What kind of foolish notion is it that the majority is always right ? If that is true then you can have no objection to slavery because everyone used to think that was a god-given social situation, some people were just born slave and that was their destiny. Same thing for royal absolutism, pleas abolish all democratic governments and reinstate all the old kings in their full glory. Don't you see there is a shift occuring in the last two centuries in society ? Especially this very medium, the internet is catalysing this change. In stead of a verticle alignment, man to god, we get a horizontal alignment, man to man. We can communicate with each and every one on the planet, this increases our understanding of one another and decreases the suspicion between individuals and people. God as an authoritif figure is more and more losing it's meaning, hence the succes of all the boeddist derivates like New Age and alike. If christianity is going to survive in the coming centuries, it will have to change as well or it will be replaced by an other religion. Take for example the katholic church, they will have to become more democratic and feminise (this means becoming more horizontal) because their rigid stucture is the most vulnarable. Hopefully the next pope will understand this, otherwise the future looks very grim indeed for the katholics. The protestants like most of you Americans are are already very split up into small fractions each having their own interpretation of the bible this might seem more democratic but the need to fall back on a book with all the answers is still to much of a dogma. This is something the katholics managed to overcome because of their rigid and autoritif structure the bible became less important, it was the pope who had the final saying in matters of belief. That is why the katholics don't have a big problem with modern bible critique and even encourage it. For example it was shown that the book of Daniel was actually a fraud ! Daniel pretented to live during the babylonian times in writing this book but actually lived 3 centuries later. This enabled him to make very accurate profecies of the times to come to Nebucadnezar who called for him to explain his dreams. This was found because Daniels account of the babylonian court was very vague indeed but knowledge of the Seleucidian empire was very accurate. The katholics know this but simply say that the text itself still has a purpose as it shows how the apocaliptic style was develloped. Besides it is old testament and for christians the real thing that matters is the new testament because that is was distingueses them from Jews. You see that the book doesn't has all the anwers, they have to come from within. ------------------ we are midgets standing on the backs of giants, Plato
I am far from an expert in mathematics, but i feel that the Bible and any other religious book is there for us to read, and pick up hints about things, until science can prove it, or disaprove it. This is a little off topic, but if you use the mathematics of today to create a child, it would have taken 400 years before conceving it. vs Organic mathematics takes only 9 months. Do you Christians follow every sentence in the Bible? I just wondered, because according to the bible ( i will look it up again) it is legal to stone your wife if she disobey you...and that is also legal according to Islam... ------------------ Just waiting for my peabrain to boot into English Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Yiipee! Not a junior member anymore Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ------------------ Just waiting for my peabrain to boot into English Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Off the subject, congratulations H-kon. Anyway, What is the possibility of one planet just happening to have life on it, just happening to be perfectly sustainable to our needs, and for so many religions to just pop up and all be so closely related. I do not believe that all of this is just a coincidence. How does KEarth happen to be the only planet, so far, in our universe to have bodies of liquid water large enogh to sustain life. I believe that God spread his word to us(what little of his word that we are capable of understanding) and then it was changed peice by peice by many different cultures. I am not the person to ask on what God thinks, wants, or how He created the earth, but I do believe that He did , in His own power, create the earth. kI am LChristian because I was born and raised christian and because I agree with what I was taught. Not because I am blind to scientific reasoning. I also believe that in some way God used his infinite knowlege of science to create everything. But I believe that one thing is for sure and in this whole debate of religion it is the one thing that has been left out. If you take all the religions of the world taht worship a good and merciful god-like being, the one main ritual to be practiced by humans is simply love and kindness toward one another.
Quote : " If you take all the religions of the world taht worship a good and merciful god-like being, the one main ritual to be practiced by humans is simply love and kindness toward one another." There is an other explantion for this observation : they are all religions of humans so there must be some basic things that are the same in all the human philosophies and religions, it is human nature to want love and kindness even stronger, it is a heritage from our long history and evolution, we were molded like that. What I'm trying to show is there is always more then one way to look at things and sometimes the truth is what you make of it. Once detached from verifiable facts, any statement becomes meaningless. ------------------ we are midgets standing on the backs of giants, Plato
You do make some very interesting points, but here is one for you to refute. There once was only one language, but sometime around the time of Babel they suddenly become many. Also what proof do YOU have that the book of daniel was not written when it was. There have been interesting theories that it was not, but just as many that there are. If you really are interested in this perhaps you can go to http://www.yfiles.com. It does make some interesting points. Also which you can read about and has been confirmed by gene-scientist is that man DID NOT come from apes or monkeys, basic thermodynamic laws that control the universe and entropy go against evolution. No one jumps for joy from radiation mutation because they have just evolved into a higher species. Also there has been a "common thread" that has been observed throughout the world's religions. Kindness and love, right, evolution, which you may or may not puport to believe, is survival of the fittest not the kindest and most loving. Alpha males and females, ie dominance, is however in genetic coding, and even complete HUMAN strangers will emulate this behavior if put into a closed system. I personally don't care if it was or wasn't the big bang, there are far more important things in my life to consider. I suppose though we could just post a discussion on different ways to effectively promote bio-terrorism because we would all "learn" something. This is not meant to be a slam, but even darwin predicted that humanism or man becomes his own god would prevail if any took his own THEORIES seriously. ------------------ Beyond Logic ... Faith Begins
Hooyey. There are several major language families in the world, and all of them are more anscient than the oldest legends of the Bible. One also has to point out that all the human languages share the same fundamental lexical structure (hinting at an evolutionary origin and certain constraints stemming from brain mechanics). I refer you to the Evolution vs. Creation thread; you will find ample response to that particular objection. But let me add that evolution indeed does not claim that we originate from monkeys or any of the modern apes. The other primate species we see today have also evolved in parallel to us; our common ancestor(s) is (are) gone extinct. Once again, browse the Evolution vs. Creation thread. Those are a bit more than just THEORIES now. We've not only got actual evidence of evolution occurring even now, we've done a few better and discovered the very mechanism behind genes and recombination thereof. Not to mention the ever-expanding fossil record or the painfully obvious morphological, behavioral and biochemical evidence. I've cited quite a few examples in the Evolution vs. Creation thread, but here's a sample: why do we have five totally useless fingers on each foot? why do we have a remnant of a tail at the end of our spinal columns? why are our bodies still covered with useless hair? why do we share 98-99% of our genes with chimpanzees? why are we 70% water? why do we bear so much in common to other mammals? I think by now evolution has become an undeniable fact -- kind of like the fact that the Sun rises every morning. Disputing such things is becoming an increasingly ridiculous undertaking. Which brings us to the significance of the Big Bang. If one assumes the governance of the universe by physical laws (and therefore no divine intervention), then we can trace our origins precisely to the event that seems to be the origin of our universe. By building an accurate picture of the universe's origins, we construct an accurate picture of our own origins. And that is significant enough to bother considering. ------------------ I am; therefore I think.
Has evolution become a fact? One thing has always seemed odd to me . Why has only one species reached the mental capacities that the humans have ? We are by no means the oldest species ( maybe you covered this in the evolution thread ? )
Great question! Actually, there is hot debate going on right now concerning the particular evolutionary pressures that had lead to the stunning growth of the brain in primates. I do not possess an answer to your question as of now. But we can speculate, nevertheless. One of the most obvious things about primates is how poorly adapted we are. We are pretty weak, we don't have big claws or a huge mouth filled with tusks. So perhaps the growing brain was a way to survive such mal-adaptations by compensating with smarts for what our ancestors lacked in brawn. There are also ideas floating about that suggest our tree-dwelling ancestors were forced to forage on foot around ever-growing territories as climate changed and the forests died off. A large brain would have helped to formulate optimal foraging strategies, as well as memorize the landscape in detail. There are other hypotheses too. But you've got to keep something else in mind. While as a species we are pretty young, as a biological mechanism we are among the oldest. When the dinosaurs died, the mammals lived on. That suggests that we mammals sport better, more advanced design. And Homo Sapiens is among the latest mammal species to emerge -- so on the ladder of life, we indeed would be the prime candidates for sophistication. Then, there's a certain degree of uncertainty in claiming that we are the first to achieve this level of sophistication. It could well be that another species on Earth used to be at our level a few million years ago, and since then erosion and glaciers wiped the traces of that advanced civilization off the face of the planet. There is even less certainty in the assumption that we are the last Earth-based species to obtain this level of intelligence. You never know -- in another 100 million years, we might have ultra-smart terrestrial octopuses roaming around. Or maybe, the Earth will be utterly annihilated in the course of some innocent school science project Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! But to this day, it is not at all clear that emergence of higher intelligence is an inevitable consequence of life. In fact, while the universe may be teaming with life, our species could well turn out to be rather unique in our mental abilities. We could very well be a rare cosmic accident. But, on the other hand, one does observe increasing sophistication throughout the course of natural history, with ever larger and more complex life-forms emerging. So perhaps the genesis of intelligence is a lot more inevitable than we may think. Only one thing's for sure -- at least at present, we seem to be the only species on Earth who can call itself sentient. ------------------ I am; therefore I think.
To Boris, I simply have to say, if evolution has become an undeniable fact, then why do so many highly informed people deny it? ------------------ I'm really not a shorty.
Uhm... Let's see... Could it be that they are not as "highly informed" as they proclaim themselves to be?? ------------------ I am; therefore I think.
Boris Quote ---- And Homo Sapiens is among the latest mammal species to emerge -- so on the ladder of life, we indeed would be the prime candidates for sophistication. this may be true but it would be easier for me to follow if there was some link between Homo Erectus & earlier primates. Even the timespan in between is quite short for evolution to account for the amount of changes seen. Evolution fits before and after this point (at least in my mind) but I always get stuck on this apparent skip of 1 or 2 billion years ?
Heres one for you guys and gals to think about: IF God can do anything why can't he make a rock so big that even he could not pick up? I think we have a problem to address here.
The Australopithecus africanus lived between 4,000,000 B.P. and was by 2,300,000 B.P. a tool user. Homo habilis lived between 2.4 and 1.5 million years ago in Africa, he was the first hominid. If you look at it this way there is no missing link... ------------------ "If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants." Isaac Newton
Hi Boris, How about this to add to your "brain debate"...the idea that aliens are the missing link? The Bible says that the elohim were involved in our creation. Some think that this relates to science in the form of genetics. Have you ever noticed how big an aliens head is? What if the ape-man was genetically altered by angels, in response to God's command? I've heard interpretations of Genesis lately that have blown my mind, but as well, make a lot of sense compared to the literal creation story that you guys think is so silly. Satan was a snake? Do you really believe that? Satan was a geneticist, and he had sex with eve. That was the fall. ------------------ God loves you and so do I!
Lori, Did you miss that post Plato just made right before you? And yes, there are some truly astonishing 'interpretations' of the Bible floating around these days (and not just of the Bible, either.) It's amazing to see how sickeningly people twitch when their religion is backed into a corner. ------------------ I am; therefore I think.
god, don't mention it. If you want a nice link to the Australopithecus try this one or even this one, with a very good article in pdf format ------------------ "If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants." Isaac Newton [This message has been edited by Plato (edited September 14, 1999).]
I have often thought that if I were one who was not sure, I would err on the side of God. Afterall, how can not believing in the big bang hurt you? You will not be judged by the big bang!
