Intellegent Theory

Just had a look.
Quite amusing, really.

If I had the time it would be fun to write a 'no, it's because...' reply for them all.

As a sidelight, when I was doing the web-reserch on the whole 'God stopping the sun & moon' issue, I can across many theories.

Non-Christian: All said 'this would mean that the earth stopped spinning, which is impossible - besides, everything would fall off'

Christian:
Well, quite a few, really. Main ones are:

1) It is a miracle. Heck, God made everything, why can't he meddle a bit when he wants?

2) obviously it did not really physically happen, it is a metaphor (or whatever the correct word is)

3) it is mistranslated and/or taken out of context.

I was quite disappointed that nobody even thought of this quite simple explanation (thought up by me in about 5 seconds ):

In a period & culture where time is basically measured by the passage of the sun (and moon), surely the sun & moon standing still is a very graphic reference to time being stopped or slowed?


But I digress, my point is that often (especially on the web) non-Christians tend to be far more inflexible of thought & dogmatic than Christians. :-?

 

That means nothing, I've known some bizarre people who are/were vicars .
Proverbs is great. It's basically a book of, um, proverbs.
Both are true. If you answer a fool in his folly, you are as bad as he. If you answer not according to it, he thinks that you are just naive / brainwashed. Cross-reference again to the UFO guys!

I would direct the vicar to Proverbs 29 v9

OMG - I've been so blind!
:roll:

 

Time stopped except for those people directly involved? I think I'd rather believe in the Earth stopping! Oh and people wouldn't FALL OFF, they'd all go that way at about 17000 mph

I think that's the problem, if there is a God and he meddles occasionally why can't he be more subtle about it? Wiping out the Minoans just to get the Isarelites free, if it'd been me in His position I'd have just appeared in front of Pharoah and said "Oy mush, leave 'em alone or else"

Inasmuch as? Presumably because we're always looking for a non-religious explanation, or did you mean the non-enquiring kind of non-Christian?
"When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything." -- GK Chesterton
and it's possible some of those hold more strongly to their "new" belief out of a sense of "I was wrong on the last one, but I'm definitley not going to be wrong twice"

But isn't the entire bible, according to some, supposed be to be the incontrovertible word of God - you can't follow both.
Re Proverbs 29:9 been there, done that, got a million T-shirts. Latest episode indirectly referred to in my post on the "What Forum?" thread.

 

[/quote]
In as much as they will flatly refute anything, follow the line of argument that best supports their case, and dismiss out of hand anything else.
This came to me with my example - the anti-Christians (that was the basic thrust of all their websites) simply read what they wanted to and flatly denied it could happen.*
The pro-Christians (to be fair in my labels! ) at least thought around the issue.

* Many of them then used evidence of this behaviour in Christians to show why X bit of the Bible is wrong

All scripture is God-breathed. And that contradicts how?

As it is a proverb, it could be highlighting that with some people (namely fools) you just can't win.

Remember that verses were not included in the original, and their allocation is sometimes somewhat illogical in terms of the intended flow of the writing. Read it as a complete chnk, rather than as 2 seperate verses.

 

Whoa, that seems like a rather broad assumption. From my experience, it is vice-versa. I am no Christian, I believe in a higher power, but I am able to study and question both the pro-religion beliefs and the anti-religious beliefs. I do know what you are getting at though, but these seem to be a minority of people, ie devout atheists.

There, of course, is no possible way to prove what is true and what is just thousands of years of tall tales and exaggerations. Frankly, for all we truely know Jesus could have been a masseur, not a mesiah.

Once again, its man's interpretation of Gods incontorvertible word, for it was not God who sat down and wrote those scriptures.

 

Not an assumption, an observation of the websites I looked at.

As another niggly little attempt to discredit Jim Meritt:

In his 'these are common counter-arguments I get section:

"3. "It has to be understood in context" I find this amusing because it comes from the same crowd that likes to push likewise extracted verses that support their particular view. Often it is just one of the verses in the contradictory set is suppose to be taken as THE TRUTH when if you add more to it it suddenly becomes "out of context". How many of you have goten JUST John 3:16 (taken out of all context) thrown up at you?"

So because some Christians take verses out of context to support an argument* so can I. Nice reasoning. :roll:


*Yes, I agree with him here - this is done far too much. Whole doctrines (and even denominations) have been built out of out-of-context or wilfully misinterpreted verses. Examples include the Crusades, the burning of Heretics and (a controversial one here) the office of Pope.

 

Ricky wrote

Assuming "God-breathed" doesn't mean dictated and written down verbatim, ie the bible is not a literally exact document, then OK, I can accept that. Thanks Ricky.

Which happens on both sides of the argument in any argument when it gets heated enough.
Remember: "even the devil may quote scripture if it suits his purpose" :lol: Possible misquote, but I've heard something along those lines many times, and that's been used to justify one point of view or another. Usually to discredit the opposition.
One question I was asked (might have been in Philosophy class or it might have been an interview for a job(!!?))
"If it could be proved conclusively to everyone that God did not exist and there is no afterlife then how would it affect your life?" That really got me thinking. And depressed me.
If there is nothing at all after this, then why are you still doing a 9 to 5 when, in the end, it doesn't matter, and will never have mattered, how you live your life? Go out, rob a bank, kill whoever gets in your way to get what you want??? Why bother looking out for anyone else,?

 

No problem.

Never actually heard it, but boy is it appropriate!
I'm gonna remember that one. Cheers!

Well, the obvious answer is that unless you want to die friendless & alone with nothing but possessions...

Interesting question though.
I would obviously be a tad disappointed ( ) but I don't think that I'd regret my lifestyle thus far.

 

Googled for it, and got it in full

By, of course, that master of the English language, Bill. (Shakespeare).
But I can't find which (if any,) play it was...

 

As always, religion is taken too seriously in this world.

 

To go back a wee bit:

Archeoptrix is not really a 'mid-evolved' animal. All the features it has (wings, feathers, etc) are fully formed. It has all the signs of a flying animal (including stuff like bird-style feet with claws front & back for gripping trees), and a complete, seperate animal in its own right.
You might as well claim that a Platypus is an evolutionary step between ducks & otters.

Find me a fossil of a lizard with semi-evolved wings

Human evolution - actually, there is a growing minority of evolutionists who reckon that Australopithecus et al are not really related to man ancestorally (no more than man is to Chimp, or Chimp to spider monkey).
I'll find some names for you.

 

No further questions.

About the Australopithecus, obviously that's just one of the first beings ever found to have any human characteristics. There are many other types in between them and humans that are more undeniably steps in an evolutionary ladder.

 

Um, not really. Feathers are simply a skin-covering, a useful way for a replite to regulate temperature (although no modern reptiles do this). As I said, show me a fossil with half-developed wings (or other transitional features).

 

Note that it says flight feathers. This seems to be a distinct development of a reptile in the direction of a bird, even if it's mostly just taking on a different type of skin covering. The dromeosaurid family had other distinctive birdlike features, such as hollow bones and claws extended backward from the foot. Also note that the later we get in the cretaceous period, the longer the arms of the deinonychosaurids get, and the more evidence of feathers on those arms is found.

 

I have to admit you got me.
In all honesty (and as Roel knows) I'm not really a full-on Creationalist, but I have been posting their side a fair bit to keep debate interesting.

I have been using arguments found in a book called 'Stones & Bones' which is actualy quite interesting, has some very good points in, but also employs a final argument that you coud drive an armoured division through, let alone a coach and four.

 

If you want an example of being able to see part-formed features you don't need to go back as for as fossils, many species of modern snakes have vestigal legs, some not even visable externally and are only apparent from the skeletons, some are externally visable and I think in at least one species used in movement.

These are generally regarded as the signs that snakes "devolved" their legs when evolved from lizards, although I guess it's reasonably possible that this is actually snakes evolving legs from being a limbless creature.

 

Sounds like one of those glass half empty/ half full deals. Has the snake evolved its way out of legs, or is it evolving legs as we speak. :-?

In the story of Adam & Eve, it is said (not verbatim) that God punishes the snake for its treacherous ways by taking its legs and forcing it to crawl on its belly for the rest of its life.

If this is true, I don't know how well it worked out, seems like modern snakes are quite happy with their no-leg situation. I can't find any reason why snakes would be evolving legs now, for their lifestyle and the niches they hold don't allow/require legs.

 

Very true, I don't profess to be an expert on anything least of all the evolutionary patterns of Snakes, I was just trying to point that out before that pedantic... erm, Ricky, yeah that's it, before Ricky intervened and pointed out the possiblity for me! :lol:

 

Who, me?

 

I take back everything I was thinking about you :roll: