Creation

[trent]

1 - Your second sentence is a perfect example of a human's selfishness. You are wrong, my friend. God doesn't worship us. He does not exist to make us happy. We exist for him, to worship him.

:rollseyes

I disagree with your entire above statement. I will just say, some people "use" "God" to live their "life" "better."

I am too tired to argue anymore, I believe I already made my point, and you didn't make yours.

[ACHTUNG]

Oh Jeeeesus! here we go!

[LINUS]

I'm so happy forums are typed communication. Could you imagine if this crap was audio format? I would have to get ready for the comet, as Josh said.

Can one of you guys make a fake log-in an' pretend to be a girl? That was waaaay more fun.

[bilson]

:
I am too tired to argue anymore

Alright. Have a good night.

[Massive Lee]

Bianca is one of the principal arguments that being gay can't possibly be natural.

:D

Blame it on the UFOs who made us with their magic wand. :drink:

[JasonC]

:rollseyes

I will just say, some people "use" "God" to live their "life" "better."

Look at preachers in big fancy church's. dummys give them their money so they can expand Gods empire. But in the mean time the preacher is livin high on the hog. And take a look at a poor one room church in the country, that preacher has to work his butt off at a nomal job to just keep his doors open.

[Nick]

So you're saying that God put the fossils there as a test of faith? Those poor misguided scientists.

The design of the human body is pretty crappy when you come right down to it...you'd think if we were made in the image of God, we'd be a little harder to kill.

We can prove evolution in an experiment.

Say we kill off all the cats with black stripes down their back. Eventually the genes for black stripes will disappear because it's a massive disadvantage to have black stripes. You've changed the species.

I'm politically conservative. I'd make being liberal punishable by death if I could...BUT...
religion has fought science every step of the way...except for when it was accidentally helped along, like when monks saved all the Greek and Latin texts during the dark ages because most of them didn't know what the hell they were copying. That computer you're typing on there is the devil's work...unfathomable elemental forces at work.

The drugs that treat cancer are genetic abominations!

The church taught that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the earth was flat! Kinda hard to have faith in that now, isn't it?

Faith is all well and good, but when it comes to what to teach children in school, a founding principle of our nation is the separation of church and state. Let them teach religious dogma in church, and science in science class.

If we listen to religion, the laws of physics and the elemental forces that make the universe work cease to exist! Now we have to deal with who's right and who's wrong! The Jews?! The Muslims?! The Christians?!...or maybe it was the ancient Greeks! They were here before Christ. Let's have a battle royale and see who wins. My money's on Zeus.

Oooohhhh. But if we listen to SCIENCE, there's actually room for a supreme being! The fact that there IS elemental order, the fact that things work the way they do, typically against an entropic universe, and chaos theory all show that chance is an illusion, and that there's no such thing as a truly random event. We share 99% of our genetic code with apes. It's REAL. We can use mitochondrial DNA to track the spread of our species right back to Africa. You can line the frigging skulls up and see the refinements in each step. "Well, Bob, the decay of this carbon isotope indicates that this skull is 300,000 years old, but that can't be right, because the world was only made 6000 years ago. God must have made the carbon decay faster to test my faith, or it's the work of the devil."
There are millions of species on this planet, Noah's ark must have been pretty goddamn big.

I believe in a supreme being...even if it's just some universal consciousness. There's too much order to the universe, and my luck is far too good so far for there not to be, in my opinion.
But I don't believe the earth was created 6000 years ago, especially since we have artifacts that predate that period.
Seven days? I bet we could find a way to blow up the whole planet in less time than that. Does that make us better than God?
We can redesign ourselves right now, from the ground up.
Some scientists say we might be able to stop aging within the next 75 years.
What happens if the day comes that science gives us the ability to whip up a planet in 7 days? Are we better than God then?

You can use faith as a blanket excuse and say that everyone who contradicts you is the devil. It's a wonderful excuse that everyone can use.

[Jand3rson]

The design of the human body is pretty crappy when you come right down to it...you'd think if we were made in the image of God, we'd be a little harder to kill.

That's the greatest thing I've ever heard. :D

[Jean]

Nick, well put.

[Jean]

Bianca is one of the principal arguments that being gay can't possibly be natural.

:D

LOL

[uofom3]

I can see both sides of this discussion, and everyone has valid points.

I'll say two things about it, and that's it:

1) Given that we cannot prove the existance of god, people can build a credibile, and completely explicable argument as to how things evolved into what they are today. This gives some piece of mind, and clearly answers questions.

2) I think it would be slightly ignorant to not be able to acknowledge that there is an equally likely possibility that something else is out there that is greater than we can explain or understand. "Creation" is a pretty intense concept to wrap your mind around. I have a believe in a "God" or some sort of higher power, and i still have a hard time grasping the idea that suddenly shit got created. BUT - to shun the idea that there is a possiblility of any sort of god or omnipresent force would be a bit unreasonable.

I don't personally have a real opinion on creation. I will say that I do believe there is a god, and I would say that I view it from the Christian standpoint. I have my relationship with god, but I don't need to go to a church to feel closer to him or be a more devout anything. I find that the more people are "spiritual" the better off they are personally, but the more "religious" they are the more they become handicapped by the intepretation that their individual churches or religious groups have on the meanings of the bible or whatever other book X religious establishment uses.

[StereoInstaller1]

Now that this has degraded into a purely religious discussion, let me put this out: I belong to the #1 most ostracized, most repressed, most persecuted religion in the world. We are so persecuted even today that we are recognized as a religion in only one country in the entire world, and legal in only a few.

I am Pagan.

Our religion is so misunderstood that only 1 out of 100 people understand our basic beliefs...and since we have no churches, no spokespeople and most importantly, no collection plates...few understand what we face should we offer to discuss our religion.

We have no hell. We have no Satan. We have a few basic beliefs, primarily kindness, trust, peace, and respect to all things. "An it harm none, do as you will" has to be the most open minded statement ever offered to mankind.

We don't use the whole "sin" guilt trip. We don't believe sex is nasty. We believe that life should be lived in joy, not shame. No one makes any money in our religion, so greed is not part of our celebrations or gatherings.

The Christians could not find a way to get all of Europe to bow down to its religious leaders (and pay them) so they made our celebrations of the seasons illegal, punishible by jail, torture, even death.

Ever heard of the Salem witch hunts? A couple of people burned at the stake or drowned...no big deal. Good christians doing their best, right?

Even in the face of this terrible persecution, gatherings still happened, festivals still happened...so the christians stole our holidays. Every single christian holiday has roots far in the past, in purely Pagan ritual, and the christians modified the ancient rituals to fit their needs, and fill their collection plates.

None of this is my "opinion", every single bit of this is historcal fact.

So, if you wish to continue living your life in shame, guilt and oppression, go right ahead. For me, who has studied history, theology, and philosophy not to pass a test but simply because I enjoy learning, seeking a way to fill the hole I felt in my heart.

Trust me, I will continue to believe as I do...

And remember, we were here first.

Luke

[JGood]

What a cluster fuck.

I don't see how any one of you can act like you have the slightest idea what we are doing here, how we got here, or where we are going.

Any of the theories are unimaginable, none of them make sense for the level of knowledge we currently have.

So I ask, how the fuck can any one of you tear into somebody else for believing something just as whacked out as what you believe in?

The thing that pisses me off about religious arguments are the way people try to cram their idea's down your throat. Make your fucking point without the sarcastic "I'm going to heaven and you're going to hell" bullshit. Other then that, I love hearing everyone's outlook and opinion. I just don't see why there is a right or wrong, as there realistically isn't right now.

.

[Jscotty]

We can prove evolution in an experiment.

Say we kill off all the cats with black stripes down their back. Eventually the genes for black stripes will disappear because it's a massive disadvantage to have black stripes. You've changed the species.

Thats true however no amount of killing off a particular animal will turn it into another species. We can kill off all the dumb dogs and eventually evolve a group of smarter dogs.. but we will never be able to kill off enough dumb dogs in order to make them smart enough to discuss politics and religion.

[DarkWing6]

Not all Christians believe that the world was created 6,000 years ago, and that evolution doesn't exist. I personally believe that God created our universe, but I also believe that this happened millions or billions of years ago. I also believe that there is evolution, man certainly isn't the same now than he was 1,000 years ago - however, I don't believe man evolved from monkeys.

***serious post, please don't take it as sarcastic bs like half the others in this thred***
Expand on this. I am very curious what differences you belive there are and why you believe this. I can understand that there are some differences (shorter lives, etc), but I am curious what differences you think there are and how you come to the conclusion that it happened over millions or billions of years.