Creationism vs. Evolution - A Culture Divided

[stahrwe]

This nails it! Faith, to truly believe in God, in it's many forms and religions, you need to have faith. Faith does not need any evidence. I do not understand stahrwe's position or any Christian's position that they require evidence or proof of some sort from non theists about God, when in fact, Christians do not want any proof or evidence. Proof would iliminate the "mystery" of faith and God.

Good point. The agnostic theist position is that I know there is no evidence for the existence of God, but I have faith that he exists. This is unassailable and completely honest as far as I'm concerned.

Star, maybe I missed something, did I say somewhere that I need proof of God's existence? Well, guess what, the Bible says that there is proof that God exists. The purpose of faith is for us to accept Jesus' death for us and His resurrection. GRACE, God's Riches at Christ''s Expense.

[stahrwe]

3) It is true. What then? Where does that leave you? Forget about your Avatars, friends opinion of you, everything else, Where does that leave you?

Dead.

The underlying fear here seems to be that if one does NOT drink the proverbial Kool-aid of religion (denying reality in the process), than one doesn't wind up in heaven. In other words, religion is the key to salvation (or at least the magic elixir that soothes us when we are confronted with our own mortality).

Does God really care that people go to church every Sunday and proclaim His glory and not worship those other false gods.

Regarding Buzz Aldrin, did he sneak the communal contraband aboard Apollo 11 for himself or for God? I really wonder about that.

Star, let's get some terminology right. Religion has nothing to do with salvation, Christianity does. If you aren't a born again Christian, you aren't goiing to Heaven.

Going to church is not a chore. Worship's purpose is to know God and enjoy Him forever.

God does very much care that we not worship false Gods. He is a jealous God and we must have no other Gods before him.

Buzz Aldrin did not sneak anything aboard the LM. NASA was aware of it. Why not read Buzz's book? You are allowed to read books outside of your comfort zone aren't you?

[stahrwe]

GE 1:3-5 On the first day, God created light, then separated light and darkness.
GE 1:14-19 The sun (which separates night and day) wasn't created until the fourth day.

GE 1:11-12, 26-27 Trees were created before man was created.
GE 2:4-9 Man was created before trees were created.

GE 1:20-21, 26-27 Birds were created before man was created.
GE 2:7, 19 Man was created before birds were created.

GE 1:24-27 Animals were created before man was created.
GE 2:7, 19 Man was created before animals were created.

GE 1:26-27 Man and woman were created at the same time.
GE 2:7, 21-22 Man was created first, woman sometime later.

GE 1:28 God encourages reproduction.
LE 12:1-8 God requires purification rites following childbirth which, in effect, makes childbirth a sin. (Note: The period for purification following the birth of a daughter is twice that for a son.)

GE 1:31 God was pleased with his creation.
GE 6:5-6 God was not pleased with his creation.
(Note: That God should be displeased is inconsistent with the concept of omniscience.)

GE 2:4, 4:26, 12:8, 22:14-16, 26:25 God was already known as "the Lord" (Jahveh or Jehovah) much earlier than the time of Moses.
EX 6:2-3 God was first known as "the Lord" (Jahveh or Jehovah) at the time of the Egyptian Bondage, during the life of Moses.

GE 2:17 Adam was to die the very day that he ate the forbidden fruit.
GE 5:5 Adam lived 930 years.

GE 2:15-17, 3:4-6 It is wrong to want to be able to tell good from evil.
HE 5:13-14 It is immature to be unable to tell good from evil.

This is all kiddie pool stuff which any basic apologetics book will deal with. I suggest Evidence Which Demands A Verdict or go to an apologetics webpage and you will find answers to all of these. If you have trouble finding one I will help you but you should be able to do so on your own.

[stahrwe]

Such inconsistincies and contradictions mean nothing to the blind faithful. They even have a guide on how to live with such errors!

"Be fully persuaded in your own mind that an adequate explanation exists, even though you have not found it . . ." The Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, p15."

Star, I agree that is a stupid thing to say. We should hold the Bible to the highest standard because the stakes are so high. BTW, I have that book (EOBD) and disagree with a number of things in it.

[stahrwe]

DT 6:5, MT 22:37, MK 12:30, LK 10:27 Love God.
DT 6:13, PS 33:8, 34:9, 111:10, 115:13, 128:1, 147:11, PR 8:13, 16:6, 19:23, 22:4, IS 8:13, LK 12:5, 1PE 2:17 Fear God.
1JN 4:18 There is no fear in love.

PR 30:5 Every word of God proves true.
1KI 22:23, 2CH 18:22, JE 4:10, JE 20:7, EZ 14:9 God deceives some of the prophets.
JE 8:8 The scribes (copyists, editors, teachers) falsify the word.
2TH 2:11-12 God deceives the wicked (to be able to condemn them).
(Note: Not every word of God can prove true if God deceives anyone at all; teaching from the Bible cannot be trusted if the scribes falsify the word. In other words, the first reference is mutually exclusive with the other three. Thus, the Bible cannot be the perfect work of a perfect, all-powerful and loving God since one or more of the above references is obviously untrue. Note also: Some versions use the word "persuade" rather than "deceives." The context makes clear, however, that deception is involved.)

EZ 20:25 God says that he intentionally gave out bad laws. (This means that God-given laws or commandments are sometimes suspect.)

LK 1:26-38 The angel who appears to Mary to foretell the birth of Jesus says that Jesus will be given the throne of David, that he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and that his kingdom will never end. (None of this took place nor can it now be fulfilled.)

MT 16:28, MK 9:1, LK 9:27 Jesus says that some of his listeners will not taste death before he comes again in his kingdom. This was said almost 2000 years ago.
(Note: This passage and many others indicate that Jesus was to come again in a relatively short period of time and not just "quickly" as present day Biblicists assert. All of his listeners are now dead, yet Jesus has not come again in his kingdom. All of the alleged words of Jesus put forth in the Bible are therefore suspect.)

MK 16:17-18 A believer can handle snakes or drink poison and not experience any harm.
(Note: Many unfortunate believers have died as a result of handling snakes and drinking poison. This kind of assertion negates the Bible as a useful guidebook for life.)

Star, go back and read Ez 20, the entire chapter. You will find that God had given the people opportunity after opportunity to obey his law and live a good life and they kept turning from Him, so He finally basically said, fine, live according to your own law, I'll allow that with the idea that it bring them back. Much like the prodigal son in the NT.

As for the snake handling, some people are just idiots. I once witnessed, where you go to a house and tell people you don't know about Jesus, to a man who said hd didn't have any use for church any more. I asked him why. He said that he had been very religious. One day he was driving his RV down I-95 and felt a strong inclination to close his eyes and take his hands off the steering wheel. He did so believing that God would drive the RV for him. Well, he crashed and was almost killed. He forgot about the scripture where Jesus was on the pinnacle of the Temple and Satan tempted him to throw Himsel off. Jesus answered that You shall not tempt God. The whoe purpose of snake handling and poison drinking, and even the lesser forms like speaking in tongues often cease to be worship and become entertainment or worse. Not all atheists are rude or idiots and neither are all christians.

[stahrwe]

Robert Tulip here eloquently explains how you can have your cake and eat it too. I don't personally share his enthusiasm for the power of myth, especially the myth of the Bible which I feel is too inconsistent and too flawed to be of much use. But Robert's position offers a reasonable way to partake in the Bible without having to put reality on hold. It's simply not possible to accept the Bible as literal truth without a huge amount of cognitive dissonance and without, as Chris says, literally lying to yourself. In my view it's an extremely dishonest position, however intentional or unintentional it may be.

I also believe very strongly that denying evolution is to deny a fundamental understanding of the world around you. It's a very sad state of affairs that this very human institution of religion so often stifles the beauty and wonder of the world in support of fairy tale notions of gods and ghosts and immaculate conceptions. Is it no wonder that many religions also preach that blind faith and credulity are virtues?

Star, I'm just curious, have you ever read the Bible. Not passages here and there which add up to the total, but started with Genesis and read straight through to the end of Revelation, no skipping around?

[stahrwe]

Here are some scholar’s thoughts on the subject of a historical Jesus…

Whether considered as the God made human, or as man made divine, this character never existed as a person.
-Gerald Massey, Egyptologist and historical scholar (Gerald Massey's Lectures: Gnostic and Historic Christianity, 1900)

We know virtually nothing about the persons who wrote the gospels we call Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, (The Gnostic Gospels)

Some hoped to penetrate the various accounts and to discover the "historical Jesus". . . and that sorting out "authentic" material in the gospels was virtually impossible in the absence of independent evidence."
-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University

All four gospels are anonymous texts. The familiar attributions of the Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John come from the mid-second century and later and we have no good historical reason to accept these attributions.
-Steve Mason, professor of classics, history and religious studies at York University in Toronto (Bible Review, Feb. 2000, p. 36)

The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any Gospel.
-Bishop John Shelby Spong

Many modern Biblical archaeologists now believe that the village of Nazareth did not exist at the time of the birth and early life of Jesus. There is simply no evidence for it.
-Alan Albert Snow (The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read)

What one believes and what one can demonstrate historically are usually two different things.
-Robert J. Miller, Bible scholar, (Bible Review, December 1993, Vol. IX, Number 6, p. 9)

How historical can the Gospels be? Are Murphy-O-Conner's speculations concerning Jesus' baptism by John simply wrong-headed? How can we really know if the baptism, or any other event written about in the Gospels, is historical?
-Daniel P. Sullivan (Bible Review, June 1996, Vol. XII, Number 3, p. 5)

The Gospel authors were Jews writing within the midrashic tradition and intended their stories to be read as interpretive narratives, not historical accounts.
-Bishop Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels

So unreliable were the Gospel accounts that "we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus."
-Rudolf Bultmann, University of Marburg, the foremost Protestant scholar in the field in 1926

The Synoptic Gospels employ techniques that we today associate with fiction.
-Paul Q. Beeching, Central Connecticut State University (Bible Review, June 1997, Vol. XIII, Number 3, p. 43)

Jesus is a mythical figure in the tradition of pagan mythology and almost nothing in all of ancient literature would lead one to believe otherwise. Anyone wanting to believe Jesus lived and walked as a real live human being must do so despite the evidence, not because of it.
-C. Dennis McKinsey, Bible critic (The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy)

The gospels are very peculiar types of literature. They're not biographies.
-Paula Fredriksen, Professor and historian of early Christianity, Boston University (in the PBS documentary, From Jesus to Christ, aired in 1998)

The gospels are not eyewitness accounts
-Allen D. Callahan, Associate Professor of New Testament, Harvard Divinity School

Even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more. All attempts to recover him turn out to be just modern remythologizings of Jesus. Every "historical Jesus" is a Christ of faith, of somebody's faith. So the "historical Jesus" of modern scholarship is no less a fiction.
-Robert M. Price, "Jesus: Fact or Fiction, A Dialogue With Dr. Robert Price and Rev. John Rankin,"

It is important to recognize the obvious: The gospel story of Jesus is itself apparently mythic from first to last."
-Robert M. Price, professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute (Deconstructing Jesus, p. 260)

You will note that many of these people are professors of respected schools and professionals in their fields of study… some are even church historians…

All agree that Jesus is nonexistent outside the gospels.

Later

Star, I'm glad you included Spong, but his name is actually John Shelby Spong. I have several of his books and have learned some things from him. He has a talent for lyrical narration but otherwise is a typcial liberal theologian. I didn't see Crossman in your list. He is usually trotted out to be interviewed around Christmas and Easter to say very nice things about Jesus and love and peace. Many of these people are associated with the Jesus seminar which sounds great. Their mission is to find the real Jesus within the Bible. The start by discounting any miracles, becasue miracles cannot be verified in history. Periodically the JS gets together to vote on what to take out of the Bible.

[Interbane]

Star: "Well, guess what, the Bible says that there is proof that God exists."

What the bible says doesn't count as proof. The bible is a book written by men, just like any other book. If it refers us to the proof, then it should stand on it's own merits outside of what the bible says. Here's a hint, there is not only no proof of a god, but not even any evidence.

Star: "We should hold the Bible to the highest standard because the stakes are so high."

No, we shouldn't. The bible has resulted in so much death and misery that you should be ashamed of believing that garbage. Gods and angels and magic! Come back down to Earth!

How old do you think the Earth is?

Do you believe prayer works?

Do you believe in unicorns?

Do you believe in miracles?

[stahrwe]

Star: "Well, guess what, the Bible says that there is proof that God exists."

What the bible says doesn't count as proof. The bible is a book written by men, just like any other book. If it refers us to the proof, then it should stand on it's own merits outside of what the bible says. Here's a hint, there is not only no proof of a god, but not even any evidence.

Star: "We should hold the Bible to the highest standard because the stakes are so high."

No, we shouldn't. The bible has resulted in so much death and misery that you should be ashamed of believing that garbage. Gods and angels and magic! Come back down to Earth!

How old do you think the Earth is?

Do you believe prayer works?

Do you believe in unicorns?

Do you believe in miracles?

<5,000 years
No, I know that it does. Have experienced answers.
No,
Yes

[stahrwe]

No, we shouldn't. The bible has resulted in so much death and misery that you should be ashamed of believing that garbage. Gods and angels and magic! Come back down to Earth!

Star, I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ for it is the power of salvation for anyone who believes.