The Religion Discussion

[QG]

pharoh continuously begged god for forgiveness when things went bad, and proclaimed that he was god when things were good.

kinda reminds me of how people blame the devil when things go bad and praise God when things go good.

Very good point my friend, not every bad doing is from the Devil. Sometimes God allow things to happen, take for instance, MOSES.
Devil had nothing to with Moses trials, but infact God did it becasue he had a purpose for Moses.
Moses PROVED to GOD that he was worthy of carrying out God's WILL.

but didnt God already know Moses was worthy?

Of course!! God needed to make Moses into the servant God wants him to be (not just ANY servant BUT A SPECIAL servant)...and in order for that to be, Moses needed to pass through those trials!

But hear this, if Moses did walk away from God's plan, God would have just gotten someone else to do his work. There is a script that says something about God can get other servants to do his will if one fails.
But God KNEW why he had chosen Moses because he was highly capable for the job and just the right individual too, GOD LOOKED AT HIS HEART!!!

[QG]

bluefete, where in the bible does it state that 1 day for God is 1000 years for us?

Considering that God is all knowing, did He put that special tree there knowing that Adam and Eve would eat from it and be cast out of Eden?

Just to stretch on this statement before people start thinking that 1000 real years is equivalent to one (1) day with God.

It simply means that spending ONE day with God is LIKE a 1000 years to us...(Metaphor)

Research what a Metaphor (those who don't know) is in the English Text to understand lol.

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

bluefete, where in the bible does it state that 1 day for God is 1000 years for us?

Considering that God is all knowing, did He put that special tree there knowing that Adam and Eve would eat from it and be cast out of Eden?

Just to stretch on this statement before people start thinking that 1000 real years is equivalent to one (1) day with God.

It simply means that spending ONE day with God is LIKE a 1000 years to us...(Metaphor)

Research what a Metaphor (those who don't know) is in the English Text to understand lol.

ok you say it's a metaphor and bluefete says its exactly 1000 years because it says exactly that in the bible

so are you right or is bluefete right?

[QG]

bluefete, where in the bible does it state that 1 day for God is 1000 years for us?

Considering that God is all knowing, did He put that special tree there knowing that Adam and Eve would eat from it and be cast out of Eden?

Just to stretch on this statement before people start thinking that 1000 real years is equivalent to one (1) day with God.

It simply means that spending ONE day with God is LIKE a 1000 years to us...(Metaphor)

Research what a Metaphor (those who don't know) is in the English Text to understand lol.

ok you say it's a metaphor and bluefete says its exactly 1000 years because it says exactly that in the bible

so are you right or is bluefete right?

read it yourself again pal and you will get your answer...the script that bluefete posted, 3:8...it said AS and not IS

The bible have a way that it likes to describe things so we can understand to GRASP what is being said.
We need to becareful though because alot of Christians MIS-INTERPRETATE the scriptures. I have been to many different Religious Christian Churches and I hear different meanings to one scripture, even on the Sunday Mornings Gospel teachings on TV lol.

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

^ thanks - that is more in line with that I learnt growing up as a catholic
if you read my post higher up this page I was also suggesting to bluefete that 1000 years was a metaphor

I think it's similar mis-interpretations that caused the Crusades, the Inquisition and other far out "religious" beliefs and practices.

you should really talk to bluefete and megadoc1

[MG Man]

do aliens on the planet Xigmathurzy read the Bible?
how did they get it?
how is the translation done?

[sMASH]

it is also misinterpretations which lead a set ah people to call killing innocent people jihad .


but to add a little logic to the item...
god created every thing, even time, and he is not bound by time. if god's day=1000 years, then he exists in time, and cannot turn back time, and progresses with time.
the people of the time of that revelation would not be thinking about time and the concept of time.
to tell them that he exists irrespective of time would not achieve the understanding in their minds,,, u talkin about over 3000 years ago here they may not even be able to understand figures above a million. so to let them grasp the concept of what he wants, he spoke to them in their jargon, a significantly long time for them is as nothing for him.

i say that was a metaphor


wrt adam (pbuh) and eve,, what if they ate of the tree of everlasting life instead of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?

[Alpha_2nr]

do aliens on the planet Xigmathurzy read the Bible?
how did they get it?
how is the translation done?

Clearly....aliens are spawn of the devil.


Hence they don't actually read the bible.
















Carry on.

[d spike]

Thanks Megadoc for your extensive contributions. We all learned something.

Really? Apart from how blind, deaf and persistent fundamentalists can be as they peddle their skewed and illogical version of what should be, what else did you learn?

Logic and rational thinking are an integral part of Natural Law, which is, in turn, an integral part of that which is referred to as the Creation.
All respected theologians through the ages used these human tools to form and understand the concepts they taught, and in turn, were respected for.
Megadoc, true to his fundamentalist/literalist base, scorned these gifts.

If anything was learned, it was how easy a person could take basic christian concepts, and twist them into an almost gnostic belief. All that was missing were the claims of hidden knowledge unseen by others, and affectations of almost magical ability/powers... oh, I forgot - those were there, too.

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

^ don't forget his now famous quotes:

sorry duane but to be a true follower of yeshua we must be biased and intolerant

I believe all scripture should be taken literally unless where it is figurative

only faith in Jesus Christ gets you into heaven, not good deeds

[goalpost]

so much people dying of cancer / aids etc.. where is this god??? why does he allow these things?

if there is a god, he's one evil dude...

Cancer- 75% diet
Aids- choices made by one individual which could result in a destroyed generation.

I know fuh sure we are not puppets hanging by a string (although we act so around oman )...FREEWILL DOOD thats why for the [b]many problems we all have!![/b]

Children born with cancer, or children who get cancer before 10 years old....daz 75% diet??? Yeah right. Most cancers actually have no cause.

[d spike]

do aliens on the planet Xigmathurzy read the Bible?
how did they get it?
how is the translation done?

I can see this bothers you...

(Reads heathensRus' handbook on How To Start An Argument)
First of all, one can realize that some things have no "right" outside of their environment.

Religion is something that exists as part of man's culture. Outside of that culture, the basic concepts might still be "true" or "right", but the way in which these concepts are presented could easily be totally alien or even irrelevant.
To illustrate: In Tahiti, the native society naturally appreciated the need to share (in order to survive, and do so harmoniously) and they had no concept of stealing. Everything belonged to everyone. Things were meant to be used, not owned. Someone could pick up "your" stool and take it home. (It would have been acutely bad manners on your part while visiting him, to then even stare hard at that stool, or worse, ask him when he would be finished with it.)
When Europeans came, dragging Jesus with them, the natives were forced to accept and learn the alien concepts of ownership, greed and stealing, in order to then be able to follow the commandment of "thou shall not steal". Instead of bettering a society, we just ruined it.


Most of the trappings of religion that we use to identify whatever religion we follow actually have more to do with the culture of the original believers than God. Mixing wine with water (lack of access to potable water); the basic food item concept of bread and wine (neither are basic foods here); not eating pork (do we now understand how to cook?); not mixing pots used for meat with those used for milk (soap has since been invented); and so on...

If the aliens we meet acquire nutrients in a manner totally different to us - like plants instead, absorbing rather than eating - how would they view the concept of Communion? Concepts of bread and wine would be meaningless, far less the concept of sitting down together as a group to celebrate each other and share in a meal...
Religion was not meant to cross cultures - certainly not without major adaptations, anyway.

Aliens wouldn't need the bible. They would probably have their own collection of sacred writings that would be far more applicable to them than ours ever could.
How would people like bluefete respond to a bunch of little green men knocking on his door, demanding that he listen to their urgent message from Erk (or at least purchase one of their magazines), for Erk said that all must hear and follow the path of Grum, which clearly states that each should share Pul with the other, for we all need Pul to exist... And those that don't, will suffer horribly the fate of Vax, which no creature should ever undergo...



If you really believe in a Creator who guides us, then you would certainly agree that he would give guidance to all sentient beings, wherever they are, and not allow their "salvation" to depend on a quarrelsome group of bipeds to invent, master and survive space travel...

...but that might be asking a little too much...

[bluefete]

What is it with you rationalists. When I give you my arguments you nitpick about where it comes from because you CANNOT refute them.

You can only quote from the Bible. You use the Bible to prove that the Bible is right. That is circular logic. I am not refuting that the Bible says what it say as it is there in black and white. What I am asking you to prove is your interpretation of it as being correct.

In the case of 1 God day = 1000 human years, the quoted text could have been a metaphor meaning "a very long time" or showing that in the infinite-ness of God, 1 day would be an eternity for man. But you chose to take the literal meaning, which I disagree with.

Therefore when you use the literal meaning of the bible and then take an argument from a biased Christian source using poorly researched points on evolution and then claim THAT is the PROOF then I need not refute it since it does a great job of refuting itself.

Why is the Earth so suitable for sustaining life?

How do scientists measure time again? Be careful here because your rationale might work against you.

You can read all about time here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time

It briefly covers most aspects and beliefs

Why do you refute some things from science and accept, whole-heartedly others?
Are you a hypocrite?Oooh, Getting a bit touchy, are we?

^ Moses was a Bhuddist?

LOL..........thats the problem right there. Ppl cant see the link. Because Buddhism speaks about ego it means that it is limited to only Buddhism!!!

R u trying to say that Moses's or any non Buddhist has no Ego??

hmm..............expand ur knowledge my friend while throughout this thread many ppl including yourself poses a great deal of knowledge concerning ur beliefs. Due to our limited ability as humans to analyse and interpret various doctrine, we need to constantly expose ourselves to different point of views.

Try to understand what Ego is...........and many parts of religion and its teachings become alot clearer. Egoism is not limited to Buddhism.........it is the reason why alot of evil exists.

Sorry you missed the sarcasm.

and yes I fully agree with you when you say "we need to constantly expose ourselves to different point of views"

Who do you then consider to be an egoist and who do you consider to be an altruist?

"Scientists have come to some agreement on descriptions of events that happened 10−35 seconds after the Big Bang, but generally agree that descriptions about what happened before one Planck time (5 × 10−44 seconds) after the Big Bang are likely to remain pure speculation." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time

Thanks for this. You see it all comes right back to God. Right? If there was a Big Bang, what caused it? Was matter/antimatter already present before the Big Bang?

Anyway, the time I was really referring to is the measurement of billions of years. Scientists use this term to approximate the age of things/periods. It is said we can tell the age of a tree by its rings. Have we ever found a tree that was 1 billion years? But we find bones of dead animals and say they are million/billions of years old.

[bluefete]

What About Plant Evolution?

It might come as a surprise to realize Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species hardly touched on plant evolution. After all, plants make up half of living things on earth. Yet the supposed main mechanisms of evolution for developing new species—natural selection and mutation—have not explained either the sudden appearance of plants in the fossil record or why most plants have remained essentially the same today as in the past.

Darwin, of course, knew of the problem—which is why he hardly broached the subject in his book. Years later, he confessed to his good friend, botanist Joseph Hooker, that the sudden appearance of flowering plants in the fossil record was an "abominable mystery." In fact, just about everything dealing with the appearance of plants is, for evolutionists, an "abominable mystery."

Some 375,000 species of plants exist on earth today, and most have not noticeably changed from the way they first appear in the fossil record. As geneticist and biologist Jerry Bergman notes: "A major problem for Neo-Darwinism is the complete lack of evidence for plant evolution in the fossil record. As a whole, the fossil evidence of prehistoric plants is actually very good, yet no convincing transitional forms have been discoveredin the abundant plant fossil record" ("The Evolution of Plants: A Major Problem for Darwinists," Technical Journal, 2002, online edition, emphasis added throughout).

Moreover, evolution's principle of the "survival of the fittest" doesn't apply in the same way to plants. After all, most plants, unlike animals, possess chlorophyll and do not have to kill or compete to eat, since they can produce their own food through the process of photosynthesis. So the idea that plants must compete against other plants to survive is not generally applicable. Even those plants that do eat living things, such as the Venus flytrap, do not eat other plants, but small insects.

Remarkably, it is now known that many plants have built-in sensors that indicate how far they can grow without invading the space of other plants. A stunning example of this is the beautiful canopy made by trees whose branches stop growing as soon as they touch the branches of neighboring trees.

Years ago, the eminent botanist E.J.H. Corner made this startling admission about the origin and the development of plants that still holds true: "Much evidence can be adduced in favor of the theory of evolution—from biology, biogeography and paleontology, but I still think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation [God doing the creating].

"If, however, another explanation could be found for this hierarchy of classification, it would be the [death] knell of the theory of evolution. Can you imagine how an orchid, a duckweed, and a palm have come from the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would break down before an inquisition" (Contemporary Botanical Thought, 1961, p. 97). GN

http://www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn85/p ... lution.htm

Is an exemption made for Plants in the evolutionary process?

[bluefete]

http://io9.com/5586017/was-our-universe ... r-universe

The current explanation of the universe's origins relies on clumsy assumptions and can't explain most subatomic particles. A small tweak to general relativity solves these problems - and seemingly proves the universe must have come from a black hole elsewhere.

As it stands right now, the explanation for the universe's beginnings is built around a combination of Einstein's general relativity and observation of the ancient universe. Mixing these two theories together creates some problems - for instance, the universe is impossibly large according to its current rate of expansion, so astrophysicists have to invoke the idea of inflation, in which the early universe expanded at a tremendous rate within the first second after the Big Bang.

General relativity, however, can't explain inflation, so another theory is required to account for it. There's nothing technically wrong with that, but it's an inelegant solution, and physicists tend to prefer an all-encompassing explanation to a bunch of piecemeal solutions. That's not the only issue with the current explanation - it can't deal with many properties of subatomic particles, consigning them entirely to the realm of quantum mechanics.

Nikodem Poplawski of Indiana University thinks solving the latter problem can also solve the former, and that's just the start of the craziness. In a new paper, he explains that the standard version of general relativity totally ignores the intrinsic momentum of subatomic particles like protons and neutrons, but a modified version known as the Einstein-Cartan-Kibble-Sciama theory of gravity solves that problem. The theory states these particles interact repulsively, creating tiny amounts of a force called torsion.

Under normal circumstances, this is just an interesting bit of math, and torsion doesn't really affect anything. However, if densities are increased tremendously, then torsion has some very significant effects. Most intriguingly, torsion makes it impossible for black holes to form singularities. And if singularities are impossible, then what's at the center of black holes?

Poplawski has an audacious proposal: there are whole universes where we thought the singularities were. The torsion process allows for a massive energy buildup inside the event horizon, and this would allow for the creation of new particles through pair production, in which matter and antimatter are created in equal quantities. All it takes then is a small imbalance between the particles and antiparticles to form, and you've got a Big Bang on your hands.

What makes this idea appealing (beyond the fact that it just sounds so awesome) is that torsion explains inflation without requiring a new theory. That repulsive force is sufficient to explain how the universe expanded to its present extent, which means a single theory can explain the entire universe as it is now.

This potentially means that many of the black holes in our own universe are the incubators of entirely new universes, each separated by the infinite time gap of the event horizon. That said, some properties of the mother universe could trickle through to its daughters, and detecting some of these properties could actually provide experimental proof of the theory. In fact Poplawski speculates this inheritance of properties could solve another great mystery of cosmology.

The so-called arrow of time, in which time flows in one direction but not another, is a fundamental aspect of our experience. This isn't accounted for at all by physics, as all of its laws are apparently time-symmetric in that they work just as well whether time flows forwards or backwards. However, the passage of matter through the event horizon would provide a time asymmetry in the new universe, giving it a forward arrow to time. In that way, time itself is a gift of our mother universe on the other side of the black hole.




What created the first universe for all these black holes to follow?

[bluefete]

wrt adam (pbuh) and eve,, what if they ate of the tree of everlasting life instead of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?

Excellent question!! Would this mean that we would live forever? Would the world become overpopulated if people did not die?

[d spike]

What is it some people have with Darwin? Why all the fuss? Perhaps the OP should rename the thread again (as he is wont to do), something like, "Your Best Encounter with God - Darwin didn't have one"...
Yes, some of his ideas were off the mark, so what? Many brilliant men who are considered to be the leaders in their field of science, had theories that have since being proven wrong... Galen is considered to be the father of modern medicine, but the man believed that our health (both physical and nervous) was based on the balance of the four biles within us, black bile, red bile, white bile and yellow bile. (I still think he had a point - some folks suffer from an imbalance of too much black bile. )

What you have against Darwin? Is it based on someone pointing out long ago on the possibility of a simian ancestor based on your present looks?
Get serious... St. Augustine pointed out that the creation of man might not have been the instantaneous thing, but could also have been the moment of insertion of a soul/spirit into the creature that Man was to become when the Creator judged it the right time of the said creature's development... and that was hundreds of years before Darwin!

[bluefete]

So Should I believe what the scientists are now finding out which God had already told us thousands of years ago?

Plants 'can think and remember'
By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News
14 July 2010

The scientists discovered the "nervous systems" of Arabidopsis plants

Plants are able to "remember" and "react" to information contained in light, according to researchers.

Plants, scientists say, transmit information about light intensity and quality from leaf to leaf in a very similar way to our own nervous systems.

These "electro-chemical signals" are carried by cells that act as "nerves" of the plants.
Fluorescence image of Arabidopsis plant The researchers used fluorescence imaging to watch the plants respond

In their experiment, the scientists showed that light shone on to one leaf caused the whole plant to respond.

And the response, which took the form of light-induced chemical reactions in the leaves, continued in the dark.

This showed, they said, that the plant "remembered" the information encoded in light.

"We shone the light only on the bottom of the plant and we observed changes in the upper part," explained Professor Stanislaw Karpinski from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Poland, who led this research.

He presented the findings at the Society for Experimental Biology's annual meeting in Prague, Czech Republic.

"And the changes proceeded when the light was off... This was a complete surprise."

In previous work, Professor Karpinski found that chemical signals could be passed throughout whole plants - allowing them to respond to and survive changes and stresses in their environment.

But in this new study, he and his colleagues discovered that when light stimulated a chemical reaction in one leaf cell, this caused a "cascade" of events and that this was immediately signalled to the rest of the plant by via specific type of cell called a "bundle sheath cell".

The scientists measured the electrical signals from these cells, which are present in every leaf. They likened the discovery to finding the plants' "nervous system".
Thinking plants

What was even more peculiar, Professor Karpinski said, was that the plants' responses changed depending on the colour of the light that was being shone on them.

"Plants perform a sort of biological light computation, using information contained in the light to immunise themselves against diseases ”

"There were characteristic [changes] for red, blue and white light," he explained.

He suspected that the plants might use the information encoded in the light to stimulate protective chemical reactions. He and his colleagues examined this more closely by looking at the effect of different colours of light on the plants' immunity to disease.

"When we shone the light for on the plant for one hour and then infected it [with a virus or with bacteria] 24 hours after that light exposure, it resisted the infection," he explained.

"But when we infected the plant before shining the light, it could not build up resistance.

"[So the plant] has a specific memory for the light which builds its immunity against pathogens, and it can adjust to varying light conditions."

He said that plants used information encrypted in the light to immunise themselves against seasonal pathogens.

"Every day or week of the season has… a characteristic light quality," Professor Karpinski explained.

The researchers used fluorescence imaging to watch the plants respond

"So the plants perform a sort of biological light computation, using information contained in the light to immunise themselves against diseases that are prevalent during that season."

Professor Christine Foyer, a plant scientist from the University of Leeds, said the study "took our thinking one step forward".

"Plants have to survive stresses, such as drought or cold, and live through it and keep growing," she told BBC News.

"This requires an appraisal of the situation and an appropriate response - that's a form of intelligence.

"What this study has done is link two signalling pathways together... and the electrical signalling pathway is incredibly rapid, so the whole plant could respond immediately to high [levels of] light."

The images showed chemical reactions in leaves that were not exposed to light

[sMASH]

blue, most of what they find are not bones, but fossils. they are what remains when the bone matter dissolves away, and the minerals which were absorbed take the pattern of the material. ( correct me if i am wrong).

when u think of our grave yards and the creatures which decompose our bodies, i find it difficult for a body to remain past a few decades. animals would have been numbering a few hundred thousand and the chances of one of them being in a situation to be preserved or fossilized would be slim.. we just lucky to encounter what we have available.

the process is so random that u can't say that it is not true because there is not much evidence, fossils are not intentional.

there is this one animal, andrewsuchas (spell) they only have a well preserved skull and a couple other bones. that is all that was discovered of this type of animal. for this animal to live there would have been many, but only one skull is found. fossils are a chance thing.

i understand where ur argument comes from, that there is not enough definite evidence and they are more circumstantial. but to say that it is not true is wrong also, because there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence. prove that the process they using to determine the age of the fossils wrong. any fossil older than 10 000 years would have ur notion of a young creation discredited.

the scientists not trying to prove any one or theory wrong, they gain nothing by saying that a fossil is millions of years older than what it is,,,, nothing.

with ur plants there,, if they have a form which is best suited, that form would propagate. the variants to the form would not survive if it is disadvantageous, and the variants which are better than what exists would soon survive more and over take what is there.

take for instance the prehistoric crocodiles and alligators and the sharks. they have remained unchanged mostly in these forms since these forms came into existence. these forms are the most suitable for the environment that they are in. the crocodiles were dominant before dinosaurs, and then the birds took over and then the mammals took over.

when they get fossils, u see it better in ocean life better, plenty different types of animals develop the same type of structure. like the turtle, there were dinosaurs which have similar structure, birds with similar. the dolphin, there were dinosaurs with similar structure. some large herbivorous mammals could be mistaken for sauropods.

all that u know of, is not all that there ever was nor all that there ever would be.

something which i think of now and then these days, if the supposed death of jesus, was by another means like drawn an quatered or lethal injection or staked in an ants nest, or impaled on a wheel, or trampled by olifants or thrown into a lions den,
... what would u guys hang around ur neck and put on ur churches?

[bluefete]

What is it some people have with Darwin? Why all the fuss? Perhaps the OP should rename the thread again (as he is wont to do), something like, "Your Best Encounter with God - Darwin didn't have one"...
Yes, some of his ideas were off the mark, so what? Many brilliant men who are considered to be the leaders in their field of science, had theories that have since being proven wrong... Galen is considered to be the father of modern medicine, but the man believed that our health (both physical and nervous) was based on the balance of the four biles within us, black bile, red bile, white bile and yellow bile. (I still think he had a point - some folks suffer from an imbalance of too much black bile. )

What you have against Darwin? Is it based on someone pointing out long ago on the possibility of a simian ancestor based on your present looks?
Get serious... St. Augustine pointed out that the creation of man might not have been the instantaneous thing, but could also have been the moment of insertion of a soul/spirit into the creature that Man was to become when the Creator judged it the right time of the said creature's development ... So are you stating that the creature that Man was to become, before it became man and prior to insertion of the soul/spirit, was ALIVE?and that was hundreds of years before Darwin!

Darwin's main contribution, which is taught as fact in many universities, was to conjure up an explanation for the origin of the species which did away with the concept of a Creator!! The monkey thing, as well .

As I mentioned previously to Duane, a chicken cannot evolve from a dog. As a matter of fact, how could we have apes and people co-existing, if one evolved from the other (or a branch thereof - the missing link they are still desperately searching for)?

[sMASH]

who ever said this was the first universe?
again, u are being to self centered as a being. first the old world was all that existed, then when more places was found it was the center of every thing, then when it wasn't the center, the sun and every thing revolved around our earth, then when we revolve around the sun we are the only creation place, then when our suns are one among billions in a galaxy which is one among billions u say this is the first universe and all others are subsequent.

why must every thing revolve around u? is that a complex which developed when u believe god would bend over back wards for u?

when most other cultures lived in harmony with the environment and taught some sort of interdependence, u come now with ur idea of superiority and dominion. where and how were u conditioned like this? simple, in ur primary theology and the mechanisms to support it.

that is why i cannot believe that jesus is the son of god, it makes god servant to us because he gave up something great just for us, which makes us superior and would make us intolerant of other beings.
u teach that u are important because god sacrifices other creation for u.
islam teaches we are important because we have the ability to maintain our environment, the responsibility to do so , and the intellectual capacity to figure out how it works.
we are commanded to gain knowledge from the cradle to the grave.
u are commanded as mega stated to stick to the book, as nothing else is important.

if u say u have to take care of the environment, u are wrong. god just goin and ask u if u believe in jesus as god or the son of god, whichever .
he put u to toil the land for ur own benefit, and not to maintain it.

we teach he gives us some knowledge of things, the ability and responsibility to maintain it, and only then to exist in it.

when u say that jesus cursed the fig tree for not bearing fruit, (or sumting like that) we say that even in war, a fruit tree must not be harmed as it is a blessing.

[bluefete]

take for instance the prehistoric crocodiles and alligators and the sharks. they have remained unchanged mostly in these forms since these forms came into existence. these forms are the most suitable for the environment that they are inWhy do we have different variations of these species? Which came first? The crocodile or the shark? Did the shark evolve from the crocodile? That can't be, based on your explanation that "they have remained unchanged mostly in these forms since these forms came into existence." How did they "come into existence?" Ergo, is evolution selective to the land based creatures only?. the crocodiles were dominant before dinosaurs, and then the birds took over and then the mammals took over.

when they get fossils, u see it better in ocean life better, plenty different types of animals develop the same type of structure. like the turtle, there were dinosaurs which have similar structure, birds with similar. the dolphin, there were dinosaurs with similar structure. some large herbivorous mammals could be mistaken for sauropods.

all that u know of, is not all that there ever was nor all that there ever would be.

something which i think of now and then these days, if the supposed death of jesus, was by another means like drawn an quatered or lethal injection or staked in an ants nest, or impaled on a wheel, or trampled by olifants or thrown into a lions den,
... what would u guys hang around ur neck and put on ur churches?

Sorry, I can't help you there. I don't wear those things. But, if any of those methods gave rise to Christianity, then it is logical to assume that one of them would be the symbol. This is a good question to ask the Pope!!

I like your feedback.

[bluefete]

Lest we forget where we are all heading!!


Jul 12th 2010 By Alex Moisi
Funniest Last Words, Deathbed Witticisms

Steven Wright once said that he wished the first word he spoke was "quote." Then, right before he died he could say, "Unquote." While that would be the greatest last word ever uttered, we have to be realistic here and admit no one could be that cool, lest the universe implode. Nonetheless, here are some valiant efforts worth remembering, last words such as:

. "This is no time to make new enemies."

These are supposedly the last words of the philosopher Voltaire, uttered when a priest asked him to renounce Satan. Voltaire had been a critic of the church for years and, according to some accounts, his last words, directed at a priest, were actually an angry cry: "For God's sake, let me die in peace!"

Apparently back in the day, the church wouldn't even let you die on your own terms. And it sure as heck wouldn't bury you in its cemetery after such a deathbed quote. Which is exactly why Voltaire's friends, in a final ironic twist, snuck in and buried his corpse in the Abbey of Scellières. Take that, church!


2. "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go."



Oscar Wilde said these last words, referring to the walls of a French hotel where he eventually passed away. What better final quote for a man who debated about the meaning of beauty and art for the better part of his life? However, whereas the first round was won by the wallpaper, in the end, Oscar Wilde fans tore the place apart and refurnished it in the style of a British flat. We like to imagine that somewhere in heaven Oscar Wilde was laughing manically as a mob armed with torches burned the offending French wall decoration.

3. "How's this for a headline? 'French Fries.'"

These are the last words of James D. French, just before he was executed via the electric chair. Get it? We'll take a break here, so everyone can re-read that joke and truly appreciate its genius. But, whereas we love a good pun as much as the next guy, the true reason this sentence is remarkable is the length to which Mr. French went to get himself executed. He was the last man to be sentenced to death in Oklahoma and the only person to get the electric chair in all of the U.S. in the year 1966. In fact, his original sentence was life in prison, but Mr. French then murdered his cellmate, allowing him to share his joke, and the rest of the world to groan at one lousy pun. It's a win-win scenario ... sort of.

4. "One last drink, please."



Jack Daniel said these words just seconds before dying from a blood infection -- a problem that started when one morning he kicked his safe in anger and broke his toe. The moral of the story, printed on a 2006 marketing poster is: You should never go to work early in the morning. We think a better moral is: Use some of the whiskey you're producing by the gallons to disinfect your toe before it kills you. But, you know, that's just us.

5. "... and now for a final word from our sponsor ..."

Not many people remember Charles J. Gussman, but he was the brains behind countless old-school radio shows, as well as the show "Days of Our Lives" -- and even some episodes of "Gilligan's Island." Gussman lived for media and went out the same way he ended most of his shows, placing the spotlight on whoever bankrolled his show.

6. "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance."



Just one out of countless morbidly ironic last remarks, this one belongs to General John Sedgwick, who was trying to encourage his troops during the Civil War. If you can't predict what happened seconds after he finished saying this, you've never seen a comedy sketch. Suffice it to say that his troops were extremely motivated -- if by "motivated." you mean scared sh**less because they just saw their leader sniped by the enemy.

7."Only you have ever understood me ... and you got it wrong."



Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was just one of the many philosophers who tried to create a logical system that would encompass all of existence. Apparently, he came pretty close. But, no one could follow his logic for long enough to make any sense of his claims about the universe. These were his last words to his favorite student before dying and leaving hundreds of philosophy majors to wonder what exactly he meant in his books. After which, they wondered what the hell they are going to do with a philosophy degree.

8."Leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub."



When you ask someone like Conrad N. Hilton, the man behind the Hilton Hotel Empire, if he has any final wisdom to share with the world, well, you kinda expect something a tad bit more profound than stuff your mom told you every time you took a shower. Then again, this is the family that gave birth to Paris Hilton, so maybe this isn't so bad after all.

9."I should never have switched from scotch to martinis."



Humphrey Bogart was the equivalent of Harrison Ford, George Clooney and Johnny Depp all rolled up into one stone-cold, rugged piece of pure awesomeness. For someone as manly as he, there was no other way to end it all but denounce mixed, fruity drinks and join Jack Daniel in ordering another glass of good old whiskey, be it Scottish or American. We can only raise our glasses and join in a toast -- a toast to all the memorable, funny last words ever uttered.

[d spike]

Since the topic seems to have swerved once more, let me add my two cents' worth.
While a French empress lay dying, one of her courtiers exclaimed that nothing in this life was certain except death. The empress replied with her last words: "...and taxes."

A gun collector made this remark while he was about to show off one of his prized items, just before he accidentally and fatally shot himself: "Here's one you haven't seen before."

My favourite anecdote of this sort is the actual words of an epitaph on the gravestone of a gentleman who was mortally wounded in a shooting accident caused by his butler: "Well done, good and faithful servant."

[d spike]

St. Augustine pointed out that the creation of man might not have been the instantaneous thing, but could also have been the moment of insertion of a soul/spirit into the creature that Man was to become when the Creator judged it the right time of the said creature's development ... So are you stating that the creature that Man was to become, before it became man and prior to insertion of the soul/spirit, was ALIVE?and that was hundreds of years before Darwin!

Now how am I expected to respond to this, without using the sort of tone reserved for megadoc and his unthinking ilk?
Perhaps, if God exists, he has put me in this position in order for me to learn how to communicate with others without resorting to derogatory idiom... let me try:

"So are you stating that the creature that Man was to become, before it became man and prior to insertion of the soul/spirit, was ALIVE?"
Of course not! St. Augustine obviously believed that dead creatures developed, and so, at the point of that dead and inanimate creature's development where the good Lord saw it fit, He cast a soul into it, and at the same time, brought it back to life, thus getting some practise in, before trying that stunt again some eons later...

(Excuse me... I have, rather ironically, run out of both patience and sarcasm at this point.)
...If it was ALIVE? ...While it was developing? ...Well, I don't know... What do you think?

[bluefete]

St. Augustine pointed out that the creation of man might not have been the instantaneous thing, but could also have been the moment of insertion of a soul/spirit into the creature that Man was to become when the Creator judged it the right time of the said creature's development ... So are you stating that the creature that Man was to become, before it became man and prior to insertion of the soul/spirit, was ALIVE?and that was hundreds of years before Darwin!

Now how am I expected to respond to this, without using the sort of tone reserved for megadoc and his unthinking ilk?
Perhaps, if God exists, he has put me in this position in order for me to learn how to communicate with others without resorting to derogatory idiom... let me try:

"So are you stating that the creature that Man was to become, before it became man and prior to insertion of the soul/spirit, was ALIVE?"
Of course not! St. Augustine obviously believed that dead creatures developed, and so, at the point of that dead and inanimate creature's development where the good Lord saw it fit, He cast a soul into it, and at the same time, brought it back to life, thus getting some practise in, before trying that stunt again some eons later...

(Excuse me... I have, rather ironically, run out of both patience and sarcasm at this point.)
...If it was ALIVE? ...While it was developing? ...Well, I don't know... What do you think?

I see

[bluefete]

Stupidity Evolved?
by Christine Dao *

For such an intelligent species, humans can sure be stupid.

The economic crisis, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the aftermath of a host of other disasters currently plaguing the world can all be traced to a series of senseless decisions. Yale University professor Laurie Santos has proposed that this propensity for human error may have evolutionary links.

She studied the behavior of capuchin monkeys, which many may recall as a pet of the character Ross Geller on the popular television show Friends. In a choice test, she found that the monkeys made the same irrational decisions that humans are prone to make.1 Thus, assuming that capuchin monkeys "diverged from the human lineage 35 million years ago,"2 she surmised that humans may make persistent mistakes because of biological limitations. She presented her ideas at the 2010 TEDGlobal conference recently held in Oxford, England.

But one doesn't have to be a scientist to discover the root causes for repetitive human error. The greatest blunder in history is found three chapters into the book of Genesis. Humanity doesn't improve from there, as the rest of the Old Testament records people perpetually committing epic errors to which some of today's gaffes pale in comparison.

No one is immune, not even those with the best of intentions. The apostle Paul wrote to the Roman believers, "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing....For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do."3 He didn't blame his propensity to err on his genes or his upbringing. He took responsibility for his own choices, calling himself "chief" of sinners.4

CNN reported Santos as saying, "We can overcome our biological limitations…but first we have to recognize what they are."1 But if her theory is correct that human error is ingrained in biology, then there's nothing that can be done. Evolution will continue as it always has, and humans will make ever dumber decisions. That also contradicts Charles Darwin's theory that organisms improve with evolution.

There's no hope, then, of improvement within the evolutionary system. But if it's true that humans aren't merely the latest result of random biological processes, then they can "overcome," take responsibility as Paul did, and accept the only invitation that offers any possibility of progress: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."5

References

1. Galant, R. How can a smart species be so dumb? CNN. Posted on cnn.com July 16, 2010, accessed July 16, 2010.
2. Addessi, E. et al. 2008. Preference Transitivity and Symbolic Representation in Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus apella). PLoS ONE. 3 (6): e2414.
3. Romans 7:18-19.
4. 1 Timothy 1:15.
5. Isaiah 1:18.

* Ms. Dao is Assistant Editor at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on July 20, 2010.

[d spike]

well fellas it was fun but my time in this ched is over ..

I suspect that "farewell and adieu" is due to his handler pulling him out of this environment... I just hope it isn't due to his attempts to see if Jesus was being literal in his last remarks in St. Mark's Gospel: if they pick up snakes or drink any poison, they will not be harmed (16:18)... A local Coral's poison would take about 90 minutes to polish you off... but a 15ft Zanana hitting you in the chest with 4 inch fangs might do the job a lot faster...

[bluefete]

well fellas it was fun but my time in this ched is over ..

I suspect that "farewell and adieu" is due to his handler pulling him out of this environment... I just hope it isn't due to his attempts to see if Jesus was being literal in his last remarks in St. Mark's Gospel: if they pick up snakes or drink any poison, they will not be harmed (16:18)... A local Coral's poison would take about 90 minutes to polish you off... but a 15ft Zanana hitting you in the chest with 4 inch fangs might do the job a lot faster...

I will still miss his contributions.

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

Anyway, the time I was really referring to is the measurement of billions of years.

LOL

Scientists use this term to approximate the age of things/periods. It is said we can tell the age of a tree by its rings. Have we ever found a tree that was 1 billion years? But we find bones of dead animals and say they are million/billions of years old.

i hope you are not THAT ignorant.

Firstly our earth has gone through many changes in the past billion years and not everything that was here a billion years ago is here now.
Trees do have lifespans and may not live to be 1 billion years old.
Bones are far more resilient and can become fossilized better than soft leaves and wooden trunks.

Please do some reading on carbon dating.

How long ago do you think the dinosaurs were here?