Actually, yes. You are asked to know who you are with certainty. Simply start out with caring about being *right* about your world-view. Certainty will follow a right outlook. Simply be right, and zeal will take care of itself. You are asked to be certain before you succumb to the temptation of traditional death scenarios. You are currently putting way too much faith in death to solve mental problems, looking at it like some sort of rite of passage or panacea. Life does not come from death! Life comes from...well, Life! It's not that hard to figure out. Just be right. You can't compromise with the truth. Use reason if you have to. Most of all, use an open mind...and use fearlessness.
I think the scientific view is over 4 billion years ago, so that's what I would go with. I would bet you have an opnion on the age of the earth too.
The only thing more sickening than these pathetic mewling believers when they're burning incense and chanting to their gods is when they deny their own beliefs for political expediency. What an absolute load of horsehit this is. Shows what a coward jem is. He has repeatedly questioned the science behind carbon dating. He views the Bible as the literal word of God and he believes the earth is as old as the Bible says it is. And yet when called out, he doesn't have the balls to say 'Yes, that's what I believe'. Instead we get 'I don't know, what do you believe'? Fucking sickening, is all I can say. Almost an argument for eugenics.
So, i've mentioned that it is a teaching device...like a chalkboard. Generally speaking, the chalkboard is blank, because the lesson is taught without words. It could be compared to a Rorschach blot/test. It's interpretation says perhaps more about the interpreter than about the T/teacher/teaching. Since Jesus' death-defying stunt, every student has rushed to that chalkboard to tell us what he thinks it means. Some of those dropped their student status and posed as graduates (ie. "Apostles") in the process of positing their pre-poisoned positions in the public domain. The first to get to the chalkboard were die-hard cultural nationalists bent on bowing down to banal books that bashed mankind over the head with bucolic bosh that should have been banned before broaching the broad-minded beauty of Jesus' better bounty. But no! Fools rushed in to fill in the gap between the master's meaning and their mean-spirited memes of thugged up themes. To a carpenter, everything looks like a nail. To an ethnic addict of Hebrew hubris, everything looks like a blood-sacrifice for appeasement's purpose. These have rushed to rule the roads of reason with ruby red writings that amount to treason. From a marketing perspective, they have *positioned* their paltry pourage primo in the people's pathetic libido. Now we have the task of re-positioning their retro-rhetoric to co-opt the kegs of constant conditioning. Christ!
what you do not get is that the bible does not say how old the earth is. In high school I was in AP physics and in college I studied astronomy and other sciences before declaring an econ major. By way - the church I attend does not think evolution is inconsistent with the bible. Does not say the earth is 6 thousand years old and is not fundamentalist. Where did you come up with those conclusions about what I believe. I question Carbon dating for the same reason I question a lot of forensic science = like finger prints and even some "DNA" conclusions. When you get and measure you baseline by guessing - you really can not be sure. I say I do not know... because I am not convinced anyone knows.
So you believe its 4 billion years old because someone told you to believe that. God gave you a brain for a reason so that you could think and reason and you dont have to let other people tell you what to think. (you like that? See how I used the same arguement atheists use against Christians all the time with us believing in the bible? Doesnt taste so good to know you are just as brainwashed as you believe we are, does it?)
If you were as free a thinker as you would like to think you are, why not go in the complete opposite direction of the evolutionists and "fade" their position? Instead of YEC, just consider that because of the unlimited power of Go(o)d, and because of Go(o)d's generosity, the devil has enough power in his little finger to make this entire world in the singularity of a single instant - like a flash of lightning - and trap it's sold out dupes for billions of years within an illusion of linear latitude. Six days? That's an insult to the Omnipotent.
Poor use of that argument and I knew you or Jem would post something similar but it's bullshit and you know it. I've read about how they came to the conclusion on the age of the earth and I've read about the bible views. I used my mind to decide the bible has no evidence or rational and logical thought behind it and I conclude the science argument is rational. And the science argument can and will change as more knowledge and evidence comes out. The religion argument never changes no matter what evidence shows that it is wrong. I'm not going to dedicate my life to physics and astronomy and paleontology and geology to become 100% certain that my view would match the current scientific view, know what peil you're not going to do it either so shut up with your illogical arguments. I've read up on blood lipids and when I get a blood test I take the results and pretty much trust them. I'm not going to become a chemist and biologist and doctor to verify that my view would match the current scientific view on blood work analysis. I'm a contractor and I have a plumbing and an electrical contractor doing some work for me, know what i have a good understanding of what they do but I'm not going to become a specialist in electrical or plumbing and HVAC, they explain what they are doing, it makes sense and I go with it. The thing is religion doesn't make sense, it is all mystical magical mumbo jumbo bullshit. Once again peil you've lost the discussion.
lets see how the brain of a bible thumper works. if the universe is only 6000 years old why can we see stars millions of light years away? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6pws3XVX7A&playnext_from=TL&videos=x-Z4SManHp8&feature=sub