DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Question for the Religious....

jc

More food for thought: Everyone alive today is atheist regarding most gods that have ever been worshiped by man.

That's such a reach. Evolutionists have no real power in the world. Evolution would be a very failed conspiracy if "controlling people" was a goal.

Do you have free will?

The greater claim is a matter of perspective. Mathematics can use the concept of infinity, but religion can't?

Changing the laws of the universe isn't a requirement of creationism. Things outside our understanding, yes, but not necessarily in opposition to those laws.

I just feel that both should have to do a better job of defending their positions and admitting their faults. Less name calling by those not really in the know would be great, too. People on both sides of the debate can be way too entrenched/closed-minded.

Analyse how natural selection can be created by the creator to help ensure that life on Earth can evolve and prosper. Then we'll talk. Until then you are just spewing fiction written centuries ago.

Do you think we would have "Gay marriage" if not for the theory of evolution? I'm not saying I'm against gay marriage- people can do whatever they want in their personal lives. Evolution gives reasoning for equality. If we all came from monkeys, how can one group be superior to another? We have laws to control peoples actions, but theories/beliefs work much better for adapting peoples thoughts/attitudes over time.

I actually consider myself an agnostic theist.

I have, let's talk.

Actually, I think I'd prefer it if you didn't, but feel free. Have you read any pro-Intelligent Design literature? Or are you one of those people who know they are right and don't try to understand anyone else's perspective?

quote by YTown above:

"It is all but mathematically impossible for the universe, and life, to have self created. There has to have been a creator of some sort."

leave out the "all but mathematically":

"It is impossible for the universe, and life, to have self created. There has to have been a creator of some sort."

"There has to have been a creator of some sort."

Call the creation/creator what you want. To say there wasn't one is provincial. (short-sighted, closed-minded, too abstract or if you prefer... stupid).

Of course not. Evolution doesn't have a moral philosophy. However, evolution would probably be against marriage itself as monogamy does not lead to a diverse gene pool as much as polygamy does.

Huh?

Maybe I'm not understanding.

Having 1 male knock up 2,3, 4, 20 females is better for the gene pool? Doesn't that spread his genes a little far?

It's not like he's running out of genes.

Until another more fit male comes around and knocks him out.

Evolution cant be true in humans because every time I start a project at home I always find myself needing a third arm and hand. Billions of years should have taken care of that simple request.

I haven't read this thread and I am not going to. However, I wanna make a revelation, a presumption, and a connection, and perhaps a prediction. Lot's of "tions," huh?

Revelation: I am not at all religious. I pretty much have shunned and despised religions for years. I remember listening to some Baptist minister who said that if you weren't a Baptist, you wouldn't go to heaven. I asked why would God hold a good man out of his kingdom and due to the religion that he was "born" into. I got a BS answer and as time went on, no matter what church I went to, I saw the corruption of what was once intended to be a good thing and had digressed into a bureaucratic web of deceit.

Presumption: I presume that many of the members on this board are anti-religion and anti-spiritual. I inferred that from how many of you just jump at the chance to mock and demean religious groups as if they are the only groups that hypocritical and have some evilness in them. Do you ever make threads about gangs and how productive/unproductive they are? I had a student in East Cleveland that was raped and murdered by gang members in an empty parking lot after she left my class one day. Do y'all ever talk about that? Do you ever question their morals? Do you ever question why they rape and kill their own? No, you just pick on the religious people and lump them all together. If one is bad, they are all bad. How freaking ironic is that. The same type of bias that you despise is the same type of bias you promote.

Connection: I did not raise my kids in a religious household. My wife tried a bit, but when the kids saw how I despised religion, they did, too. However, I do know this............as a teacher.......the children who are raised in families that regularly attend church exhibit far better behavior and character traits. Do not misinterpret that I am saying that this is always the case. I am talking percentages.

Prediction: A Godless society is a society w/out parameters on what is unacceptable behavior. A Godless society is one that is doomed.

Conclusion: I don't know if God is real or not. I will probably never join an established church and become religious. However, I do think there is value in what is taught in churches. Sound moral character is a good thing. I wish that we could remove the corruption and false pretenses from religion and offer our children a place where they can develop good morals. I also wish we could remove the politics and bureaucratic nature of religions and concentrate on spirituality. I am not a religious person, but I am a spiritual person. I wish more people had that point of view and concentrated more on helping others rather than feeding their own needs and prejudices.

I'm not sure if your response was to me directly, or the follow up.

I didn't necessarily mean they meant to control people, but it could have been used as a tool to help maintain social order?

Be good and go to heaven, be bad and go to hell.

I'm not arguing either way, and I'm not sure if I believe that or not BUT I certainly won't deny that it's a possibility.

This is what I tried to explain to Ytown. He either doesn't actually go to church or he goes to a non demonination church.


Christians themselves can't even agree on how you're supposed to be "saved." They can't agree on how one should be baptized. They can't agree on doctrine. There are people who think they're saved by just watching TV and reading their bibles. This does nothing but fuel the arguments of atheists and agnostics.

So you believe pure nothingness created everything you see before you now and every complex organism is the history of the universe just happened by chance?



All of this is why I feel I'm agnostic. Christians can't agree on how to be saved and have about 100 different interpretations of the Bible. However, it violates every law in the universe for me to believe everything that's ever happened just happened by chance. Just look at the intricacies and complexities of the human brain.

That's how I arrived there a few years ago, Candy. You should read up on Carl Sagan. Dabble a bit in both Cosmos series, and you'll feel just a bit more enlightened.

I see where you're going with this, but do we need church for that? Couldn't well meaning parents just do it on their own?

I think the concept of someone/thing always watching you, and your actions having long term consequences even if you don't get caught/in earthly trouble has some value.

I think my view is this- God is an entity we were never meant to understand. He is beyond any possible comprehension. I believe Gods power can't be described or understood. Especially by just us humans and I feel like it's almost arrogant on our part to believe that we actually can. Maybe it's possible to understand parts about him, but never all of him.

I'm not sure paranoia has much value. It seems limiting to make yourself afraid. Follow your convictions, and don't harm yourself or your fellow human beings.

I will ask again, since you took it back to that level. What created the bacteria? If it is mathematically impossible for life to create itself, then what created life? (bacteria or other)

As far as God, the Bible says that God created all of the animals by speaking them into existence. He said "Become", (or whatever word He used) and it did. For man, God formed man with His own 2 hands, and breathed life into him. It was a completely different process than the creation of the animals.

At least the Bible explains who man has that special spark within him that we call self-awareness and consciousness. It explains why man is different from the animals on the earth.

So, anyway, back to the question .... what created the 1st life if evolution is taken back to the beginning? It cannot have created itself. It cannot appeared out of nothing. What, in your view, created the 1st living thing on this planet?

I would hate to have your viewpoint, because it really says that we are nothing but genetic drives and accidents that somehow manage to drag us up from the muck. I think more highly of the human race, even with all of our problems, than that. I don't see us as a bunch of accidents, driven forward ... somehow. It does explain how some can believe such a thing, and then also believe in immoral behavior, rampant sexuality, and removing responsibility from people for their actions. "It's not their fault ...... it's evolution". (and that is exactly what many atheists claim)

I have to disagree. If the earth is 6000 years old then:

- Why are radioactive isotopes with short halflifes still around?
- What about sediment layers in lakes? They are straightforward to measure, cover millions of years, and support other dating mechanisms such as radiometric dating. It is one of the mechanisms used to support the age of the earth being ~4.5B years.
- What about the ratio of helium/hydrogen in the sun?
- Why can we see stars that are millions of light years away? If the universe is 6-10k years old, we shouldn't see them.

These can be explained away by various claims that God changed thermodynamics, or God created apparent age in the universe. But these claims all require changing the laws of the universe.

One more thing. The book of Romans says in 1:20 that God is to be understood from what has been made. If we are to believe young earth creationism's reasons for apparent age or changing the laws of the universe, then we cannot trust what has been made, and God is now in contradiction.

Sure, that could be a possibility, I suppose ..... but for the early Jews, God gave them specific laws ... laws that were so far ahead of their time that it was incredible.

Even simple laws, like "Wash your hands before you eat", "Cook your food thoroughly", and "don't use your home and city as a bathroom" were all given to the early Jewish people, and many wondered why they survived plagues and such that killed off thousands in other societies.

The Law defined the family, and how the family relates to one another. The Law told those early Jewish people how to interact with one another, and with their God.

Pretty sophisticated stuff for people only learning how to live together in villages.

I'm afraid you've lost me...

I have also struggled with whether or not God used familiar concepts to communicate concepts beyond the understanding of those early people. I don't know how long it took God, in human time, to create everything. The Bible gives a time frame that theologists have said is from 6000 to 20,000 years. I believe that the earth is older than that. I have no idea how much older though.

As far as why God set certain strict penalties for what we consider to be relatively minor transgressions, well, how do you teach a child? Do you teach him by allowing him to get away with everything, and then try to install rules and discipline into his life ..... or do you start out more stringent, and then ease up somewhat as the child deserves such consideration? If God is God, then this life is transient, (and it is temporary whether we believe in God, or not) and the next life is the one that truly matters. This life is preparation for that life. If that is the case, and if God wanted His people to know His rules without any doubt, then it makes sense that He would set strict laws ..... so strict that some might even consider them to be cruel.

However, look at other societies of the time. What customs did they practice? Child sacrifice? Mutilation of people to the point of death to worship their gods? Other truly horrific practices, as well as sexual rites that were little more than institutionalized rape.

These are the things that God wanted His people to avoid, and so he set strict guidelines for their behavior.

Hey Vers, welcome aboard the pain train



I believe this is incorrect and we have data to support this. Denmark, Sweden, and Japan are among the least religious countries in the world. Yet these countries have low murder rates. The United States and Iran are very religious countries and have murder rates ranked in the middle. To believe that God is the only thing holding one back from rape and murder is disconcerting to me. It suggests that this person cannot control themselves.

Yea, there are portions of the OT that today we shake our head at. The Bible says that working on the Sabbath is punishable by death but I don't know of any Christians that have executed those terms recently. With that lens I think the document would have existed within the context of the period in which it was written. It is easier for us to look back and infer from simpler customs/documents that it would be for an ancient group of people to understand advanced concepts such as planetary laws of motion. That's why the Bible talks about the firmament as something more tangible.

So when individuals take the Old Testament literally, there is alot of baggage that comes with that. Not just the story of the creation. But don't wear clothing woven with two kinds of materials. Or round the corners of your head (lol). Don't eat fish. Don't boil a kid in it's mothers milk (Presumed butter, not human children).

-I don't get where you're going with the short half-lifes. If they're still here, wouldn't more time make that less likely?

-Middle two seem like decay questions and we keep going around in circles so I'm not going to keep saying the same things.

-Light from stars is interesting. I suppose if he could make the stars he could make the light emitting from them be at any distance from the source. I'm not sure what laws of the universe there are related to time.

I don't see how if he's powerful enough to create them in the first place, he'd have to use a method we'd understand. Inexplicable and unexplained aren't the same thing.

The Romans bit, I'm not sure what you want from me. I see contradictions in the Bible, too. Doesn't mean something isn't operating outside what we understand.

Which part?

Pre-Darwin/Evolution Explosion in America, we were largely a "Christian" country. Politicians follow the voters. With an alternate explanation, more people moved away from the church. I really wasn't trying to be deep with it.

I believe your premise, but I'm not sure about the data supporting it. Having spent years in Japan, I don't think least religious is accurate. Reported murder rates and actual murder rates don't always coincide either. I agree with your last two sentences.

Reminds me of a Rusty Cohle speech on true detective. "If the only thing keeping a person from being a POS is the promise of some divine reward, then that brother is a POS." I probably butchered that quote.

That is a difficult question for many, and one that theologists have struggled with for centuries.

I do believe that we have free will, and are allowed by God to make our own decisions. However, God knows exactly what we will do centuries (and more) before we are even conceived. I look at it more as God knows the final result more than He forces us to a specific end. I think that God uses people and events on this earth to His ends. If he knows what a person will do, then He can put them in a position to do what they will do anyway in order to serve His purposes.

The entire story of the Bible is one of God making a creation that was capable of resisting and rejecting Him, but Him working to win us to Him. He does not force us to Him, but he literally woos His creation to Himself. he sent His own Son, in human form, to suffer one of the most painful and humiliating deaths possible, so that we could be saved. To me, the Bible is a great love story of God for His creation.

I just wanted to say one thing about what you said:

God doesn't care about religion. Jesus was a Jew. The early church was a group of meetings that took place in peoples' homes, both Jewish believers and Gentile believers.

The Bible says that there is one way to get to heaven, and that is through Jesus Christ. Man's sins are forgiven when he accepts Christ as Lord and Savior, and repent (turn away from) their sins. This implies that we "take up our crosses", and do the best we can to help bring others to Christ.

A person does not have to belong to any particular church or denomination, as long as their church is a Bible believing, and teaching, church. There are parts that are open to interpretation, but the basics are clear as day:

Salvation is a gift from God, and our salvation was purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. Through His blood, we are saved, made Sons of God ourselves, and are made righteous before God. Our part is to accept Jesus as our Savior and Lord, and to follow Him.

I happen to believe that the sacraments of baptism and communion are also important, but the way these are done is unimportant. Some churches use crackers and wine, with all drinking from the same cup, Others use bread and grape juice ... some out the "wine" in small cups, and others, like my church, dip the bread into the juice and take the elements together. I don't think that any are wrong, as long as communion is given in the proper attitude of teaching the lessons of Jesus Christ. Baptism can be dripping water onto the person to be baptized, or full body immersion. I don't think that God cares one way or the other which is used, as the value is in the acceptance of Jesus Christ by the person being baptized. I have been to weddings that went for 15 minutes, and others that went for almost an hour and a half.

I don't think that God cares about how we perform His sacraments, as long as we do them in the proper spirit.

I think that we too often, as denominations, get caught up in the differences, instead of the important similarities. That is not to say that there are not denominations that have what I consider to be real problems when their practices are put to a Biblical test. However, if we start with the Bible, then we should have similar basics.

Just my $0.02 or so worth.

Treaty of Tripoli says otherwise.

Stop perpetuating a false narrative of us being a Christian nation. Teaching evolution and "banning" prayer hasn't ruined our schools.

It's also true

With 70% of Americans identifying themselves as Christians, we are indeed a Nation of Christians.

nation of christians and a christian nation are two vasty different things.