Fossil discovery...

[K.Bullock]

“The Bishop of Durham distinguishes between the science of Darwin and the philosophy of Darwinists. Believing that one can be both a theist and an evolutionist, Tom Wright exposes the real agenda of those who argue that religion and science are necessarily in opposition.”


Good stuff from N.T. Wright the Bishop of Durham



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFTmZ9PFMx8

[Scott Greenwood]

What’s a Todd Sneider? BTW, like I said, I don't believe in organized religion (church)
I don’t really have to explain my belief system to you at all.
I expect Darwin figured it out.
In the grand scheme of things I expect god guides all things.
Churches while responsible for much of the good in the world, they have far too much blood on their hands for me to ever follow an organized religion again. The stain of pedophile priests without sanction for so long and in many cases acceptance by catholic leadership is a crime without the possibility of redemption. Look at the perversion of Islam. I choose to believe in god in my own way. I believe in a deity just not anyone else’s interpretation of that. I have my own ideas of right and wrong, although I expect the basis for much of it is my catholic upbringing, but not longer adhere to it and choose to pray in my own way. I don’t care what anyone thinks and I respect their stricter adherence to a religion. Feel free to condemn me to hell fire.
BTW, I believe the big bang was originally discovered by catholic monsignor Georges Lemaître.

[B]I believe this is how I feel. Just glad you put into writing.

I have a hard time believing what someone is saying about thousands of years ago with no factual evidence. I do believe there is a God, but is he in the grand scheme of things, highly doubtful. By the way, when you have actually winked at the after life and saw nothing, you have a base to go off of. I have been declared physically dead twice in my life, no brain waves, no heart beat.

[Cody Covey]

wtb scripture about luke warm Christians.

[cotts135]

Obviously the responses are off the cuff and the evidence I gave in the links has not been reviewed.

Not true. I read your links but again I will stand by what I said in a previous post. These are criticisms of scientific procedure in just a few narrowly defined experiments. Are we to throw away all the other provable data supporting Evolution? I will grant you that these questions are important,and if answered in the future could define the debate, but to say this the end all to be all that refutes the basic tenets of Evolution is taking the argument to a level not deserved.
Again I ask, Where is your concrete proof that we were created? One of the first things I read on the sites your referenced was this.

" While absolute proof of the existence of God cannot be realized by any human being, the great weight of evidence, when rationally evaluated, clearly balances the scales heavily in favor of God. We can demonstrate "beyond a reasonable doubt" that "He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him"
This is a faith based believe , not a fact one. Lets not confuse them.

[Matt McKenzie]

The moment you try to "prove" faith, you have lost. Faith and proof are opposites.

[dnf777]

What’s a Todd Sneider? BTW, like I said, I don't believe in organized religion (church)
I don’t really have to explain my belief system to you at all.
I expect Darwin figured it out.
In the grand scheme of things I expect god guides all things.
Churches while responsible for much of the good in the world, they have far too much blood on their hands for me to ever follow an organized religion again. The stain of pedophile priests without sanction for so long and in many cases acceptance by catholic leadership is a crime without the possibility of redemption. Look at the perversion of Islam. I choose to believe in god in my own way. I believe in a deity just not anyone else’s interpretation of that. I have my own ideas of right and wrong, although I expect the basis for much of it is my catholic upbringing, but not longer adhere to it and choose to pray in my own way. I don’t care what anyone thinks and I respect their stricter adherence to a religion. Feel free to condemn me to hell fire.
BTW, I believe the big bang was originally discovered by catholic monsignor Georges Lemaître.

AMEN!

I never saw a mutually exclusive relationship between creation and evolution. Creationism is the way the writers of the Bible explained evolution to people who could not understand the biology. Or, maybe the other way around. We see evolution EVERY DAY, and some fail to recognize it. For example, antibiotic resistance in common germs. If God created E. coli that was susesceptable to Penicillin, why are 85% of E. coli infections now resistant? They evolved. Why do pesticides lose effectiveness after years of use? Same answer. Selective forces applied to a species will select those genetically able to survive and reproduce, thus effecting a change in the gene pool. That's all there is to evolution. those are simple examples in species with rapid reproduction cycles so we can see evolution in a relatively short time, but over much longer periods of time, much more dramatic shifts have occured.

By stating the examples above, I don't see how that offends any religion or refutes the existence of God??? BTW, wasn't Gregor Mendel a monk?

[road kill]

Maybe both happened?
Anyone ever think of that?

Seriously, did you??

[dnf777]

Maybe both happened?
Anyone ever think of that?

Seriously, did you??

I did, and do believe. If you take evolution back as far as you can explain, you get into some really philosophic questions...beginning of universe, big bang, etc...but they all had to start somewhere. Even as scientists explain in detail the big bang theory of creation of the universe, SOMEBODY had to light the fuse, right? That's were only God can take credit. Science runs out of theories. If you read Stephen Hawkin's "A Brief History of Time" he alludes to just that. But just because we can't explain EVERYTHING in scientific terms, doesn't mean I"m willing to chuck it all aside and go back to the earth being the center of the universe, the world is flat, and sickness results from offending the powers that be... I don't know how 3000 songs fit in my ipod, but I don't rely on Pope Ratz to tell me spirits inhabit my little black box.

As our knowledge expands, more explanations of natural phenomena are moved from the realm of religion into the realm of science. Flat earth>>global positioning system.....Noah's ark>>>Darwin's finches.....Mystical heavenly bodies>>>Neil Armstrong's footprints

But none of the science explains the very simple root questions of where/when did the univers begin...what happens to our souls after death??? I don't think organized religion does much to answer these questions. As was pointed out on this forum, as well in recent news events, organized religion does indeed have blood on it's hands. Although they're entirely different religions, bullets finding doctors heads in church and 767s finding skyscrapers were all motivated by a firm belief that their God would not only forgive, but approve of these very "unholy" acts. I'm very scared of systems of belief than enable its followers to commit such acts in the name of goodness.

[Keith Farmer]

Are we to throw away all the other provable data supporting Evolution?

I would ask that you post any links or information you have showing conclusively that macro-evolution is or has ever occured...not just theories.

The moment you try to "prove" faith, you have lost. Faith and proof are opposites.

For me I am certainly not trying to "prove faith"...that would be a pejorative task with regards to faith...faith is what it is.

Oh, Todd Snider:

http://www.toddsnider.net/?mpf=frame&


.

[K.Bullock]

Maybe both happened?
Anyone ever think of that?

Seriously, did you??

Follow the link I posted, you will surprised to find that science and theology have not been at odds up until recently. St. Augustine wrote a piece on Genesis that Fundamentalist Creationists would call him a heretic over. He also believed that science is the fingerprints of God as do many in the church.

The young earth creationists as they are known insist that the earth is only ten thousand years old based on a western understanding of what day and a week mean. Yom is the Hebrew word for day which can mean a lot of things ...in Genesis it is correctly understood as a period of time not necessarily a literal 24 hour day.


Some believe that if it isn't a literal 24 hour day then the bible is not true. So they try to present evidence that the world could only be ten thousand years old because that is the way they interpret the time periods in the bible.

It is a relatively small but unfortunately loud minority of people that believe this. Why they feel the need to attack others beliefs ...I don't know maybe they misinterpreted some other stuff in the bible as well.



That is ridiculous. I hope God is not that small.