Not bad! A good summary of the arguments that the Pharisees and Saduccees must have gone through. My point was simply that there was room for debate and their culture was split over it with the dominant side being pro-afterlife. And for that reason, I can't imagine how the references you cited state that it's possible to say that the Greeks were responsible for transforming Jewish thought centuries later when they clearly were already at the time of Jesus.
Shoeshine, In typical theist fashion, the theists switch to attacking evolution instead of guarding their position. This is a complete dodge. This is not about evolution but about god. Let's stick to the subject. So lets make this all VERY simple and stay on track. ALL atheists, for the sake of discussion, hypothetically REJECT evolution on the basis of "weak" evidence. There...thats done. Now lets discuss creationism and god. If evolution doesn't have enough evidence to be considered true, and evolution has far more supporting evidence than creationism, we can only logically conclude that creationism must also be dismissed. If you wish to assert the there is MORE evidence for creationism than evolution, be my guest and attempt to prove that. We have a "bible" and philosophical theories on creationism. We have literally TONS of evidence, as measured by weight for evolution, which we now REJECT. If the TONS of evidence, and thousands of scientists which readily accept evolution as fact, and the thousands of books and thousands of man-years of research, do NOT support evolution, then SURELY a book and some philosophy cannot even come close to supporting creationism. Any way you cut it, christian creationism, is no different than egyptian creationism, or any of the other mythological stories fabricated by a multitude of cultures throughout time. Now... this also begs the question. Why should I accept christian creation stories over egyptian or native american indian creation stores? Read these: http://www.sammustafa.com/WorldReadings/Creation.html Then CLEARLY explain why the christian version is THE TRUE creation story. Remember... every excuse you make to reject the other stories I will use to reject the christian one. peace axeman
This is a good point. The great, great majority of Christian biologists believe in evolution and I don't mean to say that one can't be a theist and believe in Darwin. But I am saying that I personally don't think macroevolution is possible across the large fossil gaps in the time frames given. And, more importantly, I am saying that there is suspiciously little evidence for it. I have the right to ask, "Why are there a significant # of fossils showing increasing size of the horse but none showing reptile to bird, reptile to turtle, mammal to whale, mammal to bat, dinosaur to flying dinosaur, etc., etc.?" I don't think the answer is as easy as, "Well, the Galapagos finches have changed, so of course why couldn't a reptile turn into a bird in a few million years!" I am willing to admit problem areas in my faith and areas where I have to admit I believe simply by faith. I just don't understand why most non-theists can't admit the same: macroevolution must be "religion" to them is all I can figure...
"Gordon, if you short God, you just may get a margin call you can't handle." Translation: I believe out of fear, not a rational reason. "If you ask yourself these life questions and you come up with a solid answer before you are dead, you haven't thought enough about the subject." Translation: If you dont agree with my position, you just haven't thought about it enough to realize i'm right Such nonsense peace axeman
gooooooooooooooooooooo, axeman!!!! i will answer your question for them: with VERY few exceptions, most religious people never even chose their own beliefs. they are brainwashed as children. what they are brainwashed with depends on where they are born and the culture there, or what their family/friends believe. aphexcoil, would you believe the bible if you were born in syria? no!! it's sad your CORE beliefs were essentially determined by locality. :-/ i love knowing my beliefs are universal--they'd even work on an alien planet!
Thank you, axeman, for not slamming me every other sentence. I agree with you about moving on from evolution (but of course I respectfully disagree that there is tons of evidence for macroevolution). Here is what the Intelligent Design movement is all about. Secular scientists have noticed a fine tuning of the universe for life on planet earth that is unexplainable. What happened is that various astronomers and cosmologists independently discovered one or two characteristics of the universe that were tweaked into a very, low probability range for life in the universe. When you add up all these probabilites, well, you can draw your own conclusion. There are, I believe, around 50 of them right now, so I can't possibly put them all into a post, but here's a sampling: 1. Gravitational coupling constant. If this was slightly stronger, all stars in the universe would be significantly larger than our sun(with uneven luminosity making advanced life impossible). If this was slightly smaller, all stars in our universe would be significantly smaller than our sun and there would be no large elements in the universe (again making advanced life impossible). 2. Strong nuclear force. If this was slightly weaker, hydrogen would be the only element in the universe. If this were slightly strong, there would be virtually no hydrogen in the universe. 3. Weak nuclear force. If this was slightly stonger, neutrons would decay more rapidly and there would be no helium which is necessary for stars to produce the heavy elements necessary for life. If this was slightly weaker, there would be an overabundance of helium which would lead to an overabundance of heavy elements. (Plus, neutrinos would be trapped within supernovae and unable to be expulsed into space.) 5. Expansion rate of the universe. According to Alan Guth, who is anything but a Christian, this must be tuned to 1 in 10 to the 55th. The list goes on and on including the ratio of proto mass to electron mass, the ratio of total protons to total electrons, the electromagnetic coupling constant, molecular energy levels, etc. And they are discovering many more regarding the "tuning" of our solar system. The placement of Jupiter, the luminosity of our sun, etc., etc. Again, I want to emphasize that the Intelligent Design movement just "happened". Non-theistic scientists all over the globe realized that when the whole picture together, life is an impossibly low probability even based on chance . (Imo that is why non-theists so desperately have to depend on theories such as multiple universes...)
Well, here's why I believe in the JudeoChristian version: it matches the astronomical and fossil record perfectly. Here is the order it gives in Genesis (keeping in mind that the vantage point of the observer/writer of Genesis is given in verse 1 as on the surface of the earth): 1. Creation of the physical universe. (1:1) 2. Transformation of the earth's atmosphere from opaque to translucent. (1:3) 3. Formation of a stable water cycle. (1:7) 4. Establishment of continents/oceans. (1:9) 5. Transformation of the atmosphere from translucent to transparent, i.e. sun, moon and stars became visible on the earth for the first time. (1:14-16) 6. Production of small sea animals. (1:20) 7. Creation of sea mammals (nephesh as gms likes to point out). (1:21) 8. Creation of birds. 9. Making of land animals (nephesh). (1:24) 10. Creation of man. (1:26) Coincidence? I think not...
if those values were different (and you still existed), then the universe would be a different place, and you'd still be saying, "well if this wasn't like this, then that wouldn't be like that."