That stuff is hilarious! Thanks for the laugh, dcs. Evolution and geology are incorrect because God was much more vengeful in the past? Pure comedy gold!

Glad you're amused mattloch  -- Myself, I find it to be a wealth of information.  I bought the book pictured on the link last Friday at Bereans. I haven't had a chance to read too much yet, but it is a gold mine. All I had before was thin book written in 1983!

   I was some what dismayed when I saw the list of arguments NOT to use -- I was batting about 500 on those!

P.S. Mattloch  -- Evolution and geology are incorrect because God was much more vengeful in the past?  Is that from the link? I haven't seen anything like that, and it doesn't sound like anything I would expect to find.

(edit) P.P.S.  --  I suppose that's just your wording and sarcasm for the flood. 

Was it found in the fiction aisle?

Sorry DCS, that was just plain sarcastic. ;) 

One thing that is definitely true in the book....'The idea of a young earth is not compatible with evolution.'

Amen Anti  -- And creation is not compatible with evolution - young earth or old.   That's what alot of folks need to get a handle on .... like the Pope.

Instead of filtering our faith in the Bible through "science" - we should be filtering our science through the Bible to determine the validity of said science, and make our conclusions.

But what if the subject of the question isn't addressed in the bible? Let's take, oh, something common and ordinary like deafness. As far as I know, there aren't any instances in the bible in which someone was healed of deafness.  Blindness, yes. There plentiful references by Christians about faith making the deaf to hear and the blind to see.  Yet, those expression are metaphorical. They speak of the benefits of opening one's heart to faith, but they don't literally mean that faith will make people who are clinically deaf or blind able to hear or see. Yet there are an endless number of Christians who say that faith literally will allow a deaf person to hear or a blind person to see.

Why is it that deafness isn't healed by faith but something else is?  My niece wrote me a nice letter once telling me that her neighbor had a very painful bone spur on her foot and that she called the 700 Club to ask for a prayer. She said her neighbor's foot pain vanished.  I noted that, on the day she said that happened, something like 200,000 people died in a tsunami along the edges of the Indian Ocean.  

Ray  --  Jesus did heal the deaf. That one fellow was deaf and dumb - and Jesus used spit - and said, "Be opened" - and the man could hear and speak.......   And He told John the Baptist's disciples to tell him what they saw, that the blind see and the deaf hear.........   And you're right, I've witnessed it with my own eyes as well. 

   But about that tsunami..... I'm not sure what you're getting at (we've had enough trouble with communication already!)......  : )

   But I can tell you one thing that I don't think is just a coincidence.  Bush persuaded Israel into giving over the Gaza Strip and the residents were forced out of their homes, so they stood on their rooftops in protest while CNN broadcast it to the world.   24 hours later hurricane Katrine hit New Orleans and the residents were forced out of their homes up on their rooftops, and Again it was broadcast to the whole world.  Things that make you go Hummmm......

dcs: I don't know where your sources get their information. Many of the arguments you post sound like the ones posed by scientists when new scientific ideas were proposed. One of the problems of advancing the idea of human evolution is the lack of material proof. If all the discovered remains of prehistoric hominids were put into one pile, they would fit into a crate. Yet, there is enough of them to show that homosapiens--us--began to emerge about 200,000 years ago. This does not mean we are directly descended from apes and no DNA from Neanderthal has thus far been found in humans. Yet, there is no denying that pithecus and Java man were here before we came on the scene.    

By studying the Doppler effect (the "red shift") in the spectrum of galaxies, we know that the further away a galaxy is, the faster it is traveling away from us. By "reversing" this natural phenomenon, we can surmise the big bang occurred 10 to 20 billion years ago. (Depending on which astronomer you ask.)

The earth is accepted by geologists to be about 4.5 billion years old. The oldest rock found in the Grand Canyon is about 3.5 billion years old. The oldest rock found anywhere (in Greenland) is 4 billion years old. Among the moon rock samples--specifically the so called "genesis rock"-- is aged about 4 billion years old. 

Biblical and religious fundamentalists are hardly the only people who question scientific premises through discovery. Nobody challenges scientific thought more than other scientists. New ideas are not easily accepted. (Some paleontologists still insist on "brontosaurus" rather than "apotosaurus.") 

For all my counter claims to your post, may I relate my own observation and experience:

When I had the honor of accompanying a medical mission south of Mexico, two American doctors--surgeons--related that they had witnessed healing that was impossible. There was simply no scientific explanation. If two doctors who are in every sense of the word scientists can admit they don't have an answer to everything, then is it not logical that theologians don't either?

 "Be opened" - and the man could hear and speak

Impossible for someone who was born deaf. Since it says he could speak upon the command to "Be opened", he could not have been born deaf, so that ability was certainly no miracle. It sounds like the "healing revivals" I attended in my childhood, where people would walk to the front on crutches and walk away without them.  People who acquire a language before they became deaf will never, ever lose the ability to speak, but you can't put the ability to speak into the brain of an individual upon command.  This defies everything known about hearing and speech.

I've been profoundly deaf in both ears for the majority of my adult life so I speak as well as any hearing person. I've known hundreds of deaf people who were born deaf and they ALL had to go through a minimum of 13 years of speech therapy (some even more) to learn how to speak. In spite of doing so, practically none of them use their voices because they sound so bad, their articulation of speech is so bad, people complain about it and can be quite unkind. Having someone say, "Shut up, I can't stand your voice" after going through 13 years of speech therapy, is quite a blow. Deaf people don't forget it.

This is pure BS. Sorry. There's no getting around it.

I already had this argument with my Grandma's pastor when I was 15.  He finally just said "well, it comes down to faith."

I agree.  That's why I get all of my information refuting science from "Gone With The Wind."  Sorry, the bible just wasn't interesting enough. 

Husbandmaterial  -- you've got God in a pretty tight box.  Where do you think language came from in the first place. I speak in languages I don't even know.

   God loves to bust out of boxes.  Keep an eye on .gardencc.org  and watch for our God Encounter meetings -- come and see what the Lord will do.

CatherineBaker wrote, concerning the healing of the deaf: "I already had this argument with my Grandma's pastor when I was 15."

Since the advent of deaf education, THOUSANDS of deaf people have had this argument with their pastors.  They KNOW how hard it is to learn to speak.  Science clearly demonstrates the impossibility of a person learning to speak without YEARS of instruction and in the time of Jesus, there not only was NO education for deaf people but NO person who had even began the field of speech therapy.  What I've said in no way negates the beliefs of Christians on the issue of the man miraculously acquiring the ability to hear.  There have been cases in which hearing was blocked by an obstruction that was dislodged and restored the ability to hear. But if that person had the obstruction from birth or early childhood, the instantaneous acquisition of speech would have been impossible. 

What language, for example, would this man have spontaneously uttered? Presumably, he'd heard NO language of any kind before his hearing was restored. Did he rise up and immediately begin articulating Hebrew?  Even children with hearing don't immediately begin to speak. They go though a phase of babbling and playing around with sound, then making approximations of words, then finally speaking individual words.  That occurs over the space, minimum, of TWO YEARS.  Sentence construction begins later and the primitive sentences of children are short and, at times, word salad.  If a person has normal hearing, the don't acquire a command of language until the are around the age of 5 or six.  If they don't acquire language by this age because of deafness, they will struggle to do so for the rest of their lives.  Scientists absolutely know this and that is why children as young as two years old are fitted with cochlear implants.  The devise doesn't make the child "cured". They remain deaf, but since the electrodes are implanted directly into the cochlea, they can begin to hear sounds (no all implants are successful in this). They then have what is essentially a hearing aid surgically implanted in their head and just as with a hearing aid, when the battery goes dead, they can't hear any more.

The implant children had to go to speech therapy until they are at least 18 years old, so 16 years of speech therapy is now commonplace.

Catpaw  --  You said - "if two doctors who are in every sense of the word scientists can admit they don't have an answer to everything, then is it not logical that theologians don't either?'  ------ Yep, especialy theologians, many dont even believe what they study...... (edit)And Christians don't have all the answer either..... but we do have The Answer.  : ) 

Ray--I was actually talking about the age of the earth re: carbon 14 dating, etc that dcs217 was talking about.

Sorry.  I should have specified that.

dsc: Well, I'm not clear on who "we" is. There is a religious group of sincere christians who believe the world is flat. The Bible says when Satan tempted Jesus with "the whole world" Satan could not have shown Jesus the whole world unless the world was flat. And since the Bible doesn't lie....

Of course, the obvious answer is the Bible was written by scribes, not scientists. Taking the language of the scriptures to task is as ridiculous as challenging Homer or Dante.  So is taking the writers' every word literally. 

Whatever The Answer you have, it does not conform to scientific evidence of evolution, the age of the earth, or the nature of galaxies. If your going to explore the nature of God, I'd suggest that you study the world around you. "To know mathematics is to know the mind of God." Descartes (I think) said that. Math is the foundation of science.  "God does not play dice with the world." That was Einstein. Chaos theory says that order comes from chaos. I think you will find that if there is not a grand design to it all, from the expanding universe to evolution to rocks on the earth and moon, it certainly acts as if there is.

Science has not challenged the Bible. On the contrary, those who would interpret the Bible challenge science.

Catpaw  --Sorry my last comment was rushed because a friend came over.  He brought me a letter I wrote when I was in prison before I was saved.  What an eye opener!.....And..... I was just saying on my other post, that the way for me to keep it real on here is to remember the way I used to be! --- In my letter every other word was prophane and I was just so lost - and worried about things I had no control over.... Sorry I'm drifting. 

  Actually, The Bible has quite a few things in it that agree with science or discoveries  before their time.  Mountains under the sea  -  Circular earth  - are in Job.   Hebrews 11:3, to me,  is a passage that  tells us that what is seen in the universe was formed by what we can't see --- atoms........  There are more - but I'm not supposed to use things like that .....oops. 

 Because the Bible is not a science book, it is just that it will never say anything contrary to history or archeology or science. 

   The history and the archeology are easy and being proven wth each new discovery. Science is more difficult, and it certainly helps to have a born again mind to (we believe) correctly discern all the evidence.  But look at the link, and evaluate the science that is used for yourself.  I'm not a scientist, and I don't think you are.  I don't think you've personally studied the doppler affect of Galaxies or dated rocks from the grand canyon.  You're only repeating what you have heard - and you trust the conclusions because they are from trained scientists..... who just happen to believe that science and anything supernatural cannot co-exist.  Therefore, we believe, it can lead to some erroneous conclusions.   The flood was supernatural, God speaking light into existence is supernatural, etc. etc. etc.  The quite valid and extensive scientific research done by Bible believing scientists only serves to support the Biblical account of creation found in Genesis.  If you give if a chance, with an open mind...........

P.S.  I wish I could have had a book like this available before I was finally saved. I think the marerial in it would have given me enough doubt in the theory of evolution that I may have embraced creation as the only viable alternative, and then believed on Jesus Christ as Lord.  .......

  As it was, the Bible did it. It was the first time ever I'd read one. It was in prison, and there was nothing else to read for a while. And I started at the beginning, like any other book.  And when I read,  "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"..... I dunno ....Something happened.... I just believed it.... and I just kept reading......

   About one week later, at about 11:30 at night on Dec. 17, 1991.... I just cried out...."Ok.... I Believe, I Believe...." .  I felt a flood of forgiveness wash over me and I cried with relief and joy .....and I slept all night long.  I woke up and it was my birthday - I was 36 years old in the flesh, and one day old in the Spirit.... And I knew I was different. I had a peace that was indescribable.  It seems as though it was yesterday.  I am soooooooo thankful !!!!  

Didn't see this blog earlier, but if you want the scientific debunking of this (or any other creationist nonsense) the best source on the net is the Talk Origins archives.  These arguments appear to be the ones advanced by convicted tax evader Kent Hovind.

http://www.talkorigins.org/...

For a good, easy-to-understand book on how dating works and why Young Earth Creationism is absurd, try "Bones, Rocks and Stars" by Chris Turney.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/...

He's got a new book out on climate change as well, called "Ice, Mud and Blood"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/...

Hey Random  --  I was wondering where you were. The author of the book I've got is Roger Patterson.  He has a B.S. Ed. degree in biology with a minor in chemestry from Montana State Univesity - Billings.  Before joining the curriculum development team at Answers in Genesis, he taught biology and chemistry for eight years in Wyomings public school system. 

   I'm sick today and stayed home from work.  I plan on staying in bed all day!  Pretty sick.  But I'll have a look at your links later.  I'm sure I'll give them as much creedence as you give mine.  ( :   But I hope you will look at the biology presented - it refutes the evolutionary claims made in the major textbooks used today hands down. (in my humble opinion)  Later.

Answers in Genesis is thoroughly debunked at the website I mentioned.  I attended a lecture once by Hovind and found his a very entertaining speaker and a complete charlatan.

Keep in mind that a BS degree is the lowest rung on the evolutionary scale for biologists.  I *HOPE* Patterson didn't try to teach creationism to the public school kids...

Patterson (and the AiG people) need to decide whether they're teaching theology or science.  If theology, they need to leave the science out of it.  If science, they need to leave the theology out of it.

.

I've been in "nesting syndrome" mode myself most of the weekend, clearing out the garage for our expected bundle of joy. 

Well how about that!  Congratulations  ( :

I am sorry to hear that you're feeling under the weather, Dcs.  What's wrong?  I've been sick, too.  I wonder if it is the same ailment.

When I read your story above, I can see that your spiritual path really is the best for you, and I am not saying that with any disrespect.  I wrote on that general topic here: http://people.bakersfield.c...

Obviously I have a different concept of God than you do, very different, but you may find my "dietary regimen" analogy helpful.  The spiritual regimen that you are promoting might be the right prescription for people with some needs, but if I were the Goddess, it would not make sense to me to give the exact same instructions and treatment regimen to everyone regardless of their actual needs.

If our "personal relationship" with God, as it is called, is really personal, then it would be wrong for me to expect that your relationship would be, or should be, exactly like mine or that of anyone else.

By the way, the "bundle" is 38 years old, has a 1300cc engine, and drives with a British accent.

Thanks Appollo  --It's an inner ear/sinus thing going on that I've been battling for a looooong time. I'm scheduled for minor surgery on the 16th.  High hopes.

Random  -- When Roger P.  was teaching, he wasn't saved yet.  He's remorseful for all the kids he has led astray.  Although his B.S. is low on the wrung, he works with AIG and pulls from many sources - plenty of PHD'S  - (as if that were the judging criteria) -  He provides all of his sources.  

Now.........back to bed

BMW   Random?  Triumph?

Triumph Spitfire, Nancy. 

 Random  -- When Roger P.  was teaching, he wasn't saved yet.

That happens a lot.  Folks "get religion" and toss their critical thinking skills out the window.

HA...I wasnt' far off....one of the cutest cars around.  Sorry, I know it's off topic.  I'm just jealous. 

Spouse's first "my car."  It's even the same color as the one she had to give up so long ago.

Congratulations on the new arrival. So, does this mean we won't see much of you because you'll be busy bonding with the new "baby?"

Looking forward to those late-night "vroom, vroom" visits in the garage.

Well congrats again  -- I thought it was a baby baby - ........  But a Triumph... wow - how cool is that!   I've had two miatas - and I just love sports cars.

There's quite a brilliant biological breakdown of "irreducable complexity" contained within In The Blink Of An Eye by Andrew Parker. The Cambrian Explosion was most likely caused by the evolution of vision (from similar proteins in eyespots and touch/chemical receptors). Every step of the chain, from a flat patch of light-sensitive cells (found commonly in flatowrms, but even in trees), to indented patches (allowing directional light sensing), to cup eyes, to eyes with retinas (a lens above the cup, focusing light onto the cells at the bottom of the cup), and finally the "camera-type" eye which gave Darwin such trouble (and is still used, to this day, as an example of irreducable complexity). Every single step of evolution of the eye can be found in nature today. The most important reason that every animal doesn't have the camera-type (or the complex compound eyes of insects) is that not all species have the available computing power of a large brain to process the images. The fossil record bears this out, in great detail. And none of it requires a lick of work by any god or God.

dcs:    I come from alittle different understanding than you and some Christians of Genesis

I see a pause in Genesis 1 and 2  In the  3rd verse God said Let there be light     

I believe verse 1 was the beginning     I also believe  alot of time happened before verse 2 and alot of time before verse 3

"Verse 3 began the 1st day not of the creation of the earth and universe but of the beginning of life on this planet

We can talk someday about my thoughts on that

But here is one reason I lean to what I said above    When Noah was told to collect all the animals  there is not one verse about dinosaurs  there is never any animal ever descibed  that large on the ARK

My other thought    God said Hell Hades was created for the fallen angels not man    Satan and his angels had fallen before man was created  and if hell had been created for the angels then the earth had to be here before man and it had to be here along time before man

You see I have no problem with the earth and other beings (satan and worker angels) being here  millions of years before man

I believe Lucifer was over a great number of workers spirit being's (because satan and angels are spirits not flesh and blood)

I also believe the oldest of beast were here at that time and I believe the records prove that since we know the dinosars were here and not on the Ark

Just my thoughts and beliefs concerning the happenings before a new earth and heavens  I have never heard anyone ever teach this before and it doesn't make me as a teacher  but I believe there are Truths out there that haven't been taught

Ron

allRed: "I also believe the oldest of beast were here at that time and I believe the records prove that since we know the dinosars were here and not on the Ark"
 

 nsfw
 

Matt:   my I take your quote as a belief in the Ark ?

Ron

You can put *ME* down as believing in it.  I saw Indiana Jones carrying it in a wooden box. 

Oh your talking to me now Random  ?

I made a statement on the other blog and not like you to comment    I thought after days you might have a answer by now

Random are you going to leave me stranded    Not like you Buddy   was my answer to much ?

Contrary to popular opinion, I don't see everything posted on every blog.  Could you point me towards it?  What blog?  What question?

The Noah's Ark story is every bit as real as "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"  Not quite up to "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," though. 

Forget the worldwide flood...nuke the fridge!

Random:

Well Random seeing we dont know what His plan was

Let me see if this helps

God created a certian amount knowing the failure rate and lets say it is 80%    God wanted that 20% knowing 80% would fail

He didn't want 10 people he didn't want one million what He did want is what He knew 20 billion or 30 billion or what ever number it took to get the number He wanted  knowing the 80% failure rate to get to those 20%

Those 20% as you say are not mindless robots  but tested with Fire and Sin coming out  with one thing He was after    True LOVE

He couldn't create True LOVE without lossing 80% to get His Goal     After all He is (IS)   He is I"M   He formed the clay and we are formed without question    He knowing that no matter What World He created the loss rate would be 80%   He knows   you or me would be the same in any world He created 

I believe what we see is the best world He could have created to get His 20% 

 The ancient scripts that predate - and might rewrite - the Bible

A fresh interpretation of a stone tablet dated to the decades before Jesus's birth could undermine some fundamentals of the Christian faith, experts claim.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...

Still can`t figure out which "Jesus " are they talking about .Is it one of the many from hundreds of years before the modern day brand "Jesus " ?

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.c...

Damn broadband lost my answer.  Trying again:

Ron, you're bringing up the old paradox where god either isn't good, or he isn't god.

Your argument basically says that god is as good at his job as I am a carpenter.  Oh, I can saw wood and hammer nails, and it stays together--usually--but for anything complicated I call in an expert. 

So god's just barely good enough.  He's a "C" student like our current White House occupant. 

If god is all-knowing, he knows in advance that 80 percent of his work will fail the test.  Now, your typical elementary school teacher can usually get about 80 percent or better of her students to advance to the next level.  God would never make tenure in any public-school system.

If the best he can do is a failure rate four times the success rate, and he responds by inflicting eternal torture on those failed individuals, then he's far worse than a mechanic who fixes one out of five cars and beats the other four flat with a sledgehammer.  The least he could do--since his design *ALSO* deliberately inflicts pain and suffering during life as well--would be to have death end things for those 80 percent.  In that event, he'd be no different from the standard atheist point of view.  Torturing those atheists for *HIS* poor work is just childish.  Better still would be to create some sort of atheist heaven where folks like Einstein and Carl Sagan could get to use *REALLY* big instruments to explore the universe, and lecture the rest of us on what really is going on. 

Again, there are theologies which make sense.  The old Norse gods weren't omnipotent or omniscient.  Zeus had plenty of frailties and made plenty of mistakes--which the Greeks forgave.  There's a wonderful book called "JOB:  A Comedy of Justice," in which both God and the devil appear--and god isn't the good guy.  Doesn't pretend to be.  But then again, *BOTH* god and his brother satan have to answer to an even *HIGHER* god, so at least he has the excuse of "following orders."

The big problem with Christianity is that once Paul perverted it to make it more mass-marketable, all bets were off.  Every time a flaw in the reasoning was found, it was patched over with another rationalization.  Rather like the Windows operating system, with Microsoft coming out every month with a few new patches to fix their mistakes.  But those patches have mistakes.

God doesn't exist.  If he *DID* exist, he wouldn't be simultaneouly all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good.  You could pick two of the three, but all three can't coexist without lots of contradictions popping up.

Random :  Revelation 21: 8-  But the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and murders and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death

That doesn't sound like Paul    that sounds like the Word of God  He is giving you a warning when you face Him  He is also warning you before your death.

What more can He do give you a reprieve should He go against His Word      Hilter Stalin you or me  we have been told the rules   now after death we look Him in the face and admit we were wrong and please forget our lies murders  gay sexual desire's and all the false things we said about you     yea (RIGHT )

Like I said earlier Random   He wanted Man/Women   not Angels because they have seen Him  we haven't It's called Faith and from Faith comes LOVE   TRUE LOVE   and the only way was to create a being/being's without site but Faith

Ron