Pastor and Executive Member, Latino Leadership Circle
Rev. Gabriel Salguero is a pastor and executive member of the Latino Leadership Circle. The "On Faith" panelist is also director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary. He received his M.Div. from New Brunswick Theological Seminary and is a Ph.D. candidate in Christian social ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He and his wife, Jeanette, co-pastor the multicultural Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene in New York City. He serves on the board of Sojourners. Gabriel has been called one of the emerging voices of Latino evangelicals. He also serves as a member of the Equal Employment Advisory Commission for the state of New Jersey.
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Gabriel Salguero
Pastor and Executive Member, Latino Leadership Circle
Rev. Gabriel Salguero is a pastor and executive member of the Latino Leadership Circle. The "On Faith" panelist is also director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary.
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"If you ask a secular person for an example of Blasphemy, you'll usually hear "G*d-Damnit", and this is certainly one of the worst. But it is not the only. "Jesus Christ" used without reverence is another example, but so are the ones most people don't think of. See Mark's post, "Geez" is blasphemy, without any effort whatsoever you can see that it's etymology derives from "Jeezus". Other examples are simply the acronym OMG or the phrase, "Oh my Word" (John 1:1), and especially "Oh my Gosh". If Gosh is not a derivative of God, then I ask you what Heck is a derivative of?"
Truly spoken.
Just as the phrase, "Holy Sh*t" exhibits a belief that Jesus - being a man - was subject to the same bodily functions as the rest of us. Yes, Jesus had to use the bathroom, and often, just like us.
It's interesting to contemplate the wonder of god's creation. Once god designed us as biological organisms, the need arose for us to be able to ingest and process food as energy, and to expel the waste products of that processing. The same happens when we breathe in oxygen-rich air and expel its waste product in the form of carbon dioxide.
Both breathing air and eating food are wonders that enable and sustain our lives. Take away either ability and the body soon dies. Both functions - breathing and expelling waste, and eating and expelling waste - are god's design and essential to our lives.
Yet - for some strange reason - no one has written any hymns to the process of eliminating solid waste from our bodies. Why is that? We know that when WE exhale, we are exhaling waste. We know that when we breathe on another person, we are breathing out the waste from our lungs.
We know that we were made in god's image. We know from the Bible that god breathes. In fact, one of our best-loved hymns is, "Breathe on me, breath of god, Fill me with life anew." If we are actually made in his image, god is actually breathing out his waste product on us.
So, why no hymn entitled, "Excrete on me, p**p of god?" Wouldn't the "holy sh*t" excreted on us be just as godly and holy as god's breath? Why do we find shame in one method of waste elimination designed by god while singing hymns to another? It can't be the smell...which can be pretty rank in either process, and it can't be that one waste product is useful and the other isn't - both have their positive post-processing uses.
13: 1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
13:2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
13:3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
13:13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
Rage, rage against the dying of your stupid religion! It's dying, you can't stop it, science has proven it illegal in the realm of nature.
Please don't confuse my calling your religion "Pseudoscience" and the legitimate examination of reality as science. Evolution is a joke and a religion and a stupid one at that. And it's dying.
Some forms of psychology are scientific, others, like the freudian method are nothing more than mans' effort to delete God. Your religion of evolution doesn't know how life began, how life evolved, or why things die. It doesn't know the beginning, the middle, or the end, which is why it's a dying religion.
Hold onto it if you must, but it will do you as much good against Hell as a napkin will against gravity.
You really have an impressive knowledge of all things biblical as seen from your last few posts! You're either a fallen bible scholar or have an eidetic memory."
Thanks for the kind words.
Not a Biblical scholar by any means, nor a scientist. Yes, I have a pretty good memory, though at age 53, I have to take a beat and ask if my memory is failing me at times. So, I remember certain stories from my Xian days and avail myself of a few internet links I have bookmarked to re-read what I THINK I remember from the Bible before forming an argument to present in these forums. Occasionally, I'll need to pull a book off the shelf. - not everything of value has made its way to the internet! It's a mental exercise that I hope keeps me sharp.
I spent much of my earlier years studying Christianity as it was a natural adjunct to the Western music history that was at the heart of my career education. I wish I had spent more of the time studying science, philosophy and literature. I'm trying to make up for lost time.
As I'm not the typical American, I have time available to do things like reading. I'm not a sports-aholic (I follow MLB), and my TV choices are limited to those channels most Americans avoid, like the Science, History & Discovery channels. I like some TV comedies like "The Office," but I've never seen most of the popular TV fare like reality shows...though I do get a big kick out of Ninja Warrior on G4!
I try to read one major book a month. Looks like January will be taken up with "World Without End" by Ken Follett. I've been told that I should read his, "The Pillars of the Earth" first, but I don't know if I want to dedicate that much time to a single author. What I'd really like to read is Vincent Bugliosi's "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" - but nobody got me that for Xmas.
A large part of the reason why Creationist arguments against evolution can sound so persuasive is because they don't address evolution, but rather argue against a set of misunderstandings that people are right to consider ludicrous. The Creationists wrongly believe that their understanding of evolution is what the theory of evolution really says, and declare evolution banished. In fact, they haven't even addressed the topic of evolution. (The situation isn't helped by poor science education generally. Even most beginning college biology students don't understand the theory of evolution.)
The five propositions below seem to be the most common misconceptions based on a Creationist straw-man version of evolution. If you hear anyone making any of them, chances are excellent that they don't know enough about the real theory of evolution to make informed opinions about it.
Evolution has never been observed.
Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
There are no transitional fossils.
The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance.
Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved.
Explanations of why these statements are wrong are given below. They are brief and therefore somewhat simplified; consult the references at the end for more thorough explanations.
"Evolution has never been observed."
Biologists define evolution as a change in the gene pool of a population over time. One example is insects developing a resistance to pesticides over the period of a few years. Even most Creationists recognize that evolution at this level is a fact. What they don't appreciate is that this rate of evolution is all that is required to produce the diversity of all living things from a common ancestor.
The origin of new species by evolution has also been observed, both in the laboratory and in the wild. See, for example, (Weinberg, J.R., V.R. Starczak, and D. Jorg, 1992, "Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory." Evolution 46: 1214-1220). The "Observed Instances of Speciation" FAQ in the talk.origins archives gives several additional examples.
Even without these direct observations, it would be wrong to say that evolution hasn't been observed. Evidence isn't limited to seeing something happen before your eyes. Evolution makes predictions about what we would expect to see in the fossil record, comparative anatomy, genetic sequences, geographical distribution of species, etc., and these predictions have been verified many times over. The number of observations supporting evolution is overwhelming.
What hasn't been observed is one animal abruptly changing into a radically different one, such as a frog changing into a cow. This is not a problem for evolution because evolution doesn't propose occurrences even remotely like that. In fact, if we ever observed a frog turn into a cow, it would be very strong evidence against evolution.
"Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics."
This shows more a misconception about thermodynamics than about evolution. The second law of thermodynamics says, "No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body." [Atkins, 1984, The Second Law, pg. 25] Now you may be scratching your head wondering what this has to do with evolution. The confusion arises when the 2nd law is phrased in another equivalent way, "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." Entropy is an indication of unusable energy and often (but not always!) corresponds to intuitive notions of disorder or randomness. Creationists thus misinterpret the 2nd law to say that things invariably progress from order to disorder.
However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things. If a mature tomato plant can have more usable energy than the seed it grew from, why should anyone expect that the next generation of tomatoes can't have more usable energy still? Creationists sometimes try to get around this by claiming that the information carried by living things lets them create order. However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?
The thermodynamics argument against evolution displays a misconception about evolution as well as about thermodynamics, since a clear understanding of how evolution works should reveal major flaws in the argument. Evolution says that organisms reproduce with only small changes between generations (after their own kind, so to speak). For example, animals might have appendages which are longer or shorter, thicker or flatter, lighter or darker than their parents. Occasionally, a change might be on the order of having four or six fingers instead of five. Once the differences appear, the theory of evolution calls for differential reproductive success. For example, maybe the animals with longer appendages survive to have more offspring than short-appendaged ones. All of these processes can be observed today. They obviously don't violate any physical laws.
"There are no transitional fossils."
A transitional fossil is one that looks like it's from an organism intermediate between two lineages, meaning it has some characteristics of lineage A, some characteristics of lineage B, and probably some characteristics part way between the two. Transitional fossils can occur between groups of any taxonomic level, such as between species, between orders, etc. Ideally, the transitional fossil should be found stratigraphically between the first occurrence of the ancestral lineage and the first occurrence of the descendent lineage, but evolution also predicts the occurrence of some fossils with transitional morphology that occur after both lineages. There's nothing in the theory of evolution which says an intermediate form (or any organism, for that matter) can have only one line of descendents, or that the intermediate form itself has to go extinct when a line of descendents evolves.
To say there are no transitional fossils is simply false. Paleontology has progressed a bit since Origin of Species was published, uncovering thousands of transitional fossils, by both the temporally restrictive and the less restrictive definitions. The fossil record is still spotty and always will be; erosion and the rarity of conditions favorable to fossilization make that inevitable. Also, transitions may occur in a small population, in a small area, and/or in a relatively short amount of time; when any of these conditions hold, the chances of finding the transitional fossils goes down. Still, there are still many instances where excellent sequences of transitional fossils exist. Some notable examples are the transitions from reptile to mammal, from land animal to early whale, and from early ape to human. For many more examples, see the transitional fossils FAQ in the talk.origins archive, and see http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/talk_origins.html for sample images for some invertebrate groups.
The misconception about the lack of transitional fossils is perpetuated in part by a common way of thinking about categories. When people think about a category like "dog" or "ant," they often subconsciously believe that there is a well-defined boundary around the category, or that there is some eternal ideal form (for philosophers, the Platonic idea) which defines the category. This kind of thinking leads people to declare that Archaeopteryx is "100% bird," when it is clearly a mix of bird and reptile features (with more reptile than bird features, in fact). In truth, categories are man-made and artificial. Nature is not constrained to follow them, and it doesn't.
Some Creationists claim that the hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium was proposed (by Eldredge and Gould) to explain gaps in the fossil record. Actually, it was proposed to explain the relative rarity of transitional forms, not their total absence, and to explain why speciation appears to happen relatively quickly in some cases, gradually in others, and not at all during some periods for some species. In no way does it deny that transitional sequences exist. In fact, both Gould and Eldredge are outspoken opponents of Creationism.
"But paleontologists have discovered several superb examples of intermediary forms and sequences, more than enough to convince any fair-minded skeptic about the reality of life's physical genealogy." - Stephen Jay Gould, Natural History, May 1994
"The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance."
There is probably no other statement which is a better indication that the arguer doesn't understand evolution. Chance certainly plays a large part in evolution, but this argument completely ignores the fundamental role of natural selection, and selection is the very opposite of chance. Chance, in the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material that natural selection has to work with. From there, natural selection sorts out certain variations. Those variations which give greater reproductive success to their possessors (and chance ensures that such beneficial mutations will be inevitable) are retained, and less successful variations are weeded out. When the environment changes, or when organisms move to a different environment, different variations are selected, leading eventually to different species. Harmful mutations usually die out quickly, so they don't interfere with the process of beneficial mutations accumulating.
Nor is abiogenesis (the origin of the first life) due purely to chance. Atoms and molecules arrange themselves not purely randomly, but according to their chemical properties. In the case of carbon atoms especially, this means complex molecules are sure to form spontaneously, and these complex molecules can influence each other to create even more complex molecules. Once a molecule forms that is approximately self-replicating, natural selection will guide the formation of ever more efficient replicators. The first self-replicating object didn't need to be as complex as a modern cell or even a strand of DNA. Some self-replicating molecules are not really all that complex (as organic molecules go).
Some people still argue that it is wildly improbable for a given self-replicating molecule to form at a given point (although they usually don't state the "givens," but leave them implicit in their calculations). This is true, but there were oceans of molecules working on the problem, and no one knows how many possible self-replicating molecules could have served as the first one. A calculation of the odds of abiogenesis is worthless unless it recognizes the immense range of starting materials that the first replicator might have formed from, the probably innumerable different forms that the first replicator might have taken, and the fact that much of the construction of the replicating molecule would have been non-random to start with.
(One should also note that the theory of evolution doesn't depend on how the first life began. The truth or falsity of any theory of abiogenesis wouldn't affect evolution in the least.)
"Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved."
First, we should clarify what "evolution" means. Like so many other words, it has more than one meaning. Its strict biological definition is "a change in allele frequencies over time." By that definition, evolution is an indisputable fact. Most people seem to associate the word "evolution" mainly with common descent, the theory that all life arose from one common ancestor. Many people believe that there is enough evidence to call this a fact, too. However, common descent is still not the theory of evolution, but just a fraction of it (and a part of several quite different theories as well). The theory of evolution not only says that life evolved, it also includes mechanisms, like mutations, natural selection, and genetic drift, which go a long way towards explaining how life evolved.
Calling the theory of evolution "only a theory" is, strictly speaking, true, but the idea it tries to convey is completely wrong. The argument rests on a confusion between what "theory" means in informal usage and in a scientific context. A theory, in the scientific sense, is "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena" [Random House American College Dictionary]. The term does not imply tentativeness or lack of certainty. Generally speaking, scientific theories differ from scientific laws only in that laws can be expressed more tersely. Being a theory implies self-consistency, agreement with observations, and usefulness. (Creationism fails to be a theory mainly because of the last point; it makes few or no specific claims about what we would expect to find, so it can't be used for anything. When it does make falsifiable predictions, they prove to be false.)
Lack of proof isn't a weakness, either. On the contrary, claiming infallibility for one's conclusions is a sign of hubris. Nothing in the real world has ever been rigorously proved, or ever will be. Proof, in the mathematical sense, is possible only if you have the luxury of defining the universe you're operating in. In the real world, we must deal with levels of certainty based on observed evidence. The more and better evidence we have for something, the more certainty we assign to it; when there is enough evidence, we label the something a fact, even though it still isn't 100% certain.
What evolution has is what any good scientific claim has--evidence, and lots of it. Evolution is supported by a wide range of observations throughout the fields of genetics, anatomy, ecology, animal behavior, paleontology, and others. If you wish to challenge the theory of evolution, you must address that evidence. You must show that the evidence is either wrong or irrelevant or that it fits another theory better. Of course, to do this, you must know both the theory and the evidence.
Conclusion
These are not the only misconceptions about evolution by any means. Other common misunderstandings include how geological dating techniques work, implications to morality and religion, the meaning of "uniformitarianism," and many more. To address all these objections here would be impossible.
But consider: About a hundred years ago, scientists, who were then mostly creationists, looked at the world to figure out how God did things. These creationists came to the conclusions of an old earth and species originating by evolution. Since then, thousands of scientists have been studying evolution with increasingly more sophisticated tools. Many of these scientists have excellent understandings of the laws of thermodynamics, how fossil finds are interpreted, etc., and finding a better alternative to evolution would win them fame and fortune. Sometimes their work has changed our understanding of significant details of how evolution operates, but the theory of evolution still has essentially unanimous agreement from the people who work on it.
Further Reading
The "FAQ" files listed below are available on World Wide Web via http://www.talkorigins.org/. They are also available via ftp at ics.uci.edu, directory /pub/origins. Messages with more information on how to access them are posted regularly to talk.origins. The archive also contains many other files which may be of interest.
For what evolution means, how it works, and the evidence for it:
Colby, Chris. faq-intro-to-biology: Introduction to Evolutionary Biology
Mayr, Ernst. 1991. One Long Argument
Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
For issues and evidence of speciation:
Boxhorn, Joseph. faq-speciation: Observed Instances of Speciation
Weiner, Jonathan. 1994. The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
For explanations of how randomness can lead to design:
Dawkins, Richard. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker
Bonner, John T. 1988. The Evolution of Complexity by Means of Natural Selection
Kauffman, Stuart A. 1993. The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution [very technical]
For a readable introduction to the 2nd law of thermodynamics:
Atkins, Peter W. 1984. The Second Law
For transitional fossils and the fossil record:
Colbert, Edwin H. 1991. Evolution of the Vertebrates, 4th ed.
Hunt, Kathleen. faq-transitional: Transitional Fossils
For responses to many Creationist claims:
Strahler, Arthur. 1987. Science and Earth History
Isaak, Mark (ed.) An Index to Creationist Claims
My wish for the New Year: that people spend a TENTH of the time the now spend thinking/worrying about god and Jesus and spend that time learning some BASIC science.
Canyon - actually latest estimates put the diameter of the known universe at more like
150 million light years, with the most distant galaxies speeding away from their neighbors at close to the speed of light. Of course there could be galactic matter beyond that projected 'horizon' but who can say? Put more time in on the Inflation Theory websites and you'll see what I mean.
The universe could be infinite, or perhaps caught up in an infinitely repeating cycle - as the Hindus and Buddhists maintain. You yourself said infinite......now didn't you?? There are more physics and metaphysics than can be found in your philosophy, Canyon.
If infinity should be the case, why the need for the limited wrathful creator God of the OT? Hey, maybe the Gnostics are right after all about Yahwah - the Demiurge?? Maybe you're the heretic.
Why all the fuss about sin and damnation on one little tiny planet in the middle of nowhere? God must have bigger fish to fry don't you think? Mystery abounds..........
On the other hand, you're the only 'scientist' I know that continually refutes the truth of Evolution as revealed by St. Charles Darwin. Where exactly are all those other scientists that you say are fleeing the coop of reason for the no-man's land of divine revelation??
To: anyone TRULY interested in how the universe could be wider than would seem possible considering it's age, there ARE explanations available (note that this article is from 2004, an eternity ago in the field of cosmology):
Universe Measured: We're 156 Billion Light-years Wide!
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 06:30 am ET
24 May 2004
If you've ever wondered how big the universe is, you're not alone. Astronomers have long pondered this, too, and they've had a hard time figuring it out. Now an estimate has been made, and its a whopper.
The universe is at least 156 billion light-years wide.
In the new study, researchers examined primordial radiation imprinted on the cosmos. Among their conclusions is that it is less likely that there is some crazy cosmic "hall of mirrors" that would cause one object to be visible in two locations. And they've ruled out the idea that we could peer deep into space and time and see our own planet in its youth.
First, let's see why the size is a number you've never heard of before.
Stretching reality
The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Light reaching us from the earliest known galaxies has been travelling, therefore, for more than 13 billion years. So one might assume that the radius of the universe is 13.7 billion light-years and that the whole shebang is double that, or 27.4 billion light-years wide.
But the universe has been expanding ever since the beginning of time, when theorists believe it all sprang forth from an infinitely dense point in a Big Bang.
"All the distance covered by the light in the early universe gets increased by the expansion of the universe," explains Neil Cornish, an astrophysicist at Montana State University. "Think of it like compound interest."
Need a visual? Imagine the universe just a million years after it was born, Cornish suggests. A batch of light travels for a year, covering one light-year. "At that time, the universe was about 1,000 times smaller than it is today," he said. "Thus, that one light-year has now stretched to become 1,000 light-years."
All the pieces add up to 78 billion-light-years. The light has not traveled that far, but "the starting point of a photon reaching us today after travelling for 13.7 billion years is now 78 billion light-years away," Cornish said. That would be the radius of the universe, and twice that -- 156 billion light-years -- is the diameter. That's based on a view going 90 percent of the way back in time, so it might be slightly larger.
"It can be thought of as a spherical diameter is the usual sense," Cornish added comfortingly.
(You might have heard the universe is almost surely flat, not spherical. The flatness refers to its geometry being "normal," like what is taught in school; two parallel lines can never cross.)
Hall of mirrors
The scientists studied the cosmic microwave background (CMB), radiation unleashed about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe had first expanded enough to cool and allow atoms to form. Temperature differences in the CMB left an imprint on the sky that was used last year to reveal the age of the universe and confirm other important cosmological measurements.
The CMB is like a baby picture of the cosmos, before any stars were born.
The focus of the new work, which was published last week in the journal Physical Review Letters, was a search of CMB data for paired circles that would have indicated the universe is like a hall of mirrors, in which multiple images of the same object could show up in different locations in space-time. A hall of mirrors could mean the universe is finite but tricks us into thinking it is infinite.
Think of it as a video game in which an object disappearing on the right side of the screen reappears on the left.
"Several years ago we showed that any finite universe in which light had time to 'wrap around' since the Big Bang would have the same pattern of cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations around pairs of circles," Cornish explained. They looked for the most likely patterns that would be evident in a CMB map generated by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).
They didn't find those patterns.
Don't look back
"Our results don't rule out a hall-of-mirrors effect, but they make the possibility far less likely," Cornish told SPACE.com, adding that the findings have shown "no sign that the universe is finite, but that doesn't prove that it is infinite."
The results do render impossible a "soccer ball" shape for the universe, proposed late last year by another team. "However, if they were to 'pump up' their soccer ball to make it larger, they could evade our bounds" and still be in the realm of possibility, Cornish said. Other complex shapes haven't been ruled out.
The findings eliminate any chance of seeing our ancient selves, however, unless we can master time travel.
"If the universe was finite, and had a size of about 4 billion to 5 billion light-years, then light would be able to wrap around the universe, and with a big enough telescope we could view the Earth just after it solidified and when the first life formed," Cornish said. "Unfortunately, our results rule out this tantalizing possibility."
BTW - someone once wrote, "I have a minor in Psychology...this particular science is a joke." They wrote that sentiment a mere 40 MINUTES after they had written this, "...in which arena's has Bible arguments gotten better in the last decade? Pick one: Biology, Archaeology, Astronomy, PSYCHOLOGY, Anthropology, Nanotechnology."
What is one to make of that?
Does it matter, considering that the person who wrote it considers Biology, Archaeology, Astronomy, Psychology, Anthropology and Nanotechnology to all be "pseudo-sciences?"
Good point, NASA's estimate is clearly false, because we know the Universe is infinitely wide. Their guestimate was based on the latest lens/filter combination they have on Hubble. To make a guestimate on width based on the capabilities of the measuring instrument is foolishness, I think you'll agree.
As for my disorder, it's called caring for the perishing. It's called selflessness and obedience to something greater. I boast not, except in Christ.
If you're interested in the name of your disorder, it's called, "Suppressing the truth in unrighteousness" and it's generally caused by a love of sin and death.
I know that I promised that my last post would be my last to you, but I need to break that promise. Please forgive me my...er...Yahweh-like behavior.
To whit:
You wrote:
"Your religion of pseudoscience worship is dying. Scientists are fleeing from the religion of evolution and naturalism because of said arguments I posted above.
One of the most recent is that NASA has guestimated the width of the universe at 78 Billion Light-years. Your pseudoscientists, no matter how hard they try, cannot figure out how they have made up the age of the Universe at 16 Billion years and yet there are entire Galaxies much further than 39 Billion Light-years away."
You just said that pseudo-science was dying...and then in the next paragraph proceeded to cite an example of NASA's "psuedo-science guesstimate" to make your point. Or is NASA the one place bereft of pseudo-scientists?
Hmmm?
OK. You're the one with the minor in Psychology, so you tell me: is your writing an example of Bi-Polar thinking, schizophrenia, or something else? ;)
Please notice that a person who claims to have no animosity towards the Living God uses His name in a flippant manner.
Blasphemy, for some odd reason, has been overlooked for a great while as being an excellent proof for the truth of Christianity.
The world around, you can find people who find weird and imaginative ways to curse God. My friend Taketo is Japanese and speaks very little English. He was speaking to a friend in fluent Japanese and I was simply listening with interest, when I heard a derivative of, "Christ" in the middle of his conversation. Taketo, a Buddhist, chose to blaspheme the God of the Universe instead of the god of his culture.
If you ask a secular person for an example of Blasphemy, you'll usually hear "G*d-Damnit", and this is certainly one of the worst. But it is not the only. "Jesus Christ" used without reverence is another example, but so are the ones most people don't think of. See Mark's post, "Geez" is blasphemy, without any effort whatsoever you can see that it's etymology derives from "Jeezus". Other examples are simply the acronym OMG or the phrase, "Oh my Word" (John 1:1), and especially "Oh my Gosh". If Gosh is not a derivative of God, then I ask you what Heck is a derivative of?
"Man" can be blasphemous of "Son of Man" and similarly "Man Alive" is blaspheming the same name of God. "Word up" was popular a few years ago, and you should now see the blasphemous reason it caught on.
Perhaps the worst one is "Son of a B..." and other “Son of a” phrases. These are certainly not accidents in language, but cursing both Mary and the God of the Universe. You are also implying a less than ideal name for Jesus Christ through lineage.
I'm certain I haven't given you even a taste of the curse words that have been invented to curse the Living God, but you see the point.
But why does it matter? The Bible says that God's name is the only name blessed forever. When you curse it, you are declaring your hatred for God by trying to drag His name into the mud. Notice that no-one ever yells out, "Sidartha Buddha" when they hit their thumb with a hammer, or says, "Allah damnit." The reason is because these names are already cursed. But not the names of God, of these Jesus Christ is the name above every name.
Even in the hundreds if not thousands of times you blasphemed God's name, He still died in your place. If you'll repent of all your wicked ways, especially your habit of substituting His precious name in place of your filth words, and place your trust in Him, He will save and forgive you despite your hatred and will replace your heart with a heart that thirsts for righteousness.
I have a minor in Psychology...this particular science is a joke, I soon realized after studying the world and human nature. Only in the last few years (after I was out of this particular college) has Psychology started to realize they were entirely wrong for more than a century...just as the evolutionary scientists.
In a closing comment, please take your blind-fold off. There is a great fall coming and I've done my best to steer you away. Please know that your hatred for God is reciprocal and He will pursue you into darkness.
What, no reciprocal wishes for the New Year? And after I fought every urge to write "2008 CE" in my post to you.
If, as you aver, you have a scientific mind, then may I gently suggest that you avail yourself of the psychiatric sciences, and in a first-person setting. There you will find answers to many of your fears and time-tested cures for that which so clearly ails you.
You may even get the chance to browse the books in the doctor's office, perhaps discovering a few of those adjectives those of a scientific mind use to describe "smart" people like yourself.
I now once again take my leave of you, sir. Not in a day - and certainly not in a thousand-year day - but in the 2 or 3 hours since my last missive to you. I bid you adieu and wish you the all the best! Perhaps I could afford to engage you a bit longer, but I don't. I extend that courtesy to others. Free will, you know.
You'll have to content yourself with the fact that you've heard more directly from me in the past few hours than you've heard directly from your god in the...well, geez, in, forever.
Wow! Mr. Mark responded to me! I'd long since thought this little cockroach hid under the sink when the light of truth entered a thread. I guess he's getting bold in his exploits.
Mark, in which arena's has Bible arguments gotten better in the last decade? Pick one: Biology, Archaeology, Astronomy, Psychology, Anthropology, Nanotechnology. The greatest thing about the attacks by Dinky Dawkin's and his minions is that it has caused a whole slew of Biblical scientists to actually do the work to find the truth.
Your arguments were all used up by the third century, and I'm not going to pick them apart one by one because you know they are all paper thin. You'll believe anything if it's not the Bible.
Your religion of pseudoscience worship is dying. Scientists are fleeing from the religion of evolution and naturalism because of said arguments I posted above.
One of the most recent is that NASA has guestimated the width of the universe at 78 Billion Light-years. Your pseudoscientists, no matter how hard they try, cannot figure out how they have made up the age of the Universe at 16 Billion years and yet there are entire Galaxies much further than 39 Billion Light-years away.
In one thing, Mr. Mark, I admire your blind-faith. I suspect life must be easier to accept everything you hear (as long as it's not the Bible) but I cannot be so naive, I have a scientific mind and I have to know how things work. Your arguments don't. Not even a little.
Arbours coloured
by a soft September
breeze delay in
the sunshine of a
beautiful morning,
and a loving
profile presents,
in a moment, the
taste of a dream.
Nothing seems more absurd than a Catholic theologian advocating democracy.
The "Newadvent" blog entry concludes: "Christians are being persecuted by being forced to accept the immoralities imposed upon them by an irrational and agnostic (US Supreme) Court." While most Americans are at times infuriated by the Court's actions, they are not ready to turn it into a "rational and theolistic" institution, not only because the combination is illogical, but also because no one really wants another religion to dictate, a possibility that the founding fathers clearly foresaw.
The Natural Moral Law that the "Newadvent" cites seems to be best resolved by the system our Constitution framed; a system that leaves everyone to debate the realizations of human life and society as oppose to leaving the answers to a particular religious aristocracy (like some cloistered group in Rome).
When US Christians scream, US politicians quake and placate. Not surprising that the House would pass such a feel-good, toothless declaration. Not surprising that Romney can pledge to be the president of the "faithful" and not one politician dare question how undemocratic he sounds.
Facts: (1) Christians are the majority religion in this country. (2) Christians do not own thoughts. Conclusions: (1)no one owns the holidays. (2) the majority will keep feeling and pleading persecution.
You really have an impressive knowledge of all things biblical as seen from your last few posts! You're either a fallen bible scholar or have an eidetic memory. I know you're a musician, but I would not have pegged you as the guy that could set Canyon straight! I do applaud folks that have that kind of depth anyway.
Congrats on good writing in general and all the best in the New Year.....
CANYON SHEARER sez:
"Mr. Mark is the puppet of the God haters."
How does one hate that which doesn't exist?
"He has never brought any new arguments and all of his worthless arguments have been answered a billion times over by even the least of apologetics."
And the NEW arguments in defense of the Bible would be...?
BTW - do you know how much a billion is?
"He won't speak with me because I'm too smart for him."
I wouldn't use the word "smart." I'll let others fill in the blank, using only CS's posts in this thread as the determining factor as to which adjective(s) best describes our friend CS.
BTW - On Faith is a cyber-picnic. You can't have a picnic without attracting a few flies. I don't obsess about the flies, and I don't bother swatting at every one of them. One shouldn't assume that the ones I choose not to swat at are necessarily the smart ones. I may choose to not swat at some flies because in doing so, my hand would end up wrist-deep in the dung pile on which they're sitting.
"Read his post again with this hermaneutic, "Mr. Mark will believe anything if it's not the Bible." "
A rather strange comment in response to a post made by me that consists almost entirely of Biblical quotes and citations, with nary a citation from outside the Bible in attendance.
An obviously false comment, as well. I don't believe anything gw bush says, and his sayings are, "not from the Bible." Yet it's clear that some people WILL believe anything, as long as it's in the Bible.
Happy New Year to all, even CS...even if my wishing CS a happy 2008 sends me straight to hell. ;)
Mr. Mark is the puppet of the God haters. He has never brought any new arguments and all of his worthless arguments have been answered a billion times over by even the least of apologetics. He won't speak with me because I'm too smart for him. Read his post again with this hermaneutic, "Mr. Mark will believe anything if it's not the Bible."
Anonymous,
Once again you prove you're incapable of paying attention. No-one will go to Hell for not believing in Jesus Christ. Just as a person who kidnaps, brutally rapes, and murders a 12-year old won't go to prison for not believing in the judge.
You'll go to Hell for harboring hatred (murder of the heart), for viewing pornography and masturbation (rape in the mind), for purposefully destroying God's creation with sin, and for this war you've waged to keep those that would be saved from salvation. No, you won't go to Hell for anything to do with Jesus Christ, your condemnation is already assured.
Please pay attention to that.
Jeff P.
I'd love to answer your question, but I'm afraid I don't fully understand it. If I understand it to mean, "This whimsical megalomaniacal god will continue to be whimsical in Heaven" then you've created a god which doesn't exist so that you can pretend the God of the Universe is not perfectly just, righteousness, and loving. If that's what you meant, maybe my response to anonymous will answer your question.
It's always good for a few laughs when the fire and brimstone crowd drag out the image of their all-powerful and all-knowing god. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Bible knows that, 1) Yahweh's threats are often all bark and no bite, 2) Yahweh is a LIAR who makes empty promises that he never keeps, and, 3) Yahweh is hardly all-powerful and all-knowing.
You can start right off in Genesis, where Yahweh warns Adam that if he eats the fruit from the tree of life, "on that DAY, you will die." Adam goes on to live for another 930 years. I guess it's a matter of what the definition of "that" is...or what the definition of "day" is (more on that later).
The strange thing is, once Adam eats the apple (or apricot or kumquat), it makes him invisible to this all-seeing god (Gen, 3:8 "And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. 3:9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?")
Where art thou? Today we'd say, "Ally ally in free."
Later in Genesis, god promises Abraham and his descendants all the land of Canaan, but the Bible (and history) says that never happened. He promised Isaac that he would make his descendants "as numerous as the stars in heaven" (ie: billions), but the Jews have been and will remain a minority.
Yahweh promises Joshua that he will drive out seven nations they encounter, yet the Book of Joshua reports that didn't happen either. In fact, Yahweh's power was ineffective against the Canaanites because they had - get this - chariots of iron. Imagine, an all-powerful god who couldn't defeat chariots of iron. One wonders what Yahweh would do if faced with a fleet of Hummers - and the not up-armored ones at that.
In Jeremiah (34:4) God tells Zedekiah that he will die in peace and be buried with his fathers. But in 25:7 and Jer.52:10-11 say that he died a violent death in a foreign land. Zedekiah watched as his sons were executed before his eyes. His eyes were then gouged out and he was led away in chains to captivity in Babylon. Now, there's some "peace of god which passes all understanding." Food for thought for those who believe god's promise of a blissful eternity in heaven.
Seems that god is a "do what I say, not what I do" kinda guy. In Deuteronomy 13, Yahweh says that you can tell a true prophet because they're NEVER wrong. If their prophecies don't come true 100% of the time, they're false prophets...and they are to be put to death.
Apparently, exceptions are made for the Trinity, no more so than for Jesus who prophesied in Matthew that the High Priest would see his "second coming." He didn't. The Book of James says Jesus' second coming "is nigh." Still hasn't happened.
When Jesus didn't return during his generation (as he had promised) it became a source of doubt for early Xians. Our ever-inventive Bible authors had a solution though, and in 2Peter 3, we are told that Jesus didn't mean "today" today. No, to Jesus, "today" can mean a thousand years (2Peter 3:3 "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 3:4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.")!
Since "scoffers" were asking this question at the time of 2Peter's writing, we can safely assume that the "last days" have been going on for over 2,000 years. And - using 2Peter's own math of a day being a thousand years - I'd say that we're only two days into the "last days." Even if we keep the "last days" to a mere week, we've got at least 5,000 years to go before Jesus returns. OR, perhaps Jesus himself was - by the Bible's own definition - a false prophet.
Considering the track record of his dad, I'd say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Of course, one can read the works of Biblical scholars who can excuse/explain all these things, tie it all up with a neat little "consistency bow" and offer those predisposed to believe the Bible an explanation that doesn't challenge their world view. Believe me, I've read a few of them. But those apologies are not written from the perspective of WHETHER the Bible is true and consistent. They are written with an agenda to show HOW the Bible is true and consistent.
Which leaves us with the age-old question, "who ya gonna believe? Me (the Bible apologists) or your own lying eyes?"
Canyon Shearer: I forgot one last comment, which I'd love to hear your opinion.
If the Christian God is capable of the kind of torment he envisions for non-believers, or for those who follow other gods, what would make a Christian think that he'd be any different in personality once you're "eternally worshipping him" in heaven?
Yep I agree, lots of damnation in the New Testament, the so called "Good News."
I think the best quote describing the situation is from Mark Twain, who said something to the effect of "in the Old Testament God brought death to humans, but in the New Testament, after God got "religion," he brought hell."
Yes myself and all of my suffering subsequent generations (for my error) will suffer unendingly in hell. But, as I consider it, likely it won't be the Christian God's hell, because too many other gods want to put me in their hells first! I expect your god will just have to wait his turn to torment me.
Athena - so you think Canyon is actually a Catholic? They were never that bad back in the day. On the other hand, now I'm thinking
Opus Dei - could we actually have one with us on this thread?? Scourges, hair shirts, and the whole shebang.... now that would be pretty cool.
Canyon - just so. It is clearly a wrathful God that you relate to and that is always in evidence in your postings. Saul of Tarsus was probably as crippled psycologically as you are, and yet is the 'nominal' founding father of Christianity.
Do you feel that you need to be punished by a stern & righteous Father Canyon?? Hopefully you were not abused as a child, although I'll bet discipline was a major part of your upbringing, along with a serious dose of pentacostal religion.
Imagine your worshipping a divinely hateful creator that is ready to 'crush' the offending non-believer in the palm of his hand momentarily.
That says all that needs to be said about your religion, don't you think?
I think that the whole comparison of the world as sewage was brought about by the medieval Catholic Church, who viewed reverence for the Earth, Goddess worship, and women in general as filth.
As always, the unbelievers and "used-ta-be's" prove they are incapable of paying attention. In my post, please provide a reference where I preached hellfire and brimstone. Actually, it will do you better to read my post and actually pay attention this time.
I usually don't provide the references for the Bible verses I use in my posts, I feel the references detract from the flow of the e-sermon, and I'm pretty sure George Whitefield and Paul of Tarsus didn't take time out of their open-air sermons to give the majority of references in their preaching. But, since you asked, it will do you well to read 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, especially the b-verse of 20 to the end.
Whatever brand of christianity you escaped from did you a great disservice in only preaching the love-gospel, a gospel spoken of in Galatians 1:6. But do not think your blood will be on their hands, but on yours alone for failing to seek out the truth.
Please know that God hates you more than you can possibly imagine, and holds you in His hand ready to crush you at any moment. Read the b-verse of 20 and do what it says.
StephenC - thanks and of course you're most welcome to your beliefs. However, you would have to be familiar with Canyon Shearer's relentless 'hellfire and brimstone' diatribes to realize why I wrote my little spoof - in fact, go back and re-read the post near the top of this thread if you haven't done so.
As to Christianity, I've been there and done that - many years ago. As to why many people on these threads question the validity of the Christian 'faith-based' position, there is much material and many points of view to peruse at your discretion so I won't be recapping here.
Anon (Dec 28; 501pm):
Thanks for writing.
Can I suggest that this whole subject is greater than a laundry list of doctrines or 'truths'? Behind (a lot of) it stands a God who came down to earth (we just celebrated Incarnation Day) to save us. Jesus lived among us, was one of us, and died on the Cross for our sins. Once we repent (of our sin) and believe (and trust and obey Him) we begin a relationship with Him that is much more profound than intellectual assent to 'truths' (or argument against them). I encourage you to give that relationship a serious thought (and a go). Much grace,
StephenC
"Give me someone who believes and acts ethically because it is the right thing to do - not because they believe it will get them to heaven."
GJKBear,
As would I my friend. That is why I would vote for a Christian. Note that I did not say I would vote for someone who thinks that their "good" will be rewarded by a ticket to Heaven. Christians know they cannot work their way to Heaven, ever. Anyone who believes that is not paying attention and I would call on them to question what who they believe in:
Ephesians 2:8
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God"
Listen you really need to take this test, at http://theGoodpersonTest.com, before you reply, in order for you to understand what Christianity actually says.
There are many hypocrites parading as but are not actually Christians. And, yes, not ALL the founders were Christians (I never said they were). But the principles they founded this nation on WERE INDEED taken from the Bible as they clearly said. And it was the Christians who advocated for them and won. No deist, muslim, buddhist or any other pagan religion has their foundations right. ONLY JESUS SAVES
It was George Washington who said you cannot rule without the Bible as your foundation. And you cannot run a nation right without the leaders in submission to the Christian God. History has proven this out and will continue to do so.
[Don't use hypocrites as examples because no hypocrite will enter Heaven.]
Thank you for the reply!
America is wonderful in that anyone is free to be dead wrong in who/what they trust in but our leaders must have their heads on straight or they will lead us astray. In this we agree wholeheartedly. HOW they are "ethical" remains what we disagree on. Only in Jesus can anyone BE "ethical". All else have impure motives as they are slaves to their lusts, as the Bible says.
A Christian is "free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness." [Romans 6:18] but those who are not Christians are "slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness" [Romans 6:20].
See the point? Christians MUST advocate for righteousness in our leadership. Anything else begs the question on why Christians should vote at all otherwise.
You really are a total nut job. You and JJ could easily cook up your own religion shindig thing and dole it out to the religion-starved masses.
Now let's see the ingredients (the Divine Trinity as we cooks down South call it):
Birth, Hellfire, sin & damnation, salvation, the Apocalypse, and finally, the bedraggled but saved sinner appears before the very God that - What?? found even his own beloved Son disgusting?! Ooops! I don't like that look on His face. That's not the Guy I was looking for after all.
Hellp me!!!
But your goose is way cooked:
Too late pal (big booming voice) because Salvation is a one-way street and you're in Heaven now - you're in My World!!!
The curtain falls...for All Eternity.
Canyon Shearer - you are quite a lady!! My compliments.
"Question for Mr. Mark where does it say in the Book of Luke that Herod the Great was dead years prior to the birth of Christ"
It doesn't. Here's the problem.
Matthew's Gospel says that Jesus was born while King Herod reigned over Judea. Herod died in 4BC and his sons took up as tetrarchs (not kings) of a divided kingdom. Most Biblical scholars assert that Matthew's account is correct and that Jesus was born in probably 6BC.
Luke's Gospel provides a contradiction. Luke states that:
"And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)" Luke 2:1. Luke asserts that Jesus was born during this time, and that Mary & Joseph made the trip to Bethlehem from Nazareth in direct response to this census being taken.
The contradiction arises because Quirinius (Cyrenius) became Legate and governor of Syria in or AFTER 6CE, ie: 10 years after the death of Herod the Great.
It's an important distinction as Rome assumed direct power in Judea when Herod Archelaus (one of King Herod's 3 sons) was banished from Judea in 6CE. Judea now went from being a Roman vassal empire administrated by local Jewish governors and kings reporting to Rome to being under direct, on-site Roman administration. One of Quirinius' first duties in Judea was to order a census for tax purposes. The Jews greatly resented this assessment and it eventually led to revolt.
Put simply, there's a 10-12 year difference in the birth year of Jesus as reported in Matthew and Luke.
Most Biblical scholars assert Luke simply got it wrong, and for good reason. For instance, the so-called "slaughter of the innocents" by Herod (for which their is absolutely no proof outside of the Bible) could hardly have happened if Jesus was born after the death of Herod, could it? Remove the Herod dating of the birth, and more than a few things about the birth get thrown out as well, including the Flight to Egypt.
RNH tried (unsuccessfully) to justify BOTH versions of the story by asserting (incorrectly) that Herod's sons were also kings (they weren't). His position was that, yes, Herod the Great was dead when Quirinius took his census, but Luke could be correct if the Herod Matthew mentioned was actually one of Herod the Great's three sons (a stretch of the imagination that Matthew himself obliterates in Matt 14:1).
But the most-glaring problem with RNH's scenario is that there was NO Herod acting as King or Tetrarch of Judea at the time of Quirinius' census as Rome had banished Herod Archelaus as tetrarch of Judea and had taken direct control themselves. How could Matthew have referred to the ruler of Judea as "King Herod" in his account IF his account reports a birth in 6CE when Quirinius was governor of Syria, Judea was being run by Roman governors and Herod Archelaus was sitting powerless and in banishment in Vienne (which is located in present-day France)?
Even if one were to stipulate that Herod the Great's sons could somehow be considered to have been RNH's "kings," they were out of power by the time Quirinus was made governor of Syria.
Mr. Burwell, This nation is not free because it was founded on Christian principles. It was founded on secular principles because not everyone was a Christian. Even the founding fathers were not mainstream Christian...some of them were diests and they believed that Jesus was a great teacher but did not necessarily believe that he was God made flesh. They rejected the idea of a Trinity... This nation is supposed to be free for those who are believers and non-believers alike for all of it's citizens be they Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Pagan, Atheist, Agnostic or any other religion. As for voting for Christians because they have the right foundations? Would you vote for Baker? Robertson? Falwell? Roberts? Those who place themselves on pedastales have a far way to fall. Give me someone who believes and acts ethically because it is the right thing to do - not because they believe it will get them to heaven.... I can vote for a Christian - but I will vote for him/her because they have the right platform and actually live their values - not because they wear Christianity on their sleeve.
All Comments (63)
Love.
December 31, 2007 3:49 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 31, 2007 15:49
God will not hold him guiltless that takes His name in vain. - Exodus 20:7
December 30, 2007 7:04 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 30, 2007 19:04
"If you ask a secular person for an example of Blasphemy, you'll usually hear "G*d-Damnit", and this is certainly one of the worst. But it is not the only. "Jesus Christ" used without reverence is another example, but so are the ones most people don't think of. See Mark's post, "Geez" is blasphemy, without any effort whatsoever you can see that it's etymology derives from "Jeezus". Other examples are simply the acronym OMG or the phrase, "Oh my Word" (John 1:1), and especially "Oh my Gosh". If Gosh is not a derivative of God, then I ask you what Heck is a derivative of?"
Truly spoken.
Just as the phrase, "Holy Sh*t" exhibits a belief that Jesus - being a man - was subject to the same bodily functions as the rest of us. Yes, Jesus had to use the bathroom, and often, just like us.
It's interesting to contemplate the wonder of god's creation. Once god designed us as biological organisms, the need arose for us to be able to ingest and process food as energy, and to expel the waste products of that processing. The same happens when we breathe in oxygen-rich air and expel its waste product in the form of carbon dioxide.
Both breathing air and eating food are wonders that enable and sustain our lives. Take away either ability and the body soon dies. Both functions - breathing and expelling waste, and eating and expelling waste - are god's design and essential to our lives.
Yet - for some strange reason - no one has written any hymns to the process of eliminating solid waste from our bodies. Why is that? We know that when WE exhale, we are exhaling waste. We know that when we breathe on another person, we are breathing out the waste from our lungs.
We know that we were made in god's image. We know from the Bible that god breathes. In fact, one of our best-loved hymns is, "Breathe on me, breath of god, Fill me with life anew." If we are actually made in his image, god is actually breathing out his waste product on us.
So, why no hymn entitled, "Excrete on me, p**p of god?" Wouldn't the "holy sh*t" excreted on us be just as godly and holy as god's breath? Why do we find shame in one method of waste elimination designed by god while singing hymns to another? It can't be the smell...which can be pretty rank in either process, and it can't be that one waste product is useful and the other isn't - both have their positive post-processing uses.
Thoughts?
December 30, 2007 6:03 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 30, 2007 18:03
Canyon Shearer,
Ever tried Raid to get rid of coachroaches under a sink?
Happy New Year to you.
Mr. Mark,
Er, you're snoring in your sleep.
Happy New Year to you too.
Thanks and regards
"J"
December 30, 2007 3:22 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 30, 2007 03:22
Actually, the Bible says you are dead in your transgression, not just asleep.
December 29, 2007 8:43 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 20:43
Yawn...z-z-z-z--z-z...
December 29, 2007 8:36 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 20:36
Mark,
Repent, or you shall perish.
I only say this because of the charity I have been shown and the charity I wish for you to receive.
Repent, or you shall perish.
December 29, 2007 8:11 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 20:11
Dear Canyon -
Yawn, and thrice again, YAWN.
I leave you with these words from Corinthians:
13: 1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
13:2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
13:3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
13:13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
Here's a link for you, Canyon: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/charity . You may look up the definition of the word "charity" on your own.
Best wishes to you for the New Year! :)
December 29, 2007 7:25 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 19:25
Anonymous asked for some scientists who reject evolution:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/
It's a growing list and one that will eventually be absolute. Evolution is the dumbest of religions and will be a flash in the pan of history.
December 29, 2007 7:18 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 19:18
Mark,
Rage, rage against the dying of your stupid religion! It's dying, you can't stop it, science has proven it illegal in the realm of nature.
Please don't confuse my calling your religion "Pseudoscience" and the legitimate examination of reality as science. Evolution is a joke and a religion and a stupid one at that. And it's dying.
Some forms of psychology are scientific, others, like the freudian method are nothing more than mans' effort to delete God. Your religion of evolution doesn't know how life began, how life evolved, or why things die. It doesn't know the beginning, the middle, or the end, which is why it's a dying religion.
Hold onto it if you must, but it will do you as much good against Hell as a napkin will against gravity.
December 29, 2007 7:12 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 19:12
ANONYMOUS wrote:
"Mr. Mark -
You really have an impressive knowledge of all things biblical as seen from your last few posts! You're either a fallen bible scholar or have an eidetic memory."
Thanks for the kind words.
Not a Biblical scholar by any means, nor a scientist. Yes, I have a pretty good memory, though at age 53, I have to take a beat and ask if my memory is failing me at times. So, I remember certain stories from my Xian days and avail myself of a few internet links I have bookmarked to re-read what I THINK I remember from the Bible before forming an argument to present in these forums. Occasionally, I'll need to pull a book off the shelf. - not everything of value has made its way to the internet! It's a mental exercise that I hope keeps me sharp.
I spent much of my earlier years studying Christianity as it was a natural adjunct to the Western music history that was at the heart of my career education. I wish I had spent more of the time studying science, philosophy and literature. I'm trying to make up for lost time.
As I'm not the typical American, I have time available to do things like reading. I'm not a sports-aholic (I follow MLB), and my TV choices are limited to those channels most Americans avoid, like the Science, History & Discovery channels. I like some TV comedies like "The Office," but I've never seen most of the popular TV fare like reality shows...though I do get a big kick out of Ninja Warrior on G4!
I try to read one major book a month. Looks like January will be taken up with "World Without End" by Ken Follett. I've been told that I should read his, "The Pillars of the Earth" first, but I don't know if I want to dedicate that much time to a single author. What I'd really like to read is Vincent Bugliosi's "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" - but nobody got me that for Xmas.
Gotta go.
December 29, 2007 7:12 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 19:12
To: anyone who is TRULY interested in what evolutionary theory does and doesn't say, here's a freebie to start:
Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution
Copyright © 1995-1997 by Mark Isaak
[Last Update: October 1, 2003]
A large part of the reason why Creationist arguments against evolution can sound so persuasive is because they don't address evolution, but rather argue against a set of misunderstandings that people are right to consider ludicrous. The Creationists wrongly believe that their understanding of evolution is what the theory of evolution really says, and declare evolution banished. In fact, they haven't even addressed the topic of evolution. (The situation isn't helped by poor science education generally. Even most beginning college biology students don't understand the theory of evolution.)
The five propositions below seem to be the most common misconceptions based on a Creationist straw-man version of evolution. If you hear anyone making any of them, chances are excellent that they don't know enough about the real theory of evolution to make informed opinions about it.
Evolution has never been observed.
Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
There are no transitional fossils.
The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance.
Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved.
Explanations of why these statements are wrong are given below. They are brief and therefore somewhat simplified; consult the references at the end for more thorough explanations.
"Evolution has never been observed."
Biologists define evolution as a change in the gene pool of a population over time. One example is insects developing a resistance to pesticides over the period of a few years. Even most Creationists recognize that evolution at this level is a fact. What they don't appreciate is that this rate of evolution is all that is required to produce the diversity of all living things from a common ancestor.
The origin of new species by evolution has also been observed, both in the laboratory and in the wild. See, for example, (Weinberg, J.R., V.R. Starczak, and D. Jorg, 1992, "Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory." Evolution 46: 1214-1220). The "Observed Instances of Speciation" FAQ in the talk.origins archives gives several additional examples.
Even without these direct observations, it would be wrong to say that evolution hasn't been observed. Evidence isn't limited to seeing something happen before your eyes. Evolution makes predictions about what we would expect to see in the fossil record, comparative anatomy, genetic sequences, geographical distribution of species, etc., and these predictions have been verified many times over. The number of observations supporting evolution is overwhelming.
What hasn't been observed is one animal abruptly changing into a radically different one, such as a frog changing into a cow. This is not a problem for evolution because evolution doesn't propose occurrences even remotely like that. In fact, if we ever observed a frog turn into a cow, it would be very strong evidence against evolution.
"Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics."
This shows more a misconception about thermodynamics than about evolution. The second law of thermodynamics says, "No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body." [Atkins, 1984, The Second Law, pg. 25] Now you may be scratching your head wondering what this has to do with evolution. The confusion arises when the 2nd law is phrased in another equivalent way, "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." Entropy is an indication of unusable energy and often (but not always!) corresponds to intuitive notions of disorder or randomness. Creationists thus misinterpret the 2nd law to say that things invariably progress from order to disorder.
However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things. If a mature tomato plant can have more usable energy than the seed it grew from, why should anyone expect that the next generation of tomatoes can't have more usable energy still? Creationists sometimes try to get around this by claiming that the information carried by living things lets them create order. However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?
The thermodynamics argument against evolution displays a misconception about evolution as well as about thermodynamics, since a clear understanding of how evolution works should reveal major flaws in the argument. Evolution says that organisms reproduce with only small changes between generations (after their own kind, so to speak). For example, animals might have appendages which are longer or shorter, thicker or flatter, lighter or darker than their parents. Occasionally, a change might be on the order of having four or six fingers instead of five. Once the differences appear, the theory of evolution calls for differential reproductive success. For example, maybe the animals with longer appendages survive to have more offspring than short-appendaged ones. All of these processes can be observed today. They obviously don't violate any physical laws.
"There are no transitional fossils."
A transitional fossil is one that looks like it's from an organism intermediate between two lineages, meaning it has some characteristics of lineage A, some characteristics of lineage B, and probably some characteristics part way between the two. Transitional fossils can occur between groups of any taxonomic level, such as between species, between orders, etc. Ideally, the transitional fossil should be found stratigraphically between the first occurrence of the ancestral lineage and the first occurrence of the descendent lineage, but evolution also predicts the occurrence of some fossils with transitional morphology that occur after both lineages. There's nothing in the theory of evolution which says an intermediate form (or any organism, for that matter) can have only one line of descendents, or that the intermediate form itself has to go extinct when a line of descendents evolves.
To say there are no transitional fossils is simply false. Paleontology has progressed a bit since Origin of Species was published, uncovering thousands of transitional fossils, by both the temporally restrictive and the less restrictive definitions. The fossil record is still spotty and always will be; erosion and the rarity of conditions favorable to fossilization make that inevitable. Also, transitions may occur in a small population, in a small area, and/or in a relatively short amount of time; when any of these conditions hold, the chances of finding the transitional fossils goes down. Still, there are still many instances where excellent sequences of transitional fossils exist. Some notable examples are the transitions from reptile to mammal, from land animal to early whale, and from early ape to human. For many more examples, see the transitional fossils FAQ in the talk.origins archive, and see http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/talk_origins.html for sample images for some invertebrate groups.
The misconception about the lack of transitional fossils is perpetuated in part by a common way of thinking about categories. When people think about a category like "dog" or "ant," they often subconsciously believe that there is a well-defined boundary around the category, or that there is some eternal ideal form (for philosophers, the Platonic idea) which defines the category. This kind of thinking leads people to declare that Archaeopteryx is "100% bird," when it is clearly a mix of bird and reptile features (with more reptile than bird features, in fact). In truth, categories are man-made and artificial. Nature is not constrained to follow them, and it doesn't.
Some Creationists claim that the hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium was proposed (by Eldredge and Gould) to explain gaps in the fossil record. Actually, it was proposed to explain the relative rarity of transitional forms, not their total absence, and to explain why speciation appears to happen relatively quickly in some cases, gradually in others, and not at all during some periods for some species. In no way does it deny that transitional sequences exist. In fact, both Gould and Eldredge are outspoken opponents of Creationism.
"But paleontologists have discovered several superb examples of intermediary forms and sequences, more than enough to convince any fair-minded skeptic about the reality of life's physical genealogy." - Stephen Jay Gould, Natural History, May 1994
"The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance."
There is probably no other statement which is a better indication that the arguer doesn't understand evolution. Chance certainly plays a large part in evolution, but this argument completely ignores the fundamental role of natural selection, and selection is the very opposite of chance. Chance, in the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material that natural selection has to work with. From there, natural selection sorts out certain variations. Those variations which give greater reproductive success to their possessors (and chance ensures that such beneficial mutations will be inevitable) are retained, and less successful variations are weeded out. When the environment changes, or when organisms move to a different environment, different variations are selected, leading eventually to different species. Harmful mutations usually die out quickly, so they don't interfere with the process of beneficial mutations accumulating.
Nor is abiogenesis (the origin of the first life) due purely to chance. Atoms and molecules arrange themselves not purely randomly, but according to their chemical properties. In the case of carbon atoms especially, this means complex molecules are sure to form spontaneously, and these complex molecules can influence each other to create even more complex molecules. Once a molecule forms that is approximately self-replicating, natural selection will guide the formation of ever more efficient replicators. The first self-replicating object didn't need to be as complex as a modern cell or even a strand of DNA. Some self-replicating molecules are not really all that complex (as organic molecules go).
Some people still argue that it is wildly improbable for a given self-replicating molecule to form at a given point (although they usually don't state the "givens," but leave them implicit in their calculations). This is true, but there were oceans of molecules working on the problem, and no one knows how many possible self-replicating molecules could have served as the first one. A calculation of the odds of abiogenesis is worthless unless it recognizes the immense range of starting materials that the first replicator might have formed from, the probably innumerable different forms that the first replicator might have taken, and the fact that much of the construction of the replicating molecule would have been non-random to start with.
(One should also note that the theory of evolution doesn't depend on how the first life began. The truth or falsity of any theory of abiogenesis wouldn't affect evolution in the least.)
"Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved."
First, we should clarify what "evolution" means. Like so many other words, it has more than one meaning. Its strict biological definition is "a change in allele frequencies over time." By that definition, evolution is an indisputable fact. Most people seem to associate the word "evolution" mainly with common descent, the theory that all life arose from one common ancestor. Many people believe that there is enough evidence to call this a fact, too. However, common descent is still not the theory of evolution, but just a fraction of it (and a part of several quite different theories as well). The theory of evolution not only says that life evolved, it also includes mechanisms, like mutations, natural selection, and genetic drift, which go a long way towards explaining how life evolved.
Calling the theory of evolution "only a theory" is, strictly speaking, true, but the idea it tries to convey is completely wrong. The argument rests on a confusion between what "theory" means in informal usage and in a scientific context. A theory, in the scientific sense, is "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena" [Random House American College Dictionary]. The term does not imply tentativeness or lack of certainty. Generally speaking, scientific theories differ from scientific laws only in that laws can be expressed more tersely. Being a theory implies self-consistency, agreement with observations, and usefulness. (Creationism fails to be a theory mainly because of the last point; it makes few or no specific claims about what we would expect to find, so it can't be used for anything. When it does make falsifiable predictions, they prove to be false.)
Lack of proof isn't a weakness, either. On the contrary, claiming infallibility for one's conclusions is a sign of hubris. Nothing in the real world has ever been rigorously proved, or ever will be. Proof, in the mathematical sense, is possible only if you have the luxury of defining the universe you're operating in. In the real world, we must deal with levels of certainty based on observed evidence. The more and better evidence we have for something, the more certainty we assign to it; when there is enough evidence, we label the something a fact, even though it still isn't 100% certain.
What evolution has is what any good scientific claim has--evidence, and lots of it. Evolution is supported by a wide range of observations throughout the fields of genetics, anatomy, ecology, animal behavior, paleontology, and others. If you wish to challenge the theory of evolution, you must address that evidence. You must show that the evidence is either wrong or irrelevant or that it fits another theory better. Of course, to do this, you must know both the theory and the evidence.
Conclusion
These are not the only misconceptions about evolution by any means. Other common misunderstandings include how geological dating techniques work, implications to morality and religion, the meaning of "uniformitarianism," and many more. To address all these objections here would be impossible.
But consider: About a hundred years ago, scientists, who were then mostly creationists, looked at the world to figure out how God did things. These creationists came to the conclusions of an old earth and species originating by evolution. Since then, thousands of scientists have been studying evolution with increasingly more sophisticated tools. Many of these scientists have excellent understandings of the laws of thermodynamics, how fossil finds are interpreted, etc., and finding a better alternative to evolution would win them fame and fortune. Sometimes their work has changed our understanding of significant details of how evolution operates, but the theory of evolution still has essentially unanimous agreement from the people who work on it.
Further Reading
The "FAQ" files listed below are available on World Wide Web via http://www.talkorigins.org/. They are also available via ftp at ics.uci.edu, directory /pub/origins. Messages with more information on how to access them are posted regularly to talk.origins. The archive also contains many other files which may be of interest.
For what evolution means, how it works, and the evidence for it:
Colby, Chris. faq-intro-to-biology: Introduction to Evolutionary Biology
Mayr, Ernst. 1991. One Long Argument
Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
For issues and evidence of speciation:
Boxhorn, Joseph. faq-speciation: Observed Instances of Speciation
Weiner, Jonathan. 1994. The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
For explanations of how randomness can lead to design:
Dawkins, Richard. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker
Bonner, John T. 1988. The Evolution of Complexity by Means of Natural Selection
Kauffman, Stuart A. 1993. The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution [very technical]
For a readable introduction to the 2nd law of thermodynamics:
Atkins, Peter W. 1984. The Second Law
For transitional fossils and the fossil record:
Colbert, Edwin H. 1991. Evolution of the Vertebrates, 4th ed.
Hunt, Kathleen. faq-transitional: Transitional Fossils
For responses to many Creationist claims:
Strahler, Arthur. 1987. Science and Earth History
Isaak, Mark (ed.) An Index to Creationist Claims
My wish for the New Year: that people spend a TENTH of the time the now spend thinking/worrying about god and Jesus and spend that time learning some BASIC science.
Happy New Year to all!
December 29, 2007 6:31 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 18:31
Sorry - as per Mr. Mark - 150 billion light years for the diameter of the known universe.
December 29, 2007 5:41 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 17:41
Canyon - actually latest estimates put the diameter of the known universe at more like
150 million light years, with the most distant galaxies speeding away from their neighbors at close to the speed of light. Of course there could be galactic matter beyond that projected 'horizon' but who can say? Put more time in on the Inflation Theory websites and you'll see what I mean.
The universe could be infinite, or perhaps caught up in an infinitely repeating cycle - as the Hindus and Buddhists maintain. You yourself said infinite......now didn't you?? There are more physics and metaphysics than can be found in your philosophy, Canyon.
If infinity should be the case, why the need for the limited wrathful creator God of the OT? Hey, maybe the Gnostics are right after all about Yahwah - the Demiurge?? Maybe you're the heretic.
Why all the fuss about sin and damnation on one little tiny planet in the middle of nowhere? God must have bigger fish to fry don't you think? Mystery abounds..........
On the other hand, you're the only 'scientist' I know that continually refutes the truth of Evolution as revealed by St. Charles Darwin. Where exactly are all those other scientists that you say are fleeing the coop of reason for the no-man's land of divine revelation??
Think bigger Canyon, think much much bigger.
All the best for a hopeful recovery in 2008 -
December 29, 2007 5:36 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 17:36
To: anyone TRULY interested in how the universe could be wider than would seem possible considering it's age, there ARE explanations available (note that this article is from 2004, an eternity ago in the field of cosmology):
Universe Measured: We're 156 Billion Light-years Wide!
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 06:30 am ET
24 May 2004
If you've ever wondered how big the universe is, you're not alone. Astronomers have long pondered this, too, and they've had a hard time figuring it out. Now an estimate has been made, and its a whopper.
The universe is at least 156 billion light-years wide.
In the new study, researchers examined primordial radiation imprinted on the cosmos. Among their conclusions is that it is less likely that there is some crazy cosmic "hall of mirrors" that would cause one object to be visible in two locations. And they've ruled out the idea that we could peer deep into space and time and see our own planet in its youth.
First, let's see why the size is a number you've never heard of before.
Stretching reality
The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Light reaching us from the earliest known galaxies has been travelling, therefore, for more than 13 billion years. So one might assume that the radius of the universe is 13.7 billion light-years and that the whole shebang is double that, or 27.4 billion light-years wide.
But the universe has been expanding ever since the beginning of time, when theorists believe it all sprang forth from an infinitely dense point in a Big Bang.
"All the distance covered by the light in the early universe gets increased by the expansion of the universe," explains Neil Cornish, an astrophysicist at Montana State University. "Think of it like compound interest."
Need a visual? Imagine the universe just a million years after it was born, Cornish suggests. A batch of light travels for a year, covering one light-year. "At that time, the universe was about 1,000 times smaller than it is today," he said. "Thus, that one light-year has now stretched to become 1,000 light-years."
All the pieces add up to 78 billion-light-years. The light has not traveled that far, but "the starting point of a photon reaching us today after travelling for 13.7 billion years is now 78 billion light-years away," Cornish said. That would be the radius of the universe, and twice that -- 156 billion light-years -- is the diameter. That's based on a view going 90 percent of the way back in time, so it might be slightly larger.
"It can be thought of as a spherical diameter is the usual sense," Cornish added comfortingly.
(You might have heard the universe is almost surely flat, not spherical. The flatness refers to its geometry being "normal," like what is taught in school; two parallel lines can never cross.)
Hall of mirrors
The scientists studied the cosmic microwave background (CMB), radiation unleashed about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe had first expanded enough to cool and allow atoms to form. Temperature differences in the CMB left an imprint on the sky that was used last year to reveal the age of the universe and confirm other important cosmological measurements.
The CMB is like a baby picture of the cosmos, before any stars were born.
The focus of the new work, which was published last week in the journal Physical Review Letters, was a search of CMB data for paired circles that would have indicated the universe is like a hall of mirrors, in which multiple images of the same object could show up in different locations in space-time. A hall of mirrors could mean the universe is finite but tricks us into thinking it is infinite.
Think of it as a video game in which an object disappearing on the right side of the screen reappears on the left.
"Several years ago we showed that any finite universe in which light had time to 'wrap around' since the Big Bang would have the same pattern of cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations around pairs of circles," Cornish explained. They looked for the most likely patterns that would be evident in a CMB map generated by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).
They didn't find those patterns.
Don't look back
"Our results don't rule out a hall-of-mirrors effect, but they make the possibility far less likely," Cornish told SPACE.com, adding that the findings have shown "no sign that the universe is finite, but that doesn't prove that it is infinite."
The results do render impossible a "soccer ball" shape for the universe, proposed late last year by another team. "However, if they were to 'pump up' their soccer ball to make it larger, they could evade our bounds" and still be in the realm of possibility, Cornish said. Other complex shapes haven't been ruled out.
The findings eliminate any chance of seeing our ancient selves, however, unless we can master time travel.
"If the universe was finite, and had a size of about 4 billion to 5 billion light-years, then light would be able to wrap around the universe, and with a big enough telescope we could view the Earth just after it solidified and when the first life formed," Cornish said. "Unfortunately, our results rule out this tantalizing possibility."
More here: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html
______________________________________________________________
BTW - someone once wrote, "I have a minor in Psychology...this particular science is a joke." They wrote that sentiment a mere 40 MINUTES after they had written this, "...in which arena's has Bible arguments gotten better in the last decade? Pick one: Biology, Archaeology, Astronomy, PSYCHOLOGY, Anthropology, Nanotechnology."
What is one to make of that?
Does it matter, considering that the person who wrote it considers Biology, Archaeology, Astronomy, Psychology, Anthropology and Nanotechnology to all be "pseudo-sciences?"
Happy New Year to all!
December 29, 2007 4:48 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 16:48
Mark,
Good point, NASA's estimate is clearly false, because we know the Universe is infinitely wide. Their guestimate was based on the latest lens/filter combination they have on Hubble. To make a guestimate on width based on the capabilities of the measuring instrument is foolishness, I think you'll agree.
As for my disorder, it's called caring for the perishing. It's called selflessness and obedience to something greater. I boast not, except in Christ.
If you're interested in the name of your disorder, it's called, "Suppressing the truth in unrighteousness" and it's generally caused by a love of sin and death.
December 29, 2007 4:28 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 16:28
Dear Canyon -
I know that I promised that my last post would be my last to you, but I need to break that promise. Please forgive me my...er...Yahweh-like behavior.
To whit:
You wrote:
"Your religion of pseudoscience worship is dying. Scientists are fleeing from the religion of evolution and naturalism because of said arguments I posted above.
One of the most recent is that NASA has guestimated the width of the universe at 78 Billion Light-years. Your pseudoscientists, no matter how hard they try, cannot figure out how they have made up the age of the Universe at 16 Billion years and yet there are entire Galaxies much further than 39 Billion Light-years away."
You just said that pseudo-science was dying...and then in the next paragraph proceeded to cite an example of NASA's "psuedo-science guesstimate" to make your point. Or is NASA the one place bereft of pseudo-scientists?
Hmmm?
OK. You're the one with the minor in Psychology, so you tell me: is your writing an example of Bi-Polar thinking, schizophrenia, or something else? ;)
Ta-ta!
December 29, 2007 4:09 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 16:09
To everyone, except Mr. Mark,
Please notice that a person who claims to have no animosity towards the Living God uses His name in a flippant manner.
Blasphemy, for some odd reason, has been overlooked for a great while as being an excellent proof for the truth of Christianity.
The world around, you can find people who find weird and imaginative ways to curse God. My friend Taketo is Japanese and speaks very little English. He was speaking to a friend in fluent Japanese and I was simply listening with interest, when I heard a derivative of, "Christ" in the middle of his conversation. Taketo, a Buddhist, chose to blaspheme the God of the Universe instead of the god of his culture.
If you ask a secular person for an example of Blasphemy, you'll usually hear "G*d-Damnit", and this is certainly one of the worst. But it is not the only. "Jesus Christ" used without reverence is another example, but so are the ones most people don't think of. See Mark's post, "Geez" is blasphemy, without any effort whatsoever you can see that it's etymology derives from "Jeezus". Other examples are simply the acronym OMG or the phrase, "Oh my Word" (John 1:1), and especially "Oh my Gosh". If Gosh is not a derivative of God, then I ask you what Heck is a derivative of?
"Man" can be blasphemous of "Son of Man" and similarly "Man Alive" is blaspheming the same name of God. "Word up" was popular a few years ago, and you should now see the blasphemous reason it caught on.
Perhaps the worst one is "Son of a B..." and other “Son of a” phrases. These are certainly not accidents in language, but cursing both Mary and the God of the Universe. You are also implying a less than ideal name for Jesus Christ through lineage.
I'm certain I haven't given you even a taste of the curse words that have been invented to curse the Living God, but you see the point.
But why does it matter? The Bible says that God's name is the only name blessed forever. When you curse it, you are declaring your hatred for God by trying to drag His name into the mud. Notice that no-one ever yells out, "Sidartha Buddha" when they hit their thumb with a hammer, or says, "Allah damnit." The reason is because these names are already cursed. But not the names of God, of these Jesus Christ is the name above every name.
Even in the hundreds if not thousands of times you blasphemed God's name, He still died in your place. If you'll repent of all your wicked ways, especially your habit of substituting His precious name in place of your filth words, and place your trust in Him, He will save and forgive you despite your hatred and will replace your heart with a heart that thirsts for righteousness.
December 29, 2007 4:00 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 16:00
Mr. Mark,
I have a minor in Psychology...this particular science is a joke, I soon realized after studying the world and human nature. Only in the last few years (after I was out of this particular college) has Psychology started to realize they were entirely wrong for more than a century...just as the evolutionary scientists.
In a closing comment, please take your blind-fold off. There is a great fall coming and I've done my best to steer you away. Please know that your hatred for God is reciprocal and He will pursue you into darkness.
December 29, 2007 3:41 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 15:41
Dear Canyon -
What, no reciprocal wishes for the New Year? And after I fought every urge to write "2008 CE" in my post to you.
If, as you aver, you have a scientific mind, then may I gently suggest that you avail yourself of the psychiatric sciences, and in a first-person setting. There you will find answers to many of your fears and time-tested cures for that which so clearly ails you.
You may even get the chance to browse the books in the doctor's office, perhaps discovering a few of those adjectives those of a scientific mind use to describe "smart" people like yourself.
I now once again take my leave of you, sir. Not in a day - and certainly not in a thousand-year day - but in the 2 or 3 hours since my last missive to you. I bid you adieu and wish you the all the best! Perhaps I could afford to engage you a bit longer, but I don't. I extend that courtesy to others. Free will, you know.
You'll have to content yourself with the fact that you've heard more directly from me in the past few hours than you've heard directly from your god in the...well, geez, in, forever.
Take care. ;)
December 29, 2007 3:35 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 15:35
Wow! Mr. Mark responded to me! I'd long since thought this little cockroach hid under the sink when the light of truth entered a thread. I guess he's getting bold in his exploits.
Mark, in which arena's has Bible arguments gotten better in the last decade? Pick one: Biology, Archaeology, Astronomy, Psychology, Anthropology, Nanotechnology. The greatest thing about the attacks by Dinky Dawkin's and his minions is that it has caused a whole slew of Biblical scientists to actually do the work to find the truth.
Your arguments were all used up by the third century, and I'm not going to pick them apart one by one because you know they are all paper thin. You'll believe anything if it's not the Bible.
Your religion of pseudoscience worship is dying. Scientists are fleeing from the religion of evolution and naturalism because of said arguments I posted above.
One of the most recent is that NASA has guestimated the width of the universe at 78 Billion Light-years. Your pseudoscientists, no matter how hard they try, cannot figure out how they have made up the age of the Universe at 16 Billion years and yet there are entire Galaxies much further than 39 Billion Light-years away.
In one thing, Mr. Mark, I admire your blind-faith. I suspect life must be easier to accept everything you hear (as long as it's not the Bible) but I cannot be so naive, I have a scientific mind and I have to know how things work. Your arguments don't. Not even a little.
You'd have done better to hide under the sink.
December 29, 2007 3:01 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 15:01
Prudence and the melody.
Arbours coloured
by a soft September
breeze delay in
the sunshine of a
beautiful morning,
and a loving
profile presents,
in a moment, the
taste of a dream.
Francesco Sinibaldi
December 29, 2007 2:40 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 14:40
Nothing seems more absurd than a Catholic theologian advocating democracy.
The "Newadvent" blog entry concludes: "Christians are being persecuted by being forced to accept the immoralities imposed upon them by an irrational and agnostic (US Supreme) Court." While most Americans are at times infuriated by the Court's actions, they are not ready to turn it into a "rational and theolistic" institution, not only because the combination is illogical, but also because no one really wants another religion to dictate, a possibility that the founding fathers clearly foresaw.
The Natural Moral Law that the "Newadvent" cites seems to be best resolved by the system our Constitution framed; a system that leaves everyone to debate the realizations of human life and society as oppose to leaving the answers to a particular religious aristocracy (like some cloistered group in Rome).
When US Christians scream, US politicians quake and placate. Not surprising that the House would pass such a feel-good, toothless declaration. Not surprising that Romney can pledge to be the president of the "faithful" and not one politician dare question how undemocratic he sounds.
Facts: (1) Christians are the majority religion in this country. (2) Christians do not own thoughts. Conclusions: (1)no one owns the holidays. (2) the majority will keep feeling and pleading persecution.
December 29, 2007 2:20 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 14:20
Mr. Mark -
You really have an impressive knowledge of all things biblical as seen from your last few posts! You're either a fallen bible scholar or have an eidetic memory. I know you're a musician, but I would not have pegged you as the guy that could set Canyon straight! I do applaud folks that have that kind of depth anyway.
Congrats on good writing in general and all the best in the New Year.....
December 29, 2007 2:05 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 14:05
Ouch!!! Ma just slapped my hand - but look ma, no pictures, just like you said!
Canyon - how could anyone ignore you?? When you won't go away.........
December 29, 2007 1:42 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 13:42
CANYON SHEARER sez:
"Mr. Mark is the puppet of the God haters."
How does one hate that which doesn't exist?
"He has never brought any new arguments and all of his worthless arguments have been answered a billion times over by even the least of apologetics."
And the NEW arguments in defense of the Bible would be...?
BTW - do you know how much a billion is?
"He won't speak with me because I'm too smart for him."
I wouldn't use the word "smart." I'll let others fill in the blank, using only CS's posts in this thread as the determining factor as to which adjective(s) best describes our friend CS.
BTW - On Faith is a cyber-picnic. You can't have a picnic without attracting a few flies. I don't obsess about the flies, and I don't bother swatting at every one of them. One shouldn't assume that the ones I choose not to swat at are necessarily the smart ones. I may choose to not swat at some flies because in doing so, my hand would end up wrist-deep in the dung pile on which they're sitting.
"Read his post again with this hermaneutic, "Mr. Mark will believe anything if it's not the Bible." "
A rather strange comment in response to a post made by me that consists almost entirely of Biblical quotes and citations, with nary a citation from outside the Bible in attendance.
An obviously false comment, as well. I don't believe anything gw bush says, and his sayings are, "not from the Bible." Yet it's clear that some people WILL believe anything, as long as it's in the Bible.
Happy New Year to all, even CS...even if my wishing CS a happy 2008 sends me straight to hell. ;)
December 29, 2007 1:32 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 13:32
Mr. Mark is the puppet of the God haters. He has never brought any new arguments and all of his worthless arguments have been answered a billion times over by even the least of apologetics. He won't speak with me because I'm too smart for him. Read his post again with this hermaneutic, "Mr. Mark will believe anything if it's not the Bible."
Anonymous,
Once again you prove you're incapable of paying attention. No-one will go to Hell for not believing in Jesus Christ. Just as a person who kidnaps, brutally rapes, and murders a 12-year old won't go to prison for not believing in the judge.
You'll go to Hell for harboring hatred (murder of the heart), for viewing pornography and masturbation (rape in the mind), for purposefully destroying God's creation with sin, and for this war you've waged to keep those that would be saved from salvation. No, you won't go to Hell for anything to do with Jesus Christ, your condemnation is already assured.
Please pay attention to that.
Jeff P.
I'd love to answer your question, but I'm afraid I don't fully understand it. If I understand it to mean, "This whimsical megalomaniacal god will continue to be whimsical in Heaven" then you've created a god which doesn't exist so that you can pretend the God of the Universe is not perfectly just, righteousness, and loving. If that's what you meant, maybe my response to anonymous will answer your question.
December 29, 2007 12:56 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 12:56
It's always good for a few laughs when the fire and brimstone crowd drag out the image of their all-powerful and all-knowing god. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Bible knows that, 1) Yahweh's threats are often all bark and no bite, 2) Yahweh is a LIAR who makes empty promises that he never keeps, and, 3) Yahweh is hardly all-powerful and all-knowing.
You can start right off in Genesis, where Yahweh warns Adam that if he eats the fruit from the tree of life, "on that DAY, you will die." Adam goes on to live for another 930 years. I guess it's a matter of what the definition of "that" is...or what the definition of "day" is (more on that later).
The strange thing is, once Adam eats the apple (or apricot or kumquat), it makes him invisible to this all-seeing god (Gen, 3:8 "And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. 3:9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?")
Where art thou? Today we'd say, "Ally ally in free."
Later in Genesis, god promises Abraham and his descendants all the land of Canaan, but the Bible (and history) says that never happened. He promised Isaac that he would make his descendants "as numerous as the stars in heaven" (ie: billions), but the Jews have been and will remain a minority.
Yahweh promises Joshua that he will drive out seven nations they encounter, yet the Book of Joshua reports that didn't happen either. In fact, Yahweh's power was ineffective against the Canaanites because they had - get this - chariots of iron. Imagine, an all-powerful god who couldn't defeat chariots of iron. One wonders what Yahweh would do if faced with a fleet of Hummers - and the not up-armored ones at that.
In Jeremiah (34:4) God tells Zedekiah that he will die in peace and be buried with his fathers. But in 25:7 and Jer.52:10-11 say that he died a violent death in a foreign land. Zedekiah watched as his sons were executed before his eyes. His eyes were then gouged out and he was led away in chains to captivity in Babylon. Now, there's some "peace of god which passes all understanding." Food for thought for those who believe god's promise of a blissful eternity in heaven.
Seems that god is a "do what I say, not what I do" kinda guy. In Deuteronomy 13, Yahweh says that you can tell a true prophet because they're NEVER wrong. If their prophecies don't come true 100% of the time, they're false prophets...and they are to be put to death.
Apparently, exceptions are made for the Trinity, no more so than for Jesus who prophesied in Matthew that the High Priest would see his "second coming." He didn't. The Book of James says Jesus' second coming "is nigh." Still hasn't happened.
When Jesus didn't return during his generation (as he had promised) it became a source of doubt for early Xians. Our ever-inventive Bible authors had a solution though, and in 2Peter 3, we are told that Jesus didn't mean "today" today. No, to Jesus, "today" can mean a thousand years (2Peter 3:3 "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 3:4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.")!
Since "scoffers" were asking this question at the time of 2Peter's writing, we can safely assume that the "last days" have been going on for over 2,000 years. And - using 2Peter's own math of a day being a thousand years - I'd say that we're only two days into the "last days." Even if we keep the "last days" to a mere week, we've got at least 5,000 years to go before Jesus returns. OR, perhaps Jesus himself was - by the Bible's own definition - a false prophet.
Considering the track record of his dad, I'd say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Of course, one can read the works of Biblical scholars who can excuse/explain all these things, tie it all up with a neat little "consistency bow" and offer those predisposed to believe the Bible an explanation that doesn't challenge their world view. Believe me, I've read a few of them. But those apologies are not written from the perspective of WHETHER the Bible is true and consistent. They are written with an agenda to show HOW the Bible is true and consistent.
Which leaves us with the age-old question, "who ya gonna believe? Me (the Bible apologists) or your own lying eyes?"
:)
December 29, 2007 12:19 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 12:19
Canyon Shearer: I forgot one last comment, which I'd love to hear your opinion.
If the Christian God is capable of the kind of torment he envisions for non-believers, or for those who follow other gods, what would make a Christian think that he'd be any different in personality once you're "eternally worshipping him" in heaven?
December 29, 2007 9:58 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 09:58
Canyon Shearer (by the way that's a cool name)
Yep I agree, lots of damnation in the New Testament, the so called "Good News."
I think the best quote describing the situation is from Mark Twain, who said something to the effect of "in the Old Testament God brought death to humans, but in the New Testament, after God got "religion," he brought hell."
Yes myself and all of my suffering subsequent generations (for my error) will suffer unendingly in hell. But, as I consider it, likely it won't be the Christian God's hell, because too many other gods want to put me in their hells first! I expect your god will just have to wait his turn to torment me.
December 29, 2007 9:51 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 09:51
Athena - so you think Canyon is actually a Catholic? They were never that bad back in the day. On the other hand, now I'm thinking
Opus Dei - could we actually have one with us on this thread?? Scourges, hair shirts, and the whole shebang.... now that would be pretty cool.
regards!
December 29, 2007 9:21 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 09:21
Canyon - just so. It is clearly a wrathful God that you relate to and that is always in evidence in your postings. Saul of Tarsus was probably as crippled psycologically as you are, and yet is the 'nominal' founding father of Christianity.
Do you feel that you need to be punished by a stern & righteous Father Canyon?? Hopefully you were not abused as a child, although I'll bet discipline was a major part of your upbringing, along with a serious dose of pentacostal religion.
Imagine your worshipping a divinely hateful creator that is ready to 'crush' the offending non-believer in the palm of his hand momentarily.
That says all that needs to be said about your religion, don't you think?
December 29, 2007 9:14 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 29, 2007 09:14
I think that the whole comparison of the world as sewage was brought about by the medieval Catholic Church, who viewed reverence for the Earth, Goddess worship, and women in general as filth.
December 28, 2007 10:18 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 28, 2007 22:18
Dear Anonymous,
As always, the unbelievers and "used-ta-be's" prove they are incapable of paying attention. In my post, please provide a reference where I preached hellfire and brimstone. Actually, it will do you better to read my post and actually pay attention this time.
I usually don't provide the references for the Bible verses I use in my posts, I feel the references detract from the flow of the e-sermon, and I'm pretty sure George Whitefield and Paul of Tarsus didn't take time out of their open-air sermons to give the majority of references in their preaching. But, since you asked, it will do you well to read 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, especially the b-verse of 20 to the end.
Whatever brand of christianity you escaped from did you a great disservice in only preaching the love-gospel, a gospel spoken of in Galatians 1:6. But do not think your blood will be on their hands, but on yours alone for failing to seek out the truth.
Please know that God hates you more than you can possibly imagine, and holds you in His hand ready to crush you at any moment. Read the b-verse of 20 and do what it says.
December 28, 2007 9:51 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 28, 2007 21:51
Love this life and do unto others as you would want them to do to you.
To those who exclude others, judgement day isn't in the future, it's now, and you have chosen hell.
December 28, 2007 8:38 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 28, 2007 20:38
StephenC - thanks and of course you're most welcome to your beliefs. However, you would have to be familiar with Canyon Shearer's relentless 'hellfire and brimstone' diatribes to realize why I wrote my little spoof - in fact, go back and re-read the post near the top of this thread if you haven't done so.
As to Christianity, I've been there and done that - many years ago. As to why many people on these threads question the validity of the Christian 'faith-based' position, there is much material and many points of view to peruse at your discretion so I won't be recapping here.
all the best -
December 28, 2007 8:18 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 28, 2007 20:18
Anon (Dec 28; 501pm):
Thanks for writing.
Can I suggest that this whole subject is greater than a laundry list of doctrines or 'truths'? Behind (a lot of) it stands a God who came down to earth (we just celebrated Incarnation Day) to save us. Jesus lived among us, was one of us, and died on the Cross for our sins. Once we repent (of our sin) and believe (and trust and obey Him) we begin a relationship with Him that is much more profound than intellectual assent to 'truths' (or argument against them). I encourage you to give that relationship a serious thought (and a go). Much grace,
StephenC
December 28, 2007 7:52 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 28, 2007 19:52
"Give me someone who believes and acts ethically because it is the right thing to do - not because they believe it will get them to heaven."
GJKBear,
As would I my friend. That is why I would vote for a Christian. Note that I did not say I would vote for someone who thinks that their "good" will be rewarded by a ticket to Heaven. Christians know they cannot work their way to Heaven, ever. Anyone who believes that is not paying attention and I would call on them to question what who they believe in:
Ephesians 2:8
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God"
Listen you really need to take this test, at http://theGoodpersonTest.com, before you reply, in order for you to understand what Christianity actually says.
There are many hypocrites parading as but are not actually Christians. And, yes, not ALL the founders were Christians (I never said they were). But the principles they founded this nation on WERE INDEED taken from the Bible as they clearly said. And it was the Christians who advocated for them and won. No deist, muslim, buddhist or any other pagan religion has their foundations right. ONLY JESUS SAVES
It was George Washington who said you cannot rule without the Bible as your foundation. And you cannot run a nation right without the leaders in submission to the Christian God. History has proven this out and will continue to do so.
[Don't use hypocrites as examples because no hypocrite will enter Heaven.]
Thank you for the reply!
America is wonderful in that anyone is free to be dead wrong in who/what they trust in but our leaders must have their heads on straight or they will lead us astray. In this we agree wholeheartedly. HOW they are "ethical" remains what we disagree on. Only in Jesus can anyone BE "ethical". All else have impure motives as they are slaves to their lusts, as the Bible says.
A Christian is "free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness." [Romans 6:18] but those who are not Christians are "slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness" [Romans 6:20].
See the point? Christians MUST advocate for righteousness in our leadership. Anything else begs the question on why Christians should vote at all otherwise.
December 28, 2007 7:24 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 28, 2007 19:24
Canyon Shearer el al.
You really are a total nut job. You and JJ could easily cook up your own religion shindig thing and dole it out to the religion-starved masses.
Now let's see the ingredients (the Divine Trinity as we cooks down South call it):
Birth, Hellfire, sin & damnation, salvation, the Apocalypse, and finally, the bedraggled but saved sinner appears before the very God that - What?? found even his own beloved Son disgusting?! Ooops! I don't like that look on His face. That's not the Guy I was looking for after all.
Hellp me!!!
But your goose is way cooked:
Too late pal (big booming voice) because Salvation is a one-way street and you're in Heaven now - you're in My World!!!
The curtain falls...for All Eternity.
Canyon Shearer - you are quite a lady!! My compliments.
December 28, 2007 5:01 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 28, 2007 17:01
JON MATTHEW writes:
"Question for Mr. Mark where does it say in the Book of Luke that Herod the Great was dead years prior to the birth of Christ"
It doesn't. Here's the problem.
Matthew's Gospel says that Jesus was born while King Herod reigned over Judea. Herod died in 4BC and his sons took up as tetrarchs (not kings) of a divided kingdom. Most Biblical scholars assert that Matthew's account is correct and that Jesus was born in probably 6BC.
Luke's Gospel provides a contradiction. Luke states that:
"And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)" Luke 2:1. Luke asserts that Jesus was born during this time, and that Mary & Joseph made the trip to Bethlehem from Nazareth in direct response to this census being taken.
The contradiction arises because Quirinius (Cyrenius) became Legate and governor of Syria in or AFTER 6CE, ie: 10 years after the death of Herod the Great.
It's an important distinction as Rome assumed direct power in Judea when Herod Archelaus (one of King Herod's 3 sons) was banished from Judea in 6CE. Judea now went from being a Roman vassal empire administrated by local Jewish governors and kings reporting to Rome to being under direct, on-site Roman administration. One of Quirinius' first duties in Judea was to order a census for tax purposes. The Jews greatly resented this assessment and it eventually led to revolt.
Put simply, there's a 10-12 year difference in the birth year of Jesus as reported in Matthew and Luke.
Most Biblical scholars assert Luke simply got it wrong, and for good reason. For instance, the so-called "slaughter of the innocents" by Herod (for which their is absolutely no proof outside of the Bible) could hardly have happened if Jesus was born after the death of Herod, could it? Remove the Herod dating of the birth, and more than a few things about the birth get thrown out as well, including the Flight to Egypt.
RNH tried (unsuccessfully) to justify BOTH versions of the story by asserting (incorrectly) that Herod's sons were also kings (they weren't). His position was that, yes, Herod the Great was dead when Quirinius took his census, but Luke could be correct if the Herod Matthew mentioned was actually one of Herod the Great's three sons (a stretch of the imagination that Matthew himself obliterates in Matt 14:1).
But the most-glaring problem with RNH's scenario is that there was NO Herod acting as King or Tetrarch of Judea at the time of Quirinius' census as Rome had banished Herod Archelaus as tetrarch of Judea and had taken direct control themselves. How could Matthew have referred to the ruler of Judea as "King Herod" in his account IF his account reports a birth in 6CE when Quirinius was governor of Syria, Judea was being run by Roman governors and Herod Archelaus was sitting powerless and in banishment in Vienne (which is located in present-day France)?
Even if one were to stipulate that Herod the Great's sons could somehow be considered to have been RNH's "kings," they were out of power by the time Quirinus was made governor of Syria.
Hope that answers your question.
December 28, 2007 4:36 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 28, 2007 16:36
Mr. Burwell, This nation is not free because it was founded on Christian principles. It was founded on secular principles because not everyone was a Christian. Even the founding fathers were not mainstream Christian...some of them were diests and they believed that Jesus was a great teacher but did not necessarily believe that he was God made flesh. They rejected the idea of a Trinity... This nation is supposed to be free for those who are believers and non-believers alike for all of it's citizens be they Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Pagan, Atheist, Agnostic or any other religion. As for voting for Christians because they have the right foundations? Would you vote for Baker? Robertson? Falwell? Roberts? Those who place themselves on pedastales have a far way to fall. Give me someone who believes and acts ethically because it is the right thing to do - not because they believe it will get them to heaven.... I can vote for a Christian - but I will vote for him/her because they have the right platform and actually live their values - not because they wear Christianity on their sleeve.
December 28, 2007 4:25 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 28, 2007 16:25