Matt Janx

Matt: LMFAO becuase you actually think the earth has been around billions and millions of years!
You guys crack me up!

Another point: If we measure time in BC (before Christ) and AD (otherwise known as after Christ) then why was Jesus so important to mankind if there is no God?

Kona...

Your actually claiming it isn't?

Because someone told you so because they read it in a book?

You know God spoke to Jerry and told him to collect millions upon millions of dollars or he would bring him home(kill him, a death penalty by God so he claims) and he had only so many days to do it, boy good thing he went up into that Tower of Power and had a sit down with God because he was forgiven for failing to gather that money for God, but God being a loving God let him off the hook, oh yeah and even let him keep the money!

Can you beat that?

The age of the earth *has* been proven to be far beyond a few thousand years.




[Message Edited]

The age of the earth *has* been proven to be far beyond a few thousand years.

Yes by the works and ideas of MAN...we proved using MANS methods not GODS...

Anyways...

Your actually claiming it isn't?Because someone told you so because they read it in a book?

I am chooseing to mostly ignore this thread because..

I have my faith in God and believe in the Bible and that is enough for me.

If I get persucuted for my beliefs so be it.

#408 by Kona0197 - 9/18/2003 3:24:24 PM The age of the earth *has* been proven to be far beyond a few thousand years.Yes by the works and ideas of MAN...we proved using MANS methods not GODS...

So what would God's methods be for proving the age of the Earth, and why hasn't he taught them to us yet?

I respect your belief in God Kona, but there's belief and then there's blind fanaticism. Are you telling us that unless God tells you something's true, you'll never believe it? That must make for a pretty paranoid and unfulfilling existence.

Get a clue a read the bible and read it to the point you truly understand it then the age of the earth will be explained to you. until then,

quit patonizing me. I am no fanatic.

This thread just pisses me off when people deny God. Oh well, your loss.

Kona, it may interest you to know that I was raised a Christian and have read the Bible from cover to cover on more than one occasion. Most of my friends are still devoted believers and my parents regularly attend church. I'm not just some shortsighted fool who doesn't know what he's talking about, and I only patronise you because you keep coming out with these outrageous statements.

While I thought that the content of the Bible presented an interesting read and contained a lot of context upon which to base one's morals when growing up, I found no more truth in the words than I have in any other book I read before and since. I also keep getting told off at work for filing the Bible in the fiction section rather than the Religion section.

Kona,

What work of God created the computer you're using to post your view?

The same understanding of the physical sciences that make computers, etc., possible also apply to the investigations of the age of the earth.

God did not give us our ability to reason and understand the world around us just so that we would ignore those abilities and pretend they don't exist.

Additionally, which of the body of information you claim is correct was communicated directly to you by God Himself?

I'm not slamming your belief, but you should realize that God did not create us to blindly follow dogma.

As for the age of the earth, etc., I'm reminded of a story by Isaac Asimov that I think is relevant:

How it Happened My brother began to dictate in his best oratorical style, the one which has the tribes hanging on his words. "In the beginning," he said, "exactly fifteen point two billion years ago, there was a big bang and the Universe--" But I had stopped writing. "Fifteen billion years ago?" I said incredulously. "Absolutely," he said. "I'm inspired." "I don't question your inspiration," I said. (I had better not. He's three years younger than I am, but I don't try questioning his inspiration. Neither does anyone else or there's hell to pay.) "But are you going to tell the story of the Creation over a period of fifteen billion years?" "I have to," said my brother. "That's how long it took. I have it all in here," he tapped his forehead, "and it's on the very highest authority." By now I had put down my stylus. "Do you know the price of papyrus?" I said. "What?" (He may be inspired but I frequently noticed that the inspiration didn't include such sordid matters as the price of papyrus.) I said, "Suppose you describe one million years of events to each roll of papyrus. That means you'll have to fill fifteen thousand rolls. You'll have to talk long enough to fill them and you know that you begin to stammer after a while. I'll have to write enough to fill them and my fingers will fall off. And even if we can afford all that papyrus and you have the voice and I have the strength, who's going to copy it? We've got to have a guarantee of a hundred copies before we can publish and without that where will we get royalties from?" My brother thought awhile. He said, "You think I ought to cut it down?" "Way down," I said, "if you expect to reach the public." "How about a hundred years?" he said. "How about six days?" I said. He said horrified, "You can't squeeze Creation into six days." I said, "This is all the papyrus I have. What do you think?" "Oh, well," he said, and began to dictate again, "In the beginning-- Does it have to be six days, Aaron?" I said, firmly, "Six days, Moses."

I found no more truth in the words than I have in any other book I read before and since.

Ah I see...you lost your faith.

BTW the bible is NOT fiction and/or myths.

God did not give us our ability to reason and understand the world around us just so that we would ignore those abilities and pretend they don't exist.

Ah but the other side of the equation must be explained as well.

The devil will do/can do anything to stand in the way of your walk with the Lord God. That includes ecoulotion IMHO>

I just don't understand how a person can continue to crow on about how things written by man aren't fact, and yet the Bible is. As I have said time and again, regardless of the influence they were under at the time, the author(s) of the Bible were human. If God truly wanted us to believe the content of the book, why did he make the mistake of having someone else write it for him? If man is supposed to be made in the image of God, then surely God would have the same ability to write as any man.

So much of religion and the belief in God is taken on blind faith. The difference between blind faith and faith is that the latter is based upon evidence experienced by the person holding that faith, and not through second or third-hand information from a book as with the former. If you had been alive to witness the events described in the Bible, then I would be more inclined to believe your accounts of those events. The fact is that anyone could have written the Bible, and you only believe in what they have written through force-feeding and brainwashing by an organised religion.

If you were to be born out in the middle of the desert and then left to fend for yourself until your adult life, you would have no concept of God, the Bible or any of the events depicted in the book. If you then re-entered civilisation and were confronted by those things, it's highly unlikely that you would believe in them. Your beliefs are shaped by the influences around you and your own experiences. If you had been born in such extreme circumstances, your only beliefs would be those of survival and the actions necessary to maintain it.

Just read this today while on lunchbreak. First thing I thought of was this thread

Study Shows Monkeys May Resent Unfairness

By ALEX DOMINGUEZ
Associated Press Writer

September 17, 2003, 11:02 PM EDT

Humans aren't the only ones who hate a bum deal, it turns out.

In a recent study, brown capuchin monkeys trained to exchange a granite token for a cucumber treat often refused the swap if they saw another monkey get a better payoff -- a grape.

Instead, they often threw the token, refused to eat the piece of cucumber, or even gave it to the other capuchin after viewing the lopsided deal, said Emory University researcher Sarah Brosnan.

She said the results indicate man and monkey may have inherited a sense of fairness from an evolutionary ancestor.

"This implies we evolved this way," said Brosnan, whose work with colleague Frans B.M. de Waal is reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

The trait may have helped species cooperate and survive, Brosnan said.

However, Charles Janson, who studies capuchins at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and was not involved in the research, suggested the monkeys' behavior may have been learned in captivity, rather than inherited as an evolutionary adaptation.

Brosnan said she doubted the behavior was learned, saying most animals "cannot learn things which they do not naturally do in the wild."

"More importantly, however, learning behavior requires that individuals get rewarded for performing a specific behavior," Brosnan said. "In our test, the subject actually received less reward for refusing to exchange."

The researchers, at Emory's Yerkes National Primate Research Center, studied five female monkeys, testing them two at a time.

When both monkeys were given a cucumber slice after handing over the token, they completed the trade 95 percent of the time.

But when one was given the tastier grape for the same amount of work, the rate of cooperation from the other monkey fell to 60 percent, with the cheated primate sometimes throwing the token, refusing the cucumber or giving the cucumber to the other monkey. And when one didn't have to do anything to get a grape, the other made the trade for the cucumber only 20 percent of the time.

The refusal to make the exchange increased as the experiment went on, the researchers reported.

"They were not happy with me," Brosnan said, although she later added that she couldn't really know what the monkeys' emotions were.

The scientists concluded that capuchins apparently measure rewards in relative terms, comparing their rewards to those available, as well as their efforts to those of others.

Small and highly animated with faces that resemble wizened old men, the tropical forest-dwelling capuchins were chosen for the experiment because they often share food.

Brosnan, who said she is now conducting similar studies with chimpanzees, noted that the capuchin that got the grape didn't react at all to the unjustness of the situation. That "probably implies there is still a lot of difference between their sense of fairness and ours," she said.

On the Net:

Research page: http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/capuchins/BrosnanNature/BrosnanNature.htm

#413 by Kona0197 - 9/18/2003 3:47:48 PM Ah I see...you lost your faith.

To lose something you must have it to begin with.

BTW the bible is NOT fiction and/or myths.

Again, your opinion, and not outright fact.

Grayhaze:

If there is no God explain to me why I have seen bones that were broken heal themselves? Why have i seen smokers who smoke a pack a day for 50 years quit and never relapse? anything is possible in the name of Jesus.

Point is I have seen and heard many Godly maricles in my time. I have heard God speak to me though my heart. He changed my life. I do not have blind faith, I question everything.

Kona,

I don't believe in 'ecoulotion' either

My question to you is: why is it that you seem to be afraid to question (or at least critically examine) the basis of your faith? Is the basis for your faith so weak and unfounded that you cannot even examine it, and so you must only take the word of some other person as to what it is you should believe?

The argument that the 'devil' is responsible for any bit of knowledge that doesn't conform to your beliefs is merely a dodge, if you aren't willing to actually question why you believe that way.

You may have also missed the point of the story I pasted above. Even IF you accept that the Bible is divinely inspired in the author, it is still necessary to accept that the act of presenting that inspiration to the rest of the people must be moderated by the fact that it has to be presented in terms that they will understand, and in a method that they are actually capable of using (for example, since they don't have computers or presses, they had to write by hand, on limited supplies).


Ultimately, no matter how you believe, God is MORE important than the Bible. Where there is conflict or doubt or questions of veracity and motivation of the authors and editors of the Bible, the benefit of doubt MUST go to God, not to the words of the Bible.

Ingui,

I saw that article and had the exact same thought

Even if it isn't exactly applicable to humans, it is certainly food for thought.