Creationism vs. Evolution

Creation, Gen 1:1

 

Get a job!

 

its funny that you say that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZuowNcuGsc

 

I want to hear a British dude read some of the posts on this site, the accent makes it so much more funny.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H9BuxeNro0&feature=related

 

This never ending tug of war between religion vs science will go one forever. I'm more inclined to believe life was planted here by distant aliens as a science experiment to observe how far we can advance on our own. The earth is a unique place that has the right balance of chemistry for life to flourish. Is there other distant planets that can support intelligent life? Most likely. Is alien life more advanced than us ? Possibly. The SETI program has been shut down , we have stopped listening for aliens.

 

Only as long as the majority of a population stays uneducated, look at europe. Religion is basically laughed at.

 

With more donations, SETI is back up and running. Jodie Foster donated a big chunk of money among other investors.

 

I have a few questions for this thread... For those that believe in creation, what was God's purpose before us? What was his purpose for creating us? Is he an actual physical being or more of an abstract concept? Can fate/God's plan and free will co-exist? Logically, I don't think they can, which opens up a-whole-nother can of worms...

 

I'll post the following as a follow up to Saltwater Taco's questions. It's not mine but I found it highly informative and feel it adds to the discussion here.

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The question we're faced with is this: is the Bible literally the "word of God" in the sense that everything recorded in the Bible can be seen as literal truth and historical fact?

The answer is not simple. There's no way to prove that much of the Bible is factually true. In fact it's clear that much of what passes for fact in the Bible is not literally fact at all. So the question we have to ask ourselves is, does it really matter?

Debating the supposed literal truth of Bible stories misses the point entirely. Whether the Bible is the literal word of God is a matter of individual faith. No human being has ever seen God. No human has ever heard "the word of God" in a manner that's not been filtered through his or her own mind and senses.

We may hear the still small voice of God in our hearts and minds giving direction, comforting and counseling. But does one receive God's word directly from the heavens - or does it come from deep in their own being? Are we not all revealers of God's Truth -- if we're open to receive it?

The Bible tells us God is Spirit, not some sort of superperson made in the image of man. The Spirit of God is everywhere present, and therefore in each of us. We are to seek the Kingdom of God within ourselves. "Do not look here or there but within.." That's good advice. God lives and moves in each of us. God's Word, like God itself, is within each human being. The word of God did not come ready made from Heaven in book form like many want to believe.

Human beings, people just like us, wrote every word of the Bible. They may have been inspired by the God Spirit within. But Biblical authors were totally human and therefore fallible. They wrote what they believed, expressed what they felt, and what they wrote was their Truth. Writing and speaking the Truth that's in us is all any of us can do. Certainly Biblical authors were no different. They felt God was working through them.

Is the Bible True? Yes. The lessons it teaches are True, but often not what it offers as fact. The lessons conveyed by the parables and stories in the Bible are Truth. The supposed facts on which the stories are based often are not historically true.

The Bible was not written as a book at all. It's a collection of parables and truth stories spanning more than 3300 years, put together by countless people long dead. The truth of the Bible lies in the lessons conveyed by its collected stories, not in the supposed facts of the stories themselves.

Was Jonah swallowed by a whale? Was Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt? Did Sarah give birth at 80 years of age? Did Jesus walk on water? Who cares! Those whose focus is on unprovable claims such as these are like literal minded children grasping at tiny details and entirely missing the actual message the Bible seeks to convey.

Lot's wife could not leave the old life and move into the greater life of oneness with God she'd been called to. She was therefore frozen in place, like a pillar of salt, unable move forward in obedience to the direction of the Spirit of God.

Jonah swallowed by a "great fish" (no whales in the Mediterranean) then spit back out tells us that no matter what situation we face, no matter how hopeless things may seem, that by faith we can overcome any condition, any situation. Those are the Truths the Bible conveys.

The Bible was written in parable. A parable is a story told to teach a moral or spiritual lesson. Ancient hearers of these parables understood they were not to be taken literally. The lesson conveyed by the story was the point of the story. The story itself was simply a vehicle by which the lesson was delivered.

Jesus spoke Aramaic as his daily language. He thought and taught in Aramaic. Aramaic is a language of parable. When describing something in Aramaic a story is told in order to flesh out the lesson. To make a point the Aramaic speaker would deliver that point within the context of a story.

Those who heard Jesus speak were Aramaic speakers themselves. They understood that the details of the story meant nothing - it was the moral and spiritual Truth the story related that was the message. The "facts" used to embellish the story were simply the vehicle by which Truth was conveyed to the listener. These facts generally had no other value or purpose.

It's unfortunate but many today park their brains at the front door of the church and become like literal minded children, insisting on factual accuracy with Biblical accounts that were never intended to be factually accurate. Are we not as intelligent as those who heard Jesus speak? We've been taught a lie for hundreds of years by well meaning people who were teaching the same lie they'd been taught.

Some try to tell us that if one word of the Bible is proven false then the entire Bible is worthless - it's the "inerrant word of God!" they loudly claim. What foolishness!!

The Bible is in large measure a collection of Truth conveying parables and stories, not an inerrant record of actual fact. Yes, actual events in Jewish history often inspired these Truth stories, particularly in the Old Testament. But the Bible was not written to convey factual history, nor was it meant to be taken as such. Those who insist on Biblical inerrancy "in every word" ignorantly demean and diminish its true grandeur and majesty.

Some go so far as to claim that we know exactly what Jesus did and said because he had scribes that followed him around recording every word he spoke! Where did that come from?!! Relatively few in Biblical times could read or write. A scribe was a paid professional people depended on to communicate over great distances. Jesus despised the Scribes and Pharisees, saying they were corrupt money grubbers who oppressed the people. He would hardly have such a person in tow everywhere he went! No first hand eye witness account of Jesus' ministry has ever been found, nor will it ever be found because such an account does not exist.

The lack of Biblical understanding among Christians and non-Christians alike is amazing. Many consider the Gospels to be eyewitness accounts of the life and works of Jesus. The earliest Gospel, Mark, was written almost thirty years after the death of Jesus. Matthew, Luke and John where written many years later. These authors had no first hand knowledge of Jesus. They wrote things that had been passed down, elaborated on, embellished, invented and reinvented over a period of 30 to 70 years!

The Gospel authors were not recording facts, they were writing stories of Jesus they individually felt should be told. This explains the contradictions between the Jesus stories told in Matthew and Luke, for example, and the completely different Jesus found in John. These men wrote using a somewhat common template to describe the image of Jesus they had in their hearts and minds. The Gospels are not records of the actual man that lived, walked and taught many decades earlier. These authors never knew Jesus the man, yet many today act as if they did.

Jesus never wanted to be worshiped as a God. When He said "The Father and I are One", he was saying that "The Father" and all of us are One. He didn't use the term "Father" in the sense of his biological father, instead he used it as we do in referring to the concept of God as the Heavenly Father.

When Jesus said "I AM the way, the truth and the life," he was referring to the great "I AM", the name of God in Aramaic and Hebrew. He was saying that God alone is the way, the truth and the life. He was not pointing to himself. It's not hard to see where error crept in over the centuries.

Jesus understood the difference between himself, the man, and the Christ mind he developed after years of study and spiritual discipline. The mind of Christ brought him into such unity with God that the limitations of the world could be ignored and the power of God used at will.

Early Christians understood that Jesus was fully human, and that the mind of Christ that he embodied was a state of being empowered by God in order that Jesus might do his work. They believed that the mind of Christ lay dormant in each of us waiting to be actualized. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.."

Jesus, known as The Christ, was the greatest Truth Teacher ever among men. He was not God, nor did he ever claim to be God. We're all, like Jesus, made of the very stuff of God, the stuff of eternity -- just as our world is, just as the awesome expanse of the unfathomable universe around us is.

The ongoing natural processes by which creation is brought about are beginning to be revealed, both in the scientifically verifiable physical realm as well as the all encompassing spiritual realm we're each part of. That God chooses to accomplish everything by the application of natural laws that we're now only beginning to understand, in both physical and spiritual realms, should be no surprise to anyone willing to open their eyes and see.

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Holy

Lol