*********************************************** I am not yet and will not ever be bound to a specific religion (as slave perhaps). *********************************************** I've never understood that thinking. The underlying implications, of course, are that one cannot be correct about religion, cosmological truth is unknowable and everyone is right when it comes to spirituality. However, I absolutely agree that noone, but noone should criticize IB!
well that just makes a complete mockery of what is commonly regarded to be "true"! something is either true for all, or it's not "true" at all. as much as your "we are the world" social conciousness might want it to be the case, they can't ALL be right. mattjclark, i don't know why you waste time with pompous fools that proclaim, "i read the word and i knew it was true. end of story"! (which is funny, cos after reading the very same, i KNEW it was a complete load of hogwash.) inandlong, why do you even bother asking and answering questions? someone that 'knows the truth end of story' obviously wouldn't need to bother with such mundane tasks as critical thinking and gathering up the courage to face the implications of any answers that arise.
I respectfully disagree. I believe truth can be known beyond a "reasonable shadow of a doubt" by simply examining objective evidence. By looking at the scientific evidence one can, imo, see that one and only one holy book matches the Big Bang and subsequent progress of life on planet earth. Is it not reasonable to assume that, if there was a Creator, He could correctly log the beginning of planet earth and the cosmos in a book and leave it for future intelligent life? Of course, there are much more interesting and important aspects to religion than simple scientific verification, but it is revealing.
shoeshineboy, i'm not sure exactly what it was you were 'respectfully disagreeing' with... re genesis: it took an army of christian apologists working overtime to reconcile its story with scientific 'fact', and the end result (which is still shaky) requires such a stretch of imagination i can't see how anyone in their right mind could call it 'reasonable' to believe. apologetics can make the most ridiculous of claims appear plausible. (i've got a link somewhere of the "hey diddle diddle" nursery rhyme treated this way. i'll dig it up) ps- if you're interested, you might wanna check out the work of Quentin Smith, who argues that big bang cosmology effectively rules out the existance of a 'creator'.
That's a very interesting fact SSB (although I don't know it to be true). For the 140 years of argument relative to evolution, I've never heard of any supporter of the Bible using evolution to prove the divine nature of the Bible. Very Funny. A black man (OJ) commits murder and gets off, The Democrats pass welfare reform, And Christians using evolution to prove the Bible. I've officially seen it all.
Are you talking about the Bible when you mention the holy book? Have you ever heard of and read Theravada and Mahayana Conons in Buddhism? Have you ever read Kojiki and Nippon Shoki in Shintoism. I-Ching from Confuciunism They have a good and better explanation of the Big Bang. The all start off with the world in Chaos, Void, or MU(nothingness). Then a duality or gender occurs/splits out and creates the universe. In Shinto, it was two gods who were born from the chaos, male and female. They meet and the world was born. In I-Ching, it's Ying and Yang deriving from Tao. In science, first with the fact, in a vacuum there is constantly a separation and attraction between energy(particle) and anti-particle(energy) splitting and joining to none.(Read some quantum physics books if you don't believe me) In another words, where is space there is something and where there is space there is always time. Modern science cannot figure out what was there before time or even space was there. Now with a scientific theory(it's not mine but some scientists'}, But from the observation of a vacuum, it is said that the the Big Bang might have been caused by some type of distortion between the constant separation and joining of matter and anti-matter. "Let there be light", world born from gender, and scientific duality... if I stay biased I can say Eastern Religions have a better analogy. But personally it's not much difference. Still, most of you should better understand other religions before you comment on "religion". Most of you are talking based on Western Religions, considering it "religion" as a whole. I can say that to stu on the post above, along with other posters in here.
I will look up Quentin Smith as I can't imagine where he's coming from. The Big Bang means a universe about 14 billion years old, an earth about 4 billion years old and life a fraction of that. That's why Einstein with his cosmological constant, Sir Arthur Eddington with his Oscillating Universe and Fred Hoyle with his Steady State Theory all bitterly fought against the Big Bang. These mathematical geniuses all realized one important fact: the Big Bang does not allow anywhere near enough time for Darwinian evolution to occur. You can't create a cell, transform a reptile-like creature into a mammal (or bird), etc., etc. in just a few billion years. (As you can tell, I did not mean to argue for evolution.)
Noone knows what happened before 10 -34 seconds, so I wasn't referring to that imo speculative time period. I am referring to post 10 -34. After that time, I am simply saying everything fits beautifully with Genesis. That's all.