Spoken like a true history teacher. In that case I guess I should be polite and openminded by avoiding the suggestion that you do not fall into that category either. ...and no scientist should refute what they don't know of yet. Or were you trying to belittle the creationist views again?
Creationist view? I have nothing against anybody having a faith in God, or a God, or even several Gods, but the creationist view has nothing at all to support it. There is a wealth of evidence that supports and suggests that everything evolved. They is no evidence that we were created. To even start this theory, you must first discount almost everything we know about Geology, Physics and Chemistry. It seems strange that anyone can accept science when it effects their daily lives, but not if it goes against the book of Moses. I can explain when life started. It was post Cambrian. This is when two things appear in rocks. 1. Fossils and 2. Oxygen. The early fossils are very primitive life forms and as the rocks get younger, so the fossils become more advanced life forms. This trend is followed all over our planet. This does not tie in with any 'creationist' theory. In addition, by following this 'age' related thing, we can trace the evolution of certain animals. The horse and elephant are two examples. We can also see animals appearing and going extinct, sometimes in 'mass extinctions' as with the dinosaur. All of the above follow a logical, mathmatical process and pattern. Creation says that all of this information is wrong, but cannot explain the seperate strata, nor the half life, nor the pre cambrian rocks having no oxygen in them. No, I am sorry, believe in a God if you will, but don't try the creationist thing with me, because it is pure, made up, fairy tales.
I reckon Douglas Adams got it about right. Man makes things. It virtually defines us a separate species So you get a couple of cavemen, sitting around a man made fire, eating an animal killed with man made weapons, skinned with man made tools, wearing man made clothes. So one caveman turns to the other, waving a roasted rabbit leg or something and says "So who made all this then?" "All wot?" "Dunno; all this. Life, the Universe and Everything" And there we go. An entirely new metaphysical tree for us to bark up.
Just as a point of interest I would like to point out that this is now accepted as untrue. A modern day myth. http://www.bede.org.uk/flatearth.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_mythology Christians are often blamed for promoting a belief of a flat earth but the truth is that the Greeks knew the earth was spherical, Roger Bacon (a friar) in the 13th century wrote about the curvature of the earth and Nicholas Oresme (an intellectual advisor to the French King) wrote that the world was round like a ball. Obviously these events occurred before Christopher Columbus as well, possibly the story which started the myth. In fact it is claimed there is no evidence anytime after the 4th century BC of a flat earth belief. Genesis doesn't seem to mention it either... http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c034.html
I think the misconception is that the church punished people who denied that the universe was terracentric like Gallileo who said it was heliocentric. Therefore the earth was no longer at the heart of Gods creation.
Sorry if any other replies have covered this. All evidence we have for the existence of God comes from the hand of man -- recorded in such ancient documents as the bible. Although the authors and editors (i.e. the Vatican) of these documents claim that God communicated to the authors and they recorded God's own testimony of what occurred (creation, garden of Eden, etc.), we do not have anything beyond the authors and editors claims/word that this actually happened. It all boils down to faith. If you beleive that God exisits, then no amount of evidence (or lack of) will convince you any different. One only has to examine the numerous contradictions regarding the life of Jesus in the bible. If you were to read the bible and actually digest the 'facts' as the bible tells them -- you would be left very confused to what actually happened. Not to mention the various other accounts regarding Jesus' life that were left out by the editors of the bible, which would have further confused the story even more. One has to have faith that the numerous contradicting stories are indeed telling the truth, regardless of how much they fail to make sense or fail to provide a accurate narrative to the life of Jesus. Dinosaurs remains provide a bit problem for the story of God's creation of the earth. God - apparently - created the entire universe in six days, and also created man toward the end of this very short time period. This is great -- but where did the dinosaurs fit into this six day creation frenzy...? From what we can glean from examining the remains of dinosaurs, they roamed the earth for many millions of years. So either God created man and dinosaurs at the same time, many millions of years ago, and they roamed the earth together in harmony until the dinosaurs became extinct and man went on to dwell until his rise to prominence about 30,000 years ago -- or the story told by the bible is fiction. Many 'enlightened' Christians do the decent thing and just ignore this part of the bible -- along with other bits they don't like or that are too ridiculous to embrace. Whereas others have a simple explanation for these dinosaur remains and how they fall outside of the bible's narrative of God's creation; Satan planted them there to make us not believe in God's word, and to confuse us. Such a simple explanation -- who could argue with that....? Without faith -- God does not exist. There is no evidence that he is anymore than the product of man's fertile imagination.
You make a good argument against literalist but most Christians, at least the ones I know, don't believe that Genesis is to be taking literally. Even before modern science put in its two cents men like St. Augustine have taken an allegorical approach towards Genesis. Genesis is a nice story that gives us a theological approach towards the beginning of what we know. Go up to someone these days and try to explain Biology, Chemistry, and Physics to them and there a good chance youre going to confuse the hell out of them, so I imagine it would be even more confusing for men living thousands of years ago. Thus the easy to understand 'God did it with a snap of the fingers in 6 days' approach, the cliff notes to the universe if you will. Us Christians don't ignore Genesis or any other book in the Bible. Going through conformation my youth group actually had a class on this subject. We discussed all these amazing stories and agreed stuff like Geneisis and Job werent literal but stories that helped explain and understand things. "Theres a lot of weird stuff that contradicts itself in this book". said one my conformation teachers. Since I was a young child I've been taught not to believe blindly in the Bible but to use it as a guide to life. Hence the reason I never had a problem with humans and dinosaurs living millions of years apart and my great-great-great-etc granddad being a monkey while still maintaining a belief is something greater than anything we know. P.S. I have to say this is a pretty good thread nothing like the mudslinging and name calling in the religion & spirituality threads.
You like this thread, don't you Stomper? It always amazes me that Christians suddenly come out with 'I don't take everything in the bible literally.' It seems a bit like moving the goalposts to me. Christians, it appears, can pick and choose the bits of the bible that they want to believe in. Perhaps the bible could have a little guide as to which bits are to be taken literally and which bits are not. It may help the discussion in future.
As I've always said "it's Gods world but the Devils playground". Funny how superstitious humans are, take away our beliefs and we all revert to little devils! It's all in the soul of each individual.
This has been my argument for many years ... what part of the Bible are you choosing to follow and what part are you not? That question tends to get me into a bit of trouble with a few 7th graders parents every year. Price you pay when you live in the Bible Belt of the USA.
My favourite bits from the bible are Abraham, Noah and the Lott's wife thing. Great reading, all of them. Abraham pretends his wife is his sister, so that she can sleep with some Egyptian king and he can make a load of dosh out of the deal. The said king gets upset and Abe and his missus scarper, only to do the same thing to another king. Seems odd that God would choose such a person. Mind you, the God of the OT wasn't a very nice God. Playing games with Abraham having to sacrifice his son was not amusing; especially for the young lad. Then there's Lot. First he wouldn't give up the visiting angels to the local sodomising gang, but offers his daughters up instead. Weird man. Then God turns his wife into salt for 'just having a look' To cap it all, his daughters then get him drunk, twice, take turns with sleeping with him and both get pregnant. (Seems he wasn't too drunk) This is the one good family in Sodom. What were the others like? Finally Noah. What a great story. He likes getting drunk too. A wine maker was our Noah and pretty good at making boats too, by all accounts. The Ark would have been the largest boat ever made, had it been a true story. Made entirely of wood, it would also have sunk within 10 mins, or never even floated. To cover the wo|rld with water, would take more than three times the amount of water that there is in the oceans today. Where did it come from? More to the point, where did it all go afterwards.
I´m a simple man and like to simplify things. Bible? A book of stories, great amusement at ancent times without TV or Big Brother. Plus a great tool on teaching the needed moral codes to the people, 10 commandments especially. But does God exist? Just don´t know. When I´m at my weakest I believe 100%, at my strongest maybe 37,4... What puzzles me most is the space itself and its enormity. If solved I guess we´d solve the issue of God and soul and its immortality as well.
There was a time when I decided to chat up women using quotes from the Song of Solomon. Lines like 'Your temple is like a pomegranite', 'your teeth are like a flock of sheep' and ''Your breasts are like two Does frollicking in the forest' never failed to get a reaction. Often violent.
The bible can be used to justify anything. Good book for those interested is The Great Medieval Heretics by Michael Frassetto. You think the Catholic Church of today is bad with all the child abuse, they were hell of a lot worse then.
I know mate. I went to Catholic schools, including an all boys grammar school. Not quite so far back as to call it medieval, but nearly.