When you see pictures of Jesus praying...

Because I'm not the one trying to prove my point to a crowd of unbelievers.

If they're that "well-documented", you shouldn't have any problem finding them. Why should I do your research for you?

Cory, did this get into FSM and you didn't alert me?

In fact, I have a few minutes. Let's try these links that explain the evidence of evolution:

http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_3.htm

http://books.nap.edu/html/creationism/evidence.html

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/fitch/courses/evolution/html/evidence.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092501177.html

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search/topicbrowse2.php?topic_id=46

http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/default.htm



And that's a 2 minute search, only returning articles from educational institutions and the Washington Post.

That is a cop out. Something cannot be created out of nothing… that is a scientific fact.

As for time… who says that God is bound by the limits of time. Time is something that is here only… that we experience as humans. God is already in the beginning and the end… He knows everything that has happened and that is yet to happen… because time is not a limitation He has to deal with.

Speaking of using He to describe God… this was done so we can better understand the nature of God in human terms. God is not a He or a She… simply thousands of years ago, the male gender was used to convey traits that men alive back then would understand. Someone earlier asked about the form of God… and about us being created in His image… what this refers to is our spirit, not our physical body. Clearly, God does not have a physical body like you and I, He lives in the spirit form and He created our spirits in His image.

Yes, I do believe in evolution… I believe in the big bang… God created the bang in the big bang… setting everything in motion… I also believe that He stepped in and made things happen… like forming the universe like it is… making the first life… and molding it through evolution… I also believe that Gods hand was and is in all things tangible in this world. Where evolutionists and I part ways is that evolutionists have to believe that by some chance 2 atoms mysteriously collided in the same way on a completely lifeless planet and created life. I believe that God did that, not the astronomically improbable chance that this happened by itself.

The creation story scientifically has been proven to be an accurate sequence of events. Day 1 He created the heavens and the earth, day 2 etc… and so on… scientifically this is the order that evolution would have dictated. As far as explaining the perceived time being so short because of the use of the word day, who is to say how long a day was back then, what did it even mean… a day?… I believe that a day was perhaps millions of years… creationism working in unison with evolution… only after the appearance of Man was a day given the meaning 24 hours.

I also believe that plants and animals did and still are evolving… what I do not believe however is that everything evolved from the same thing. I do not believe that humans descended from apes. I believe that at some point God put us here to rule over this planet and the animals that He created.

Anyway, I respect everyone’s right to or not to believe like I do. Interesting topic to say the least.

I agree Juro, and for the record, I love science. To completely ignore it would be fool hearted... just as would be completely ignoring the possibility of a divine being being the creative force in the universe.

The first two chapters of Genesis contain contradictory creation stories. In the first (Gen.1:25-27) humans were created after the other animals...

"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image.... So God created man in his own image."

In the second story (Gen.2:18-19), man is created before the other animals...

"And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof."

Also, in the first story, Adam and Eve are created simultaneously (Gen.1:27)

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

... and in the second story, Eve is created from Adam's rib (Gen.2:21-22)

"And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man."

All of your examples require starting with “something” even if it as an atom… you still have to start with “something”. Tell me how you do any of those things with “nothing”.


Just because some people believe idiotic things does not mean that everything about what they believe is idiotic or false. Nuf said.


Who ever said that God was in conflict with science? He created the laws of science… lafs.

Remove God from the equation… and we are back to where I started… there would be “nothingness”.

Galileo?

I am quite sure He didn't Eboni. That was a european interpretation of Jesus. Surely Jesus would look much more like a middle eastern human, not anglican.

Yes, I totally agree.

I'm afraid I have to contradict you here. On the first day God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night. Yet he didn't make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day. He also created plants before the sun (day three).

You are left with a “leap of faith” either way in my opinion.

I think the pose is just showing how jesus is so full of himself. I mean: look at me i died for your sins, look at me i can change water into water, look at me i forgive everyone that repents, look at me my mother is pure, look at me i am hanging from a cross. Come on he is just an ancient Tyrell Owens who makes a few good plays and thinks he deserves the world.

You equate belief in God with being good. What does that have to do with anything? I believe in God and am of the worst of sinners because I know that what I do is a sin yet still do it. Being a Christian does not somehow make you, me or anyone else any better than anyone else. It simply means that I have accepted the gift of forgiveness that comes with my belief in Jesus.

I didn't. I was responding to the person that asked athests how they could be moral without religion. Ask her.

T.O.!

This is an interesting point and I’d like to weigh in on it.

Yes, there are 2 creation stories. I would like to first say that the Christian Bible is looked at differently by most Christian sects vs say the Koran by Muslim. The Christian Bible is not infallible. It was inspired by God, n0ot written by God. It was written by Men thousands of years ago and written through the eyes of Men with an understanding of their surroundings thousands of years ago, not by modern men with a modern understanding of the universe.

This does not mean that things should be ignored in the Bible. All scripture is useful for teaching… meaning there is something to learn from everything, not that all of the details are “completely” accurate. The Bible is called the “cannon” which literally means “yardstick”. The cannon is to be the measuring stick to everything. The Bible is to be taken in totality, not line by line. There is a “single truth” that lies in the passages of the Bible, that is where the word of God comes from… the wholistic meaning, the wholistic truth and morality is from God, not short verses taken out of context and written through the eyes of men who lives thousands of years ago.

Back to the creation stories, there are 2 stories to help men understand creation. One from more of a scientific, “just the facts ma’am” viewpoint, first day, second day etc… and the other sort of a campfire story, Adam and Eve. We can learn something from each story, each having it’s own purpose, it’s own meaning.

I agree Juro, Christianity is not about morality, it is about faith, and grace.

Billy, if you're interested you should do some reading on M Theory (aka membrane theory). It's currently supplanting string theory as the dominant unifiying theory in physics. It has very interesting things to say about the big bang and the question of something coming from nothing. In membrane theory the big bang was just part of a cycle... not the first, and not the last. Mind boggling stuff.

I don't ignore the possibility, I don't beleive in a transcendent divine being. The capacity for elightenment and satori lies within every ones grasp. To be divine implies there is something more than us, to imply that we are seperate from this illusion called god. but really we are all the whole and the whole is in us.

This is the underlying notion behind the question of "what was your original face before you were born." The assumption here is that christianity has any more validity than say Harry Potter. Its not a matter of creationsim being right, or evplution being wrong. Evolution is a theory and creation a myth. Whether I put much faith in science is up to me, but the bible is just another book. It has some very insightful lessons in its pages, but I do not accept it as a more valid truth.

Christian Mythology, Greek Mythology, Norse Mythology, Indian Mythology and even Buddhist Mythology all require adherence to a beleife, once you hold on to the belief it anchors you. Ultimately the questions of how we got here and where we are going are less important than appreciating the world we live in at this very moment.

I must say I found it quite perplexing at the number of non-believers in this post. That goes to show my own naievete.

My question is for Neehai

Are you a Christian? Just curious because under your name it says "Messenger of God", however in the asking of your questions in the way that you have, I wonder your religious or non-religious orientation?

Im proud to state that I am a Christian

Funny, when I read this I couldn't help but think of the ancient Vedic theory of the cycle of creation.

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http://www.indiaheritage.com/rendez/article1.htm

THE HINDU CONCEPT OF TIME

According to Hindu religion and cosmology the flow of Time is eternal. Creation and Dissolution are only two events in a long cyclic succession of Cosmic events. There is no beginning in the past and there is no end to the future. Creation is a manifestation in concrete terms of the Absolute. Dissolution is when all the created universe merges in the Absolute. And that is when the period of non-manifestation begins. The periods of manifestation and of non-manifestation alternate. These are the days and nights of Brahma.

Brahma Himself is a manifestation of the Absolute. He has a life of 100 years in His time.

Between one kalpa (technical name for Brahma’s day) and the next, the only thing that survive are, Brahma himself (who has to be ‘brought back to memory’, by the Absolute, after his ‘sleep’ !), the vedas in their latent form and the collected aggregate of vaasanaas (imprints of actions and thoughts) of all individual souls. Just as each kalpa is followed by another kalpa with an intervening Cosmic Night, so also one Brahma is followed by another Brahma.

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And Christianity isn't the only religion where the concept of a "day" is a bit different for God.

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

Yugas
Years are grouped into yugas (ages):

The Four Yugas 1,728,000 (= 4k) solar years Satya Yuga
1,296,000 ( = 3k)solar years Treta Yuga
864,000 ( = 2k)solar years Dwapar Yuga
432,000 ( = k) solar years Kali Yuga

One cycle of the above four yugas is one mahayuga (4.32 million solar years)
A manvantara consists of 71 mahayugas (306,720,000 solar years)
After each manvantara follows one Sandhi Kala of the same duration as a Krita Yuga (1,728,000 = 4k solar years). (It is said that during a Sandhi Kala, the entire earth is submerged in water.)
A kalpa consists of a period of 1,728,000 solar years called Adi Sandhi, followed by 14 manvantaras and Sandhi Kalas.
A day of Brahma equals
(14 times 71 mahayugas) + (15 times 4k solar years)

= 994 mahayugas + (60 k solar years)

= 994 mahayugas + (6 times 10 k ) solar years

= 994 mahayugas + 6 mahayugas

= 1000 mahayugas

as is confirmed by the Gita statement "sahasra-yuga paryantam ahar-yad brahmano viduH", meaning, a day of brahma is of 1000 (maha-)yugas.

Thus a day of Brahma is of duration: 4.32 billion solar years.

Two kalpas constitute a day and night of Brahma; the life cycle of Brahma is one hundred years of Brahma, or 311 trillion years.

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Interesting how modern geologists and the ancient Vedics come up with similar time frames for how old things are.

Fascinating!

coco

Morality is an interesting subject in terms of this, and I felt that I needed to answer to this (even if the responses to my prokofian length threads are slim to none).

First off, this would assume of course that the person you're talking too IS moral. Because certainly there's been plenty of immoral people who do and don't believe in the gospel. We had the crusades which had priests telling the knights that it was okay to slaughter the unbelievers (in direct contradiction of atleast 2 of the commandments), and then of course in more current events the pedophilic priests. But also there's the rapists, serial killers, and murderers who are obviously not very moral people.

But let's go back a bit. What makes me moral personally? Is it something i'm born with or is it something i'm forced on? In otherwords, do I absolve from murdering any given person because of a spark of divinity, or do I absolve from it because i'd be arrested and thrown in jail? This was a question fielded by Ancient greek philosophers who came up with the story of a shepard who finds a ring that makes him invisible (Interesting side note, they were sued by J.R.R Tolkein, who had some how obtained a time machine for this purpose alone), anyways, he finds this ring and decides not to tell anyone. First thing he does with it is little jokes and pranks, then eventually he starts stealing food, then eventually he starts to kill people he doesn't like (also a plot of the Sci-fi Movie the "Hollow-Man". The idea behind this story is that when he took away the possibility of him being caught by the law enforcement, his morality started slipping. Basically, the question asked is: if you were able to do something immoral with no possible chance of any repercussions whatsoever, would you do it? And before you answer this question with your current state of religious affirmaty, think about it seriously for a bit, I think you'd be surprised how your thoughts would lead astray.

I think that morality doesn't come from God, it comes from humans. We set up a society that needs certain things not to happen constantly to run properly, like murder and theft, thus these are illegal. Parents convey these morals to their children so they know this as well, and most children grow up with those morals. But think about this, ever heard the saying "There's no more perfect evil than in the mind of a child"? Kids steal constantly (I know because I work in a store where this happens a lot without parental supervision), and that's immoral, but given the chance, what else might a child do? If a child was put into a room where a person was hooked up to a machine that shocked him when a button was pushed. If a child were left near this button alone, pressed it, and saw this man scream out in agony, what are the chances do you think that the child would press it again? And maybe again? Laughing and giggling as he did, obtaining some amount of amusement from the man's agony. No, I think we're empty slates at birth, and our parents and our governments put morals into us. If you raised a child to kill, they would have no problems with killing as an adult, would hardly see it as immoral at all. Violence is coded into the human being. Little boys will play cowboys and indians, or cops and robbers, and maybe grow up and play video games where you gun down hundreds. It's not real, but the fact of their popularity belays a innate human interest in this.

No, I don't believe we're naturally moral beings, I think we learn to be moral beings, and what's moral is what we learn. If we learned that it was morally right to lie cheat and steal, then we'd be having an argument about how it's not immoral to tell the truth.




Let me stop you here, isn't that what god did? The bible calls the creation of the earth, to quote one line I can remember off the top of my head "and then god said, 'let there be light' and there was." Essentially, there wasn't and now there was. And if god didn't create something out of nothing, then where'd he get the materials from? And if you can admit that there even WAS raw building material out in space with god before the earth, then couldn't you admit that the big bang wasn't something out of nothing?




So then you believe in Fate? Then why am I told I have to do this and that, if what I do is what i'm going to do and there's no way I can change that? And why does God hate gay people if he created them and knew they were going to be gay? Yes, this is going by modern church standards, but modern church standards are what I don't like. This idea of god likes this and god doesn't like this.



I think this is probably the best response to that line of questioning I threw at you. But do you realize that that is a fairly pantheistic and somewhat taoist view of God? Many churches would consider that kinda talk heretical. I think the best description of God's gender was by a feminist writer named .....well I forgot her name, and would not be able to find it without digging through all sorts of stuff. But what she said was that God is both male and female, and yet neither at the same time. In otherwords, God is everything, he can be male, female, both, or neither, (she called God the God-ess, instead of God or Goddess), thus God had a more appropriate all encompassing gender.



In reference to the 2 atoms collided thing, I think this is a pretty big misunderstanding, or I think lack of understanding of what this means. Now to make the big bang these events had to happen in an EXACT perfect way, at an EXACT perfect time, at an EXACT perfect angle, and an EXACT perfect space. Pretty unlikely right? But here's where I think people misunderstand: This doesn't have to be a one time thing. Not just the first time it happened it happened perfectly. This event could have happened Millions upon billions of times, resulting in just as many failed and destroyed universes. That is to say, that me winning the lottery is pretty close to impossibily low chances of winning, but what if I buy 50 million lottery tickets? Seeming to be more possible that just ONE of them would have the perfect numbers for everything to turn out right? You see the universe is so perfect in it's creation via the big bang theory because it's the only way it COULD exist.



Well herein lies the problem:

The earth has a certain balance about it, if the Moon moves even slightly out of orbit, the earth feels cataclysmic changes, now the creation story has the sun the moon and the stars created AFTER the earth. That means for 1 day (as you described could have been millions of years) the earth had no sun, moon, or anything except for the seas and plants. Now how do the plants survive without the sun? A rather essential part of a plant's life. Then i'll point out as Chip pointed out, that ironically the first day had day and night created....but it wasn't until the 4th day that the sun, moon, and all the stars came. So where is the light coming from, and the dark?

Then of course, we step back to the God is weak argument, that this omnipresent, perfect, all powerful god had to REST on the 7th day. He had to actually rest in some sort of cosmic LA-Z-BOY after doing all that 6 days of work. Now why would an all powerful god be tired after this? And furthermore, why would it take god a day (possibily 15 billion years) to make all this stuff if he could just go "Presto! let there be light!" and bam there's light!

Seems like a few rather large fallacies in there.



I think that the idea of that God put us here to rule over the planet and all living things is another one of those egotistical human thoughts that got put into the bible, like the earth being the center of the universe and all that. I don't believe we're better than animals, I just believe we're smarter than most of them. There was a long period of time up until the Homo Sapien humans that we were no better than the animals, if not worse off. We were scavengers that fed entirely off of animals that had already been killed and mostly eaten by other animals. We got our sustenance off of the marrow inside the bones where other animals didn't know about and left as waste.

No, we're not better than animals, atleast animals haven't been slowly destroying the planet, and finding new and devious ways to torture their fellow species over silly things like religious and political beliefs.

I don't see any reason not to believe that everything in the kingdom animalia evolved from the same thing. millions of years of temperate shifts and the creatures choice of location would create a fair amount of diversity. Though as I said, evolution is not the one and only correct answer to how we got the way we did, but neither is creationism.

And yes, if we didn't have different believes, the world would be a very uninteresting place.

Wow sorry, didn't even realize how much I rambled in that last post.

I do love discussing religious theory.

--------------[Edited Add in]--------------

I just searched your profile in SL, Billy Grace and I found an interesting thing there.

You're a Gorean?

It's funny that you talk about morality derived from god, when I consider Goreans to be horribily immoral people. Just goes to show how morality is defined by the people who give these morals.

I'm surprised you can be Gorean and Christian at the same time, considering that Goreans see nothing wrong with murdering, torturing, beating, and physically or mentally abusing their slaves. Not to mention all the free sex and lending women around like property. So much of this would violate so many commandments of Christianity.

Gotta say, wasn't expecting that one.