Creation vs. Evolution

[The Chairman]

Greed would fit any production including Mr Saget.

Fear would soon follow.

 

[mase]

This thread is still going! Good reading but....

 

[AXL72]

bloody hell!!! the fricken church kicked me out and asked me not to return until I start paying tidings!!!

W. T. F. !!!!!

does that mean i am not worthy to worship Jesus....ohhh the horror:17:

say it aint so:17:

 

[AXL72]

hey, so the muslim mens are encouraged to blow us (up) so they get their 72 year old virgins in heaven. But what do the muslim womens get as encouragement? do they get 12 men from laBare (mens strip club)?

I dont get it.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Doc: I think it’s a long way from ‘people of color.” In calling him a bigot you make part of his case. One of the things that Harris is saying is that the current demand to be PC keeps us from clear and open discourse on the subject: Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.

Harris argues that faith gets in the way of knowledge and is at the root of much of the world’s conflicts. He says that he has not faith based system, but rather a system that builds a world view from that which is demonstrable and knowable: what one would call facts: It is time we conceded a basic fact of human discourse: either a person has good reasons for what he believes, or he does not. When a person has good reasons, his beliefs contribute to our growing understanding of the world. We need not distinguish between "hard" and "soft" science here, or between science and other evidence-based disciplines like history. There happen to be very good reasons to believe that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Consequently, the idea that the Egyptians actually did it lacks credibility. Every sane human being recognizes that to rely merely upon "faith" to decide specific questions of historical fact would be both idiotic and grotesque — that is, until the conversation turns to the origin of books like the bible and the Koran, to the resurrection of Jesus, to Muhammad's conversation with the angel Gabriel, or to any of the other hallowed travesties that still crowd the altar of human ignorance.

No matter what your religious situation, if you’ve looked at history you must concede that more people have died and that more atrocities have been promulgated in the name of a God than for any other reason. Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way; maybe there are alternatives: maybe, maybe not. Harris would argue that’s the way it has been and that’s the way it is. From the Romans and Jews at Masada, to the current nuclear face-off between India and Pakistan, religion has been the single most costly accoutrement of human civilization. We must realize that the concessions we have made to faith in our political discourse prevents us from even speaking about, much less uprooting, this single most prolific source of violence in our history. Why uproot it? Self-defense!

Lamont: I think what Harris is saying is that the moderates don't have a chance. They lack the commitment that the fundamentalists have, they lack the religiosity that the fundamentalists have and, if you believe history, "true believers" win out (if they can maintain true believer status). I'm not persuaded one way or the other ... yet.

H2Andy: Because when it all hits the fan (and if you believe Harris it already has) you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem, at that point there are no innocent bystanders. That's not a nice place to be.

I'm not sure that I agree that we can blame many wars on relgion. Were not governments involved in those wars? Were the only issues or even the main issues of the wars really religious?

It seems to me that on close examination most wars involve the same old worldy persuits...land, money and power. The government or group waging that war might come up with all sorts of imaginative ways to justify their claim to the land money and power being faught over but lets not forget the land money and power.

 

[Rick Murchison]

a quote from Sam Harris....

Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to.

Couple of points here...
One of many questions I have for God is how in his omnipotence He can allow children to suffer horrible abuse and disease - how does this fit in the grand plan. I was given a glimpse in a near-death experience back in '68, and as crazy as it seems, everything - including those cruelties we despise - somehow fits perfectly into a perfect plan. The fact that I still can't get my little pea brain around that concept now doesn't change its reality.
In the second place, In the above quote Sam Harris uses a fallacious argument to draw a false conclusion. He presents an invalid either/or thesis when he allows only the "can do nothing" and "does not care to" choices. Anyone who has raised children knows that allowing a child to make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons is the most heart-wrenching, most difficult part of parenting. Yet if it isn't done the child won't have much of a chance to grow up to be a responsible adult, and zero chance to be a free, strong one. If you really love your children, at some point you have to let 'em go and do thier own thing, even when you could do something to rescue 'em and care to. You don't rescue them - not because you don't care to, you don't because you love them.
It's that free will thingie.
Rick

 

[MikeFerrara]

So, let me get this right. If my son comes home from aikido class spouting pronouncements of Buddha, then I should take his sensei out for a "winter diving lesson" with a very heavy weightbelt? Or, keeping in mind Deuteronomy 13:7-11 should I get a posse together and lead them in stoning my son to death? Or Both? Give it to me straight now, please don't cherry pick.<G>

While the stoning of children for heresy has fallen out of fashion in our country, you will not hear a moderate Christian or Jew arguing for a “symbolic" reading of passages of that sort (Deuteronomy 13:7-11). In fact, one seems to be explicitly blocked from looking for symbolism by God himself in Deuteronomy 13:1 - "Whatever I am now commanding you, you must keep and observe, adding nothing to it, taking nothing away."

Clearly, Deuteronomy 13:7-11 is as canonical as any in the Bible, and clearly it is only by ignoring such barbarisms that the Good Book can be reconciled with life in the modern world. This is the problem for "moderation" that I was pointing to earlier: there is nothing underwriting moderation other than the unacknowledged neglect of the letter of Devine Law.

We need to put Deuteronomy in the context of the whole Bible to see where Mosaic law fits into Gods salvation plan. Reading the whole New Testament would help but Galations explains it well.

 

[photohikedive]

Couple of points here...
One of many questions I have for God is how in his omnipotence He can allow children to suffer horrible abuse and disease - how does this fit in the grand plan.

one of the ideas I have regarding this, is that in the long run (eternity) even a life of suffering is but a blink of the eye. if this is really just a steppingstone to the everlasting, then the little bad that happens here, as important as it may seem now, will be insignificant in the end

 

[sandjeep]

Well said Rick. I posed the question concerning free will a few pages ago, so I will ask again. Does Man, who some say evolved, exercise free will? Andy, replied that if one does not choose to kill on a given day, then yes, Man has free will. However, I submit to all that Man is not an evolved creature, but was created in the image of God.

 

[The Chairman]

As humans we tend to dwell morosely on the physical. Few really understand the importance of the spiritual... I know that I really don't.