Scientists aren't at war with religious fanatics. Religious fanatics create their delusion of having an ongoing war with science.

And why do they perceive such a war? Because the observations of science conflict with their fables.

So the mere fact that religious fanatics recognize a conflict between their mythologies and scientific discovery only shows that they are fully aware of just how utterly absurd their fables are.



Well, that's the kind of things that a religious person must do. Keep chipping away at the fables in a desperate attempt to make them appear to potentially fit into what is actually known by science.

All you're doing here is bowing down to science, acknowledging that science must indeed be supported, and that the fables must be constantly re-interpreted and re-evaluated to try to get them to comply with our true knowledge of the world.

Personally I'm not impressed by your explanation. We could revive Greek Mythology in a similar way. Just say that the Gods are indeed still living on Mt. Olympus. They're just invisible to us is all.

You can always come up with additional silliness to support your myths until the cows come home.

The bottom line for me is that these technical debates aren't even required. The bible claims that the Egyptians and Canaanites refused to worship God, but it has them worshiping gods anyway. So these authors of the bible are caught red-handed making up fibs about other cultures in an attempt to place their 'religion' above all others.

Their motivation and intent is crystal clear. So why bother wrestling with all these other trivial things when the stories are clearly false to begin with?

And then you're still stuck with the fact that death, disease, and all manner of imperfections existed prior to the arrival of mankind on the planet, thus flying in the face of the very foundational premise of the biblical fables that mankind's fall from grace is responsible for these things.

And you're still faced with the fact that if Adam and Eve didn't know the difference between good and evil before they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would have necessarily had to have performed that very act in a state of pure innocence.

But then they couldn't have been held responsible for having been 'guilty' of knowingly chosen to do evil.

It's just contradiction after contradiction after contradiction.

There's no possible way to salvage these ancient myths. And to be perfectly honest, I truly can't imagine why anyone would even want to really.

And I think it's impossible to have built the pyramids in such a precise and technical way when it can't be duplicated even with today's technology. We still don't have machines capable of moving some of the stones used in the ancient structures.

Yet, there they are....

James,

I'm a computer programmer. Part of my job is to anticipate unlikely events and build error traps to prevent them from breaking the program. The reason I'm good at what I do, is that I'm good at thinking that way. That said...

If I start a statement with "I believe" or something similar to that, that's what I believe. Otherwise, I am posting a possibility that someone might have overlooked. I favor a global flood theory, but I believe you have completely ignored the possibility of a flood that effected just the inhabited parts of the world. Instead of accepting that you ignored a very logical possibility, you respond with a Ad Hominem Abusive.

I do need to point out again the absolute lunacy of rejecting the idea of an all-powerful God, because you can't believe in a global flood. That one makes me laugh every time.

Yes.

Learn about the Human Genome project and all of their studies. I think you're be totally shocked and amazed at just how much they truly know.

Using DNA evidence from fossil bones of humans they have reconstructed the birth, and migration patters, of humanity from Africa out into the rest of the world.

The story is amazing and unbroken.

And that's the KEY right there. It's an unbroken story from the beginning of the first humans right up to today.

If there had been a major flood that had killed every human on Earth save for one small family, that would have changed this story dramatically.

Of course, one could argue, that the story of Noah and the Flood was indeed local, and that not all humans on earth were killed. That's basically what would need to be done to preserve the biblical story.

I personally have no problem with that. But it does bring into question the need for an Ark to have the animal kingdom ect.

In short, the fables become less and less credible in terms of having any verbatim merit.

Besides I personally have a myriad of other valid reasons for rejecting the biblical cannon of stories (especially in terms of them being reliable in terms of being a 'verbatim' account of anything truly precise)

At the very best they may have some sort of parable value. But once we go there, then most of the claims of the religions that are based on these fables becomes unwarranted.

Besides, I also don't need for tales of "Zeus" to be real in order to believe in spiritual concepts. And the same holds true for Yahweh. I have no need for Jesus to be "The Christ". It's simply not important to me. I personally know that I'm not at odds with any personified creator. So I feel no dire need for any 'savior'.

So I have no incentive whatsoever to even remotely believe these biblical tales.

For me, it simple doesn't come down to the idea that either the biblical account of god is true, or there is no such thing as spirituality.

I guess for people who think that way, the idea that the bible might be false is just unthinkable because, for them, the only possible alternative is atheism, which they may potentially find totally unacceptable.

I don't see it that way. I don't need to Hebrew picture of god to be true. It's just not important to me in the least. No more than I need Greek Mythology to be true.

It's an unbroken story from the beginning of the first humans right up to today.


so your faith in what they know is absolute,, in other words, you have reason to believe that what they have uncovered has no POSSIBLE absences in the information......?


interesting


well, I guess time will tell, perhpas

Humanities MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor) lived between 3,000 and 1,000 BC. Every single living human (regardless of where they live or what their skin color is) is related to the same woman who lived between 3,000 to 5,000 years ago.

Plea from non-believers everywhere: Please ignore the fact that Noah's flood is recorded to have happened during that time (around 2300 BC).

back to the OP,,,

The faith/God relationship is a very personal one.


I guess its not a question that can truly be proven as the standard of 'caring' is not absolute for any tangible evidence to 'prove'


its usually emotions proving or disproving emotions


mine tells me God cares, my experiences and how I interpret them tells me he cares, I am not egotistical enough to believe he cares ONLY about me so I believe he cares about EVERYONE


another interesting note in these debates,

ever notice that on one hand people claim that the religious are not 'self accountable'

but on the other hand some of the same folks will back up their disbelief in God based upon how he DOESNT intercede to alter the consequences of peoples choices?... wouldnt expecting THAT indeed be abandoning our self accountability

...things that make you say hmmmmmmm

most RECENT , would imply that this is changing with time, or at least CAN change with time,,,doesnt it?


science is constantly 'discovering' things, what they know so far is not always ALL there is to know,,,

It can change, but the most likely thing to change that would be a massive extinction of humans.

Yes, that would be hilarious if true, but for a computer programmer you don't exhibit much logic, IMHO.

On these boards I've given countless sound reasons for why I reject the biblical picture of God. The flood being the least of my reasons.

Moreover, when did I ever reject the idea of an all-powerful God?

Never. I have never rejected any such idea. All I have ever done is explain why the ancient Hebrew stories can't be the word of any such God.

I accept the idea of a potentially all-powerful God. In fact, I go way beyond the Christians in that regard.

I accept Eastern Mysticism as potentially being truth. And it imagines God to be far more powerful than the biblical portrait of God. Far more powerful.

In fact, I believe that reincarnation is far more likely than the idea that humans are judged for all of eternity based on a single solitary shot at life. Especially when so many humans die in childhood, or in their rebellious teenage years. What sense would it make for a God to judge a rebellious teenager in the same way that he would judge a 90 year old sage?

It makes no sense at all, IMHO.

In fact, many of my arguments against the biblical picture of God is simply that this picture isn't anywhere near wise enough to represent an all-wise God.

I started a thread once suggesting that reincarnation is a far wiser system of raising human souls than a single lifetime. Cowboy came into that thread and argued that the Earth would become over-populated if that were the case.

Well, for one thing, the world has become over-populated.

But that's totally beside the point. I argued that God could use billions upon billions of other planets just within this very universe that we observe around us. Cowboy refused to allow God to be that powerful and demanded that God must be restricted to only using planet Earth to raise his humans.

I even allow for God to use entirely different universes that we aren't even aware exist. I give God INFINITE POWER.

The biblical picture robs God of any real power. The biblical God can't even forgive sins without a blood sacrifice being made.

The biblical picture of God is extremely limiting.

So for someone who is suppose to know something of logic, you should be well aware that my ideas of God are so vast that they simply cannot be reduced to the trivial stories of the bible.

I don't use the failings of the bible to reject God.

On the contrary, I use the POWER OF GOD to reject the bible.

I place God far above what most Christians can even begin to imagine.

But you still reject the flood, which is very funny.



Logical Fallacy: Straw man. From this point on, your post is a rant, based on the straw man.

You're the one who posted:



Not a word of which is true. (i.e. total straw man to begin with)

More likely (re:THE flood) is that god did not create the flood. Noah was simply made aware that such a devastating thing was going to occur. He warned to no avail and then when that 'civilization' was damaged to the point of no return the survivors cooked up the story of God causing it because the 'event' was beyond their understanding.

Reckon that if we had an all out nuclear war the people 3000 years later will have a 'story' of god 'burning' us because we were bad...

That is the way human history works... When the survivors regather someone allways comes up with a 'control' mechanism so they can be 'top dog'.

A wise observation...

Now if people will apply that logic to just about every event in the Bible, there may be less arguing.

Ya know, I can stand a lot, but I can't stand the lack of creativity and originality.

I didn't attack you; I dismissed your claim of the existence of a flood.

Yawn.

the Moon landing very real the Ark and believing in a book word for word is no bueno

the bible is not original all the stories are other cultures religious stories

to understand history you need to study multiple perspectives from all the cultures in one time period

what are the other 'perspectives' on the moon landing?

some people think it was hollywood government conspiracy but we have tons of tangible proof and technology is amazing i live in florida so just go to the musuem and space center and watch a shuttle launch


the ark there is no proof other than a short story in the bible

maybe or maybe not


google noahs ark in turkey and come to your own conclusions


interesting though that a country with a predominant ISLAMIC culture, like TURKEY , would verify the find,,,,(Shrugs)

Jesus is a prophet in Islam
The Ark story is in the Quran read it


and maybe maybe not..... really?

we have real proof of a moon landing it happened when not so long ago

no prooof of an ark could not have done what the bible said it done back before sumerian civilization even existed