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Creation according to the Bible.
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Post by
MyTie
You yourself say that you do believe in the possibility that God may not exist, why do you not give other people the benefit of the doubt with their beliefs?
When do I not? I don't believe the same things they do. My only insistence is that if one adopts a point of view of how the universe was created, there must be a certain amount of belief involved, since we have no way of proving one way or another with certainty. It isn't as if my beliefs are better than anyone else's. I brought up this discussion not to demonstrate how my beliefs are valid and others invalid, but that no matter which way you cut it, you must accept something as belief, if you are going to 'cut' it at all.Seriously guys, argumenting against the Bible is a complete waste of time.This is a poor attitude to take. If you think our topic is a waste of time, then simply leave. I'm sure the recycle bin will fulfill your desire for competent and constructive discussion.
Post by
Orranis
You yourself say that you do believe in the possibility that God may not exist, why do you not give other people the benefit of the doubt with their beliefs?
When do I not? I don't believe the same things they do. My only insistence is that if one adopts a point of view of how the universe was created, there must be a certain amount of belief involved, since we have no way of proving one way or another with certainty. It isn't as if my beliefs are better than anyone else's. I brought up this discussion not to demonstrate how my beliefs are valid and others invalid, but that no matter which way you cut it, you must accept something as belief, if you are going to 'cut' it at all.
This was a response to the "If God dropped in and said 'Hey guys I'm real' people would still not believe." I think if you realize the possibility of God non-existence you should assume people think the same with their beliefs, and I think everyone does.
Yes, we do have beliefs, but they are beliefs based on different things.
Post by
MyTie
This was a response to the "If God dropped in and said 'Hey guys I'm real' people would still not believe." I think if you realize the possibility of God non-existence you should assume people think the same with their beliefs, and I think everyone does.
Yes, we do have beliefs, but they are beliefs based on different things.
Agreed.
Post by
166779
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Post by
91278
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
gamerunknown
If God dropped in and said 'Hey guys I'm real' people would still not believe
Well, he did. He said
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
and
But the... unbelieving, ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death
Edit: Also in John 12:48... He says he speaks in parables so that fewer people will understand him in Matthew 13 too.
What's more interesting to me is that he doesn't come visit everyone. There are people that the authors of the Gospels must not have known about, living in America and Australia and various islands (unless they had divine revelation). Even the people living today that have read the Bible but have doubts probably could do with a physical manifestation of Jesus - but that'd be putting the Lord to the test. Yet he didn't remain reclusive when he came to Earth, he fulfilled the prophecies and acted as he preached as an aid to people believing. If he didn't, fewer people would believe in him, so that's one way in which we put the Lord to the test. He's also omniscient and benevolent, so he knows that some people will be tortured forever and one intercession in the world wasn't a severe decline in our free will... Or would it not be permitted for him to return without fulfilling the prophecies of the second coming? Wasn't the second coming supposed to be in the lifetime of his disciples?
The original authors certainly didn't intend for it to be literal.
I'm almost certain this is revisionism otherwise this
holiday
wouldn't make any sense. It's merely a coincidence that the people that don't take the Biblical creation literally (or some conciliation between the two in Genesis at least) do so after the vast majority of scientific evidence contradicts the Biblical creation - remember, questioning the fact that God created the world literally as outlined in the Bible could get one killed 500 years ago.
as some sort of fringe craziness
It doesn't need to be, but the point is that anything can be accepted if there is no objective criterion for accepting it. Something can be held as true by the majority of people in the world (the
geocentric model
was an entirely normal and respectable belief, for example) and still be wrong (argumentum ad populum). The thing is that science deals with falsifiable statements: if something isn't falsifiable, it could certainly be true, but science reserves judgement on it. In the absence of evidence though, the scientific approach isn't ambivalence, it's a lack of belief (monumentally different from a belief in a lack). That's why astronomers aren't looking for Russell's teapot and engineers aren't attempting to construct a Tardis.
Post by
134377
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Post by
OverZealous
It's a creation myth. There are lots of others. For anybody to actually take it seriously, except as a myth, is quite scary. It's like believing that when there is a thunderstorm, it is actually Thor hurling Mjollnir about. I don't get the "earth being 6000 years old" bit though- why that random figure, and not another?
Can't remember how that exact conclusion was reached right now; but it is not a random figure. There is a calculation behind it, I believe.
Post by
gamerunknown
Can't remember how that exact conclusion was reached right now; but it is not a random figure. There is a calculation behind it, I believe.
It's based on the calculations of Ussher given the genealogies of Genesis and Matthew along with the ages given in the Bible. Clearly he didn't think much of 1 Tim 1:4 or Titus 3:9.
Post by
Gone
I'm at work and thus don't have time to read te entire thread, so my apologies is Somone already addressed this. Many religious people believe that when it said God created the world in 6 days it actualy refers to 6 periods of time, maybe thousands or even millions of years. So by this logic it is even possible that the earth was
finished
6,000 years ago, even if the creation of it took millions of years.
As for weather it could have been done in 6 days, simply put if you choose to believe in the existence if an omnipotent deity then anything is really possible.
Post by
91278
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Post by
KingdomKnight
"A day is as a thousand years with the Lord".
There's a guy that explains Genesis rather well, but I don't recall his name. He explains it using the scientific method.
Post by
Gone
So by this logic it is even possible that the earth was finished 6,000 years ago, even if the creation of it took millions of years.
That logic is surely disproven by the fact that new species will continue to be discovered because of evolution? You can't claim something is finished if it is still developing new life.
Did I ever say that evolution stopped 6000 years ago? Way to pick at phrasing that had nothing to do with my point...
Post by
asakawa
My question is; is there any reason to believe any of this without that one text as a source?
Science does not start with conclusions and then try to find evidence to support it. Anyone practising that brand of "science" has no credibility.
All
the evidence clearly shows that the Christian/Jewish holy books are not sources of scientific knowledge. I would worry about anyone that looks to them for that sort of information.
Post by
Gone
My question is; is there any reason to believe any of this without that one text as a source?
Science does not start with conclusions and then try to find evidence to support it. Anyone practising that brand of "science" has no credibility.
All
the evidence clearly shows that the Christian/Jewish holy books are not sources of scientific knowledge. I would worry about anyone that looks to them for that sort of information.
I'm sure that people of faith look at those who only believe what can be explained by science with the same incredulity.
Anyway the topic is whether or not (with the assumption of God) that the creation story of genisis is possible. Not how reliable holy scripture is as a scientific source.
Post by
91278
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Post by
166779
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Skreeran
Certainly, it is your choice what to believe. I have no evidence to offer beyond human nature and conjecture. It is difficult to believe, that God created the world. It takes a great deal of faith. The thing that makes it easier, to accept God, is a critical view of life and death in the absence of a God. Again, I'm not saying you are wrong in what you believe. It's not what I believe. I think we are ok with that, though. The disagreeing part.
I sometimes wonder what the world would be like, and what people would be like, if God showed himself and demanded we obey him in a physical sense. I suppose I don't even need to read the entire old testament to see that probably wouldn't change anything. Most people, generally speaking, will never believe.I would say that we are ok with disagreeing, yes. I don't hate you for believing differently than I do, and I would die in a moment to defend your right to believe differently than I do (THE most important right our country grants us, in my opinion; a lot of people would do well to remember that).
I suppose we just have different standards. Me, I would rather start with a blank slate and fill it with facts (in layman's terms) based on evidence, and then construct my own personal philosophy, rather than taking both from an ancient doctrine. I would wager that neither approach is easy, not really. I have had a very difficult time coming to terms with my own mortality and absence of true purpose in a universe (apparently) devoid of any sort of eternal life. As someone who was raised as a Christian, believing he would live forever, it has been a particularly hard pill to swallow. But rather than choosing the belief that makes me feel better, I feel obligated to choose the belief that I find more likely based on the available evidence.
I have a passionate love of science. I have as long as I can remember. I crave understanding of how things work and how they came to be the way that they are. And after taking a deep breath and doing my very best to examine the universe without the bias of a preconstructed doctrine, I find the evidence in favor of a Supreme Being to be inadequate. I do not know how the universe came to be. The beginning of the universe is beyond observation. But that doesn't mean all theories have exactly the same weight. There are several powerful, well-supported, scientific theory-complexes that allow for the spontaneous generation of a universe without the need for a deity (M-Theory, for example; the offspring of string theory). Because all of those theories are built on scientific and mathematical observations of the universe that in most cases have been validated through experiment, I find them more believable than the any one of the ancient doctrines that ancient men believed.
Post by
Gone
Did I ever say that evolution stopped 6000 years ago? Way to pick at phrasing that had nothing to do with my point...
No, you didn't. But then, how do you intend to define "Finished"?
If that's the way you wish to look at it then the world will never really be "finished" unless there is no life left on it. Perhaps a better way of saying it would be "finished" up to the point where it was described in Genisis.
Like I said though that dosnt really have anything to do with my point. Which is that the Bible says 6 days, but that could just as easily (and to me more likely) mean 6 periods of time, possibly thousands or millions of years. Which could explain evolution, and the 6000 year timeline if you take events occurring after the creation in Genesis to pick up after this 6 period of time process.
Post by
Frostshamadin
My question is; is there any reason to believe any of this without that one text as a source?
Science does not start with conclusions and then try to find evidence to support it. Anyone practising that brand of "science" has no credibility.
All
the evidence clearly shows that the Christian/Jewish holy books are not sources of scientific knowledge. I would worry about anyone that looks to them for that sort of information.
I'm sure that people of faith look at those who only believe what can be explained by science with the same incredulity.
Anyway the topic is whether or not (with the assumption of God) that the creation story of genisis is possible. Not how reliable holy scripture is as a scientific source.
Possible? Well, it goes against everything we know about physics and cosmology. But if you assume there is a god then the whole question becomes moot, as then anything is 'possible'.
And you know everything there is to know about physics and cosmology do you? I mean years ago everything we knew about the natural wod told us that the sun orbited the earth (and before you start it wasn't just the church that condemned Galileo, the rest of the scientific community thought he was a joke as well).
People have this nasty habit of assuming that we know everything that there is to know about the natural laws of the universe. Who knows what tools we still lack.
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