Well - in the post that originated this discussion between us - you spoke of a God who is claimed to be omniscient. What God other than the biblical one were you refering to?

So what is your interpretetation of the biblical God - which by the way states that God is omniscient and exists outside of time. How are you interpreting that to mean anything other than what it says?

You may conclude that this God does not exist - but you are not basing your conclusion on anything factual, so you are merely presenting a strawman who's attributes fullfill your contradictions.
Isn't that cozy. I agree with you. The God that you are speaking of does not exist. However - this god is not the one represented in scripture.



Again - you are the one who established the definition of God in your original post - stating it was the one believed to be omniscient. We're working with your definition of an entity already described in print. I don't need to define it - merely reference the description that exists.



What are you basing your conclusion on?



But time is not defined by the future. Time is described by 3 separate entities - past present and future. Your conclusion that time does not exist merely demonstrates your not understanding what time is. We have indefinite evidence to attest to the past, and unless you are in a comma - you are fully aware of the present as it occurs. Though you may not recognize the future, as it has not occured - it will come, and you can do nothing to stop it.





We agree - truth is truth. It is an absolute. However, perception of it can be evasive, and delusional. And truth is not perception.

The concept of "original sin" is from Catholicism. You'd be hard pressed to find it in the bible.

It isn't the fact that people can't avoid it - it's that they don't. There's a difference. Not_being_able to avoid sin takes the responsibility away from the individual, and that is not how man was created. It is certainly within man's capability to avoid sinning, however - no one does. No one ever has, no one ever will - apart from the incarnate Jesus. But I'm not telling you anything you're not aware of here. It is the central gospel message.

The shooter was under the delusion that by murdering a "murderer" - that his actions were justified. What religious ideology supports that? It's not Christianity, and It's not Judism, so what religious ideology are you refering to?

Guess you missed that whole Columbine thing, eh?

Reality bites.

True. But religion has so little to do with God, and scripture. Religion is all about man reaching out to God, as opposed to God reaching out to man. This is why most of the worlds religions get it wrong. They attempt to follow there idea of what it takes to reach God, and in doing so, they create an hierarchy, and either they claim an authority over man in terms of their intellectual theology - or they put their faith in men who do this, thinking that this is the wat to get to God.

This stands in direct contradiction to everything that is scriptural.
It's not about religion - it's about the bible, and the testamony about Jesus.

No. We are created with the heaven switch on. At the point that the individual "sins" (does wrong, whatever your term for falling short of doing what is right is) THEY flip the switch. Once the individual flips that switch, separating them from God (thus not losing their ticket to paradise, if you will) there is only one way to flip the switch back on, and it has nothing to do with how many "good works" one does - but in recognizing that faith in Jesus is the switch. It's not about quantity, but quality.

So - going to hell is not a decision by God, it's only a fullfillment of the choice that an individual makes. It's all about the heart. Either one recognizes the place God has in existance, and how they're in relation to that, or they decide for themselves that it's all about them, and how they percieve God in relation to thier reality - as to where they'll end up. The choice is entirely in the hands of man.

I fail to see the significance in contradiction.



It's not an assumption on my part, I'm merely stating a biblical concept - and that is where the idea of "all knowing" comes from. If you're going to state a biblical concept as an a priori than it helps to understand that concept. Else, you are not talking about God, in which case - who are you talking about?



Not quite. The omniscience (all knowing) of which we are speaking is not confined by time. Therefore - the knowledge is in everything that will ever happen - as the only constraint of "now" is on those who dwell on this planet. Omniscience already knows all from the end of time, backwards to the beginning. Therefore they know what has occured, and what "might" have occured is irrelevant, because it doesn't exist. It is only in the mind as a possibility, and there is no "knowing" in possibility only assumptions.



Actually, since I strongly believe you and I fall woefully short of the mind of God, your stating with certainty that God does not know the future is delusional at best. Perhaps you consider the thousands of prophecies of scripture that were fullfilled centuries after the prophets died - coincidence. That still does not demonstrate that God is unaware of what has happened in the future. For despite the unsurity of decisiveness of man in the present, whatever happens in the future is going to happen, and for an entity that is aware of all of the circumstances surrounding every decision that is to be made, knowing what the eventual outcome will be is not hard to reason that an omnicient being already knew what the choices are (were). For all of the logic that you are attempting to assert - time is an asssumed premise as a constraint. If we remove time from your argument - you have no foundation to support your conclusions.



But you have nothing to base your assertoin on than mere desire on your part. And if life has demonstrated anything - it is that just desiring something be true, does not make it so.



Why not? And he doesn't convert people to serve him. Where do you get that idea. Worship him, perhaps - but he doesn't convert anyone to serve him, everyone does already, whether they choose to or not. For no one can do anything apart from God. Man is incapable of even breathing on his own. If you think this is true - attempt to stop breathing by shear will. Do it for - oh, say an hour. Then you can claim that there's no entity you're serving.

And despite what you may think, God knows every action you have enacted, every choice you've made, are making, or will make. If you do not think this is true, than you're just in denial of defining God. All you're doing is defining a God that cannot exist. Anyone can do that. Perhaps it might be easier to attempt to understand the God that already exists.

What!?!? If I'm not mistaken, it was a bullet that killed this man - not a bunch of words. Do you understand cause and effect?

How about these simple concepts... As ye reap, ye sow, Actions have consequences, and all of those simplistic biblical concepts, so obvious, even an Evolutionist can understand it. Evolution is easy to understand, it's believing it that takes more faith than one man can muster.

That doesn't make any sense. If God is all knowing they don't know what is happening beyond now. You're contradicting yourself.

Actually, that's not quite accurate. He did not create people to go to hell, else everyone would. It isn't God's choice that people go to hell - it's their choice. He doesn't make the decision for anyone.

So I guess you could say that if one finds themself in hell - it's because they were a fool while they were on earth. That's what's sloppy.

Jeannie;

If we are viewing "will" as being defined as concious choice rather than "desire" - than I agree with you. The key word here is choice. The power of which has, and always will remain with the individual. Even following a programmed decision process is a choice unto itself. I always prefer to use the term "freedo of choice" rather than "free will" because the term will can refer to a number of meanings, whereas one can rearly misinterpret choice - especially in reference to biblical topics.

You're a joy my friend. Keep me posted on your results.

well for one - there's this:



I agree. Since Don-E-2 is an Evolutionary Biologist, I find it hard to believe he does not have an agenda, and that his research and conclusions are unbiased. In fact, I'll go as far as to say he's blinded by bias. Just another minister of Evolution. Since he provides no evidence of his research, let's pass around that salt shaker shall we, to help swallow those pointless assertions of his.

Here's my point. Respond to this one.

Take a frog and put it in a blender. Turn the blender on for - oh, let's say a minute. Now pour the contents into a bowl. How long will it take the contents to mutate back into a frog? And please explain your answer.

Since all of the genetic material needed to mutate into the frog in the first place are present, you should be able to successfully explain how this occurance will take place, since this is how life began in the first place - is it not? No, wait - this is NOT part of the theory of Evolution... or is it? Since Abiogenesis is NOT the beginning of Evolution, and Creationism is a myth. Where did life begin? Let's start with that cornerstone and see where it leads.

For Bushi, or whoever else wishes to comment.

A complete mis-understanding of genetics. What are you talking about?

Here, let's simplify this. Correct me if I'm wrong about this - but Evolution presumes that all life has eminated from a single source, and that over b-i-l-l-i-o-n-s of years and m-a-n-y mutations, we have arrived at all of the millions of species walking, flying, swimming, or rooted into the dirt - all sharing their original DNA with the "origin of life".

Now - even YOU have to admit, that thre are species with more information in their DNA than others.

So - please explain how that occured, and give examples in the Evolutionary records where this phenomina has been documented. Then you can come here and tell me that your Religion of Evolution is in fact - scientific. Other than that - don't claim someone else knows nothing of genetics until you can support your theory with it.

And while your at it - supply some evidence of this "new information" added to the genome. I don't recall a Nobel prise being awarded for this discovery. Support your claims with some facts every now and then - will ya, huh?

And answer the questions I posed, or I'll repeat my post till they lock this thread.

Yes, I do have a point.

First off - is this supposed to represent something greater than mutation within a species? If so - elabotrate for me.

Here's something that concerns me about the good scientists' conclusions. Did he map out any of the DNA of the bacteria he was working with, and the various mutations discovered through their generations? If not - WHY NOT? For if this information is available, and it demonstrates (I cannot stress this fact enough) that _information was gained_ through the mutations, then I will become an Evolutionist for life. If not, what is the excuse for not doing so, and how is his study anything more than conjecture, or proof that the natural course of events is present (I.E. loss of DNA information through mutation) which supports Creationism more than it does Evolution.

I will bump this thread until these questions are adressed.

And how is it you know that there aren't dinasaurs on the planet even as we speak? Let's say for the moment that dinasaurs roamed the planet with man. What is your proof they did not? And most thinking Christians bother to examine the "evidence" for evolution, and rather than take a human's subjective opinion about their observations - await the "proof".




You're premise is false. Just because God knows the choices that man makes does not mean man is without choice. It can be easily demonstrated that man has the freedom of choice (as opposed to free will. No one has a free will) and that God is fully aware of the choices made. Since God is not contrained by time, an action does not have to occur before He is aware of what it "was".

Now you're redefining your terms. We have extensive proof of gravity through experimentation - but science is not about the "why's" of anything so what was your original point?

We know nothing of "how" evolution works, as there has yet to be a succesful experiment recreating any conjecture that is presumed. What we have are many observances of fossils, and then subjective explinations as to how they may or may not relate. Which - by the way, every one of the fossils that "prove" evolution, also verify and prove creation. It's a matter of world view. Since there is no way to substanciate anything that EITHER side claims - it just boils down to what one is willing to put their faith in. While I cannot disagree with you that the advances in science and technology are mind boggling, I cannot agree that any observances of the scientists of the last 150 years lays any claim to what occured 6,000-10,000 years ago (for those Creationists in the croud) or 4 to 5 billion years old for that matter. There's no way to substanciate it. It's all conjectured extrapolation. It's like looking at an Escher. You can understand what you're looking at - but it is impossible to verify it in reality.

I'm not an "evolution denier" - I just don't see there being enough "facts" to support the conjectures. From the presumption of dating (a scientific contradiction in and of itself) to the lack of ANY success in the laboratory to substanciate the suppositions.

For instance. In the original post - I don't disagree that an extremely old, unique fossel was discovered shedding light on perhaps a "new" - which is just another way of saying previously unknown, as there's nothing "new" about it, but to draw any conclusion as to how it fits in the order of man is what science fiction novels are created on. Where's the "science" in that?

Perhaps this is the case. But the post I responded to did not adress the evidence for the "origin" of gravity. Gravity is a scientific fact - a hard and true theory. The claim was that thee is more Evidence for evolution than gravity. Ludicrous. There's nohing subjective about gravity.