Get Ready For New Requirements In Faith

[qwazse]

... my wife questions my Harley all the time ...

Does it answer "Take off your shoes, for you stand on holy ground."

[moosetracker]

There are two types of people who use the bible for gain, those that want to serve the masses, and those that want to serve themselves. I have found that those who serve themselves only use the parts of the bible that suits their purpose. The Google search engine makes it very easy to pick and choose only those scriptures that give an advantage.

 

But the meek only have themselves to blame, reading the bible has become a thing of the past. Predators take advantage of their ignorance and serve their will on them through their emotions because they don't have enough knowledge to resist with reason. 

 

Barry

 

I would like to see you repeat that to the attendees when one of the churches meet for their annual or semi-annual conferences to discuss differences of opinion and arrive at decisions on which direction the church will follow..

[Eagledad]

Does it answer "Take off your shoes, for you stand on holy ground."

LOL 

 

Barry

[packsaddle]

So let me get this straight.  I'm the result of survivable chance mutation?  Sounds like something Science Fiction is based on.  

 

Well partly. You are also the result of a momentary lapse in judgment by a man and a woman too, lol, same as the rest of us monkeys.

But if what I wrote sounds preposterous to anyone reading this, try this one on: God made YOU in His image.

[moosetracker]

Well partly. You are also the result of a momentary lapse in judgment by a man and a woman too, lol, same as the rest of us monkeys.

But if what I wrote sounds preposterous to anyone reading this, try this one on: God made YOU in His image.

 

If God made me in his image as he did all our ancestors, and we have evolved and changed since our ancestors, does that mean God keeps on evolving & changing himself, and then he changes us to have his new traits?...   Did God once look like a Neanderthal ???     Oh, no, could not be, throw that Darwin bum out !    

 

 And there you have the total confusion for those who deny Darwin's theory of Evolution, no matter how many bones and fossils are dug up to prove it..

 

Frankly I don't buy the God in human shape & form.. So I can embrace Darwin..  I guess that would be what Eagledad would call my selective Bible reading & interpretation.

[Eagledad]

Frankly I don't buy the God in human shape & form.. So I can embrace Darwin..  I guess that would be what Eagledad would call my selective Bible reading & interpretation.

I find myself in a strange place to be used as reference line of how one believes in their god.

 

Specific to your statement, I don't sweat the small stuff,  but I am in Pack's camp on this.

 

Barry

[Stosh]

Well partly. You are also the result of a momentary lapse in judgment by a man and a woman too, lol, same as the rest of us monkeys.

But if what I wrote sounds preposterous to anyone reading this, try this one on: God made YOU in His image.

 

Sounds as plausible as intelligent mutant pond-scum.  (or mutant ninja turtles,    )

 

I just find it difficult to wrap my mind around how complicated and sophisticated everything seems to be around me that it is all the result of happen stance.

 

Billions upon billions of years of "evolution" and then BAM, 5,000 years and look at all the progress that has happened.  Humanity goes from riding horses to walking on the moon in the span of one lifetime?  

 

Maybe the myth of religion is a stretch, but the fantasy of evolution is even bigger stretch for me.  

 

No one has never seen it happen,

It can't be replicated in a scientific study.

 

And yet it is taught as scientific fact?  

 

Under those parameters, God as a creator is just as much a scientific fact, as well..

 

At best evolution is a philosophical speculation that has been around since Greek/Roman times and it was used as a counter-argument against Chrstanity by Darwin (trained theologian).  Philosophy and theology are some pretty close cousins in the realm of speculative thinking.  Just comes down to what "school of thought" does one believe.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

 

No one has never seen it happen,

It can't be replicated in a scientific study.

 

And yet it is taught as scientific fact?  

 

 

 

Evolution has been observed, and yes, it can be replicated.  Here's just one example:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

 

Note population Ara-3

 

Also see any number of websites, like http://talkorigins.org/

 

If you're going to veto teaching actual science because some people might have religious reasons not to believe it, we can't teach that the earth orbits the sun or even that it's spherical, not to mention a host of other things.  If you have actual scientific objections to evolution, have at it.  If you have religious reasons, that's not relevant to the science.

[DuctTape]

Stosh, I would direct you to the link I posted earlier. The article addresses some/all of your questions.

[Rick_in_CA]

A fun discussion!

Is it possible for two contradictory ideas to be true? Take the following thought experiment:

Given an all powerful God (true for many faiths).

Assume that God created a 40 year old man five minutes ago. He created that man’s past (memories, parents, history, other people memories, current activity in progress, etc.) at the same time. So which of the following is true?

a) The man is five minutes old?
b) The man is forty years old?

Are they both true?

[moosetracker]

Thanks Rick, I feel younger already.. Here I had stopped aging at 21 (yea right!)  But, now perhaps I am only 5 minutes old and God played a mean trick on me..

[packsaddle]

We mostly play the meanest tricks on ourselves. The rest of us are just collateral damage when grandma wears a thong to the beach.

[NJCubScouter]

Billions upon billions of years of "evolution" and then BAM, 5,000 years and look at all the progress that has happened.  Humanity goes from riding horses to walking on the moon in the span of one lifetime? 

 

Well, my mother (who is otherwise a rational, logical person) thinks that, no, humanity has not walked on the moon.  It was all set up in the tv studio and Walter Kronkite was in on it.  She and my father (who, I am pretty sure, did believe man was walking on the moon) did nevertheless allow my brother and I to stay up way past our bedtimes on that July day in 1969 to watch the first moon walk.   (I am not sure of her opinions about horses; my father took us for a few riding lessons, but my mother didn't join us.)

 

But, meandering back to your question, yes, we went from being an essentially horse-powered society to walking on the moon in the span of a lifetime.  (And not just theoretically; both of my grandmothers' actual lifetimes.)  And now the computing power equivalent to the roomfuls of machines that allowed men to go to the moon, walk on it and return safely to Earth is basically compressed into whatever you're writing your posts on.  We did that, us people.  Our species is great, except when it is being ridiculously stupid.

 

(After I wrote this next part, I realized that some people might think I was making light of their religious beliefs.  I'm not.  I'm just giving my view of things.  But if you think you might be offended by someone suggesting that a book that you hold sacred might be otherwise, please stop reading now and go read about uniforms or the patrol method or advancement or something - although I realize those topics can sometimes ignite a religious fervor of their own.)

 

(Just giving you more time to stop reading.)

 

Okay, so... Packsaddle mentioned the part of the Bible about how God created us in His image.  (Or "our" image, in the translation I am most familiar with.)  That is one of the passages in the Bible that convinced me, over a course of some years, that the Bible could only have been written by mankind.  God made us in His image?  Only our species could be that egotistical.  And not far from that passage in the Book of Genesis is the one about how God gave Man "dominion" over all the beasts of the Earth, fishes in the sea, birds in the sky, etc.  Pretty convenient if you ask me.

 

And as always in these discussions, Packsaddle mentioned monkeys.  I have always believed in evolution as a scientific fact, but the obviousness of that conclusion was really brought home to me the first time in my adult life that I went to a zoo and watched chimpanzees.  If you observe what a chimpanzee looks like and how it behaves, and do NOT think that we and they share a common ancestor, I would say that you just aren't looking.  Do we also share a common ancestor with the amoeba?  I have to just go along with the scientists on that one.  (My wife actually doesn't believe it, or at least she didn't the last time we talked about it.)  But when it comes to some of the beings on this planet that bear a greater resemblance to us, I know what I see with my own eyes.

Edited April 23, 2015 by NJCubScouter
A little edit to avoid a tangent on when the "motor vehicle" was invented!

[packsaddle]

You talk about this stuff with your wife? Egad! A wonder you had the offspring that you did.

I had a relative who also knew ABSOLUTELY that the moon landing was faked AND he also knew ABSOLUTELY that championship wrestling is the real deal, no drama, no theatre, no fake holds or choreographed moves. But he was right about how much he loved his family and they loved him and he was right about how much my wife and I love each other so I give him a decent average after all is done.

 

It's the very young of our species and the young of the other great apes that are most alike. We just drag the development out a whole lot longer.

As far as being created in various images, all I can say is that if that is true, God must have very poorly designed knees as well as a few other little details that 'could' have been a lot more intelligently designed...but weren't...because of what selective pressures had to work with to start with and because, evidently, things are 'good enough' for this species of monkey to swarm over the entire planet in a geological blink of God's eye. I concur on that 'smart' comment: we ARE clever...but we seem to have mastered stupidity as well.

Edited April 23, 2015 by packsaddle

[Peregrinator]

The decisions on cannon are a study in itself. But protestants and catholics work from the same OT and NT. They dispute the importance of apocrypha ... which basically cover the period between Israel's return from exile, the wars of Maccabees, and the rise of Roman occupation  -- most devout protestants (and, obviously, Jews) read it sooner or later. There is nothing from those books that couldn't be inferred from agreed-upon cannon, and therefore the extra narrative does not explain any schism.

 

I am not sure that is accurate. Catholics (and Orthodox) view the books that Protestants call "apocrypha" (well, at least some of them) as canonical. Sentinel listed them above. And any well-formed Catholic will tell you that prayer for the dead can be justified from 2 Machabees 12.