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 Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 7:23 pm
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Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 7:38 pm
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Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 7:49 pm
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If you're looking to determine if God and science can co-exist, consider these.
http://www.gotquestions.org/argument-existence-God.html
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/answers.html
For the atheists and for the Christians.
As for our society being based around Christianity? Well, not really, actually. Learned this in Church History. A number of the founding fathers were not Christian. Some were, but not the majority. As for our society being founded by people who probably acknowledged God: likely.
Our money says In God We Trust. In the Pledge of Allegiance, we have "One Nation, Under God". Thomas Jefferson said that "All people are created equal."
This nation wasn't originally based around Christianity. It was based around religious freedom. However, it has become a Christian nation because of the numerous Christians living in the United States. And it was God Who gave us this country.
I should have joined this guild. I received an invitation, but I'm in soooooooo many guilds all ready that I declined.
Then I could back you up.
You'll probably just have to dust off your sandals on this one. I've come to understand that people really don't want to change their ideas and ways of thinking, so they won't. And they will come up with whatever excuse, no matter how ludicrous it is, to stay that way. I do my best to be open-minded and consider the points of other people. But I don't expect them to do the same. You shouldn't either. Bring glory to God, but don't drag it out.
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Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 11:04 am
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Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 11:28 am
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Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 9:47 pm
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Hey, just adding my two cents in this topic.
I actually wrote something about this in my journal, about how Christianity and nature can both be correct. Let's take an example, the big bang. Those who believe in it say it just happened. Well, according to everything I've read, nothing JUST happens. Something had to have given it a "push". And that, my dear friends, would've been God. Let's take another, slightly more vague, example. Scientists say that the earth is a little over six billion years old. Well, didn't it take God six days to create the earth? Maybe when they said days, the meant years, as in a billion years. This is pretty vague and I don't expect anyone to believe it.
Something else to consider would be that God is responsible for many of the things science claims other things caused. Maybe God is the one who caused the genetic mutations that lead to the creation of many of today's species. This might possibly explain evolution. Now keep in mind, evolution is change over time, and that's what I'm talking about, not about the origin of life, which we all should know.
Well, that's just my take on it. It's open to interpritation if anyone wants to take a crack at it.
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Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 4:48 am
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For ease of reading, I color coded this post, each new color starting a response to a different person.
@Cheif: Well, I'll take a crack at it.
There's no reason to interpret the days in Genesis as anything other than days. If they weren't 24 hour days, the Jews would have used another word representative of the time period. Other instances in the Bible of the word day, in reference to 24 hour periods, also use the same word given in Genesis.
There is no reason for there to be a first cause. Your claim is that all things without exception need a start. God would fall under that everything as well, so something must have created God if you're claiming such a universal rule. The inevitable response is that God is outside of time and/or the universe and doesn't need a cause, to which I say you need to find a better argument than special pleading. You're creating a universal rule then begging for one exception, and that's not the way universal rules work. Note also that recently renowned scientist Stephen Hawking pronounced his calculations that the universe would inevitably come into being as a function of the known laws of physics, no God required.
Now, in response to your claim that God is responsible for things science has already shown happen naturally. You have the loosest definition of evolution there (change over time). A more accurate definition would be that evolution is the tendency of traits that aid a species in survival to be passed on to later generations, adapting them to their environment to aid in survival. Now, you've actually made two mistakes in one here: you've assumed an untenable position that cannot be proven false, firstly, which is not the same as something being true. You've taken a position that cannot be shown as true nor as false and are asserting truth for no sound logical purpose. Secondly, you're claiming a God of the Gaps. Just because science doesn't have an answer, it does not mean that God is that answer, and the thing you cited as an example (mutation) does in fact have a scientific and natural explanation.
The field of science that deals with the origin of life would be abiogenesis, just in case you didn't know the name. It has been shown through controlled experimentation that non-living elements can come together to form strings of amino acids, also called 'the building blocks of life'. However, there is still a lot more research to be done to check this conclusion and ensure that it is factual.
@OP: I mean this in the nicest of ways, and say it so you can learn. You absolutely made a fool of yourself, and you have no one to blame but yourself. I read the thread, and there is no reason for you to feel persecuted like you do. They were cordial, factual, and while at points they were rude, it was was only because you came into the thread as if you were the end all be all of information. Your posts, honestly, were condescending, and you made no attempt to understand what was being said to you to correct the glaringly false claims you made.
Take the criticism, learn from it, and move on.
@Scarlet: A couple of problems with what you're saying. The 'In God we trust' stuff you're talking about came into being in the 1950's with McCarthyism to separate us from the 'Godless Communists'. It has nothing to do with Christianity, but everything to do with being better than the Soviet Union. Same for the Pledge of Allegiance. As for Thomas Jefferson, he is an avowed atheist according to the letters he wrote denouncing all religions, especially Christianity. I would ask you to prove God gave us the USA, but I know you can't, so I won't press it.
A document that I like to cite in the Christian Nation argument is the Treaty of Tripoli, which in article 11 declares that the USA was not founded on Christianity in any sense of it.
Gonna point out the irony of you supporting someone who specifically didn't keep their mind open against those trying to correct her baseless claims. More irony in you saying that THEY were the closed-minded ones, when they simply looked at the claim OP made and weighed it against known facts and reason before disagreeing. OP is in the wrong here, and you're demonizing the open-minded.
@Ambrosia: There is no God particle. There's gravity holding atoms together, and gravity that pulled the bits of matter in to form planets. Also, believed by who to be the source of creation? See the above about Hawking's findings.
I will also note, if you compare the times that Jesus is supposed to have lived with the historical events we can account for, it's impossible for him to have existed at all, or the Bible is vastly wrong. Either way, you lose when you bring facts in to line them up, because you either discredit your religion or you are blatantly dishonest with which facts you cherry pick and shift dates on. Note also that no contemporary historian makes mention of Jesus in any specific fashion save for Josephus, and his writings were tampered with by the Church (we know this for a fact). Also, there were over 300 recorded 'sons of god' at the same time Jesus was about. There are no records of the death of Jesus outside of the Bible, which is very strange because the Romans were notorious for recording everything, and especially important because they neglected to record anything about him coming back to life or about his miracles as well. In fact, outside the Bible, there are no reports at all of Jesus ever existing period.
Don't lie to yourself like that and think that history backs your story. It doesn't.
Like, at all.
DeistPaladin on Youtube has a great few videos about this. One. Two. Three.
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Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 8:48 am
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On the contrary Fefnir, I can prove that God gave us the USA.
Nothing is given without God's will. Nothing is taken away without God's will. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.
And see, there ya go twisting my words again.
I didn't say it was founded on Christianity. I said it was founded by deists, and it became a Christian nation.
"As for our society being based around Christian? Well, not really, actually...number of the founding fathers were not Christian...society being founded by people who probably acknowledged God: likely"
"This nation wasn't originally based around Christianity...however it has become a Christian nation..."
I didn't use the examples I did to prove that it was based off of Christianity. I was making a point that our country was founded by deists.
I am not demonizing the open-minded, nor am I speaking against them. I'm simply saying what is true, and that is that people will come up with any excuse and/or reason to believe what they believe, no matter what.
And it's ironic you should say that she is closed minded and that they are open minded, considering neither side really got anywhere.
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Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 4:13 pm
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So... you're saying it's every bit as likely that he was 'taketh'-ing from the British rather than giving to the colonists. Just because you say God did it, it doesn't mean he did.
For the second part, I was actually agreeing with you, lol. So um... Yeah. Not much to say about the thing we agree on. See, I only addressed the examples you'd given because it was in the context of the founding fathers and the start of the nation rather than the proper context. Jefferson also has a great deal of documentation for his lack of faith in general, and he was used as an example of deism when he most certainly did not believe in a God in any form. It was more detail correction than argument making.
Saying what you're saying is infinitely more applicable to OP than it is to the others. I read what happened in that thread, and she was making claims she couldn't back. The others there used facts to prove her wrong, and her excuse was that 'they didn't want to find Jesus'. And while confirmation bias is a well documented occurence, that too is more applicable to the OP than the people she was talking to.
Open-minded status isn't proved by who changes their mind. One can be open minded and after serious thought about the claims posed, come back to the same answer they had before. I said this based on the content of your statement to OP. Specifically, this line: "I do my best to be open-minded and consider the points of other people. But I don't expect them to do the same. You shouldn't either." You just called them closed minded and OP open minded. Unfortunately, she was the closed minded one in the situation, and they were the open minded. It's not because they didn't want Jesus, it's because the things she was saying were easily shown to be wrong with facts, and it was shown that she had a lackluster understanding of the topic she was talking about.
You'd have to read the whole situation minus the 'she's Christian, she's my friend' blinders to see that she was in a debate, lost badly, and ran back to a safe zone in this Christian guild to lick her metaphorical wounds.
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Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 7:49 pm
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Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 7:55 pm
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Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 5:38 am
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Reply
