War and Christianity

Alright, I'll accept your deal. I believe.

The alternative, of course, is you are completely reckless in the way you are going about in your arguments; if your words are not motivated by bitterness, then you are simply completely oblivious to how you sound in this thread.


I never said you claimed otherwise. However, the way you speak of Islam, you make it seem like all Muslims are terrorists.


You don't know that.

For that matter, the native americans might think that might be a good thing.

But overall, remember:
- "Judge not lest ye be judged"
- "Should a man strike your cheek, turn to him the other"

JESUS WAS A COMPLETE PACIFIST. There is no "try it first" according to Christ. He was 100% unequivocally opposed to war. When he was crucifed, and his torturers dared him to come down, and the Jews expected him to be the great conquerer, he instead bore the pain himself, and did NOT strike back in rage.


Absolutely not. Terror is an emotion. And we certainly aren't fighting it - people in the US have been more afraid than ever since the start of the "war on terror" then they ever have been. Bush's fear-mongering campaign should be evidence of that!

...

For anyone who believes we couldn't do more to stop Saddam before going to war, consider
- Jesus never was violent in his life and founded one of the largest religions in the world.
- Ghandi led the movement for independence the second most populous nation in the world, India, without lifting a single hand to strike his oppressor.
- Martin Luther King Jr. preached peace and non-violence and was the primary voice of the civil rights movement in the US.
- The elimination of apartheid in South Africa was done via embargoes and political pressure, not armies.
- The founding of another one of the world's largest religions, Buddhism, is rooted deeply in a tradition of valuing all life and practicing non-violence, and has touched hundreds and hundreds of millions of lives.

The Gospel has exactly 0 things said by Christ to justify war or violence of any sort.

I agree, why can't we accept the fact that there is not proof either way? It's sort of like having one foot in yesterday and the other in tomorrow and no one's paying attention to today.

Why is that human beings are always so willing to die and kill over something that is not tangible? Freedom, having the liberty to meet one's basic human needs (physical and intellectual) for ones self and ones family, that I understand protecting and dying for. Most wars start because someone has convinced a group of humans that their basic human needs are threatened in one manner or another. Religious wars start because someone has convinced a group of people that religion is a basic human need.

I think that in reality, it comes down to our fear of death. Physical death (which is all that we can see) is final and inevitable. Humans are aware of the fact that one day the essence of our being will cease to exist. It is instinctual as breathing to try and prolong our existence and to perpetuate our genetic map.

Throughout the short time that humans have been aware of their existence and their inevitable demise they have looked for a way to "cheat" death, whether it is scientific, magical or spiritual.

We are always seeking the fountain of youth and everlasting life. Faith - promises us everlasting life without the need to preserve our physical beings. It is difficult to argue against faith because it defines something that we spend our whole like seeking and that is to understand our own human spirit.

Faith gives us a way to seek ourselves and promises everlasting life in the process.

Religion (a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith) takes advantage of faith by preying on human fear. Religion says you can have everlasting life BUT you have to do this, this and this first. Religion is frequently the cage that more powerful humans use to contain less powerful humans.

In defense of religion, when used in a benign manner, it has also been an effective tool for perpetuating the human species by teaching and enforcing the rules of the physical world and helping humans control their physical environment.

Science - the knowledge or system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method concerned with the physical world and its phenomena, by it's nature, challenges faith.

Faith must exist in order for religion to exist. So it is not inconceivable that religion feels threatened by science and that religious human beings blindly cast themselves onto religion as if their very survival depends on it. It is not inconceivable that religion becomes then an even more powerful tool [misused] to bind the human species to it.

I thought that Neal Stephenson's allusion to religion being an intellectual virus was a fascinating idea. Some [physical] viruses must exist in the human body in order for the human to live. Others, prey on the human, stealing life, until the human ceases to exist.

Notice that the definitions of Science and Religion are not so far apart, with the exception of faith being the requirement for religion, they are nearly identical.

So the questions remains, how do we deal with the fact that we will cease to exist as we presently know our existance?

Using science, we search for ways to extend our life spans and hope [faith again] for a time that scientific method will be powerful enough to produce a human body that does not cease to exist.

Using religion, we believe that [the physical body] does not matter, the spirit continues after the physical ceases to exist.

Realistically, I think we should quite worrying about it and live every moment that we possibly can, the best way that we possibly can according to our own instincts and standards, respecting the instincts and standards of others.

But... that's just me and I'm a freak'n alien.

Nice post Rose The bitterness and mistrust towards science exhibited by many religious people has always baffled me. How can anyone be bitter towards science? Every single convenience we take for granted, the tool that facilitate our livelihoods, the medical advances to cure our illness and extend our life... all of it is the product of science. What has god done for me lately?

This is a fair question and I hesitated to answer for a couple of reasons.

First, I didn’t know if we wanted to take this thread into the direction of debating the existence of God but subsequent posts have done so already.

Second is that part of the answer is extremely personal to me and requires me to reveal some things that I know I would have had trouble believing before they happened to me.

Third, your reaction to me even saying I had a personal relationship with Jesus gave me pause because I have no desire to reveal such personal experiences for no reason only to be ridiculed and made fun of. I know before I answer your question that most atheists will scoff at my answers and will think they sound nutty as I admit I would have before they happened to me.

Yes, I will answer your question but I would appreciate you taking them seriously and recognizing that I am revealing something that I really do not want to. I am willing to do so because I believe you want an honest answer. Just read what I write and take it with a grain of salt if you do not understand or believe them to be true.

First I will address some things that are not of a personal nature. Part of my answer is common sense. Take a good hard look at the world and for that matter universe around us. We can all agree that the universe had a beginning which was the beginning of time. Scientific evidence supports the big bang theory. Ask yourself a couple of questions.

1. If we all can agree that the universe has a fixed time and therefor kind of a birth date in which it came into existence then where did it come from to begin with? How can something be created from nothing without the help of God or whatever name you want to give Him/Her.

2. If somehow something (the rock we call earth plus the heavens) was indeed created from nothing then where did the very first form of life come from? It is impossible to create life from rocks and other lifeless things. Science supports evolution where life evolved into where we are now with the exception of the gap between man and apes but it has no explanation to where life was actually created.

Religion is not in conflict with evolution by the way. Life evolves over time and changes form dependant upon the environment it lives in. The only difference is that religions believe that God created man at some time after all of the animals. Nowhere does it say that man did not evolve.

The creation story as a matter of fact mirrors the scientific theory about the creation of the earth. The who is to say how long a day was back then. Basically the order and time frame reflected in the creation story works out. The first day (X million years) God created the heavens and the earth.
The second day (X Millions of years) God created the oceans which separated the earth into land and sea. And so on and so on…

3. What requires a bigger leap of faith? A) God created life from nothing B) life came from nothing when somehow 2 atoms (that we do not know where they came from) flew into each other at exactly the right way to not only create life but that life actually survived to have offspring. That offspring somehow became different and spawned all of the different life forms that exist today.

It is much more plausible that God created all that you now see. There is a huge amount of evidence supporting that. Just look at the complexity of the human body for a second. What are the chances of a single cell or whatever the first form of life was to evolve into such a complex being that lives, breaths, thinks, reproduces, is as delicate as heck to the point that if any little thing is off it dies. I will tell you that the possibility of that happening is astronomical. You are taking a much bigger leap of faith to believe in that than believing God had a hand in it all.

Ok, that is the first part. Your question specifically was about things I have seen or felt. First I will start with what I have seen.

1. There are many many things that happen that science has no explanation for. For example, a close friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer and given a short time to live. She is a Christian and we all began to pray for her. She got worse and worse. The doctors gave up hope. They even called in her priest to give her last rights. Then for no reason whatsoever she began to get better. The doctors could not explain it. She soon was released from the hospital and after a short period of time she was declared cancer free. There is no earthly explanation for her survival. She has now been cancer free for 5 years. Prayer worked and saved her life.

This story is not unique. I have heard many that are similar and have no explanation other than a miracle. I saw a thing on 20/20, I think it was, one time where they scientifically proved that prayer works. They had people pray for patients without their knowledge and proved that the ones that were prayed for statistically did better than the ones that were not. I experienced this more times than with the friend I just spoke about. If there was no God involved then what explanation is there for things like this happening? I do not know of a good one.

2. I know that this story will not be believed by many of you but I am sharing it to answer your question Juro. I have seen a real live Angel. Before this happened to me if someone had made such a statement I would have thought… yeah right… sure… whatever. But it happened to me.

I suppose I need to tell you my story and give some background to this so you will understand what happened. I will get top that but to do so I need to move on to things I have felt.

I accepted Christ and chose to believe in Him when I was 16 years old. When I did I immediately felt a burning sensation inside of me. The expression “on fire for God” comes to mind. I believe that this “feeling” was the Holy Spirit living inside of me. I know that the concept of a Holy Spirit living inside of you is hard to comprehend if you have not had that experience but God promised that he would send the Holy Spirit to guide you, to comfort you, to be with you in good times and bad. I “felt” the Holy Spirit inside of me back then.

Slowly that fire diminished as I continued to grow up. I soon turned my back on God and did all of the things that young boys do but I never forgot that feeling that came from the Holy Spirit. After College and a stint in the Navy I was dating a girl who was later to become my wife. Once we became serious we discussed it and decided to find a Church to go to because we thought it was important to have that as a part of our life. We found one and became active in it.

Personally I was doing many of the things I was supposed to but something was missing. I no longer felt that burning feeling inside that I did as a youth and figured that was just a thing for kids and that through life’s experience and innocence lost it was not something I would ever feel again. Thinking and praying about it what was really holding me back was that I had a lingering doubt that religion might all just be a bunch of BS that people made up to make them feel good about dying. That doubt was what was holding me back.

I was involved, but something was always missing. I prayed about it and spoke to a mature Christian I respect and he said I should try attending a thing called “The Walk to Emmaus”. I agreed knowing very little about it. Basically it is a 3 day crash course in Christianity where they also have some really wonderful “surprises” that they do for you while you are there that help you experience God’s love.

I want to say that I have been very involved in subsequent “Walk to Emmaus” weekends and nobody but me has seen an Angel so this is a unique experience to me so if someone reading this decides to attend do not expect to see an Angel… lol. Anyway, one night while I was there I did in fact see a live Angel. She was standing right in front of me, her body illuminated and her eyes fixed on me. I saw light coming from above her and could physically feel the love of God coming from heaven, passing through her and pouring into me. That love filling me up was EXACTLY what I felt as a youth. Every doubt I had about the existence of God was gone. After all, when you have an Angel sent to you stand right in front of you and fill you with the love of God, it is hard to not believe.

So, I saw an Angel and “felt” the Holy Spirit inside of me. These are very real experiences I have had. You may choose to not believe them and I respect that choice but it will make it no less real to me. I saw it with my own 2 eyes and felt the burning love of God inside of me.

Lastly, I will tell you one other thing that happens to me repeatedly. I have had God speak directly to me. Again, this will be hard to accept until it happens to you but I am willing to reveal this fact to you again because I think you are serious in wanting me to answer your question. God speaking to me directly is not through a loud audible voice like you see in the movie the Ten Commandments. He communicates to me by putting thoughts in my mind that I know are not my own. I know that you will be skeptical of this but I know it is from Him. Sometimes he has told me things that will happen that come true, sometimes he guides me in decisions I am praying about. All I can say is that I know these thoughts are from God and that at times these things are things I would not normally do.

Well, I am sorry for the long post but felt I needed to be thorough in my answer. As I said before, I know that many of you will be skeptical but all I can tell you is that these are my experiences and the truth. There is more but due to the length of this post I will save that for another day.

The case for Jesus is another thing. I focused on God here because that is what you asked about but there is tons of evidence supporting Jesus. I will not give them at this time but want to make a statement and pose a question.

Academia and most historians support the fact that Jesus and the disciples lived. The debate is whether He was indeed the son of God or not. The disciples were with Jesus His entire ministry and supported the claims of miracles, healings etc… that are shared in the Bible. They witnessed first hand these things, saw Jesus die and claimed he was resurrected. Given that you agree with this I have one question. If they were all lying about their experiences and in fact made things up to make it seem Jesus was in fact the son of God when He was not, why was it that every one except John was willing to die horrible deaths without admitting it was all a lie? Some of you surely do not know this but every deciple except John dies a gruesome death.

Andrew, Phillip and Simon were crucified. Peter was crucified upside down as he requested because he did not feel he was worthy of dying in the same way as Jesus. Bartholomew was beaten then crucified. Mathias, Judas (not Iscariot) and James, son of Alphaeus, were stoned to death. James, son of Zebedee, was beheaded. Matthew and Thomas were speared to death. John was the only one to die of old age.

What compelled these 12 men to endure persecution and martyrdom if it was all a lie? That is one question I could never answer until I accepted that it was because Jesus was indeed the Son of God and that the stories about Him are true. These 12 disciples went to their deaths proclaiming what they had no doubts that Jesus had risen from the dead, proving that he was everything he claimed to be, the Son of God.

Shocking... isn't it? lol.

There's a $100 word... hehe... finally got to use it ay Chip?

Im not bitter towards science; im bitter towards evolution... As a matter of fact, its not even fitting to call evolution a branch or form of science. An evolutionist by the name of G.A. Kerkut even admitted that evolution is not capable of scientific verification, and called it a philosophy which needs to be accepted by faith, and admitted that any evidence supporting evolution is circumstancial... Ironic, huh?



What have you done for God? Ever tried meeting him half way?

"Some scientists have, for some time now, believed that man came from a common ancestor. Using DNA mutation rates to date fossils, researchers believe that the first humans (not hominids), "Adam and Eve," lived 100,000-200,000 years ago. But recently researchers recognized they had miscalculated the rate of mitochondrial DNA mutation in fossils of early humans. Instead of having existed over 100,000 years ago, the new data indicates "Eve" may have lived only 6000 years ago, a scenario that amazingly correlates with the Biblical dating of creation. [Science, Volume 279, page 28, 1998]"

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/sardi3.html

Maybe so, that is your interpretation. All I can say is that was indeed not my intention and I am big enough to apologize if I came across that way. I was simply attempting to pass along information I believe to be correct. I am sorry if it came across as me hating Muslims or anyone else for that matter.

I think I have said this already but to set the record straight, I do not believe that all Muslims are terrorists or even bad people. I am repeating what the Koran says and it is damn scary if you ask me.




You would be just about the only one that thinks that without war we would have still broken away from England, kept the French, the Germans, the Japanese etc… out as well as many other countries that threatened our existence.


Oh, I agree that the American Indians were treated badly, that is a whole other thing.


I agree that Jesus was on the most part a pacifist but as I have already stated, he did use violence to clear out the tax collectors and merchants from the temple. Doesn’t sound like someone completely opposed to violence to me.

An explanation could easily be that He did not lead then Jews in battle because it was not the time for that. He was there for a different purpose. If God was so against war then tell me why He commanded, led, and blessed the Jews repeatedly in the Old Testament?




Symantics… still the same thing to me.


I totally agree that peace is what we should strive for but also consider that sanctions did not work and were repeatedly broken for 12 years. We were attacked on 9/11 and there is nothing wrong with defending ourselves.

I want nothing more than peace but as for me, personally, I believe that if nothing is done that peace will never come. Take the war to the terrorists, that means Iraq too, train the countries to defend themselves and promote freedom and there is a possibility that one day there will be no more terrorists and the world will be a better place for what we have started here.

Isn't the author of that article a health journalist?

My buddha will people please stop blaming the war in Iraq on 9/11. Saddam had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, in fact he had less to do with 9/11 than the US government did. I dont' really give a tear in a bucket who believes in the great and mighty God, but at least fact check the reason behind the war. We gave money to Osama, we funded al queda not Saddam. Is Saddam a bad dude...yes but he did not cause 9/11. We know who did and he is still out there throwing his hands in the air like the rest of us wondering why the hell the US isn't going after him. Iraqi's being killed today are not terrorists. Bottom line they did not friggin attack us. They are being killed because they are an easy target, they have oil and we want that damned pipeline. This world will not be a better place because we bombed the shite out of Iraq. At least if they found Osama we could have a bit of catharsis and closure on our end.

Your president is using God, religion and terror to validate a war that is unjustifiable. The only thing this war is doing is taking our service men off of the soil they should be protecting.

Yes. What's your point?

We can agree to disagree but I do not believe that this is being done anywhere but in the minds of the press and some liberals. This war has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity and I reject the assertion that President Bush has “using God, religion and terror to validate” the war.

That is funny because the war is supported fundamentally by the fundamentalist evangelicals.
Besides that do you really think that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11? And if you do not think that he did then what are we fighting for because so far as I can see the god you worship would not be in favor of this sort of battle. America has dirty hands. We tell other countries to disarm when we have more weapons of mass destruction than all of them put together. We tell them to allow freedom of religion yet we condemn the gay citizens who wish to marry based on religious principles. Tell me please Billy what are you fighting for? If you support war then you are not fighting on the side of your christian god. This is what I loathe about the christian sect. They talk out of both sides of their mouths and use false information to justify attacks on another country. Saddam did not attack us...you do not disagree with me; you disagree with the facts.

And just for the record, I am niether liberal nor am I conservative. I am a citizen of a country gone mad.

First, thank you Billy for taking my inquiry seriously, as I did pose it with genuine curiosity. Thanks for sharing your personal experiences with not only me, but the rest of the forums-heads.


Yes... I understand. I hope by reading my later posts (follow ups to the BooBerry comment) you have a better understanding of what I was trying to convey. Also, even though I'm an athiest and don't subscribe, I wouldn't dismiss your beliefs.



This is probably another topic worthy of its own debate, but... I don't think there is enough hard data to conclusively say much about the very early universe. Scientists are still working on figuring out the story surrounding the Big Bang. Most, but not all, feel there was 'nothing' before, but there are other theories: multiple universes, cyclical universes. There are theories that the universe has always been, but goes through cycles of expanding and collapsing. So, I can't really agree that there was a 'start' time for the universe.

Like I said, this is a big subject, and I'll have to start a separate thread on this. I think it would be a great discussion.

Well, the earth wasn't really created from 'nothing', but I moreso want to address the second part regarding the creation of life from 'lifeless things'. There is plenty of material in the universe to construct just about anything. In the 1950's, Stanley Miller performed an experiment where he placed some common elements into a beaker: methane, ammonia, hydrogen gas, and water vapor. He put an electric current through the mixture and a few days later discovered that a brown-goo had formed: amino acids, the building blocks for proteins. So, it's not too difficult to create the basics for life from simple elements.

Science will, eventually, fill in the blanks with man's early family tree, but you have to realize the difficulty in finding study materials. Fossils are buried beneath feet of earth and are few and far between. Personally, I'm amazed they've been able to find what they've found so far.


Interesting. I was always taught it was days.. like our days, not a day equalling a few million years.


This is a great question, and I think the fundamental difference in our ways of thinking. I feel that is requires more faith to believe that a supreme being created everything. It's the simplest, easiest answer available. Great scientific questions can take decades or more to answer with thousands of hours of study, testing, etc. The god answer is just far to easy for me.

Understood. I believe in other posts, I've mentioned that I believe Jesus existed.

I can only speculate Billy, since I was not there and outside of scriptures, no way to verify this. I suspect that they all truly believed he was the son of god. When people have strong faith, they are willing to do just about anything, indluding dying, to support and hold true to that faith. We've seen that throughout history, up to today, in one form or another: Seppuku (aka Hara-kiri), Jihad suicide bombers, Jonestown members, etc. We may view those as crazy, plain wrong, or far more than what we'd be willing to do for our faith, but it clearly demonstrates how strong faith can lead to ultimate personal sacrifice.

It was to make sure that I was reading an article written about the origins of man by a health journalist. That's all.

Just because I or anyone else may be a Christian and support the war does NOT make the war about Christianity. I’ll bet that the majority of supporters like cheese too… the war isn’t about cheese either.


Yes


Isolationism has precluded every war in which America has been attacked… bad policy.


Thai is a whole other fight Isis, one which I tend to agree with you on but unrelated to whether it is right to go over there or not.


I think I have made my views very clear and see no need to re-post them. Please read what I have already said about why I support the war.


You think Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism, I do. We all understand that. There is no need to regurgitate it and be nasty.


As YOU see them my dear. You pick and chose the facts you want to see yet ignore the ones surrounding Saddam and terrorism.


Your political bias is irrelevant as is mine. I am a citizen of this country that is proud that we have a President that will take a stand and fight for freedom and am not “mad” at anyone.

No, it's not ironic. It's false. Take a population of fruit flies and divide them in half. Take one half to a nothern climate and the other to a southern climate. Within several generations they will have substantal differences between them due to natural selection. Kerkut was a creationist so his views are hardly surprising.

Care to reference that?

I know he made a similar comment regarding the debate surrounding the dawn horse - but I thought it was more about the drawings.. the pictures rely on 'faith, rather than evidence'.

I am way behind WRT this thread, but I wanted to make a point about this particular topic. What you are describing, Chip, is a form of intra-species evolution (e.g., adaptation). In the case of the fruit flies, although the northern and southern contingents will mutate to adapt to their unique environments, they fundamentally remain fruit flies.

Inter-species evolution, otoh, is the evolutionary process of morphing one species into another. Generally speaking, it is this latter form of evolution that elicits objections among theologians.

Richard Dawkins has an example of the transition from one species to another that is alive and easy to find. I wonder what those thoelogians think of it?


"The discontinuous mind is ubiquitous. It is especially influential when it afflicts lawyers and the religious (not only are all judges lawyers; a high proportion of politicians are too, and all politicians have to woo the religious vote). Recently, after giving a public lecture, I was cross-examined by a lawyer in the audience. He brought the full weight of his legal acumen to bear on a nice point of evolution. If species A evolves into a later species B, he reasoned closely, there must come a point when a mother belongs to the old species A and her child belongs to the new species B. Members of different species cannot interbreed with one another. I put it to you, he went on, that a child could hardly be so different from its parents that it could not interbreed with their kind. So, he wound up triumphantly, isn't this a fatal flaw in the theory of evolution?

But it is we that choose to divide animals up into discontinuous species. On the evolutionary view of life there must have been intermediates, even though, conveniently for our naming rituals, they are usually extinct: usually, but not always. The lawyer would be surprised and, I hope, intrigued by so-called 'ring species'. The best-known case is herring gull versus lesser black-backed gull. In Britain these are clearly distinct species, quite different in colour. Anybody can tell them apart. But if you follow the population of herring gulls westward round the North Pole to North America, then via Alaska across Siberia and back to Europe again, you will notice a curious fact. The 'herring gulls' gradually become less and less like herring gulls and more and more like lesser black-backed gulls until it turns out that our European lesser black-backed gulls actually are the other end of a ring that started out as herring gulls. At every stage around the ring, the birds are sufficiently similar to their neighbours to interbreed with them. Until, that is, the ends of the continuum are reached, in Europe. At this point the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull never interbreed, although they are linked by a continuous series of interbreeding colleagues all the way round the world. The only thing that is special about ring species like these gulls is that the intermediates are still alive. All pairs of related species are potentially ring species. The intermediates must have lived once. It is just that in most cases they are now dead. The lawyer, with his trained discontinuous mind, insists on placing individuals firmly in this species or that. He does not allow for the possibility that an individual might lie half-way between two species, or a tenth of the way from species A to species B. Self-styled 'pro-lifers', and others that indulge in footling debates about exactly when in its development a foetus 'becomes human', exhibit the same discontinuous mentality. It is no use telling these people that, depending upon the human characteristics that interest you, a foetus can be 'half human' or 'a hundredth human'. 'Human', to the discontinuous mind, is an absolute concept. There can be no half measures. And from this flows much evil. " http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1993gaps_in_the_mind.shtml

I appreciate that Juro. I will take you at your word that you did not intend to offend me and am certainly willing to look past that. Thank you for caring enough to clarify.


Probably so but at this point I think I’d rather start one discussing the virtues of cheese instead… lol.


Building blocks are quite different from life itself. I am sure you would agree. Besides, you would have to believe that this stuff flew through outer space either by themselves or on the rock we now live and somehow mixed just the right way in a harsh environment without the help of a lab and test tubes. I am not ready to take a leap of faith that outrageous… hehe.


Maybe so… maybe not. I am betting on maybe not because I do not believe that they exist.


Whose to say how long a day is when there isn’t even a sun. Who knows how time was measured by the first humans? The Bible also says that men lived hundreds of years way back then which is doubtful. A day is just a measure of time which indicates the completion of a cycle, our cycle is one full rotation of the earth. Who knows what theirs was. The writers of the Bible probably used the words day to fix some kind of time frame on it, not necessarily meaning one rotation of the earth but inserting a the word day was easy to understand.


I respect your opinion but we can agree to disagree on this. Simple and easy are not words I would use to describe the theory of life beginning with a big bang and evolution of mankind from nothingness or at best some stuff that came from who knows where.


HEY!!! Something we agree on… I will have to write that down in my diary… hehe. Note to self… Juro agrees with me today!


This information is actually outside the scriptures and comes from the book of martyrs as well as some other early church documents.

There is one fundamental difference between the disciples and the examples you gave. They all had absolute faith and killed themselves or were willing to die. My question is how can you explain the disciples willingness to die for what they knew to be a lie. They were there with Jesus as witnesses to everything He did, suffered horrible persecution and horrible deaths without ever wavering.

If as you agree they lived and lets say they had in fact say it was a lie upon their death their murderers surely would have publicized that fact and Christianity would have dies in its infancy. If you agree that they did die without recanting that Jesus was the Son of God then it makes it certain that they had “absolute” faith that He was what He claimed.

I know that I would not die for what I knew was a lie. Nobody would yet the disciples died horrible deaths and were willing to suffer extremely difficult lives and persecutions for those beliefs. Something to think about at a minimum ay?

Below is a little more detail as to how they died as well as some of the apostles:

Good points Paolo I'm pretty familiar with the debates since I enjoy trolling "creation science" sites. Inter-species evolution is still evolution though so the statement that evolution can't be proven is a blanket statement that's not actually true. We can't definitively prove that we evolved from apes, but we can come pretty close. There's immensely more evidence to support evolution than there is to support so-called intelligent design. The claim that the universe and life are too complex to exist without some intelligent creator still boils down to "we don't know and it's complicated, so it must be magic."

I will not debate evolution, I believe that evolution does not conflict with creationism. I will simply debate the point that God created maybe the bang in the big bang theory, the first being/s that evolved into what we have now (i.e. plants and animals) and at a later date created man who has also evolved somewhat. God was the creator and it has worked out as He disigned.

Yup, I hear ya, Chip. On the other hand, the more I learn about fractoids, string theory, quantum mechanics and other stuff of the philo-scientific ilk, I find it equally troubling to have evolution presented as un-challenged fact. Who's to say it's not "both?"