I want to say the following. Only a fool can say in certainty if there's a God or not. We may attempt to explain the aftermath of Big Bang and how humans and everything else has evolved to their current state, but no scientist has the answer to what initiated the Big Bang. We do however have evidence that explain to a certain extend what happened from Big Bang until today, but none to claim if there's a God or not.

Also,



I'll try to explain this one more time.. Natural Selection is not random. Meaning, the selection to which generations are allowed to breed and which die are nothing but random. The only thing random is how alterations are made to each generation. Also, and this is also a big misconception about evolution, the effects of evolution apply to both living and non-living things. Which means that the complexity of the first living cell should come as no surprise since it was also evolved from non-living things to the state of evolving certain attributes that would classify it as a living organism, such as the ability to re-produce and the ability to metabolize. It's just that the attributes of life allowed some things to survive through time better than non-living things. Also, the "laws" of natural selection were not designed themselves but they are simply derivations of the laws of physics. Now you may ask, well who designed these laws of physics then? Scientists have long tried to unify all four forces of physics into one and I think that eventually they'll succeed..

To make this even clearer, check this out:

Let's say I write a function in Lite-C about a super AI for an FPS game..



as you can see, I do use randomness for my AI, but that's hardly the whole thing for how my ai works. Same principle works for Natural Selection. It's greatness revolves around several NE laws which in turn get derived from physics, but randomness is only a small part of it.

Hope it makes sense..


tl;dr maybe there's God, Natural Selection not random


Cheers,
Aris

Totally wrong, the US constitution is NOT based on the Bible;

http://atheism.about.com/od/godlessliberals/p/Constitution.htm

From the article:

Why does the Christian Right seek to make a big deal out of the religious beliefs of the authors of the Constitution, though? They seem to think that if these men can be identified as devout Christians, then it follows that the Constitution is a Christian document which embodies Christian principles and doctrines (as defined by the Christian Right, of course). This does not follow, however. A Christian is every bit as capable of creating a godless, secular document as an atheist is.

Indeed, the fact that many of these men were devout Christians (even if not in the way that the Christian Right imagines) bolsters the case of contemporary secularists because it makes the absence of overt religious and Christian language all the more glaring. If they had mostly been atheists, the non-religious language would be expected and unremarkable. Yet because they were religious and steeped in Christian education, the absence of Christian language and references must be read as both deliberate and purposeful.


Cheers

HyperGraph, are you Dan Silverman?

Any reason you ask? I am getting my feet wet with gamestudio and don't have any way to contribute yet. Wanted to post in the morbius thread to introduce myself, but for some reason I cannot find the new post button there. I found this thread and thought it was interesting, though.

You sound like Dan Silverman. Are you he?

Nope. Not he. How can I sound like someone by typing? Do ya got a mic in my room? Just kidding .

HyperGraph,

Your style of writing and your way of replying and answering are very similar to that of Dan Silverman's from what I have seen. Do you know him?



maybe

Cool! Nope. Should I?



Yikes! I'd better watch what I say then? No camera, though, right? :P

I don't know. Should you?


not a bad idea

Uhm ... O ... K ... Bit strange ...

Is it? Sometimes life seems that way

Okay, I agreed with this when I was an agnostic, and I think it's a much more honest position than straight out denial of God. However, I came to the conclusion that while it is impossible to claim that there is no God, it is actually possible for someone to claim that there is a God. Let me explain.

Let's assume for the sake of argument tht there is a God. All powerful etc... He would be able to hide His presence, or He could choose to reveal it. If God chose to reveal His presence to someone, that someone would be a fool -NOT- to claim that there was a God. Now I'm not saying that I'm such a person, I've arrived at my belief through more mundane means. But this is the entire concept of prophethood in a nutshell. This explains why the prophets were so darn stubborn, assuming again that the history about them is accurate.

At the same time, while I don't think God will reveal His presence to just anyone, in the same way that He revealed it to, say... Moses, But I do think He reveals Himself to everyone in some lesser way. The more we respond to this, the more He reveals. This is one reason I don't think it's at all illogical to believe in a God, and why I maintain that Intelligent Design is a valid theory, worthy of our school system's acknowledgement.




I would ask that... yes. To me this part of your argument really supports the intelligent design side. If it's not random, then it must be laws that control the universe. If it's laws, then who wrote them? Why are they consistent throughout the known universe? What is causing them to remain intact over centuries and eons? I can really understand why some people don't believe in God, I didn't for a long time. But I can't understand how anyone could claim that there is definitely no God. It's really illogical. We're so small in comparison to the whole universe. Our sphere of knowledge is so tiny, the more we learn, the more we realise that we don't know. I'm repeating myself, but I really think atheists are either lying to us, or lying to themselves.

Mind you a lot of religious people also seem to be lying to themselves too. They clearly haven't thought any of this through, and they rely on blind faith. I've encountered them from many faiths, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc... I'm not saying they're bad people. Just that they are not thinkers.

Then there are those who take religion, or some philosophy, and use it to justify whatever thay want to do. Those people are bad, or severely misguided. Whether they're Christians, Muslims, Darwinists or Flying Spaghetti Monster worshippers...

HyperGraph, thanks for responding. I'm giving a counter-argument, not so much for you, but for other readers of this thread. I kind of wish someone with a little more enthusiasm had responded to my post...



It is commonly held, but I think it's much more than a stretch, as both geneologies mention Joseph by name, and neither mention Mary. Either way, there is an error in the text. i.e. the geneologies contradict each other, or one of them fails to mention that it is the geneology of Mary, and refers to her as Joseph.

It's much, much more probable that the text was written by fallable men (however well intentioned) than by an infallable God.



Agreed, and I wouldn't expect more from any historical document. But when the claim is made that the document in question is inspired by the Holy Spirit, I find it surprising to find 'different mindsets' involved at all.

Again the point of this was to explain why 'Creationism' was probably not good to teach in a science class, as the Bible is not really a scientifically accurate book. However, as book of moral guidance, it's stature is much higher, and I don't think it should be ignored all together. As a believer, I think God gave us minds to discriminate between what is true and what is false.

Moral guidance? Does this include genocide? How 'bout those laws on slavery? And those that say women are worth less than men? What 'bout stoning a child for not obeying a parent? If I lived by these morals the local government would have my @ss!

If you haven't read my previous posts, I will explain again. I'm not a Christian, I'm a Muslim. It is exactly because of those things you mentioned (i.e. Genocide, Slavery, and unfair treatment of women), as well as the contradictions in the Bible which caused me to reject it's teachings overall. However, when I said it should not be ignored altogether, I meant it. It has some important truths in it, which for Christian society, should not be ignored.

If god created the universe, and everything that will happen is determinated by laws of nature if god DOESN'T influence in the universe, all influence by god would mean that god changed his opinion because he could have made the beginning state and the natural laws just as he want, because he is allmighty, but if god is perfect, he won't change his opinion, because there can only be ONE perfect opinion and one of the two opinions would be wrong. That means 1. God doesn't exist OR 2. God does not influence in the universe OR 3. God is not perfect. Each case would mean that there is no reason to pray to god.

I'm not sure if I understand your argument. Let me explain what I understood, and you can confirm if I've got it right. Then I will try to respond to it, acknowledging the while that we are way off topic. Here goes:

If we assume that God created the laws of nature, then we would assume that they are perfect. Your question is 'why would God, later, choose to change those laws as He sees fit, by influencing history, performing miracles etc...? This would imply that His laws were not perfect to begin with, and would serve to disprove His existence'

Is that what you meant?

This might help this thread:

similarly that

God does exist. God is sovereign. God is perfect. God wants us to pray to Him.

I have just explained why a "god" can't be allmighty and perfect at one time. So the god you believe in cannot exist

Btw, if you think life needs a creator, who is the creator of the creator then? Or did he just appear by chance?

Says who? A book? I have thousand books that says the opposite. So what?

Hi Lukas!

God is Almighty and perfect no matter what you or anyone else says. The God I believe in most certainly does exist. God has always existed. He IS the Creator.

Ok, you are ignoring my logical disproof of god...

But please answer my other question: Who created god? Did he just appear by chance?

EDIT: And what did god do before he created the world? Did he wait an infinite time? Then he would have to still wait today and nothing would have happened.
And if god is allmighty why did it last 6 days to create the world? Why didn't he just snap his fingers and everything appeared?

I am not ignoring you at all. God has always existed.

Says who?

I realize that you might have answered before I edited my post. But still you are ignoring my questions...

smitty said that god said everything. So god said that god exists. Sounds a bit like a fantasy friend of a child, doesn't it?

Indeed, my friend harvey ...

I like the way you think

By the way, by Newtonian physics, this statement would be completely valid. People back then believed that if we had an all-powerful computer and could input all data about our world into it, we would be able to predict the future under the last detail. Einstein however has changed this view, and it is now the general belief that God does indeed play dice. If you want to know more about this let me know and I'll get a bit more technical.


Cheers,
Aris

I do not know what God did before. He did not tell us in His word. God is above time. He created time for man. Yes, God could have created everything in an instant, but He created time for us.

God says so in His word.

LarryLaffer: By the "dice" you are refering to the uncertainty relation aren't you? AFAIK it's just a law that we can't find out posiiton and speed of particles as exact as we wish, so we have to work with probabilities. But I think there is no real random, we just can't find out these things exactly.
I think there is a real determinism.

But omniscience has also other contradictions. If a computer should know everything about the universe, it should also know everything about itself. This is a recursion because it has to "know what it knows" so the amount of information would be infinitive and couldn't be stored on any harddisc

Says God. Not just a book, His word. The others are only books. Believe it or not. Your choice.

I am not ignoring your questions at all.

Wow! There is something YOU DON'T KNOW! So you can't blame us anymore for not knowing exactly how life began

About the time thing: Yeah, but after god created time, god was still allmighty and could create everything with infinite speed. After that time would be there for us nevertheless

Why are you so sure that god wrote the bible? Most likely the Penta Teuch was written by three sources, the Jahwist, the Elohist and the Priestly source. The gospels are also written by fallible men. So this is not god's word!

So you have directly spoken to him? What's he wearing? How does he look? Where does he live?

Edit, while at it, could you ask him about the value 273? He is almighty, he knows what i want to know ...

Lukas, you could fill volumes of books with what I do not know about God and other things as well. I do not claim by any stretch of the imagination to know everything, but I do know that God exists and that His word is true. I do blame you for not wanting to know God, because God says we are all without excuse.

Is that what he has answered to 273?

Or do you want me to say that you NOT talk to a god? But have it from an old book?

God did not have to, but He chose to use men to write down His word. He filled these men with the Holy Spirit for this purpose and inspired (God breathed) His word through them.

Could you please stop quoting nonsens and give an answer?

Yes, I speak directly to Him every day. It is called prayer. God is Spirit. Nobody knows what He looks like.



Yes, He does. Why not ask Him yourself?

I am trying to answer the best I can. You don't want me to use God's word. It is only nonsense to those who do not know God.

Problem is, i take my med and have stopped hearing voices ...

Okay, you talk to him, as a proof, what is his answer to 273?

I do not take meds and I do not hear voices. I do not know what 273 is and I would not ask Him that even if I knew what you are talking about. You want proof? The only way you will get proof is when you seek Him with all your heart.

I don't know what your heart does, but mine just pumps blood. It can't seek anything.

I think you know what I meant. You need to seek God with all your heart, mind, soul, etc., then He will reveal Himself to you. If you do not want to know Him, then he won't. It is that simple.

I do not have a soul. Nobody has a soul.

Of course I know what you mean. You mean thinking with your BRAIN (not heart) and cause a placebo that makes you think god answers you. (EDIT: Which of course only works if you think that god WILL answer you, not if you don't think so and want to try it ;))

Okay, you cannot answer me my question, you cannot answer what he is wearing and where he lives neither. Because you actually don't talk to your god in real. You lied again. How much ave marias is it now?

Your god is a fiction of a society that lived before 2000 years. It represents the knowledge of before 2000 years. And is as real as any other ancient religion.

Even worse that creationists tries to sell that ancient myths as if it would be todays knowledge.

Lukas, all people have souls whether you believe it or not. All souls will live forever with God in heaven or in hell separated from God for all eternity. Your choice. God's answers are in His word. Seek Him with all your heart (yes heart, because your mind gets in the way) and He will reveal Himself to you. God will not reveal Himself to anyone who does not seek and desire to know Him.

Tiles, my God is very real and you will one day know that for yourself.

How do you know that all people have souls? Also because it's written in that 200 years old book?

Btw, when I was a child I really "seeked" god because my parents said he exists. But after I read some books that aren't 2000 years old but are about science, I got doubts. And then I realised that god actually doesn't answer. If you pray nothing will happen. Did you ever notice that only prayers get accomplished that can happen by random?

yep, and it is older than 2000 years. Aww, but you are mistaken my friend. God does answer prayer. Sometimes He says yes, sometimes no and sometimes wait. God knows what is best, and we need to pray according to HIS will.

Psalm 46:10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

As I said the "answer" is a placebo. Once you get doubts you will notice that he actually doesn't answer.

Lukas, ask Him to take away your doubts and to show you that He is real. He is real. His word is true, and He will answer you if you really want to know Him.

Of course I already asked him to take away my doubts. He didn't answer, so I became atheist.

Watch this video on God answering prayer by saying Yes, no and wait:

Yes, No and Wait

Lukas, if you keep asking Him, then He WILL answer.

Lukas, I sought God for years before He revealed Himself to me. Keep asking Him. He will show you. He loves you!

smitty, watch the video HyperGraph has posted. The jug of milk loves you!

Thank you, but I am not interested in Hypergraph/Dan Silverman's attempts to undermine God, God's word and God's truth.

That's exactly right. Quantum physics says that you can't know at once everything you'd want to know about a subatomic particle. Matter is made up of things called electrons and quarks and you are limited by nature in what you can know about them. The world has a built-in uncertainty that prevents you from knowing exactly how things are going to turn out. You can calculate only the probabilities of outcomes of events. If you measure an electron at one location, there's a certain probability that when you look for it at another location, you'll find it. So the future is as uncertain as we always though it was, and no technological advances are going to change that. That's the way the world is.

Einstein, who started quantum physics, never really believed that this view of the world was the final word, just like you're saying.. He thought that quantum physics was temporary and that one day we would discover the hidden world underneath; a world that isn't probabilistic. But sophisticated experiments done during the last 20 years have convinced physicists that, in this case, Einstein was wrong. The world that quantum physics shows us is the real world.

For more on the subject, look up some articles on the net on quantum physics, or you can check out this awesome and easy to follow book called "Quantum theory cannot hurt you" by Marcus Chown. I'm no physicist and I was able to follow that book very easy. Highly recommended.


Cheers,
Aris

Watch the video. It is funny and it uses YOUR words :P .

Video Link

yeah, right

Is that sarcasm? Or do you agree with that video?

I did not watch the video. The comment was for Hyper/Dan. I still think Hyper is Dan Silverman. If not they must be twins.

Well, I have also the same opinion as Dan. Maybe I'm also the same person as Dan?

Watch the video! You are quoting the bible all the time, and expect us reading all the quotes, but you don't want to watch ONE video! Please watch the video!

Lukas, you are so funny You do not seem like Dan at all. I cannot watch it now. I will try to watch it later, k?

Ok, watch it later then, the essential is that you watch it at all

ok, I will watch it later, but if it is vulgar like the things Larry posts, then I will turn it off.

Smitty, I watched it. It is not vulgar, there is no nudity or anything. But it makes an argument which seeks to disprove God's existence. I think you could handle it.

Lukas, your argument about God's opinion changing is invalid. Let me explain. You stated that if we assume God created the universe and its laws, then they should be perfect. Therefor there would be no reason for God to interfere with events on Earth, like answering prayers, performing miracles etc...

However, this argument assumes that we know God's intention behind creating the universe. It assumes that He was trying to create some machine which works perfectly. It's actually taking materialistic philosophy and applying it to God.

God's purpose, as most religions would present it, is to test mankind, and to sort out the good from the bad. You can call it heaven and hell, karma, whatever, but the idea is the same. The universe is a moral experiment, not a physical one.

As I've stated before, I don't think God's existence is something subject to scientific inquiry. Everyone will draw their own conclusions from the same data. A believer will look at suffering and see God's hand, while a disbeliever will look at the same scene, and be convinced that there's no God.

The prayer thing is the same, you can always draw different conclusions from how or whether our prayers are answered. It does not change the fact that God either does or does not exist. One side is right and one is wrong. We will not know for sure until we are dead. This alone scares me enough to side with God.

I know I will die one day, and I have no idea what will happen. How can I be so arrogent as to assume that I know what will happen after I die? So to prepare for the unfortunate possibility of a Hell, I try to be good, and ask God for His mercy etc...

If I'm wrong, it won't matter to anyone. If the disbeliever is wrong, he'll be regretting his decision for all of eternity. It's like playing Russian Roulette. You might win the money, sure, but is it really worth the risk?

@Lukas: God's miracles are part of His design. your argument assumes God didn't want to interfere in the first place, and is wrong.

@Dooley: that last line you said reminds me of something very similar i said on this forum recently.

@Smitty: i find it really interesting that you find that connection between HyperGraph and Dan. i don't see that connection at all; or at least not enough to think they're one and the same.

julz

EDIT: i watched the video. people who vouch for the "logic" and "rationality" of such a video show how much it means to them to reject God.

the first argument doesn't really go anywhere. it takes 6 or so minutes to explain to us a very basic idea. "you're a smart person" he says, as if talking to someone in kindergarten. just because there's no "scientific" evidence for God, doesn't mean He isn't real.

the second argument about "scientific evidence" against is equally useless. if someone tells you you can't fold paper of any size in half more than 7 times, and gives you statistical evidence, and then you do it 12 times, who are you going to believe?

here's an important question: why do atheists even care? Christians want other people to be saved, for various reasons. why do atheists even care? and if it's the "religion kills witches and tall new york buildings" reason, don't bother. that's neither the fault of religion in general nor Christianity and Islam. it's a shame extremists are always labeled with the religion they claim to be such devout and spiritually mature members of.

Wow, Dooley! You are so right with everything you said! You sound like you are so close to the truth! The thing is that no matter how good we try to be, we can never measure up to God's standards, because He is a holy and sinless God. That is why Jesus Christ who is the only begotten Son of God (God in the flesh) came to earth to die for our sins. Being God He is the only one who could be our sacrifice because He is sinless. But it is because He rose from the dead that we too can live forever! Please keep searching, Dooley. You sound like you are so close!

Julz, if I discover that I am wrong then I will be the first to admit it and apologize, but I think Dan Silverman is Hyper. Pun intended.

lol, sure thing!

I got bored with that video after a couple of minutes.

Thanks for trying to help. I'm aware of this, and Islam teaches the same thing. There is a big difference still, the idea of Jesus being a sacrifice for our sins is not present in Islam. We believe it is through God's mercy that our sins are forgiven, not through our deeds, as many have accused. But God has commandments, and fulfilling these is part of our faith. Jesus said so too. The book of James in the Bible makes this argument very clearly, I suggest reading it.

However, it has little to do with teaching Creationism in schools, so I will hold off further discussion for another time.

If you want more details about my understanding of the Bible, see this article: http://www.schmidt-gallery.com/Bible_in_islam_v008.pdf

Not a single word in 42 years. My toaster is more communicative. Your god doesn't exist, that`s why it is so quiet. And you don't talk to him neither. Else "he" would've been able to answer my simple question.

He is almighty you said. But is limited to speak through a burning bush? Is limited to let others do the work? Is limited to send menaces instead burning the baddies down directly? Speaks not to everybody? Is limited to send his "son"? Breaks his own rules by committing adultery with a wife called Maria (poor Joseph, horned by a god)? I could go on with an endless list of weird things connected to that. Doesn't really sound almighty to me. Doesn't even sound as a god to me, as changeable as "he" acts.

When i would be a god i would snip with my fingers. And done.

Sorry, but for exact that reason that all just means one thing to me: there is no god. At least not as described in the current religions. There is just a fictional goddess which is introduced by some religious weirdoes.

I care because we've already been at witchburning, at torture in the name of a god, at war in the name of a god. And that wasn't some extremists, that came from the top. And i don't want to let this happen again. Religion never did anything good in the past.

what top? God's the only "top" in our beliefs, and you don't believe He exists, so what's this "top" you speak of?

"torture in the name of a god"? someone could drown a cat in your name, but does that mean it's indicative of your values?

what if someone killed religious people in the name of atheism? what if someone recruited people from a Rolling Stones fan-club to work in acts of terrorism by tricking them into believing Mick Jagger would want them to?

you know almost nothing about Christianity.

julz

There is no god at the top. Just some religious fanatics.

I mean the religious leaders. The same that forbids the useage of pill and condom and has stocks of companies that produces them.

I talk about the worlds biggest secret service. With killer commands.

I mean witch hunt. That has cost thousands of women their life. And was torture in the name of a god. Honestly i see shrift as a torture too. But that's another chapter. I mean crusade. Which was a complete war in the name of a god. I talk about official stuff. Known by all. Done by all.

I talk about telling the people that bad things will happen to them when they don't do what priests wants them to do. I talk about fear here. The weapon of religion.

I talk about having control over the people. It's all about power, but not the power of a god. It's the power to control the masses. The only reason why religion exists.

And creationism is just another try to get more control over the masses by religious ratters. It is again a crusade. Currently just with words, by faking and lying. But it is just a matter of time when nobody stops them.



I grew up catholic

Believe me. I know more about christianity than i ever wanted to. I am not talking about what ifs here, i talk about facts.

i agree. the catholic confession should be forbidden (at least for children). it's sick and can be damaging. i am still very angry about my confession experiences.

(while religion clearly is on the decline there still is a lot of pressure (especially in rural areas) to have children take part in christening and first communion and confession and all of that.)

point being...?

first, i'm not going to go into Catholicism vs Protestant, but that control and hierarchy is a mostly Catholic phenomenon.

secondly, most people i know who "grew up catholic" know hardly anything at all about Catholicism. most with a proper Catholic upbringing are aware of that and know to differentiate themselves from those who just "grew up catholic", as "label catholics" are so common. and an understanding of Catholicism isn't necessarily an understanding of Christianity .

proper Christianity never prescribed much power to people. Catholics will often argue in favour of their hierarchical system with references to Jesus sending out the Apostles, saying this infers power to priests as well.

Christianity was not created for humanly power, it's abused for humanly power.

just like alcohol, sex, drugs, money, and even power are good things but can be abused.

julz

Huh? The point is the answer to your statement. And that you are wrong with that i know nothing about christianity.



Don't tell me what i know or not know. I know that better than you

Well, I have had a look at it all, not just consumed and then quickly forgotten. I have proven it. And have started to think by myself. I found lots of inconsistency, i found out that there is not just black and white like the bible wants to tell us. And that was the moment where i stopped being catholic and have left the church. Quickly.



... or you will burn in hell ...

No power, no pressure? And that's not just a catholic or even a christian phenomenon.



It's the other way around my friend. It all started when the first shaman found out that it gives him a big advantage by being the shaman.

Religion is always abuse.

okay, i'm not going to quote many chunks, coz it'll just be quotes of quotes of quotes...

i already explained why i asked "point being?". i didn't tell you how good a Catholic you were or grew up as, or whatever. i told you that telling me you "grew up catholic" tells me nothing whatsoever about your understanding of Christianity.

there's an enormous lot to being Catholic that the Bible doesn't tell us. if we just look at the Bible, we find Christianity as it's meant to be: accept God as your Saviour and you're saved. Catholicism has its own inconsistencies that stem from un-Biblical tradition, which teaches about all these things you have to do for God's favour, whereas Christianity as the Bible teaches says we can't earn righteousness; none of us are righteous; but having faith in Jesus will put us in God's good book.
i didn't say there was no power; i said there is very little power. mature Christians are asked to encourage and teach other Christians using the Bible so that they can see if it's truth or not. powerful figures such as the Pope get power from the people who follow him, not from Christianity.

and i never said "no pressure". but now that you mention it... the burn in Hell thing isn't much pressure on a Christian, because we can have confidence in God and have no need to fear Hell. it puts a little more pressure on a Catholic, who is taught that mortal sins that you don't confess at a confession will cause you to go to Hell, and how well you act in your life determines how much purging you need before going to Heaven.

julz

And i have answered that i do, that i know better what i know than you. Wrong answer? Seems so ...



Question, murder is sin, right? But would the imaginary killer of Hitler also burn in the same way in hell as a mass murder? What when the mass murder would be ill, when he would be unable to feel? Such diseases exists.

Heaven? Hell? That is black and white. This doesn't work in life, what makes you think this will work in a life after life? There is no Heaven. And there is no Hell. That said, saved from what, saved where, saved how?

Saved?

What the heck gives you or anybody else the right to even think of rescueing me from anything? What gives you the right to say i burn in a hell for this and that reason? What the right to say i will reach a heaven when i do this or that?

I already had a look at the told concept and decided that this concept is too inconsistent, too cheap, and proveable wrong. Leave me alone with this nonsense. Bible is nothing else than a tool to control people. An old tool. I am not interested in lies and ancient views of the world. We live now, not before 2000 years. And i live much comfortabler without the chains of an ancient faith.

Point is, i will not go to your house, ring you out of your bed, and try to convince you from my point of view. I don't mind what you believe. Believe in the holy shoe when it brings you fun. But Christians do mind. Spread the holy word they say. And christians does even more with the try to establish creationism and Intelligent design as an alternative to science. They want the control over knowledge back. And in that case i have to resist. We already escaped such a dark chapter before. We have already seen who the saviours are and how the saving works ...

Which leads me back to creationism. It is faith. And that is a private thing, not a public one. It is disproven. It is at least 2000 years old and collides heavily with nowadays knowledge. It has nothing left in school. School is made to teach knowledge, not fairy tales.

No he won't answer, instead you will consider certain events as answering from God. This is called wishful thinking and it can convince people that a certain event of pure chance has some kind of deeper meaning... but only because those people were waiting for or rather looking for an event that fits their view.

In short, the basic superstition that can be found in just about any religion. As we know, superstition is a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, but instead on wishful thinking or fear.



Heaven as a concept doesn't make sense anyway.

Cheers

Dooley,
I thought you may find this site interesting. It is a former PLO terrorist.
http://www.shoebat.com/

Huh? Creationism in schools Smitty...

I did not claim that I know what god wanted to create (if he exists), I just sayd that god knew what he wanted when he created the universe and create it and the natural laws just as he wishes. If he influences later, that means he changed his opinion! As one of the two opinions must be unperfect, god can't be perfect!
Btw god revoked quite much stuff in the new testament, which means that he must have changed his opinion. As god is perfect, and changing his opinion means that he is not perfect, god can't exist. quod erat demonstrandum.

That means you didn't watch all of it?

I know, Dooley. I just thought you may find it interesting since you are Muslim.

Lukas, if you knew the Lord, then you would know that all what you said is not true.

No, Lukas, I thought the video was stupid.

Actually it is all related. If the bible is true (which it is), then creationism is true and it should be taught in schools

If you knew that the lord doesn't exist, then you would know that all what you said is not true.

Did you actually understand what I said? Did you listen to me? Can you disprove what I said?



It is not stupid. Watch the whole video!



Creationism is not true! It's just religion! It's disproven! God does not exist and Evolution is true!

But that's just it. How do you know that God didn't intend to create a changing, evolving universe? The Universe changes and evolves, people change and evolve, so God's law sometimes changes and evolves. Any religious person will agree to this. As a Muslim, I believe the central belief of One God, and following His Commandments never changes. The specific laws might change or evolve, but the belief never changes.

Paul's Christianity however, does present a major change in belief from that of the Old Testament, and even that of Jesus and his desciples. They even argue about it in the Bible, and call each other hypocrites. This is a problem for Christians to resolve.

Getting back to the question at hand, all I'm arguing is that since it remains impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God, it is still a viable explanation for the existence of the universe, the beginning of life, and the mechanism of evolution, and should not be ignored.

OK Smitty, I'll bite. I'm no expert on history or Palestinian/Israeli relations. However I know that creating a refugee situation is no way to solve a refugee situation. That's exactly what happened. Now everyone is surprised that Palestinians want to have their homes back. I'm not saying I agree with everything every Palestinian has done in the past, a lot of their actions have clearly contradicted Islamic teachings, but I do notice that while specific methods of Palestinians are highlighted a lot in the media (i.e. suicide bombings, rocket attacks etc...), some equally horrible things are also done by the Israelis (i.e bulldozing people's homes while they are still inside, shooting at and killing school children, preventing water and medical supplies from reaching whole communities etc...).

As for hating Jews, this is not a teaching of Islam

"They are not all alike. Of the People of the Scripture (i.e. Jews and Christians) there is a staunch community who recite the revelations of Allah in the night season, falling prostrate (before Him). They believe in Allah and the Last Day, and enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency, and vie one with another in good works. They are of the righteous." (Quran 3:113-114)

The Quran recognizes goodness and righteousness wherever it is. This is not an endorsement of every Christian and Jewish practice, many are condemned in the the Quran, like taking Jesus as a god etc...

As for those who would argue that religion is just a means of controlling the masses, actually this is a human practice, not a religious practice. Yes, religions are used to control people, but so are secularist ideas, communist ideas, nationalist ideas etc... Greedy, power hungry people come from every nation, and they will use whatever means they can to gain authority, including religion. But that does not change the teaching of the religion.

"Lo! Allah enjoineth justice and kindness, and giving to kinsfolk, and forbiddeth lewdness and abomination and wickedness. He
exhorteth you in order that ye may take heed." (Quran 16:90)

The people who do injustice will be judged all the more harshly for their manipulation of religious ideas. But still, this does not effect whether belief in a Creator is scientific or not. Hitler used Darwinist ideas to justify the slaughter of millions of Jews. Should we forbid evolution to be taught because of the actions of Hitler? Once again, to restate my point of view, while creationism as taught in the Bible is unscientific, and should be kept in a religious studies or social studies class, the idea of intelligent design is perfectly logical, and presents no threat to science. The real threat to science is the practice of closing the door on ideas, and areas of study, as many evolutionists have tried to do with intelligent design.

Ah, but I do know that the Lord does exist and that He is truth and His word is truth. Yes, I understood what you said, Lukas. No, I cannot disprove what you said anymore than you can disprove God and His word (the bible). I thought the video was stupid. I did not need to watch anymore. Creationism IS true. It is not a religion. It is NOT disproven. God DOES exist and evolution is not proven and false.

And the pope is jewish.

I think i said it before. There is not a single fact pointing in the direction of the existance of a god. That's why it is called faith and not knowledge.

So you are saying you cannot prove or disprove god. Do you know what things do that you can't prove or disprove? They don't matter! It's like claiming that there parallel universe wich doesn't have any influence in our universe. It wouldn't matter. You couldn't prove or disprove it. It's the same for god. You can't prove or disprove the existence of god because he doesn't influence in the world!

So you cannot disprove what I said. And what I said disproves the existence of god!
You say I can't disprove "God's word" the bible? Haha! The bible is rubbish! Almost everything in the bible IS DISPROVEN!

Evolution IS proven! Evolution IS true!

EDIT: Oh yes, you NEED to watch the video! Don't refuse seeing the truth!

Something in between

Quantum physics by itself is deterministic but it is not intuitive,the physical meaning of the parameters of the equations and of the relevant results being partially unknown

Human beings reason by analogies
The indeterminism of quantum physics is due to the fact that we try to describe entities which are beyond the limits of ou experience ( protons, electrons etc ) using analogies with our world ( particles , waves) as well as to the interference with the measuring instruments

The orbit of the moon does not change whether you watch it or not, different story for an electron

Going to philosophy

The error of Einstein was to implicitly assume ( even though it was an atheist) a sharp distinction : mind and matter

If what we call mind is the mere results of a neural networks than also our mind is part of the measuring pipeline same as the instrumentation for measuring the position of the electrons

Having said that I dont mean that quantum physics has definitely excluded the existence of soul

A reasonable critic was :
If measuring generate probabilistic results and our materialistic mind is part of the measuring system why do all scientists agree on the result of the same experiment ?

The question is still open

For those who are intersted I would suggest to read " Quantum physics and Phylosophi " by Werner Heisemberg
An outdated book but still a masterpiece

Someone mentioned also the theory of the intelligent design
As far as I know most of the scientists do not accept it, either

The Catholic church, thanks to his thousand years wisdom ,have realized that it is the last beach for religion
The topic is very complex, I would just make a , so to speak, critic from an ethical point of view

The Bible claims that men and animals have been living in peace in the Eden, but because of the original sin they started struggling for life

Well....ok...it can make some sense in case of creationism and the intelligent design ?

Fossils clearly demostrate that animals were fitted with claws and long teeth from the very beginning, before , the monkey who had just been turned into a man, ate the apple

I watched a program on television, some time ago

A female camel refused to have sex with two male camels, because she had to take care of her kid

No problem
One male camel engaged the female camel while the other one kicked her baby to death

Should I assume that such behavior has been planned on purpose , by a God of love?

I was touched and I dont think to be a particular sweet hearted guy

Oh mighty milk jug! do watch over me and be my guiding light!

Not exactly. I'm saying that since science is uterly incapable of explaining how life originated, or how the physical laws originated, or how matter itself came into existence, and since all of these things seem to follow an orderly, intelligent system, it serves to argue that the first cause may have been an Intelligent God, instead of whatever it is you materialists might suppose.

This is compounded by the fact that throughout history, many people have stepped forward and have claimed that an almighty God has communicated to them through various means, and has inspired books etc...

Ignoring these books and prophets etc... is actually unscientific, because all the data available is not being considered.

"I'm saying that since science is uterly incapable of explaining how life originated, ..."
jcl said that there are many theories about that. We just don't know yet which exactly is the right. But what we know is that is DID happen by chance!

"and since all of these things seem to follow an orderly, intelligent system, ..."
Does it?

"Ignoring these books and prophets etc... is actually unscientific, because all the data available is not being considered."
It's not unscientific to ignore insane claims by unknown people. If I wrote a book with ridiculous claims that I met some superior being it wouldn't be considered unscientific if scientists ignore it! And don't call it "available data"! It's no data. It's ridiculous claims.


Any you fully ignored my actual message: If god can't be proven or disproven, it means that he doesn't influence in the world!

true



There are many valid theories



Yes and no
In quantum physics , " existance " is the natural state ,
The " non existance " does not exist
A non intuitive issue but supported by the theory and lab evidences



Intelligent maybe, but please spare me the God of love



Definitely not a scientifc argument, for obvious reasons

Dooley, my sole purpose for sending you that link was because Walid was a PLO terrorist who came to believe in Jesus Christ.

It is not Paul's Christianity. The Law in the OT was given as a schoolmaster to teach us that we are incapable of keeping God's laws and lead us to the Messiah/Saviour Jesus Christ who is God.

Those who do not fear God have no knowledge of Him.

Proverbs 1:7
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 1:29
For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:

Proverbs 2:5
Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.

Proverbs 9:10
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.

The bible is no scientific source and bible quotes don't have any scientify relevance.

Sadly, one day you will find out you are wrong.

If you admit that you don't know how something happened, then it's really unscientific to rule out some possibilities, like an Intelligent Designer.



Yes it does. Let me give some examples:
1. Cell reproduction. Cells can reproduce themselves with remarkable accuracy. This is not random, it is an amazingly complex system, which occurs throughout every species of animal, plant, fungus etc... Try making a candy bar that reproduces itself... I think a team of the world's best scientists, with all the funding in the world will not be able to do this... ever, nor will they be able to explain it in terms of chance. There are too many laws involved which govern the universe to explain them away as chance.

2. Forces. The forces of Gravity, magnatism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces all behave consistently throughout the known universe. It binds matter together, and keeps planets in orbit around stars, and moons around planets. All this serves to maitain a secure environment in which life, as mentioned above, can grow and evolve. If chance were the governing force in the universe, we would not be able to rely on the sunrise in the morning, or the cycle of the moon. The underlying order allows us to predict these events accurately, this implies design, not chance.

3. Time. Time flows in one direction, at least our perception of it is limited to one. It's always ticking away in one direction. No chance involved here. If it were chance thaen every day would be a crap-shoot. I might wake up three weeks ago, or 100 years in the future. Time is consistent, predictable and orderly. Another evidence of design, not chance.

4. Morality. This is connected with something AlbertoT wrote.



So you're saying that you have an innate sense of what is right and what is wrong? You can judge for yourself whether the actions of these camels was 'good' or 'evil'? Where did this sense of morality come from, on the backs of crystals? Again, religions teach that God gave us the choice to do good or to do evil, it's up to us. Blaming God for the actions of these camels is hardly a valid argument against His existence. i happen to believe that animals have been given choice as well, not just humans. They are a bit more limited in what they are capable of, but it's still right and wrong, and they still will bear it's consequences.

5. Death. Death will overtake all of us, and it remains a huge hole in any scientific analysis of the universe. We simply cannot claim to understand what happens to our consciousness after we die. Any attempt to do so (without divine intervention) would be foolish. We each face this unknown and we each will be taking our choices with us. This is enough for me to reject any false claims that God doesn't exist.



And who will decide who's claims are ridiculous? Who appointed these judges? Everyone with a mind has ultimately to decide for themselves which claims are ridiculous and which are not.

very well said, Dooley! Excellent!

To 1.: Cells reproducing themselves DID happen by chance! Earth origined billions of years ago. The cells had time to origin by chance.
Btw. cells don't reproduce themselves with THAT accuracy. They envolve. If The new cell can reproduce itself better than the old one, it survived, while the old one may die out.

To 2.: This is explained by this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

To 3.: dito

To 4.: Morality is made by humans. There does not exist a consistent definition of moratlity. Animals do not have morality. It makes sense for evolution and selection that some animals are killing each other. The strongest survives and shares its genetic material.

But as far as I understood the religious point of view, a consitent moraltity exists: the moraltity of god. (although humans can decide themselves) If god creates animals that are killing each other, he of course can be blamed by that!

5.: Death in science means just that you don't live anymore. That's it. In science there is no afterlife. So don't waste your life for an afterlife that likely does net even exist.

smitty and Dooley, are you the same person?

I wish I was as intelligent as Dooley!

What's coscience then ?
I have been taught that it is :

" an innate sense of what is right and what is wrong "

In the Bible is written somewhere that human being have been created much alike God

Since I dont suppose that even the most fanatic fundamentalist assume that God has a beard and a couple of hands and legs than the similiarity must be something spiritual related

I felt sorry for the poor camel mummy and I dont think to be the only one
I would never dream to design such a cruel world

If the God's sense of good and evil has nothing to do with ours , how can he expect that we behave well ?

i never said (or even implied) that i know what you know better than you do. all i said is that you saying "grew up catholic" doesn't actually tell me anything about your knowledge. other things you've said since then have. so my answer was not wrong.

heaven and hell can easily be black and white, because the requirement for salvation is black and white; there's no half-way:

saved: either never sinned in your entire life (no one), or accepted Jesus as your Saviour (there's no half-way; there's no "i'll say i believe in God just in case", coz God knows our heart).

unsaved: everything else.

there is very clearly no in-between.

neither do we. some Christians might (usually Jehovah's witnesses, who believe there's limited room in Heaven, i think). all we're doing is talking about our point of view in a discussion about our point of view. secondly, you already said that you do care in response to one of my posts a little while ago. now you're changing your story.
maybe more comfortable without Catholic pressures, but atheism brings chains of self-preservation, uncertainty in death, and finiteness. Christianity will free you from those chains, without those Catholic chains.

@Dooley: we don't often have Muslims in these discussions, and it is good to be able to be in the same discussion as you. we both have similar logical arguments: the Russian Roulette argument, and your response to Lukas' argument is similar to mine, neither of which Lukas shows any indication he's actually read.

@Lukas: "So you cannot disprove what I said. And what I said disproves the existence of god!" look again, Lukas. God never changed His opinion. look back because i'm not going to repeat everything Dooley, Smitty and i said about that.

you don't have to be an atheist to be logical.

julz

interesting thought: what about video games? an AI can be built to respond to various stimuli that we would associate with sorry, happiness, cruelty, etc. what makes the camel different to a complex AI?

and for those who don't believe in a soul: what makes us humans different from it? has our conscience simply evolved from "i don't want that happening to me, so i won't do it to others"?

i'm not presuming that you make cruel video games; off the top of my head i don't know what games you've made or worked on. but most games are cruel, aren't they? what are the limits of "cruelty", if it isn't just something people can do?

julz

EDIT: two things:
1. sorry for the double-post, but so many things have happened since i went to bed last night, and my response to AlbertoT is very different to my responses to Tiles, Dooley and Lukas.

2. i know this isn't exactly on the original topic, but is it safe to say that the entire topic has derailed consistently enough and mutually enough that it is on-topic in a different way?

agreed


agreed, but even if it were possible for any one to go through life and never sin (which only Jesus did because He is God), we still have the sin nature that was imputed to us through Adam, so that alone damns us to hell without the blood of Jesus Christ and His resurrection power to save us.


everyone else, animals do not have souls


agreed


I think it is very sad that Christians don't go door to door. Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons do, but they are cults. They believe Jesus is a god, but not The One and Only God Jehovah. As I said before, I would not be much of a Christian if I did not bother to tell people the gospel (good news) about Jesus Christ.

true. thanks for that.
i guess my point was more that we don't go knocking on Tiles' door; we're not forcing anything down his throat here.

if i went door-knocking, i wouldn't know where to start, and i'd choke up.

julz

No, this shows me that you haven't been reading very carefully. Smitty is apparently a Christian, and I, as I've stated in almost every one of my posts, am a Muslim. Muslims and Christians have a lot of beliefs in common, namely One God who created the universe, the concept of Prophethood, that God revealed books to His Prophets, in order to guide humans to correct belief and good deeds, and the idea of an eternal afterlife where the good will be rewarded, and evil will be punished.

The main differences are in the belief area (most of the good deeds mentioned in the Bible are similar in the Quran, like praying, fasting, and giving charity). The Christians believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and that he is God, and that by sacrificing his life on the cross, the sins of the believers would be forgiven (correct me if I'm wrong here). Christians site the Bible as their primary source of knowledge about God.

Muslim's believe that Jesus was a prophet, not God or the Son of God, and was never actually killed, but was protected by God, and that God is fully capable of forgiving our sins without such a sacrifice. Muslims believe that the Bible was at one time revealed by God, but that over time, naughty Jews and Christians have corrupted it's text (whether intentionaly or not) and that it is no longer a trustworthy source of guidance. Muslims believe that the Quran was the last book revealed by God, and that it holds the most authentic knowledge about God.

Smitty and JulzMighty and I could probably have a very lively debate about these differences, but we are banding together for the time being, because we believe that evolutionists have gone too far in assuming that they can determine spiritual matters through our limited human observations.



Agreed, I really think Muslims and Christians have a lot more in common than that which divides us. It's a shame that there's so much mistrust between our faiths, due mostly (I think) to past misdeeds on both sides.

yes, and misdeeds is definitely the right word. they weren't just wrong by today's standards, but even contradicting the teachings of each of our faiths respectively.

i think that Lukas confusing you and Smitty was a joke, in reference to Smitty asking if Dan Silverman and HyperGraph are the same person.

but that's a good summary of Christianity, no mistakes. and what you write about Islam is similar to what i've read in "a spectator's guide to world religions", which is promising as far as the reliability of that book is concerned, since i'd take your word about a Muslim's beliefs over that of a book written by a Christian (though i was pleased with how unbiased it comes across). have you read it?

julz

That's the whole point. One Day. You cannot prove it NOW. You say i have to be dead. But i believe that the dead is the end of everything. And even for christians is the dead the end of life. And so it has no relevance. It is faith, it is fairy tales, and not knowledge.

ONE DAY cubes may count as round instead square.
ONE DAY i may dance with a fairy.
ONE DAY i may find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
ONE DAY i may meet a god.

No difference ...

I appreciate your attempt but we are talking about a much more serious issue than a video game

May I have an explanation to the following question ?

The Bible claims that God created a perfect world , the Eden, but Adam and Eve spoilt it eating the apple
The Bible admits that the world is cruel but it charge the responsability on the men not on God
This is consistent with the creationism but not with the intelligent design
In this case God is responsible

I was replied that I should not assume that concept of good and evil is innate in me

well I have been educated as a Catholic, it is exactly what the catholic church claim
The concept of " good and evil " is innate in the human beings ( the cocience) regardless if you are a catholic a protestant a muslin or even a savage of the forest, being a reflex of our creator

This is a quite reasonable position being strictly necessary to avoid an "ethic relativism"

If so, why my feelings are completetly diffrent than the ones of my creator ?

Should I really believe that a God of love has created a world which for me is horribly cruel just for his pleasure same as we create and play violent videogames ?

Hard to believe

P.S.

You asked me if I develop and play this kind of games
Good question

You must make a distinction between a violent and a cruel game

A Quake like game is a violent game but it is clear, being so exagerated, that it is also a fiction
No problem with it
I will never neither develop nor play a game with realistic brutalities vs people and animals

God created a perfect world. When Adam knowingly disobeyed God and sinned, then sin entered the world through Adam. Eve was tricked by the serpent (Satan). That is why sin is passed down through the man. Jesus Christ is referred to as the seed of the woman, because He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Anyway, God created Adam and Eve in innocence, but when they ate from the tree of knowledge which God told Adam not to do, then their eyes were opened and they knew good and evil. So it is man who chooses evil. Does God allow it? Yes, God gave man a free will. God could have easily created man to worship Him, but He wants us to love and worship Him because we want to, not because we have to. God created the angels and gave them free will, too. Lucifer (Satan) and his co-horts (demons) chose to rebel and are now fallen angels who will eventually be cast into hell with all unbelievers. From Adam until now, the effects of sin have gotten progressively worse and will continue to do so until the Lord returns. God allows evil for His divine purpose, and I believe that is to bring us to Christ. Right now the Holy Spirit is restraining evil to a certain extent. There will come a time, and that time is imminent, that Christ will snatch (Rapture) the true believers from this world. When that happens, then the Holy Spirit will no longer restrain evil and God will bring judgment on an unbelieving world. This is the time known as the Tribualtion. It will last for 7 years and will commence after the Rapture and with the signing of a peace treaty between the Anti-Christ and Israel. The Tribulation is also the time when God will be dealing mainly with the Jews once again to bring them to their Messiah. There will be 144,000 Jews from each of the 12 tribes that God will seal during this time and they will be preaching the gospel. The Tribulation will be worse than any time in history. Much of the world and the population will be destroyed. During the first three and a half years of the Tribulation, the Jews will be allowed to worship in the Temple in Jerusalem (which will be rebuilt). After three and a half years at the mid-point of the Tribulation, the Anti-Christ will declare himself to be god. It will be required that anyone who wants to buy and sell will have to take a mark on their forehead or hand. Once you take this mark you can never be saved. At the end of the Tribulation, the armies of the world will come against Israel in the valley of Megiddo (Armageddon). Christ will return with His saints (believers) and He will destroy the enemies of God and Israel. All the Jews who are alive at this time will see Christ return and accept Him as their Messiah and Saviour. After this, all believers will go into the Kingdom for 1000 years. Satan will be bound during this time. Those believers who go into the Kingdom in their physical bodies will have children and they will have to come to Christ (who will be ruling on the throne of David in the Millennial Temple in Jerusalem) for salvation. All other believers (OT saints, NT saints, Trib saints who died during the Trib) will have a spiritual body. At the end of the Kingdom, Satan will be loosed to lead a rebellion but it will be brief. It's hard to believe that even then people will reject Christ, but they will. Then Satan will be cast into hell, and Christ will judge all unbelievers according to their works since they rejected Him and chose to be judged by their works. All unbelievers will be cast into hell and all believers will go into eternity with Christ in a new heaven and a new earth. This is just a brief overview, but can all be found in the bible. If you choose not to believe it, then that is your choice. My prayer for you is that you will seek after God with all your heart and ask Him if it is true.

Comeon. Again quoting nonsense instead answering a single argument is not a very valid method to discuss.

Constantly repeating lies doesn't make them more valid or true.

I don't think your feelings of right and wrong are different than the Creator's. Yes He allowed evil to exist in this world, but why? What were His other options?

1. Allow no evil at all - this would be a pointless universe. We would all be robots, and would have no free-will.

2. Destroy Evil right away, or before it is allowed to Manifest - This would go directly against the concept of Mercy. If God destroyed evil people right away, or before they were able to behave in an evil manner, it would be a denial of our ability to grow and change, and a very un-merciful God.

3. Give everyone whatever they want right away - Sounds great, but what if someone wants another person to be dead? What if someone wants everyone to give all their stuff to him? What if someone wants it to be day, and another wants it to be night? This option is not very just, and would result in more problems than we could imagine.

4. On the other side, if He was an Evil God, He could have made it much worse. Imagine if evil people could do whatever they wanted, if they had super powers or the ability to make things happen just by thinking them. That would be worse. Imagine if there was no end to this life, and evil was allowed to go on forever. As it is, evil takes work, just like good. This gives the good people a chance to overcome evil, and limits the power that evil holds on the world. Also, believers accept the idea of a judgement, where evil is put to an end, and good is rewarded. This will make up for any injustice which was allowed to exist in this world.

I'm glad you're asking the questions you've asked, it means at least you're thinking about it. I'm not claiming to have all the answers either, this is just how I see things. I thought the same things not that long ago, but I realised that I was judging God in a way. I thought how I would have made the world better, but I could never really come up with a better model.

Also, when I asked whether the ideas of good and evil were innate in you, I meant that they are. I guess I was being sarcastic (a bad habit of mine), I was really trying to ask how you think those ideas got there. To me the very idea of right and wrong, existing in our minds, is evidence of a higher purpose in life, evidence of God.

Even if you can imagine life coming about randomly, and things evolving randomly (which I cannot) I think it's a real stretch to think that higher concepts like love, morality, truth came about by random coincidence. Sorry if I confused you.

There are 7 dispensations in the bible:

Innocence
Human Conscience
Human Government
Promise
Law
Grace
Kingdom

Human Conscience began when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

For those of you who may not know, dispensation means household economy. It is how God deals with man in different times in human history. But man is always saved by God's grace through man's faith in believing God's word.


Dooley, I forgot to address your remark about the book of James. James wrote how saving faith should produce good works, not how we are saved by our works. Martin Luther did not understand the book of James either.

Animals do not have free wiil
God has created evil , not simply allowed it



Sarcasm is also a bad habit of mine
This explanation reminds me that guy who used to wear tight shoes
" For the pleasure to take them off, at home " he said




Well let's say He could have done something better
Again low level sarcasm .



I appreciate
No sarcasm



Nobody can figure out things evolving randomly but science is not alwayes intuitive
Our intuition can be deceiving
Can you really imagine that "time and space"are not a absolute items ?

You dont need religion to explain love a morality

I have already proposed a couple of times to make the following computer simulations

You get started from a population made of

1\3 selfish poeple : they dont help nobody even the ones who helped them
1\3 generous people : they help everybody even the ones who refused to help them
1\3 normal people : they help everybody except the ones who refused to help them

I skip the details but you got it

You run the simulation

After some generatios the populations is made of

90 % normal people
5 % generous people
5 % selfish people

The selfish people, by the way, are a minority but they own most of the available resources

Nothing new under the sun

Perhaps, but Martin Luther more than likely wasn't mainly interested in religion itself, he was more interested in social change. To be honest, I don't think he really cared all that much about how he interpreted the texts.



Yeah, posting bible quotes over and over again really is futile.



Yeah, in fact, if you stretch that belief a bit when it comes to the bigger picture, I'm sure God doesn't care about humans as it's only an incredibly small fraction of "his creation".

Yet another reason why the concept of God doesn't make sense, why would he care? The whole 'we humans are special' argument fails hard in my opinion,

Cheers

God did not create evil. Man chose to disobey God (sin) and continues to do so. That is where evil comes from. Could God have prevented it? Yes, but God gave man free will. Man has free will to choose good or evil. You all are so intelligent, but overlook the fact that God is the One who created everything. Some things are too complex for our finite minds, that is why God made salvation so simple and easy that even a child can understand it. It is a free gift. All one has to do is accept it.

God cares about man because He created us to love and worship Him. We are His only creation that has a soul because He breathed the breath of life into us.

As told, the whole concept is wrong. There is not just good or evil.

How can you even say such a thing? Nature can be very cruel and quite evil, don't tell me you believe mankind is to blame for natural carnivore violence, the impact of hazardous conditions on our planet and what more.

We're only to blame for cruelty that is caused by us, but Tiles is right, the concept is wrong.



The amount of complexity of something means nothing when it comes to who made what or even if it was made. Humans are able to make very advanced technological devices, automobiles, airplanes, computers that are incredibly complex, complex structures and much more, yet all of that wasn't made by God...

Cheers

I didn't say that we are saved by our works. Just what James said, faith without works is no faith at all, just as works without faith will not do us any good. It's God's mercy which does away with our sins.

In Islam, God's mercy manifests itself in the form of God sending us guidance. He sent Prophets and Books with which we can learn how to believe and behave properly. This is our expression of faith, which will serve to ensure that God forgives our sins. No you can't force God to forgive you, it's up to Him, but the fact that you care and are asking for His forgiveness is an indication that His mercy has already reached you. Otherwise you might be an atheist or idol worshipper etc...

He showed you mercy by opening your heart to His message. Now it's up to you to act on that message, which you will if you really believe in it. I'm surprised Christians have a hard time with this, it's all over the Bible. According to the Bible Jesus said:

"Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. " (Matthew 5:19)

This is Islam in a nutshell. Thanks Jesus

How do you know, have you been inside the mind of a dog? A lot of evidence points to the fact that animals can learn behavior. It seems like you're using a Christian viewpoint to support your atheistic argument. If it's evolution, then animals should have every bit of free will that we do, or perhaps slightly less, or more free will.

By the way, I've never read anything in Christian or Islamic literature which states that animals don't have free will. Maybe I missed it, but I believe they do, to a lesser extent than humans of course. They seem to be more bound by instinct than we are, but it's a matter of degree, not black and white.



The computer simulation idea proves nothing to me. In order to write a computer simulation, you need a computer, something which was designed by an intelligent entity. You also need the intelligent entity to write the program. These arguments support intelligent design more than a random evolution.

Again, you have to look at the initial cause. Yes humans can invent complex things, but not nearly as complex as the things already in nature. Plus, how did they get the physical ability (i.e. hands)to invent these things? How did they get the raw materials to do their inventing? How did they get a mind with which to solve all the problems which arise when inventing something? All these things are provided for us, yet we take them for granted.

The single celled organism, which evolutionsist believe just popped into existence, is so much more complex than anything humans have ever made, it's irrational to think that it could happen by chance. As I've said, it's like discovering a Boeing 747 in the jungle, and assuming that it just pieced itself together over time.

Another analogy: If you were walking along the beach, and you saw 20 shells organized in a square on the sand, would you think that it happened randomly? What if you saw twenty more squares, each made of 20 shells, set in a pattern? Whould you sit there and try to figure out how they randomly appeared there? I think any thinking person would assume that they were placed there by an intelligent entity (i.e. a person). Answer this question, please. I want to know if you would really assume that the squares are a random occurrance.

Free will is an illusion anyway. Your brain is controled by natural laws just as everything in the universe!


Rubbish! What a computer simulation does, can also be calculated by humans, just slower. And a computer isn't made by a god, it's made by a "failable" human.

EDIT:
This claim is very dangerous. It says: "Don't think for yourself! It's too complex for you! Let a 'god' think for you!" This is one of the reasons why the church got so much power in the middle ages.

Yeah, it's made by an intelligent entity (a human). Your argument implies that the computer pieced itself together randomly out of jungle mud!

But our brain did. The only reason why a computer didn't envolve by chance is that it can't reproduce itself. Only things that can reproduce theirselves can envolve.

Said as if reproduction were the simplest thing in the world. (more sarcasm) Oh if that's all it is, I'll just install the reproduction chip into my computer, and it can evolve too.

This is exactly where God's influence is most obvious. Even if all the scientists in the world got together (right now) they would not be able to invent a computer that could reproduce itself. This is why a living cell that's able to do so (reproduce itself) is seen as a miracle, and why it is the main focus of the Intelligent Design Theory.

Even if they did eventualy design some nano-computer that could reproduce itself, it still supports intelligent design, because those scientists are not dummies. Years of research and experimentation would be required to invent such a thing (if it's even possible, which I doubt), and the same sientists would laugh at the idea that it could happen randomly. However, that's exactly what a cell is, it's a tiny computer, with the ability to absorb and manufacture chemicals, and reproduce itself. It contains roughly a gigabyte of information in it's DNA, which tells it exactly what kind of proteins to manufacture, and in what quantities etc...

I don't think you have studied the living cell in any depth. See the following website http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~acarpi/NSC/13-cells.htm
It's the first thing that popped up when I typed 'the cell' into Google, after the Jennifer Lopez movie. It is not a religious website, just conveying facts about the cell.

The idea that such a complex and well organized structure came out of some primordeal swamp, with the ability to reproduce itself is ludicris. It's like dumping a bunch of silicon and wires in a bucket, and swishing them around, adding a bit of electricity, and expecting to get a new motherboard...

Try writing a computer program with random key entry. See how long it will take to arrive at Crysis. This is what you are telling me you believe is possible.

Either I did not explain my self or you did not grasp the meaning of the computer simulation which I proposed in my previous post
Useless to say that it does not come out of my head

Many people assume that the " struggle of life " must lead to aggressive and selfish behaviours only
However in the world there are also love and generosity which should not be compatible , they claim, with evolution

This is absolutely false

A super aggressive and \ or a super selfish member of a comunity may be dangerous for the whole comunity , thus the other members tend to push him out
On the other hand a super generous guy is dangerous for his own survival

For this reason a stable comunity is a mix of love and hate , of generosity and selfishness, of good and evil

These behaviours are nothing else than the results of the evolution
Nothing to do with religion or the supposed free will

This does NOT support Intelligent Design! You say that a reproducing computer can NOT be created be intelligent beings!
But if you throw 1000 dices often enough, you once WILL get 1000 sixes


We still get taught the thruth in biology lessons. I already knew most of what the site says.

I have no doubt that animals have also feelings
Everybody has seen on television the commotion of the gorilla mother holding her dead kid in her hands
I am pretty sure that the female camel was in despair watching her kid being kicked to death
This is one of the reasons why I refused to believe that this world has been created by a God of love
This is one of the reason why , frankly speaking, I think that many religious guys ( not all of course ) are heartless people

Am I using the christian viewpoints ?
of course I am
Have you have ever heard that kind of demostration called " reductio ad absurdum" ?

You get started from some assumptions then you demostrate that they lead to absurd conclusions thus also the initial assumptions are false

You have never heard a Christian or a muslin claiming that animals dont have free will ?

Do you realize that this is one of the strongest prove in favour of evolutionism ?

Christians assume that human beings are something special and not just an evoluted monkey

That may be it, or perhaps I didn't read the original post about this. It makes more sense when you put it that way, but it is hardly an argument against intelligent design. It does work as an argument in defense of evolution though. (slight difference)



Never, it's statistically impossible. It is theoretically possible, but so unlikely, that an intelligent designer is much more probable. Plus, who made the dice? Who is rolling them? For your genetic game of roulette to occur, you need the laws of physics and chemistry to be in place. It is hardly a random occurence at all. The whole set-up has to be there from the beginning, and this is even harder for me to believe than the randomly generated cell idea.

It's like someone opening a store, and advertising it in the newspaper, and giving his 100th customer a prize. Yes the guy was chosen randomly, but it's within a plan that he was chosen.

Plans do not occur randomly, nor do laws, they are designed.



I have, but I've never seen scriptural evidence for this claim. Islam actually has evidence to the contrary. If you're interested, I could find it and post a reference.

There was a big chaos after the earth origined. So the dices were thrown millions of times. If this is still too hard to believe for you, let's think about this: The universe is huge. It might be even infinite. So if the universe is infinite, there is an infinite number of planets where live is possible, the chance that cells do NOT origin by chance would be INFINITESIMAL! But even if it's limited to the Hubble volume (14 billions light years), there would be enough plantes that the chance that cells origin on at least one of them is very, very high!
The probability of an intelligent designer is higher? Haha! Who created god by the way? Did he just happen by chance?

Btw. the Hubble volume also proves that creationism is wrong. Its radius is 14 billions light years. If the world was created by god 6000 years ago, it would be just 6000 light years! But I think that has already been mentioned in this thread, but ignored by you, the creationists.

Man is responsible for the the impact of hazardous conditions on our planet such as pollution, but God is sovereign and in control of all things. He does allow evil, calamaties, catastrophes and whatever is necessary so that we will realize that He is all powerful, that we need Him, and that we are spiritually lost without Him.



It is God who enables man to invent, but man cannot create. Only God can create.

smitty and Dooley, could you please comment on the Hubble volume thing?

Lukas, you haven't been reading my posts. This last post of yours is proof. I've said all along that I'm a Muslim, I don't accept the literal interpretation of the Bible, as Smitty does. (don't worry, I'm not angry about it... just pay attention).

The Quran does not place such specific time limits on Creation. It says that a day with Allah (God) is as 1,000 years of your reckoning. It mentions that the the angels ascend to God in a day whcih is as 50,000 years of your reckoning. The point is that the word 'day' in Arabic does not simply mean 1 24 hour period. It can be used for that, but it can be used for any period of time, of whatever length. So while the Quran does mention that Allah (God) created the heavens and the Earth in six days (periods), it does not indicate the length of these days (periods).

The Quran also, does not attempt to give a day by day report on what happened since the beginning of creation. The Quran is not a chronological book. The Bible is written (more or less) chronologically. Chronology (time) is a human limitation, something which Allah (God) would not be effected by. So as a result, Muslims do not have to argue that the universe is only 6000 years old as do Christians (who interprete the Bible literaly). I'm perfectly happy with a much older universe.

This is why I've been advocating the theory of Intelligent Design not Creationism. Because it follows Islamic principals of scientific inquiry much more closely than the Creationist's literal interpretation of the Bible.

The Quran is not silent on the matter of the origin of the universe though. It gives statements which are remarkably similar to modern theories of the origin of the cosmos, like the big bang.

"Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and We made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe?" (Quran 21:30)

The heavens and the earth were all together, and God seperated them. How would an Arab merchant in the 6th century know this? There are many such statements in the Quran which have left scientists baffled as to how it was written so long ago, when theories on the origin of the universe were pretty unscientific. Also, if you consider the Quran's statement about all life coming from water, it actually is supported by the theory of evolution.

After arguing with Christians so long, I can hardly blame you for assuming that people who believe in God are not logical or scientific at all. However the Quran is not the same as the Bible, and it never contradicts what we can observe in nature. Therefore Muslims have a much better relationship with the sciences than Christians ever did. Remember the European Renaissance occurred because of interactions with Muslim society, who had translated Greek texts (which had been prohibited by the Catholic Church) and re-introduced the sciences into European languages. Muslims also made many contributions to these sciences. The Quran encourages observation of nature, and history. All of these things can bring us a better understanding of God's creation. We are never told to close our eyes to reality, and just believe in a book.

"Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of night and day there are indeed Signs for men of understanding. Those who celebrate the praises of Allah standing sitting and lying down on their sides and contemplate the (wonders of) creation in the heavens and the earth (with the thought): "Our Lord! not for naught hast thou created (all) this! Glory to thee! give us salvation from the penalty of the fire."(Quran 3:190-191)

oh dear... are people still calling "young earth creationism" "creationism"?

it's just like calling "peanut butter ice-cream" ice-cream, which is perfectly correct, except that if peanut butter ice-cream is disgusting, it doesn't mean ice-cream is disgusting. remember that Dooley is Muslim -- do you think Dooley believes in a world-age estimated based on the Jewish-Christian Bible?

the Bible doesn't teach an age for the world. some people tried to calculate the age of the world using the Bible, but it wasn't written with the world's age in mind.

the idea that one can calculate the world's age by looking at the Bible is quite fanciful and pretty cool, hence its popularity, but just because that concept is wrong doesn't make the Bible, or Creationism, wrong -- Creationism in general being that something of some intelligence created the world and the universe; and as far as Smitty, Dooley and i are concerned it's the concept that the one and only all-powerful God created it all.

even from a scientist's point of view this hypothesis is without flaw, and just because it's untestable doesn't mean it's not true.

and just because it's untestable in this life, doesn't mean it's not a concern. doesn't mean that if it's true you won't regret rejecting God after you die.

no one wants to deal with the idea that you're playing Russian Roulette by holding onto atheism? science is inherently agnostic, i would've thought.

and before someone says "well even if we choose to believe in God, do we want Islam or Christianity or what? what will save us? why even bother?" consider if you were in a room starving, and you can see down several paths in front of you, some or one of which may lead you to safety. will you just sit there and starve to death, in defiance of how many options are in front of you? or will you explore them?

julz

Ok, I need to quote some scripture here to make my point. What James is saying is that if someone is saved, then his faith is going to produce works that show that he is saved. He is saying that salvation is a result of believing God's word, and then salvation produces good works and obedience to God's word. In other words, anyone can say he is saved, but if you say you are saved (have faith) and you do not produce good works, then your faith is dead. Faith and works go together because faith produces works. Not that the works save us, but our salvation should manifest good works. James also says that it is not good enough to believe that God exists. He says even the demons believe that God exists and they shudder. We have to believe God's word and act upon it. Believing God's word is what makes us righteous, not our works. Abraham believed what God said and God credited to him as righteousness, then Abraham acted upon his faith and obeyed God (works) by being willing to sacrifice Isaac (yes Isaac, not Ishmael). In the same way, Rahab the harlot believed God and obeyed Him. They were both saved by God's grace and their faith in God's word. The same way man is saved in every dispensation. And yes, Dooley, it is God's mercy and grace that saves us. Grace is unmerited favor. We do not deserve His grace or His mercy. No amount of works that we do can save us. God is holy. Man is sinful. We cannot approach God on our own because of our sin. God in His infinite mercy provided the only way we can be saved. God says in Leviticus 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.’ This was the reason for the sacrificial system that was given in the law of Moses. Even in Eden (before the law was given to Moses) when Adam sinned, God killed an animal and clothed Adam and Eve as a temporary covering for their sin to show that blood had to be shed because of the terrible results and consequences of sin. The sacrifices given in the law of Moses had to be done continually because they were also only a temporary covering for sin. That is why Jesus (God incarnate) came to earth. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world once for all. Only Jesus (God) could do this because He is holy and without sin. Of course it was necessary for Jesus to rise from the dead. Without the resurrection we would have no hope. At the moment Christ died, scripture tells us that the veil in the temple was torn it two showing that Christ is the door to God and heaven.

John 10:9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.


Matthew 27
50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.
51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, 52 and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
54 So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God!”


James 2
14What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds."
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.

19You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

20You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called God's friend. 24You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

25In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? 26As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

"Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. " (Matthew 5:19)


Let's take that verse in context:

Matthew 5:17-19
17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

What Christ is saying is that He came to fulfill the law. Man cannot fulfill the law, so Christ fulfilled it for us. Christ goes on to say that heaven and earth will not pass away and not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law until all is accomplished. All prophecies in the word of God will be fulfilled at the end of the Kingdom. Then The Great White Throne Judgment will take place, all unbelievers will be cast into the lake of fire forever, and God will create a new heaven and a new earth for all believers for eternity. (Rev 20:11-21:1)

Now for the verse you quoted.

"Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. " (Matthew 5:19)

What Jesus is referring to is false teachers like the Pharisees who taught the law, but did not follow the law and changed the law to suit their own purpose. They did not believe the scriptures or they would have recognized that Jesus was the Messiah. They were not believers so they would be least in the kingdom of heaven (in other words they would not enter in), but whosoever shall do(believe) the word of God and teach others to believe the word of God, they shall be called the greatest in the kingdom of heaven and will enter in. There are over 600 laws and we cannot even keep the 10 commandments. Some, like the Pharisees, put on a show like they can keep the law, but inwardly they do not believe. Jesus said,

Matthew 23:27
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.

Jesus knows we cannot keep the Law. Jesus kept the Law and fulfilled it for us. Jesus wants us to believe Him, His word and what He has done for us.

Smitty, what I'm trying to say is that this is a simple concept which has been there since the beginning, it's called belief, and doing good. Paul has made it horribly complicated by stating:

"For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law" Romans 3:28

The truth is that both faith and works are required, here is the same concept in the Old Testament:

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD" Deuteronomy 6:4

i.e. BELIEVE

"If thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law, and if thou turn unto the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul. For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." Deuteronomy 30:10-14

i.e. KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS - do good deeds and avoid bad deeds - easy concept.

And again:
"The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live." Ezekiel 18:20-22

So if we do bad deeds, but then repent, and keep His commandment, then God will forgive us...easy again. Hard to do, but easy to understand. Jesus said it too...

"And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:" Mark 12:29

and the part about following the commandments...

"And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Matthew 19:16-19

So Jesus is refering to the same system. He did not mention that he was about to die for that man's sins. Instead he told him to believe in God, and keep his commands, this is the way to eternal life. First you believe in God, then you do what God tells you... easy to understand.

"Those who have faith and do righteous deeds they are the best of creatures.
Their reward is with Allah: Gardens of Eternity Beneath which rivers flow; They will dwell therein for ever; Allah well pleased with them and they with Him: all this for such as fear their Lord and Cherisher." (Quran 98:7-8)

Same message, same prophets, same religion. It's only Paul's writings which contradict this simple message. Read the book of James again, who is he calling a foolish man? Why did he not mention Jesus' alleged crucifixion once? Why does he never mention how God used Jesus' sacrifice to forgive our sins? Why does he not mention this most central pillar of the Christian faith even once?

With all due respect to your beliefs and understanding. I only present my understanding in an attempt to help us arrive at the truth.

For everyone else:
And here you have an example of the kind of debate which is possible between Muslims and Christians.

I am not arguing about the important contribution of Islam for the civilization
I wonder why ?

Let's see it

The new testament is much more advanced than the old testament
Why ?
The old testament has been written in wild years
The new testament in the highly civilized ( relatively speaking of course )roman empire

The Coran is more advanced than the Bible
( People confuse terrorism with Islamic religion )
Why
Middle east was at the top of the civilization in the middle age much more advanced than European countries

In other words : " Your heart, your religion "

Having said that claiming that Islam has been a defensor of Science ...well

If I am not wrong the famous Alexandria library has been destroyed by a Califf
Claiming :

" If these books dont agree with Coran than they are dangerous
If they agree than they are useless
Thus burn them "

The Quran is not more advanced than the Bible. Have you ever read it? I found it very chaotic and incoherent, compared to the Bible.

Islamic culture was indeed much more advanced in the middle ages than the European Christianity, but this changed in the 16th century with the age of enlightenment.

Also, the Alexandria library was burned down in Cesar's civil war, and not by some calif.

Yes I read the Coran

However I was rather speaking of the pratical effects

The Bible claims that jewishes much love each other but hate the others and the old testament is full of violence
Jesu christ claimed that you must love everybody but christians have persecuted the other religions
Islam has never persecuted the other religions ( they were happy with a fee)

My explanation is the following : The different degree of civilization

Some sources claim that the Alexandria library was burnt by the emperor Aurelian ( not by Cesar) some other by a califf

The illuminism is in the 18th century
It was a further step forth of the civilization and it reinforces my opinion

Nowadays most people accept the good of both religions while refusing the extremism

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/29/29315/1.html

sorry, it's in german. a short article about the koran and evolution i came across yesterday.

Well, first there is the hypothesis that god made the world in seven days. Stands word by word in the bible and is a very detailed and exact timespan. And then we have the detailled bloodline back to adam and eve. There are no gaps in the bloodline. All members fine listed one by one (which makes it also hard to incorporate 99% of the rest of the human population into that by the way. Proof of another lie ... ). Now let's calculate the generations in years. Makes around 5000 years plus seven days. Oh wait, eight days. He had a little rest ...

Hmm well, I read the very beginning of Genesis again...

This is what I noticed:

God creates light before he created sun. But light requires sun and it's proven that daylight comes from the sun. Strange.
God creates plants before he creates the sun. But plants need the sun to survive. So the plants would have died, especially if day means millions of years.

Everyone who actually believes that the earth is 6000 years old and was created by god should also stop using there computers right away. We humans know that our life will end so we make up stories, but that doesn't make such things true the truth is that there was no creation and there is no god. The quicker you accept it the better of you gonna be, religion of all kind is just a bunch of rubbish bullshit that is made up to control people and to keep them in line.

That maybe sound hard or cruel but reality is not always likable in fact reality is very cruel. Should this been taught at schools ? Maybe as fiction but nothing more then about fairies or goblins, the bible is nice fiction but thats all there is to it.

You can fill whole libraries with such bible inconsistencies

This is not one that I would consider a Bible inconsistency. Is the sun the only source of light? I have light in my room at night and the sun is not the one providing it. I once looked at it from a 3D modeler's perspective. When I start to create a 3D model the environment is evenly lit by light coming from all directions in the 3D view ports. However, once I place an actual light (point light, area light, etc) the uniform light goes away and is replaced by the new light source. This is typically how a 3D modeling package works (3D Studio MAX, Modo, etc). Could not the Bible reference be something similar? Could there not have been a temporary light source that filled everything until the sun was created? Now, I am not saying I take this story to be truly how it all happened, but I am saying that it is not a Bible contradiction.



But most creationists believe the world was created in six days. Therefore, could not plants survive an entire day without the sun? Sure they could. Also, plants can grow without the sun. Plant a seed in a pot with dirt and hide that pot under your sink in your kitchen. Make sure to water it. Doesn't the plant grow? In fact, it will grow very straight and tall without the sun to HINDER its growth. Sure, plants need the sun, but they don't just instantly die without it either.

I am not trying to defend the Bible here. However, if someone wants to bring up contradictions of the Bible then they should at least bring up legitimate ones. If someone wants to say that the Bible's story of creation does not match up with science's theory of evolution, the age of the earth and bio-genesis, then that can be legitimately compared and contrasted. But to take something like light being before the sun and saying that is a contradiction in the Bible ... no. That story may be opposed to scientific teaching, but it is not a contradiction in which the Bible contradicts itself.

This is incorrect. First of all, the Bible does not say that God made the world in seven days and rested on the eighth. It says he made it in six days and rested on the seventh.

Secondly, there bloodline in Genesis is not necessarily without gaps. You have to understand the ancient mindset as well as the language in which the bloodline was recorded. Most ancient genealogies have gaps in them. Many read like the bloodline in Genesis. The word "son" or "begat" does not literally mean "son" as we take to today (not in the original language and not by the understanding of the ones that wrote it). The word "son" ("ben" or "bar" in Hebrew) showed a decent or a genealogical connection. It did not necessarily mean that there was a father/son relationship. It could mean one was the grandfather or even a great-great grandfather. But it did show direct decent. The term "begat" (in the original language) did the same thing.

In many ancient genealogies there were gaps. The authors often left out people that just were not considered important enough to include. Others were included only to show decent. The ancient mindset was not as concerned (historically) with getting every little detail correct and in chronological order. Thinking like this is fairly recent.

In any case, most creationists claim the earth (and all of creation) could be up to 20,000 years old and not just 6,000+. Again, I am not saying I agree with this, but if someone wants to point out a Bible contradiction then they need to try to find a legitimate one and not harp on things like this.

The parting was in fact from 1500 years before the Quran, in the Enuma Elish from Babylon where Marduk parted the waters with his sword, and created the dry land. Muhammed could well have known this myth.

Please forgive my ignorance (and, no, I did not read your original post, Dooley), but what is this talking about? What in that verse from the Qu'ran is even remotely scientific that a scientist would be baffled by it? Again, please forgive my ignorance.



Because a Jewish scribe penned it down some 2-3000 years earlier? The book of Genesis predates the Qu'ran by that much.

I stand corrected, thanks



I know that in the nowadays bible nearly not a single word is the same than in the first bible. Old greece is a devlish language. And that was not the only translation.

Point is, the whole christians believe in the written word, as it is now. So it makes no difference what i think about ancient mindset.