What is so far fetched about people living for 900+ years. Scientists have discovered all the things that kill off man, so why is it so HARD to accept that perhaps man once did live longer than a lousy 120 years or so at best. If the Genesis account of creation is to be accepted (the water divided from the waters) why couldnt the earth have been in such a way to provide man with a living environment conducive for LONG life. Not this momentary life we currently live. Or is lack of a scientific background cause for one to not accept the POSSIBILITIES....
When science can overcome the paradoxes of something from nothing or something that conforms to natural law having no beginning or end science won't be science as we understand it today; science will be something else - maybe what today we call 'religion'. P.S: Scientism, the belief that science can answer all questions given time, is religion.
Welcome to the club. Complete objectivity is perhaps approachable when we're dealing with some mathematical or logical operations; otherwise, we can't separate ourselves from our perceptions. Belief is a tuffy. Everybody's modular; by that I mean we all have different 'moods' or modes of being. Our beliefs can fluctuate in their presence-in-mind or even invert with mood changes.
The hard evidence is that biblical scripture is directly contradicted by geological, fossil and radiological evidence, with respect to age of the planet, occurrences of biblical events, existence and development of life. Also, the Bible permits slavery (both old and new testament). It also indicates that the God of Abraham is a sadistic misogynist (God punishes all women for Eve's sin, by forcing them to bear children in excrutiating pain). Assuming that human laws would throw God in jail and throw away the key, were God mortal, why would anyone accept the Bible as a superior moral guide?
I was once thrown out of Sunday School for asking this question: Remember when Cain killed Abel and was subsequently banished to the Land of Nod. Where did all the people who resided in this 'Land of Nod' come from if Cain and Abels parents, Adam and Eve, were the first people on earth? Well? (...and no they were not 'Subprime borrowers' cursed by God and sent back in time either)
It is not inerrant. It needs to be interpreted to have any value to you, if your purpose is to know yourself and be saved. Salvation is for the mind. The bible is not able to mend the broken mind. You must look elsewhere, believing that a better presentation of the facts is there for you when you are ready for it. A book which begins with an account of creation that is simply not true, can hardly be counted on to save you. Jesus
I am saying that your observations mean little, because you weren't there, and your speculations are not proof. If there is a deity, all of us are unqualified to pass judgement, because we are blind, clueless and inept. Quantity wise, science has a lot more to learn that it has learned.
Giles, you've rearranged my words so that the meaning's been altered. I was suggesting that science in it's present form can't deal with paradoxes in nature, such as something coming from nothing, and that if science ever can deal with natural paradoxes it will have evolved into something different from science as we know it today. Also, scientism is a sort of religion in that it's a faith based on the scientifically unverifiable notion that science, given sufficient time, can explain everything. Re your question "Where do thoughts come from?": this is a good candidate for questions that science as it's structured today may be unable to answer. Science has no trouble detecting brain activity that accompanies thought but this is a long way from explaining the specific content of thought. Certainly the subjective nature of consciousness probably places individual experience forever outside the purview of science which by its nature is objective. Having said this though I have to say there has been much progress lately in the understanding of the functioning of the brain and the ways brain function relates to the quality of thought if not its specific content.