Conflict of interests

personally, i have not had the same experience. but then i was a nerdy little kid first, and a christian second.as a child, i wanted to be a paleontologist later in life. so needless to say, biology and especially geology interested me from a very early age. when i became a christian, retaining my understanding of scientific things became kind of hard. keeping my faith in science, as it were, was like walking through the same minefield.except it wasn't a matter of faith: i KNEW they were just simply wrong. i'd seen enough geology and biology to know creationism was a lie, and i'd just kind of laugh about it. i never saw any IMPORTANT problems between creation and evolution.and now i have more and more knowledge of the bible, and i'm starting to understand where the problem is: they're reading wrong. creationists HATE me because i tend to out-bible-quote them, and put the contextual knowledge behind it. they love to say "the bible says such and such" and i can usually correct them...

imply? i thought i said outright they just make stuff up most of the time. but looking over it again, i guess imply would be the word. i really should stop wording things so passively.i've had whole conversations on this board that go:them: "the bible says..."
me: "book, chapter, verse?"
them: *no reply*lather, rinse, repeat. i don't believe the world to be magical in any sense of the word. i just think there's more to it. i consider faith an addition on top of knowledge. actually, i find divine motivation to be quite an interesting topic of debate. i'm currently studying the torah, nevi'im, and ketuvim (or, collectively, the old testament). i'm paying attention to what sort of picture the various sources are painting of god, and it's quite challenging to the standard christian views. i have a new idea, but if and when i feel like discussing it, i'll post a separate thread here. (having some causal relationship problems: do the changes in the text's rendering of god follow the people, or vice-versa?) i know the exact feeling. i have a friend, an ex-g/f actually, who's a fundamental christian. her attitudes about religion are a lot like mine used to be, and it annoys me to no end when we ctually talk about it. because i know and believe differently now. she used to complain we (another christian friend of mine, and i) would treat her like a child, but she doesn't do that anymore. i think she figured out why.but yes, nothing gets under our skin like seeing the way we used to be.

well, no, you're sort of right. the problem was that i couldn't just give it up and decided not to accept it. it explained everything i'd ever been interested in as a child. the bible didn't even so much as mention dinosaurs. i just don't think god would have to break his own rules to create us, and then go back and cover his tracks to make it look like he didn't break the rules.unless god is a corporate entity. i like walking with dinosaurs to some extent. but be wary, they do make stuff up. alot of the social structures they talk about, and various behaviours are almost all theory. usually backed by something, but always under debate. i think that evolution is much more powerful, and an old earth much more grand. my god makes bigger, cooler miracles than the god of the yec's. i agree. i hate this fundamentalist way of reading the bible too. so far from the fundamentals of the text. concepts are completely lost on them, like the fact it's a COLLECTION of books, by different authors, at different times, from different sources, in different languages. let alone trying to explain typos, translation errors, different versions, editting, etc. no, the bible has to be perfect, and written by god. even where it says otherwise. i'm finding real courses more interesting.speaking of which, i should go do my bible homework. lol.

i'm currently in a debate with willowtree. he keeps talking about how i worship strange gods of archaeology and rocks and cows and stuff. i can't seem to be it through his thick skull that i'm a christian. my personal favourite is irrational. because they're right. it IS irrational. i just don't see why it's a bad thing to be irrational occasionally. it's what makes us human. i can't pray in churches.

i thought i was using it correctly. behavioural patterns of dinosaurs are not sheer speculation, some is evidenced in the rock, the bones, etc.for instance, we know that compsagnathids would eat the young of their own species. we know that t-rex would try to hunt living dinosaurs at least part of the time. we know that triceratops stuck together in herds, with strong family bonds.my argument was more with the specificity of it -- they would try to create plot. this isn't a bad thing (ever read "raptor red"?) but i was just saying to be mindful that not everything is solid fact. WOULD A CAPSLOCK KEY SUFFICE?

i don't think he does, actually. god knows he exists. i think that in this stage of our evolution, it is better to be at a distance from god. it's like a mother teaching her child to walk. at some point, she has to stop carrying it. i got in argument with mike the wiz one time on here. he asserted that athiests were just afraid of the god of the bible. and so i listed a few things about the god of the bible that would turn off an athiest to christianity or judaism. things like: killing millions of innocent children, lying, jealousy, punishing children for their parents' sins, etc. poor mike went nuts, and called me a blasphemer. i had to point out that everything i posted was directly from the bible, and only the first 5 books of it.some of that stuff that casts god in a bad light really is in the bible.however, i think evil is the wrong word. god creates and defines good and evil. calling god good or calling god evil are both pretty silly. we're putting our own moral framework onto a god beyond our understanding. i find creationism especially offensive for a similar reason: it binds god by a universe the creationist made up. as a former athiest, this statement is still wrong. disbelief in god may or may not be a belief depending on the person, but in no way is it ever a system. religion is a system; athiests are no unified.or, at least they never let me come to meetings. this one got a lot of attention. but i have a different reply. as an athiest, and even as a christian, i found the idea that purpose and meaning in life can only be found through serving the invisible man in the sky far too depressing.if you're called to service, that's cool and everything, but there can be meaning to life without god. that's what makes faith special, we don't need it.

but to an athiest, it IS. like i said, you may find true meaning in whatever religion want -- the athiest just isn't looking for that because they can find it in other ways. do we need an overall lasting external meaning to life? and i would still argue that it can indeed be found without religion. lots of people find it in child-raising, but some find it in the question for human understanding and advancement: arts, sciences, etc.it may eventually lead us back to god. it may not. i find oppression, misery, and sorrow all the more meaningless believing in god. it's the classic "why does god let this happen?" question. there are answers, of course, and i have my faith. but to athiest, it's easier to believe that there is no driving force behind it all.i'm just saying that different people see things differently, and not everyone finds reason, sense, or faith in religion. lots of people lead quite happy lives as athiests and agnostics.

i'm currently in a class labeled "introduction to the bible: old testament." i knew what i was in for when i took, but from the looks of it, most of the class didn't.you can tell the christians in the class: they're the ones who protest even after professor soundly disproves their weird opinions of the bible. it's a scary thought for some to be shown evidence that the bible is flawed book, with imperfect editting and translation, incomplete, and written by many different people over a thousand years. ...we're not even covering whether or not the book is historically accurate at all. some beliefs don't hold up to scrutiny though. like the perfection of the bible. it has contradictions. if you read it in the fundamentalist way, it doesn't make any sense.

you have a fundamentally wrong way of reading the bible at every level. ignoring reality and scientific fact, your reading does not evem stand up to literary analysis.you claim to read the text literally, but you do not. as a religious person, i would not describe faith as rational. here's a hint of to the mindset of the redactors of genesis. genesis 1 and two describe two instances of creation, which often literally contractict each other. the first story's order goes: light, sky, earth/plants, sun/moon, fish/birds/serpents, animals/man/woman, rest. the second's order goes: earth, man, plants/eden, animals, woman.the both can't be right, but the edittors put them in. why is that?is it maybe possible that they didn't care about precision, factuality, and detail? so if your statement is true then why do creationists care so much about details that don't even line up right within the same book? here are the opening verse of the JPS masoretic version:

quote:

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When God began to create heaven and earth (the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water), God said, "Let there be light"; and there as light.

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this tells us a few things. it tells us that the earth was not created from nothing. it says it existed before god said anything, it was just empty. it also tells us that it was not neccessarily in the beginning. (ask amlodhi, i'm sure he'll back up the learned hebrew scholars.) actually, either reading is acceptable, depending on how literal you take it. there's also apparently a midrash that says the days are the days it takes god to tell moses how he made everything, which explains why god is portrayed as speaking, where in chapter he's actually performing actions. wrong, and wrong.eloyhim is not a name, it's a title. god's name is yhvh. start reading in genesis 2, it says yhvh eloyhim. it's specifying WHICH god.eloyhim is indeed plural, but it's not neccarily of majesty although its verbs are all singular. the best explanation i heard was from my hebrew bible teacher. he said that it's like "pants" or "scissors" and is just never used in singular, even though it's only describing one god. genesis two describes god as forming man out of the earth, physically. your "instantaneous and miraculous" is an interpretation, and does not match the text. the word indicates a process. but i've posted about this before. read genesis 6. what is this ben'eloyhim? god has a family? other gods? genesis in no way refutes polytheism. when rachel steals here father's gods in genesis 31, the word used is the same: eloyhim. only by implication and interpretation are they fictitious.as for evolution, see the process i mentioned above.and yeah, it refutes athiesm. like independence day with will smith refuted that we're alone in the universe. i'd hardly call it a conclusive, factual document. all interpretation.john is a text i largely ignore. it does not match the other three gospels, and attributes things to jesus that would have gotten him crucified for blasphemy justly. a good reading of the text is on a gnostic, symbolic level, not a literal one.genesis mentions neither christ nor a spirit -- see the translation above.a better explanation for the pluralities may be the qabalistic one. it also explains why god would create man male AND female in his image. the text does say that god is male and female. but not in genesis 2. good, now break it off at chapter 2, halfway through verse four. then read that story up til the second last verse, and tell how they coincide. which account? and you're still reading it blindly. open your eyes, read it for what it is, in the best context you can. there's meaning to the stories, important enough that authors and edittors were willing to forgive errors evidenced by the text itself in order to include it in genesis. you're trusting in the wrong parts. christians don't want to either. read galations.or just observed the look on your face when i tell you that i'm allowed, in the eyes of god, to stone you to death for cooking last saturday. do you follow god's rules? i know i don't. actually, old-earth views have been around a long time. the creation myth in question is younger than you might think (about 600 bc) and creationism in the sense we think of today is even younger. this like a bush-kerry debate. "my opinion is consistant!" "mine changes as new information comes up!"which one is right? should we ignore new advances, and simply take older views? genesis does say that there's water outside of our atmosphere. now that we've been there, shouldn't that information matter? no, fact is something observable. every observation insists that a literal reading of genesis, focusing on the details, is wrong.

thus demonstrating my point: you have a fundamental reading problem. i said, IGNORING scientific facts and reality (arguments about whether evolution happens etc), that your view does not stand up to literary analysis. replying about evolution (in an obviously misinterpretted way) does not help your point. i'm not talking about evolution, i'm talking about the bible, what it says, how it's structured and composed, who wrote it, where why and when, and how it's been revised, editted and translated. from about the second half of verse 4 onward for a few verses. it says that god made adam before anything else. read the parenthetical aside: it says that no grasses or plants were made. then, when god notices that adam is lonely, he makes animals. and when no suitable mate could be found for adam, he makes eve.seriously, have you read genesis 2? it says water existed before creation. 6th day. god rests on the 7th.and homo sapiens (two words) were not "premeval" they were, and are relatively recent.and genesis two is not a miraculous event, except for when god breathes life into adam. god simply forms a man from clay. no, the bible STATES that god does exist. no implication. it's not like "hey, maybe there's some invisible man in the sky." it says things like god talked to moses on mt horeb.and please, PLEASE read the bible some more. there is no possible way that it came from the mind of god. it was written over thousands of years, in different places, by different people. it has many inconsistencies, oversights, factual errors and distortions, and agenda-driven text. you can't just say that it was written by god and expect those of us who've actually read the book to agree. i do not disagree, i'm just saying that the qabalistic trinity works better than the christian one for the example of genesis. that idea says that god is male, female, and neither. it would explain why when god creates humans in his image, he creates them with two genders. and it wasn't until the 1500's that we thought the earth went arond the sun and not vice versa. models are changed, revised, and often completely scrapped because they don't fit the data. creationism doesn't fit the data.and although i can't find you the context of the gould quotemine, i assure that stephen jay gould has not doubt in his mind as to what model is true. and it's not the flood. have you read the book? so tell me, according to god's word, who's the earthly grandfather of jesus, joseph's father? is matthew right, or luke? one has to be wrong. doesn't that inspire some doubt in your mind? you have proof of neither point. in fact, i'm disproof of the first. i don't care about the accuracy of the bible -- but jesu try and shake my faith in god. darwin was a christian.evolution is part of the study of (divine) creation. just because it collides with your faith somehow does not mean it collides with everyones'. take a poll of evolutionary biologists, i'll bet that yu find a fair number are christians, and the christian faith is no danger whatsoever. genesis is not the foundation of christianity. in fact, many of christ's teachings were contrary to genesis. genesis promoted the idea of revenge. jacob's sons respond to dinah's rape by tricking every male in the city into becoming circumcised (god's holy covenant) and then killing them all when they were still weakened. sound like something christ would preach? recent does not equal wrong. but old often does, especially in things like science which get revised when problems are found.and actually, i'll see if i can find the source for you, but apparently old-earth RELIGIOUS arguments and existed since about the time of christ.

the earliest possible date for the authorship of genesis is around 600 bc. the creation myth in question (genesis 1:1-2:4) and the story of the flood are babylonian in origin, and thusly could not have been written before the babylonian captivity.i suspect portions of genesis to be much older, but have no literary evidence for this. in my opinion, genesis 2:4-4:26 is the older of the two myths, and the more important.but the whole 7-day thing, in terms of biblical history, is rather new. sameul and kings are probably older.