When did you accept God in your life, or realize you did not believe in him?

well, there IS global warming by definition because the earth is measruably warmer than it was one hundred years ago. but what is the significance and what caused it? who knows. maybe it has nothing to do with man and maybe it'll actually turn out to be good. totally possible. i am completely willing to accept that "global warming" might be a complete crock.

are you willing to accept that the bible might be a complete crock?

 

which is why a scientific argument about the bible is utterly pointless. if science doesn't fit, then "god did it" or that particular sliver is allegory. if enough doesn't fit, then it was written so that people of the time could understand it.

science is actually just the opposite of "truth and not fact". it is purely interested in the facts -- the "truth" is left up to somebody else. that is, science describes a phenomenon and doesn't really get into "what are the implications if this is true?" it either is a good description of the phenomonon or it's not -- the bigger picture is only important if it supports or disproves the smaller pieces.

the "big picure" stuff changes wildly as new theories come up. space-time, quantum mechanics, strings... these things have serious implications but are not examined with the idea that they need get us to a particular truth -- they simply are attempts to descibe the observable universe.


einstein once tried to come up with a theoretical force that it's inversely proportional to the distance two bodies are from each other. the goal was to describe a universe that didn't keep expanding because the implications of an expanding universe were not very welcomed. that is bad science, in my book.

 

Proof is a subjective term. At the very least, it's highly coincidental that a man-made structure fitting the description of the ark would be resting precisely where the Bible says it is. Some eyewitness statements (particularly the locals) say the structure is wooden, and it's way above any treeline.

 

Good site. I actually read through that entire article and bookmarked the site. Looks like they make some pretty strong arguments.

I never saw the one they debunk, though. I will give them credit however -- they blast the crap out of that one doc. But again, I've seen several (excluding the one referenced on talk.org) and they've all been different. For the record, they're all portrayed as "inconclusive", but certainly haven't disproven anything.

Why wouldn't we? Who says God isn't still creating new species? The Bible doesn't say one way or the other.

The stages are similar, yes, and that's the point I was trying to convey. Darwin came up with that hypothesis in the early 19th century (if I'm not mistaken). Moses wrote Genesis about 5 1/2 millenia earlier, and he was just a nomadic shepherd at the time. How could he possibly have come up with that, considering his intelligence level and utter lack of scientific resources?

I've said elsewhere that I'm not one who hangs my hat on literal interpretation of the creation account timeline. The Bible itself is actually a little vague (throwing into question what is a "day" to God, for example).

 

hey! didn't you read what i wrote about this?

plants (in particular fruit bearing ones)
whales (and fish, presumably)
birds
land animals
man

land animals come before birds and whales.

a simple nomadic shephard would probably think whales are fish when in fact they are quite different. if he put whales down seperately from fish and after land animals, then i might wonder where he got such a radical notion and could see how people would infer it was divine.

and fruit bearing trees didn't evolve until land animals evolved. a fruit's whole purpose is to produce a seed in a tasty wrapping so an animals will eat it and distribute its seeds somewhere away from the parent tree (and in a pile of fertilizer, too boot). without animals, why create something tasty for animals to eat?


edit: i see. you're still catching up! what's wrong, you got a life or something?

 

why would the bible's account be silly?

 

No, I'm not willing to accept that. That is what faith is. Kinda like all the researchers who think they will find a cure for cancer when there is really no reason, other than hope, to think that.

 

Horseshit. Evolution is currently truth and not fact at best.

 

no the use of the bible to prove the bible would be silly.

 

sure. kind of like that. only the people trying to find a cure for cancer are HOPING to find a cure, implying that they think it's possible that they won't. you, on the other hand, do not accept the possibility that you're wrong. that simply is not scientific. that is why the two worlds are incompatible.

science can shed zero light on religious matters. i'm fine with people believing what they want. i know people get something good from religion. i just think it's insincere when they turn to science to attempt to prove their faith when their faith cannot be disproven by those same mechanics.