People can mock creationist (believers that God created all things in 6 literal days) if they want. It does not change the fact the God created this world and all things about 6 thousand years ago.

The funny thing is despite all the supposed fundamental scientific evidence about "evolution" and "big bang" theories, there are many people who are hearing one hour presentations by Answers in Genesis, and that one hour is all that they need to discount the "evidence" for evolution.

This has especially frustrated teachers, Ken Hamm (president and founder of Answers in Genesis) has been personally confronted and attacked by educators. All are saying basically the same thing, "In one hour you have destroyed the foundation to all the concepts that I have been teaching all year" If it was such a solid case (the evidence of evolution) then organizations like Answers in Genesis would not be having the success that they are.

For people who are sincerely struggling with this, I would highly recommend you find a Answers in Genesis conference hosted at a local church in your area, and make plans to attend it.

fagarcia75 said: "By the way, I learned all this in high school science. I guess you were too busy reading the Bible to pay attention, though" Actually I did not become a believer in Christ until I was 17, and so I heard the same teaching you did in high school, and I believed the same lies. You should really study the other side, even for perhaps from an educational standpoint. There are so many flaws, fallacies, and ludicrous assumptions that go with the big bang/evolution mindset. There is perhaps two "flaws" with what I believe; namely, that no one can prove that God exists and that the Bible is His Word to us. I believe both of these by faith, and I have full confidence that God does exist, and I know that He is real.

You graduated high school, and then, at age 17, you found God? Aren't most people 18 in senior year?

Please name and describe the biggest five of these "flaws, fallacies, and ludicrous assumptions" about evolution.

fagarcia75 said: People can mock creationist (believers that God created all things in 6 literal days) if they want. It does not change the fact the God created this world and all things about 6 thousand years ago. The funny thing is despite all the supposed fundamental scientific evidence about "evolution" and "big bang" theories, there are many people who are hearing one hour presentations by Answers in Genesis, and that one hour is all that they need to discount the "evidence" for evolution. This has especially frustrated teachers, Ken Hamm (president and founder of Answers in Genesis) has been personally confronted and attacked by educators. All are saying basically the same thing, "In one hour you have destroyed the foundation to all the concepts that I have been teaching all year" If it was such a solid case (the evidence of evolution) then organizations like Answers in Genesis would not be having the success that they are. For people who are sincerely struggling with this, I would highly recommend you find a Answers in Genesis conference hosted at a local church in your area, and make plans to attend it.

Answers in Genesis? LOL. Feed outrageous lies to enough people, and some will be gullible enough to believe it. Those who do are of course shocked by the amazing "truth" that has been revealed to them about the horrible mistakes of scientists.

Anyway, it's just another example of people being "converted" to a religion; in this case, specifically creationist Christianity. And the converts are usually the most fervent in their belief. The teachers are understandably upset that their students suddenly have gotten a religion that thinks science is a lie.

[edit: By the way, don't misunderstand me: I have no problem with the Book of Genesis, as part of a religious text. But Answers in Genesis uses arguments that have been repeatedly disproven to try to "prove" that accepted science is wrong and that the Book of Genesis is a scientifically accurate telling of the formation of the world. I do have a problem with that.]

[edit2:  http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2007/09/humphreys-fourteen-evidences-for-young.html ] 

tombi123 said: @kn Einstein did not believe in a personal God.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but here is an interesting excerpt from "20 Things you need to know about Einstein".  http://www.time.com/time/2007/einstein/16.html.  I consider Time Magazine to generally be a good source and suspect they did a good bit of research before publishing this.

 

Did Einstein Believe in God?

Yes. He defined God in an impersonal, deistic fashion, but he deeply believed that God’s handiwork was reflected in the harmony of nature’s laws and the beauty of all that exists. He often invoked God, such as by saying He wouldn’t play dice, when rejecting quantum mechanics. Einstein’s belief in something larger than himself produced in him a wondrous mixture of confidence and humility. As he famously declared: “A spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort.”

When asked directly if he believed in God, he always insisted he did, and explained it once this way: “We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”

It's amazing to me that a man of Einstein's intellect and who's theories have stood the test of time described his knowledge of the universe as "a childs".  Again, I look to quantum physics and discover all sorts of "laws" in classical physics are clearly at odds with quantum mechanics and vice versa.  If one were to truly study both, they will learn that much of what we know and accept to be absolutely true in science may actually just be an approximation or worse completely wrong.

No one is going to win this argument on this board and quite frankly it is silly to try.  Each of the "religions" of the world believe they are right and will continue to believe so.  Atheism is just one of those...

Quoted For Truth. That is why I'm agnostic.

Final-Fan said: Kasz216 said: Rath said: @Kasz. I didnt say that Christianity caused those things (which it didnt, those things would have been done anyway, by different people for different reasons) but rather that those things spread Christianity. The word of Christ was spread at the point of a sword during those times, peoples were conquered and converted. See i think the same things would of been done by the roughly the same people who would have gotten to their positions just through another way. Assuming we're talking about an alternate universe where only religion doesn't exist. People always overlook how one little thing can change things, like for example how much of a longshot it is for you to be born. I mean you're half one of who knows how many sperm, then at the right time, at the right date... etc. This is really a tangent but it's an interesting thought. Either way i'm sure it doesn't matter. One could make people eat rice by force because rice is the easiest thing to grow and that doesn't make rice any more sinister. Either way, if there's no proof for something one way or another i'm not going to make fun of someone for believeing what they believe. If someone wants to beleive pink dragons exist in the universe, hey why not. There are any on this planet as far as we know but we haven't seen every planet, who knows if there's life elsewhere and if there a pink things we would call dragons in one of those places. Now if someone were to say Pink Dragons existed on earth. There we might have a problem. If someone wants to believe in Thor go ahead. Until someone shows me a mathematic proof i'm not ready to say there isn't a god. Also, even if someone does show me a mathemetical proof that says there is no god i probably won't accept it because i'm nowhere near good enough at math to decipher mathematical proofs. I mean i heard someone found a mathematical proof that says alternate universes might exist. How's that work? That's the real problem though. Just because science can't currently detet something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Sub-Atomic Particles, Dark Matter, Dark Energy. These all exist.(Probably, I think there is still debate over Dark Energy since we don't have a lot of proof on it.) They still existed when we did not have proof. Someone who believed in sub atomic particles before we could see them would of been correct. The belief the universe is planet is flat and luminerious ether don't exist we have proof. The truth is. You don't have to prove something exists in this world. You have to prove it doesn't exist. Because the absense of proof doesn't mean that something doesn't exist. The only thing that proves something doesn't exist is proof that something doesn't exist. That's another reason i wouldn't want to be an atheist. You can't really win this arguement because there is no way to prove God doesn't exist. Well excepet possibly one of those really strange math proofs. While all someone who believes in god has to do is wait. A hard thing to do, but eventually if right, they'll be proven right when the whole afterlife thing kicks in. Of course this is rarely the case as religious people often try to convinvce atheists god exists. Which I'm sure gets annoying, but i mean think about it from their end. They think your going to spend forever in a place worse then a WNBA game. Of course that's where i generally have a breakdown as far as mainstream christianity goes. How could anyone be happy in heaven when they knew a bunch of people they knew... or heck 1 person they knew was in hell? Heck I wouldn't consider my afterlife a perfect place if I knew someone I knew was facing eternal punsihment. Even if it was someone I really hated. Heck I'm not even sure i could rest easy knowing Adolf Hitler was in a place where he was tortured forever, likely because nobody has ever wronged me enough. Of course I don't think hitler should get in the "buffet line" with everyone else either. But either way i'm not God so i really don't know what you'd do in such a sitation. Anything less then what everyone else got and one of hitlers relatives who wasn't pure evil likely would be upset. (I would of said parents, but from all accounts they were both jerks if i remember right.) I suppose this is just another tangent though. Which happens when it's 5:30 am and you've yet to sleep. So i'll wrap this up with yet another tangent. It all does remind me of one holy text spread around by a group of christianity that was mostly destroyed. It might of been part of the dead sea scrolls or recovered elsewhere. I believe it was Jesus to one of his disciples after jesus died who asked a similar question to mine above to which jesus said something like "Don't tell anybody but everyone gets into heaven." or something along those lines. Which would probably be the most favorable option if those who believe in god are right. Then again an eternity of someone saying "I told you so" might be hell for some people. That may be technically true but it's silly to live your life with Descartes' "I think therefore I am" as your sole guide.  You gotta draw the line somewhere, and assuming that the generally perceived world actually exists is a damned good place.  I don't think that believing our own two eyes, and the eyes that our machines make, as long as we double check them all, is just like believing in an undetectable God who, even if he did the whole flaming bush routine and turned the sky green with purple spots in front of a million cameras, could erase all evidence of it from our minds and our machines just because he felt like it.   Asking us to disprove the existence of such a being is silly.

So is asking someone to prove that someone who has the power to wipe our memories etc. is. I mean, if you want to have something be related to faith you can't really have definite proof. Otherwise having faith would be kidna pointless. It's not really a test of faith so much as a test of sanity. Regardless while I actually believe in that god i take most of what's in the bible with a grain of salt... as I do organized religion in general. Organizations with people on top almost never work out. Because those people at the top will change everything to keep their power. Organized religion is no different, the fact that there isn't one branch and instead are who knows how many different denominations are proof of that. I mean if you look into a lot of stuff the Catholic church has done... like even recently under the last pope. A lot of it to me just seems like other people trying to use god to make them do certain things. For example certain religions forbidding the eating of things like Pigs or Cows. Isn't it likely that the whole thing came from people not cooking their pigs and cows properly and getting parasites and the like which "curse" them. Therefore the leaders see it's bad to eat those things and therefore they say god says you can't eat those things pointing to the sickness... and it becomes law. Also... to the guy who said Einstein didn't believe in god. He sure did talk about him a lot. Also, just accept that the earth is 4.6 billion years old or so Fagarcia... i've taking historical geography... it's about hte most boring subject you can have a class on. We used to have weekly tests too.... that were 100 questions long. It was the most brutal class I've ever had in college.

Kasz216 said: Final-Fan said: Kasz216 said: Rath said:

I guess we pretty much agree then. It's just as silly to demand proof of God's existence as it is to demand proof of his nonexistence. My problem was that you had seemed to be be saying 'I don't have to prove God exists, you have to prove He doesn't.', which, obviously, we don't. Good news is, you don't either.

[edit:  I liked historical geography!] 

tk1989 said: rickthestick2 said: Apostrovich said: 4. The reason why you think that if God exists he is an "asshole" is because you don't really understand God much at all. That's why i recommend you read Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer, not that you should be converted but that you know what the Christian God is, assuming he exists. I think you are (don't take thin the wrong way) ignorant of the subject. But god is an asshole? If you have read the old testament you will realise that god is (in the words of Richard Dawkins): "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust unforiving control freak; a vindicative, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevlent bully" God is one of the biggest most unjust assholes ever!

 I have no idea where you get the fact that he is unjust. Rightfully God has all the right to wipe us out, just as he had all the right to create us.

Anyways God isn't erasing people from existance. All humans were made in the likeness and image of God and as such we are seemingly "Immortal" in the sense that we, our souls, will not die. God is simple yet complex.

He will destroy the wicked. Is that Unjust?

He controls and owns all that he created. Is that Unjust? 

He created a natural order for all things of the Universe and enourages people to follow it. Is that Unjust?

He cures the suffering of pain, and forgives the wicked of sin (if they ask), he avenges the blood of his children and he has given all of humanity immortal souls and the gift of eternal life (if accepted). Is that Unjust?

He created all of the Universe and despises when another idol diety gets credit for God's work. Is that Unjust?

Call God as asshole out of your own profanity and dislike for him sure, but don't call God Unjust. That's not true. An Unjust being is not God.  

rickthestick2 said: tk1989 said: rickthestick2 said: Apostrovich said: 4. The reason why you think that if God exists he is an "asshole" is because you don't really understand God much at all. That's why i recommend you read Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer, not that you should be converted but that you know what the Christian God is, assuming he exists. I think you are (don't take thin the wrong way) ignorant of the subject. But god is an asshole? If you have read the old testament you will realise that god is (in the words of Richard Dawkins): "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust unforiving control freak; a vindicative, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevlent bully" God is one of the biggest most unjust assholes ever! I have no idea where you get the fact that he is unjust. Rightfully God has all the right to wipe us out, just as he had all the right to create us. Anyways God isn't erasing people from existance. All humans were made in the likeness and image of God and as such we are seemingly "Immortal" in the sense that we, our souls, will not die. God is simple yet complex. He will destroy the wicked. Is that Unjust? He controls and owns all that he created. Is that Unjust? He created a natural order for all things of the Universe and enourages people to follow it. Is that Unjust? He cures the suffering of pain, and forgives the wicked of sin (if they ask), he avenges the blood of his children and he has given all of humanity immortal souls and the gift of eternal life (if accepted). Is that Unjust? He created all of the Universe and despises when another idol diety gets credit for God's work. Is that Unjust? Call God as asshole out of your own profanity and dislike for him sure, but don't call God Unjust. That's not true. An Unjust being is not God.

Obviously not EVERYTHING God does would be unjust. But it's hard to deny that he was an asshole on multiple occasions in the Old Testament.

Job is a pious man and all-around great guy. God and Satan get to talking about what a pious guy Job is and Satan says "Well I bet he wouldn't love you so much if you weren't so nice to him." God says, "I bet he would." So to settle the bet God sends some bad luck Job's way. Job still loves God. Okay, bet's over.

But wait! Satan says, "I bet he wouldn't like you if you were meaner!" God says, "Oh yeah?" and gets meaner. Job still likes God.
-- Satan says, "I bet he'd hate you if you were even meaner!" God says, "Oh yeah?" and gets even meaner. Job still likes God.
-- Satan says, "I bet he'd hate you if you completely destroyed his family, all his stuff, got him really sick, and made everyone hate his guts!!" God says "OH YEAH?!" and does it all to Job. Job still loves God. (God knows why.)
-- Then God gives Job all his stuff back, plus some extra for being a good sport about it.

How is that not an asshole thing to do? Beating up on some guy who loves you BECAUSE THE DEVIL SUGGESTED IT!

P.S. Oh, and the fact that God was nice to Job again in the end doesn't make his treatment "just".

[edit: I just noticed that you appear to only take issue with the "unjust" part of the description. I take it that you concede the rest is a fair description?]

Obviously not EVERYTHING God does would be unjust. But it's hard to deny that he was an asshole on multiple occasions in the Old Testament.

Job is a pious man and all-around great guy. God and Satan get to talking about what a pious guy Job is and Satan says "Well I bet he wouldn't love you so much if you weren't so nice to him." God says, "I bet he would." So to settle the bet God sends some bad luck Job's way. Job still loves God. Okay, bet's over.

But wait! Satan says, "I bet he wouldn't like you if you were meaner!" God says, "Oh yeah?" and gets meaner. Job still likes God.
-- Satan says, "I bet he'd hate you if you were even meaner!" God says, "Oh yeah?" and gets even meaner. Job still likes God.
-- Satan says, "I bet he'd hate you if you completely destroyed his family, all his stuff, got him really sick, and made everyone hate his guts!!" God says "OH YEAH?!" and does it all to Job. Job still loves God. (God knows why.)
-- Then God gives Job all his stuff back, plus some extra for being a good sport about it.

How is that not an bad thing to do? Beating up on some guy who loves you BECAUSE THE DEVIL SUGGESTED IT!

P.S. Oh, and the fact that God was nice to Job again in the end doesn't make his treatment "just".

[edit: I just noticed that you appear to only take issue with the "unjust" part of the description. I take it that you concede the rest is a fair description?]




The bottom line is that the Bible is a spiritual book, and that God's ways are higher than man's ways. We are not going to be able to comprehend all that God has done or will do, but we can trust Him. The whole concept of trust and faith is relying upon God for who He is, and what He declares in the Bible. If it was a logical thing, then there would be no faith.

As far as the whole Job passage goes, if Job thought God had been unjust he would of declared it, but Job did not. God had a higher purpose in these 'tragideies" for Job's life.