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I take it your ending the discussion. Thank you for the dialog.

"Do you not think you are posing a double standard here PriveR? You criticize me for not being able to think for myself without referring to other author's and then you make statements like this, showing that maybe you have bought into someone else’s thinking without using your own. The problem with any belief is that you build on certain foundations without realizing it. You say "My proofs come directly from my own experiences" but in reality it comes from the people that have most greatly influenced you. You don't learn things in a vacuum."

No. Actually, the best part about learning from those that i have is that they told me NOT to just blindly accept what they tell me, but to question it, test it for myself and see what results I get. That's the learning process right there. I'm a skeptic by nature, so that is exactly what I did. After having done so, the results confirmed what they taught. Similar to scientific experiment but based directly on my own experimentation. My own experience and my own questions. Besides, every one of my teachers brings something different to the table, and as it turned out, they all have truth to their teachings. Complementary truth that when added to one another, adds up to a bigger and more mysterious divine than that is laid out in any book.I just think that people get so caught up in 'my book is better/more real than your book' when truth can be found in many different places. It doesn't have to be opposite. It can be complementary.

Nothing is ever as black and white as you make it out to be.

"That is the point; nobody seems to be saying the same thing. You choose what you want to believe and so do they. "

Yes and no. The underlying concepts are actually very similar. The laws of the universe will always be. The language and pantheon(s) that is used to describe/name it is different.

"First, my God does not sleep." You have no way of knowing that. Based on your own (three) books, and your belief that it is somehow 'inerrant' the last time your god showed up at all was two thousand years ago. I don't see him anywhere. I don't see Jesus hanging around somewhere these days. It'd be cool to meet him if he did exist, because I think folks need to get back to the 'love your neighbor thing' and quit arguing over semantics.

Why would your god go away when he just told his own 'children' not to eat that fruit and then told them where it was? Where was he during that time? Either he was asleep or went somewhere else during that time, when it would have been really advantageous to say 'hey, i just told you not to do that'. It seems like your god has a way of leaving when things get really bad. Or going to sleep. Or taking sides just because someone doesn't praise him enough. Again, not a god worthy of worship.

"Second, man inflicts death on other men because of sin."

Only if you believe that sin/heaven/hell/your god/satan exists. Which takes a staggering amount of imagination to believe in the whole thing. That is what followers have been telling people for centuries to get people to convert to Christianity. The power of our own imagination is really something, because people have been fighting about which version is 'correct' for centuries. I just think we need to reframe the discussion. To outline the similarities in all and not to promote one as 'the one way' when the same objective can be achieved no matter how they go about it. If we're going to survive as a species, we all have to get involved and stop arguing over which one is somehow 'more true' than others.

"So, PriveR, you can offer your own sacrifices to your god, or you can ignore offering any sacrifice but pay for your sins with one final sacrifice when you die (the penalty of everlasting torment away from His Spirit).."

My god/desses don't require sacrifices. Since I don't believe your 'hell' exists at all, I am not in need of your god's 'spirit' and therefore being 'away' from it for 'eternity' is not an issue. I have an active relationship with the earth that we live on and work to link with the divine breath I find in everyone and everything and honor that.

'Two roads diverged in a frozen wood, and I- I chose the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference.'

Frost was right. It's about the journey, not the destination.

My journey is taking me elsewhere at the moment. Events I can't control but have to address are calling my attention elsewhere. I thank you for your time.

Namaste and bright blessings on your road. May you find what you seek. :)

Hi PriveR,

In response to,

"Assuming, of course that one somehow thinks their version of 'truth' is more 'true' than another's.
They are both man made. The same. No difference. Just like people. You claim to have some version of 'truth' that you yourself cannot even explain without resorting to one of three different books, and different people's opinions.

First off, truth does not change. Either what you believe is true or it is false. It cannot be both. When you get two worldviews that are stating two opposite truth claims, logically one (and quite possibly both) is in error.

Second, truth is not man made, it comes from God. Without His revelation we would not be able to determine truth. It would just be your subjective opinion against mine. Nothing would make sense.

Third, the three different translations I use all say the same thing, just in different language. Take John 14:6 in the NIV, the NASB and the NLT.

"Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" (NIV)

"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by Me. (NASB)

"Jesus told him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Me." (NLT)

You said,

"Ideally it would be nice to see some of the other prominent pagan authors, just like there are many different Christian authors, answering questions as part of the panel, so that other folks could see the real diversity of thought under the pagan umbrella. We are everywhere."

That is the point; nobody seems to be saying the same thing. You choose what you want to believe and so do they. There are certain truths in Christianity that you cannot deny and still be a Christian. (2 Peter 2:1; Jude 4; 1 John 2:22, 23; 4:4-6; 5:10, etc)

You said,

"As have my own teacher(s)"

Do you not think you are posing a double standard here PriveR? You criticize me for not being able to think for myself without referring to other author's and then you make statements like this, showing that maybe you have bought into someone else’s thinking without using your own. The problem with any belief is that you build on certain foundations without realizing it. You say "My proofs come directly from my own experiences" but in reality it comes from the people that have most greatly influenced you. You don't learn things in a vacuum.

When you say,

"Your god sets up an impossible standard and then expects his followers to flagellate themselves when they don't measure up. How is that 'good'?"

Your right about the impossible standard, because of the original sin of Adam and Eve meeting God's standard of good is impossible, since, just like Him, it is perfect. That is why He sent His Son into the world to save us from our sin, that we might be able to meet that standard by faith in the Son. That is the good news. If you try to meet His standard on your own merit you will fail miserably because you have already broken it during your lifetime countless times.

For God's followers, flagellating themselves will not meet that standard either. Meeting that standard only comes through faith in Christ. That is the criteria. It is not about our "works" of righteousness (we don't have any), it's about His. His followers have nothing to boast of in themselves, only of what has been accomplished in and by Him.

You said,

"He must still be asleep at the wheel. People are dying everyday because of someone's belief that their 'version' of him is somehow more 'true/real' than another person,
and all you can say is 'my book is true and you
made your system up' when one was written by people 300 years after the events supposedly happened and the other comes from experience.

First, my God does not sleep.

Second, man inflicts death on other men because of sin.

Third, in your "system" of belief you have no way of accounting for morals or logic or truth or uniformity in nature or purpose or meaning. It is all a matter of subjective preference that does not have a measurement for morals or truth or logic or uniformity in nature. Each person does what is “right” in his own eyes (Judges 17:6; 21:25).

You asked how I make sense out of God preserving the bloodline that the Messiah would be born into. Because of man's evil actions if God had not stepped into the picture there would not have been a bloodline for the Savior because there would not have been anyone on earth who believed in God. Once man found his supposed autonomy the influence exerted on believers would have eventually dissolved faith in God (Jeremiah 17:9). That is why; in the time of Noah God destroyed the whole earth except for those eight people who still had faith in Him. He also preserved for himself a people who would make his name known among the nations and when those people started to lose faith in Him, He took His hand of protection off of them and let the nations subdue them, leading them into captivity in Babylon. In this way God let them know that if they were obedient to Him He would bless them, but if they were faithless, He would allow their enemies to control them. Added incentive, you might say. His purpose was one day to have the Savior to be born out of this people He had chosen so that He would provide the righteous requirements He requires to meet His right standards.

When you say,

"What on earth does this mean? I thought Christians didn't believe that Jesus HAD a bloodline? "

Jesus traced His HUMAN lineage through Joseph and Mary. Since He was born a human to pay the penalty that man had incurred His human chronology can be traced back in time to the first inhabitance, Adam and Eve. Mary was His biological mother and Joseph His stepfather (the Holy Spirit conceiving His human existence in her womb).

You said,

"This suspiciously sounds a lot like the 'we must fight them over there so that they don't come over here' justification used for a needless war."

As I said before, a Christian’s fight is not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers (Ephesians 6:12).

You said,

"And why are so called 'unbelievers' not deserving of credit for the good works that they do?"

As I said before, because you cannot meet the righteous requirements of a holy, pure and perfect God and that is why Jesus became man; to meet those requirements.

"For I have come down from heaven not to do My will but the will of Him who sent Me." (John 6:38)

The book of Hebrews puts it another way, in speaking of answering for wrong doing, by example of the Old Testament priest and sacrificial system in requirement of God’s law and about a holy sacrifice for payment of sins,

"Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives forever, He has a permanent priesthood. Therefore He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them. Such a priest meets our need - one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, He does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for His own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when He offered Himself...Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said, 'Sacrifices and offerings you did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me: with burnt offerings and sin offerings You were not pleased. Then I said, Here I am - it is written about Me in the scroll - I have come to do Your will, O God."...And by that will, we have been made holy through the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Day after day every high priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time He waits for His enemies to be made His footstool, because by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." (Hebrews 7:23-27; 10:5-14)

So, PriveR, you can offer your own sacrifices to your god, or you can ignore offering any sacrifice but pay for your sins with one final sacrifice when you die (the penalty of everlasting torment away from His Spirit), or you can, God willing, believe in His Son and have your sacrifice paid for in His death, as well as His righteousness given to you on His behalf. It is only through His Son that God will justify anyone, because only through His Son was the penalty for sin fully met.

"The wages of sin is [still] death." (Romans 6:23)

If you want to earn your own wages, after you die you will earn them in the “lake of fire” for that is the second death spoken of in Romans 6 (See Revelation 20:14-15)

Thanks for the chat!

Oh, one thing I forgot to address.

You said "Since you say we are all part of the divine, are you "god?"

The first thing I thought of was that scene from the original Ghostbusters "Ray. The next time someone asks you if you are a god, YOU SAY YES!!" :)

My answer to that? not in the sense that you're using it. I think that we all have the potential to be a conduit to something outside of ourselves. Sort of like a cable that plugs into a socket and runs a lamp. The cord itself doesn't run the lamp, but it allows the electricity to flow into the lamp to complete the circuit to make the light.

Hi PriveR,

I read your current post. I would like to make a few comments on it but will be working until Monday.

You let me know when you want to end the conversation. As long as you are willing to continue so am I.

Hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

"And there is very little comparison between the Bible and the Rede; the one being God's Word of truth, the other being man's ideas."

Assuming, of course that one somehow thinks their version of 'truth' is more 'true' than another's.
They are both man made. The same. No difference. Just like people. You claim to have some version of 'truth' that you yourself cannot even explain without resorting to one of three different books, and different people's opinions.

I think Starhawk writes with common sense. As do many of the other panelists. The fact that a pagan even HAS a voice on a high profile site such as this one is a HUGE step in the right direction. Ideally it would be nice to see some of the other prominent pagan authors, just like there are many different Christian authors, answering questions as part of the panel, so that other folks could see the real diversity of thought under the pagan umbrella. We are everywhere. I would love for the moderators to have people comment on the fact that Wiccan Military soldiers just recently won a 10 year battle to have the pentacle placed on their tombstones. Unfortunately, there is a long way yet to go. As for Starhawk, I agree with a lot of what she says, although my personal path is different than hers. I think she needs to work on revising her timelines and some of the history. What I really respect most about her is that she is not just talking about possible ways to fix things, she is actually going out and sticking her neck out wherever she feels that she can make a difference. As have my own teacher(s). I will too, once I have the resources to travel more.

You say: "To this day the words spoken in James 4:4 are true.
"You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God."

That is why PriveR, I can make the statement that you hate the God of the Bible."

You apparently do not know how I feel about the bible, even after discussions that should have ended long ago. Don't put someone else's words in my mouth. Again, not my book, not my god, not my problem. Let me say this: if your god exists at all, he is asleep at the wheel and has been for millenia.

Oh, and btw: I worship Nature. The natural laws that exist, both in and out of science, is my god/dess. I wait for the signs to tell me what name to use as a focal point for prayer.

"How do you know that you are not imagining that you have? What are your proofs to support such a statement and how logical are they?"

My proofs come directly from my own experiences. You have no more way of knowing if your book is 'true' or just as 'imagined' as you say that mine are. I have proof enough for me of my system.

"God says, "There is no one righteous, no not one;...there is no one who does good, not even one."

Your god sets up an impossible standard and then expects his followers to flagellate themselves when they don't measure up. How is that 'good'? Your god tells people to 'don't eat that thing over there' and then goes to sleep or on vacation or something. He must still be asleep at the wheel. People are dying everyday because of someone's belief that their 'version' of him is somehow more 'true/real' than another person,
and all you can say is 'my book is true and you
made your system up' when one was written by people 300 years after the events supposedly happened and the other comes from experience.

"Just because something is done in His name... "

This paragraph you wrote makes absolutely no sense. Why is it that your god 'works in mysterious ways' when bad things happen but good things are somehow proof of 'his love'?

"The reason things were done was to restrain greater evil and protect the blood line that would one day provide redemption for His people."

What on earth does this mean? I thought Christians didn't believe that Jesus HAD a bloodline? This suspiciously sounds a lot like the 'we must fight them over there so that they don't come over here' justification used for a needless war. And why are so called 'unbelievers' not deserving of credit for the good works that they do?

Why don't you ask me if I studied my own Jewish heritage? Or what led me out of it? You make so many assumptions and jump to conclusions about things not talked about and don't ask.

I suspect our time together is growing short.

Hi PriveR,

The Bible does tell us “not to judge, or we too will be judged,” as well as to love our neighbor as well as our enemy (Matthew 7:1, 6:43) and much more in the Sermon on the Mount as well as other places, but with any verse of Scripture you have to take it in full context.

Yes, Jesus said those words and many things that require us, as His followers, to make judgment calls, such as further on in the verse,

"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw pearls to pigs...." (Matthew 7:6) Also mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount are for us to beware of false prophets and how to recognize a false prophet. All this requires making a judgment for how can we be aware of false prophets unless we can make a judgment to identify them. And we can recognize them by their fruit. They do not preach the message of God (Galatians 1:8, as one example).

So what did He mean by the statement? The answer is found in the context. It is not about unity at any cost, or surrendering truth to lie. It's about making a judgment on someone else on a matter while all the time you exhibit the very quality you are judging in an even greater manner. As He said,

"Why do you look at the spec of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first remove the plank out of your own eye, and then you will clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." (Matthew 7:3-5)

Notice, He says "first take the plank out of your own eye" so that we can remove the speck from our brother's eye. In other words, don't have a critical spirit like a Pharisee, when you make judgments or be conscious of the small sins of another and be impervious to the gigantic sin in yourself. To carry the analogy further, first recognize that you are sinful, just like those you tell the Good News to, but because of God's mercy in your life you want others to know how their sins may be forgiven as yours have been because of the Savior and how He can restore a person to life, a new life of relationship with God the Father.

Jesus constantly made judgments about the human condition, and preached a message about repentance and forgiveness, but was also highly critical of the Scribes and the Pharisees.

And there is very little comparison between the Bible and the Rede; the one being God's Word of truth, the other being man's ideas.

You said,

"Why do you rely on other people's opinions to tell you what to think? Do you have an opinion on what the bible or anything is without resorting to another person's ideas?"

First, are you assuming that your opinions and perceptions of the world are not influenced by anyone but yourself or that you have no bias in your intellectual assent on matters with others of the same faith? From what I read on the Starhawk blog everybody was gaga over what PaganPlace or Starhawk had to say. They were the experts on what it was all about. Time after time on those two blogs I saw statements on the wisdom of these two people. Can these people not think for themselves? I can make the same statements regarding what you believe in. It is a mute argument.

Second, I consider what other people say in relation to the text of Scripture to gain insight. But Scripture is the light that I judge things by.

Third, I have thought long and hard on certain issues and examined them from a Biblical perspective to have a better understanding on them and looked to others to help me express the biblical position more succinctly to unbelievers. In doing so I have asked you how your worldview can in turn make sense of these issues because of its inconsistency.

Fourth, are you not relying on the Rede to tell you what you think? If not them why do you believe it?

You have still to demonstrate how you can know something to be "good" if you are the reference point for "good" or if the Rede is, then who wrote it? Was it written by man? How do you know it is trustworthy? Is it absolutely true? If not then how do you know it will still be true tomorrow? How do you know it has not been tampered with? You keep telling me that if you are wrong, then you are wrong. Are you sure you are right?

You keep referring your experience as if it was valid, but what is your reference point for measuring "good?" Do you not assert yourself as the reference point of that also? If, as you have suggested, it is your subjective measure on what you believe to be in the best interest of the greatest number, how can you decry a hedonist who believes that "good" is measured by what is in the best interests of his/her own self. After all, in an evolutionary world, is it not to the fittest that the spoils go? The Korowai tribe of Papua, New Guinea at one time, and possibly still do, considered cannibalism acceptable in their survival of the fittest. Since the culture accepted this as normal and "good" who are you to tell them differently? The problem is you cannot judge it wrong without an absolute reference and measure of what "good" is. Again, I ask you, why should I believe the Rede "An it harm none, do as you will" when I see other philosophies such as evolution claiming exactly the opposite. You seem to want to fit evolution into your belief only where you can make it agree with your belief.

You see, without the Christian God you cannot have a discussion on right and wrong because you have no way of resolving differences of opinion. Or to state otherwise, if you cannot answer any of these questions without being subjective then why should I believe anything you have to say? It just boils down to your opinion.

You said,

"Animals only kill for a specific purpose."

Sometimes that purpose is for the sport of killing.

You said,

"Humans don't even need a reason and keep inventing more creative ways to blow each other away."

First, according to the evolutionary outlook, we are just animals. So why do you judge another human animal for stealing or murder when it is only protecting its food supply or its female against another male. Why is it wrong for a male to dominate a female, since she is the weaker in physical strength? Why is it wrong to kill the runt of the human litter to prevent it from breeding a weaker stock or just because you are hungry and have nothing else to eat?

In a relative world of subjective ethics, that you have said yourself change over time, why is it wrong to condemn Hitler for murdering six million Jews? All these questions you cannot make sense out of without the Christian God. Therefore, looking at the world through the eyes of the God of the Bible makes more sense than through your eyes.

PriveR, when you say,

"You need to stop assuming that I don't have a 'god'"

You have already told me that you do not have a god or goddess right now. When are you going to chose one? (1 Kings 18:21) What is god to you? Do you get to pick and choose? Is god to you "Nature" or "Science" since from both you get the theory of evolution, that when looked at from a purely scientific perspective is impersonal and caused all we have today by blind, chaotic, random, accidental chance mutations, and yet when looked at from a "Mother Earth" perspective has some intangible quality of being.

Since you say we are all part of the divine, are you "god?"

When you say,

"We're merely speaking different languages to describe what is in essence something that is bigger and more mysterious than both of us and any book put together."

How do you know this if "it" is bigger and more mysterious than you can know about?

You said,

"Oh, and which of your three bibles are you using to get your quotations from?"

Three translations from the original Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew texts gives me more of an appreciating of the sense of the Scripture taken from the original languages that is the source of inspiration. The books that we call the Bible were known and testified to by the Fathers of the faith long before they became The Canon that we have today. These Father's also refuted false teachings in all their forms as they came along. I have read some of these. They are on line for your information.

You said,

"Please don't equate me with Dahmer."

I am equating your ethics to his in the sense that you have stated that you yourself are the subjective measure of truth. As such, absolute truth and absolute moral values cannot be known, only speculated on. As such, you are the measure of them, just like he was. You have already stated that they change from culture to culture, and I agree with you. We only differ over the reason; because mankind has ignored the objective morals that come from his/her Creator, and through which we can truly know what "good" is.

Your paragraph stating,

"Actually those horrible things I mentioned were done in the name of the god that you revere. Your book was used as justification for such acts. How on earth is that god 'good'? That same version of 'god' has allowed terrible things to be done in his name throughout history"

The paragraph is loaded with accusations that I will attempt to explain here.

Just because something is done in His name does not necessarily mean that the people who did these things were following His lead. People who commit atrocities will one day have to give an account before Him, so in effect; they have not gotten off Scott Free. The reason things were done was to restrain greater evil and protect the blood line that would one day provide redemption for His people. When people of faith started marrying unbelievers if God did not step in there would have been no faith left to accomplish His purposes on this earth.

At the time of Noah God "saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of his heart was only evil all the time." (Genesis 6:5) "But Noah [and his immediate family, who were believer's of God - eight in all] found favor in the eyes of the LORD." (vs. 8). God’s choice, to preserve what is good was to destroy the evil from the earth.

God also chose a people to make Himself known to the nations, starting with Abraham (Gen. 13:16), in which He chose to bless the earth with. He protects and keeps them safe from their enemies, even when they start to worship the creation and form gods made of "sacred cows" or "The Golden Calf" to worship instead of Himself, the one true God. To stop the apostasy from spreading, He wipes out many to preserve the blood line of the believer. If He had not done this mankind would have abandoned Him and been cut off from Him for eternity. To prevent it from happening again, He prepares a "Promise Land" for His people and tells them to destroy the people dwelling in that land so as not to prevent them from poisoning their minds with their idol worship. "Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn you away from following Me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be His people, His treasured possession.

His people do not listen to His voice or obey His commandments so after being merciful to them for awhile, He lets the evil inhabitants in the regions around come in and kill and rape and butcher His people because they continue to ignore Him. But those who love and worship Him He protects, because His purpose from the beginning was to preserve a bloodline for the Messiah so that many people would eventually be saved from His justice by their disobedience. Without doing what He did all of mankind would have suffered His punishment for wrong doing. A Just Judge does not ignore wrongful actions and always does what is good.

We find the same thing happening during Jesus' earthly ministry and after. God continues to call out, separate and preserve His people from unbelief by faith in His One and Only Son. Hence, the references to sheep and goats; the righteous and unrighteous; believers and unbelievers; wheat and tares, etc., made by Jesus.

Without God's plan of redemption and God's ability to carry it out all the peoples of the earth would have succumbed to the devils lies and ways.

To this day the words spoken in James 4:4 are true.
"You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God."

That is why PriveR, I can make the statement that you hate the God of the Bible. You will not submit to His ways, nor can you do so. Instead of asking, or should I say pleading, for His mercy you continue to rebel against Him by denying His very existence. Romans 1:18 says, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like moral man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore, God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts..."

But Romans 10:11-13 also says, "As the Scriptures say, "Anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame." For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile - the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call upon Him, for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

You should learn more about your Jewish heritage by reading the rest of the chapter plus chapter 11. You can also learn of the Jewish Redeemer promised since the third chapter of Genesis onward by reading the Book of Hebrews. Look up A.W. Pink online in his exposition of Hebrews if you want a really good insight into the book.

You said,

"All we can ever do is lead by example and hope that others might learn from it."

How do you determine your example is "good" since there are so many others who think otherwise?

God says, "There is no one righteous, no not one;...there is no one who does good, not even one."

You said,

"How do you know I haven't?"

How do you know that you are not imagining that you have? What are your proofs to support such a statement and how logical are they?

What happens when my definition of "good" is different than your definition of "good" in which it most definitely is?

Actually your book is supposed to say 'judge not lest you be judged' and 'love thy neighbor as thyself', correct? it's actually very similar to the Rede. How are those 'so different' definitions of 'good'? Not bad ideas, those. I just think that those ideas have been around a whole lot longer than the book itself has. Otherwise we really wouldn't have survived to be here at all.

Why do you rely on other people's opinions to tell you what to think? Do you have an opinion on what the bible or anything is without resorting to another person's ideas? You said yourself you need three books to try to understand what is supposed to be one set of words.

What you are not understanding about my system in addition to the Rede is the Threefold Law. The threefold law states that whatever we send out gets sent back to us, times three. If we send out love, we get love back. If we send out hate, anger or meanspiritedness in some form, it will come back to us amplified. We believe this to be a natural law, that works the same way evolution does- outside of ourselves.

Actually nature has a lot to teach us. Animals only kill for a specific purpose. Humans don't even need a reason and keep inventing more creative ways to blow each other away. Animals also have the capacity for self sacrifice and empathy. Something we can all benefit from. If we understood the plants that were around us better, we may have a LOT more medicines available for illnesses that we currently don't have. What is taken away as lessons from nature is up to the individual. There is no reality. It is all perception.

You need to stop assuming that I don't have a 'god'. I am not an atheist, nor am I a secular humanist, but I can see some value in all their positions. I just don't have the god that you insist is the only one. We're merely speaking different languages to describe what is in essence something that is bigger and more mysterious than both of us and any book put together.

Oh, and which of your three bibles are you using to get your quotations from?

Please don't equate me with Dahmer. Do you honestly expect me to respond to that? That is just insulting to the highest degree. I suspect he's talking about those who have no god at all. Again, doesn't apply to me.

"I’m glad you recognized that, because it shows that without God anything goes."

Actually those horrible things I mentioned were done in the name of the god that you revere. Your book was used as justification for such acts. How on earth is that god 'good'? That same version of 'god' has allowed terrible things to be done in his name throughout history. We don't necessarily need your version of god to realize that all humans should have the basic right to life. Neither you or I can control the actions of other people. All we can ever do is lead by example and hope that others might learn from it.

I have more of a problem with those who shout about how "good" a Christian they are, who keep telling me I'm 'going to hell' and try to convert me, rather than those who may be just as much a believer in Jesus but who don't proselytize, who quietly go about making taking care of others a priority in their lives. They are the best representatives about what Christianity could be about.

"How do you determine what the least harm would be? Can you see into the future to know that certain actions are going to be less harmful than others?"

Some folks can. I don't have that ability. So I try to consider as many of the possibilities as I can, and use logic to determine what may happen. If I can live with the consequences I can imagine, I will make a choice. But its about making careful actions, putting love first and restoring balance whenever it's been disrupted. Am I perfect? No. I'm human. I make mistakes. There's no need to beat yourself up over normal mistakes, just to learn to work to correct what harm has been done. When you see divinity everywhere, hurting any of it is no different than hurting yourself or someone you care about.

"Ever seen a thinking rock that appreciates beauty.."

How do you know I haven't?

Plants are concerned about their own survival. There's got to be some level of sentience going on there, or there wouldn't be any plants that have survived.

Hi PriveR,

Thanks for the reply. The list gets longer in what to reply to. Holidays are coming in a couple of weeks if you are still interested in continuing the dialog by then I will, the Lord willing, be able to sit down and catch up on some of the questions, after giving them more thought. Many of my thoughts have been adopted from "Pushing the Antithesis" by Greg Bahnsen if you want to go deeper into the argument supporting a Christian worldview as the only one that can make sense of existence.

To quote from your previous posts, when talking about morality,

"Morals? I think that a good rule of thumb is the Wiccan Rede: An it harm none, do as you will. The 'harm none' part also includes self, too. That is my standard."

What happens when my definition of "good" is different than your definition of "good" in which it most definitely is? Who decides then? Without God it's all a difference of opinion in which you state your preference and I state mine. And may the force be with you, because when differences arise that is what it boils down to; who is the greater force.

I said,

"Do morals come about by the instinct to survive?"

Sure, why not? I'll go with that. I think instinct itself is part of the package for us as part of the animal kingdom. All animals have it, and that it evolved as we did."

You see PriveR, the problem for you, without God, is to explain how there is meaning, how we establish truth, how there is distinction between "good and evil." Without God this universe came about by mere chance, an accident without explanation; and without God, you and I are nothing more than animals (as you have stated), and as such what you determine to be good and what I determine to be good is also meaningless, since your "good" is not the same as mine. As such (animals), according to your evolutionary theory, the strong survive, so why would I consider the "good" of another when nature is my teacher and I watch a male lion devour its offspring or a killer shark kill a seal. If I believe everything came about by chance and I have been taught such since early childhood, I am nothing more than a glorified monkey, then what is to stop me from thinking that to kill another man, if the “animal” threatens to infringe upon my territory, or take from my food chain, is wrong? That is right along the thinking of Jeffrey Dahmer,

‘If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…’
Jeffrey Dahmer, in an interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, Nov. 29, 1994.

The Humanist Manifesto III states,

"Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change."

As I said before, this way of looking at man means we are nothing more that biological bags of matter in motion. How can matter be self aware? Ever seen a thinking rock that appreciates beauty or a gorilla killing another gorilla and being guilty of murder?

The Christian position is the only one that can establish truth and meaning and purpose to life. "Good" needs a measure to be established, and without an absolute, objective, ultimate reference point (God) how is "good" established? There is no consistence to your explanation of "good" whereas for mine there is,

"He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

When you say,

As far as the Rede goes, I never said you should adopt it if you don't agree with it. I just said that is my standard. I do not tell anyone else what they should or shouldn't do. I am fully aware that the only person I control is myself. People are going to believe whatever they want regardless of what you and I say. That's why the second part of the Rede says 'live and let live, and fairly take and fairly give'”

But why live and let live. If all we are are evolutionary monkeys?

“In a situation like you describe, I would never strike first. I would seek to find out if my feeling threatened has any basis. I could be feeling something that could be a result of something else that happened earlier that day. If I find out any information about planning something like you said, I would contact the authorities and have them check it out. That's far different than hurting someone before they hurt me. I try to figure out what the least harm would be and then act accordingly.”

How do you determine what the least harm would be? Can you see into the future to know that certain actions are going to be less harmful than others?

Again, since your morality is subjective, being as your Rede and you have determined, do you not think you are being inconsistent when you critics the Christian for the atrocities you have identified in the Bible (PS. that is something that I will explain in later posts if you choose to continue the dialog)? After all, you are making a moral judgment that you recognize to be wrong based on what foundation? If each culture develops its own moral standards, what right do I have to condemn another culture for killing six million Jews or sati in Hinduism or cannibalism in New Guinea? What right do you have to demand female rights, since in some societies as in nature, the male rules the roost? The answer is only in a society that recognizes that man and woman have been created equal in the eyes of God and every human being is to be regarded as valuable and treated with dignity and respect because he/she is made in God’s image.

Since you say,

"Actually, if you look at history of the world and world cultures, morality HAS INDEED changed throughout time. It used to be considered 'good' to burn someone for 'practicing witchcraft' or 'heresy'…I'm not saying we should dominate, by any means, but that perhaps if other people were willing to take ideas from all religions into account that might have something useful to teach to others, then we can all advance forward. I have proof enough for me of my system."

I’m glad you recognized that, because it shows that without God anything goes.
What right do you have to condemn others, for either you live by the utilitarian concept that "good" is that which produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and burning witches was considered to promote the greatest good, or you take the hedonistic approach in that "good" is what produces the greatest happiness in the individual. So if your philosophy is that of a utilitarian and mine is that of a hedonist then who decides? Was Hitler’s Germany to be condemned for murdering six million Jews? Why does the greatest number determine good? How do they know it is good?

The only reason the Christian can know the law of God is "good" is because “good” is part of God's own character; not because the Christian can establish it by his own subjective thinking. God is good and the example/standard/measure of what goodness is. Your measure for “good” cannot be justified. If you think it can tell me how?

Because there is no 'explosion'. It's a misconception of what the big bang theory actually is.

There are many misconceptions surrounding the Big Bang theory. For example, we tend to imagine a giant explosion. Experts however say that there was no explosion; there was (and continues to be) an expansion. Rather than imagining a balloon popping and releasing its contents, imagine a balloon expanding: an infinitesimally small balloon expanding to the size of our current universe.

Another misconception is that we tend to image the singularity as a little fireball appearing somewhere in space. According to the many experts however, space didn't exist prior to the Big Bang. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the moon, "three astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."3 The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing. So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know. We don't know where it came from, why it's here, or even where it is. All we really know is that we are inside of it and at one time it didn't exist and neither did we.

Big Bang Theory - Evidence for the Theory
What are the major evidences which support the Big Bang theory?

* First of all, we are reasonably certain that the universe had a beginning.
* Second, galaxies appear to be moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance. This is called "Hubble's Law," named after Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) who discovered this phenomenon in 1929. This observation supports the expansion of the universe and suggests that the universe was once compacted.
* Third, if the universe was initially very, very hot as the Big Bang suggests, we should be able to find some remnant of this heat. In 1965, Radioastronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered a 2.725 degree Kelvin (-454.765 degree Fahrenheit, -270.425 degree Celsius) Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) which pervades the observable universe. This is thought to be the remnant which scientists were looking for. Penzias and Wilson shared in the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery.
* Finally, the abundance of the "light elements" Hydrogen and Helium found in the observable universe are thought to support the Big Bang model of origins.

I assume that you do not accept the theory of the big bang, since your insistence on biblical inerrancy will not allow for such a thing. As your god's book does not allow for evolution of creatures. (again, please correct me if i'm wrong.) Given that all the evidence points to these things, it must be hard to accept. The thing is, the world works according to natural laws, not how we 'wish' it was.

You said: "What I get is a living/loving relationship with the one true God, a sense of purpose and meaning for life and basic answers to the difficult questions in life; questions that no other worldview is capable of answering or can even make sense of."

By claiming to have the 'one true god' you automatically refuse to see what is so fundamental: that we are all the same. We are all humans, with the same hopes and fears and dreams.

There is no need for separation from one another. Especially if we are to survive. We are extremely small, fragile creatures in spite of what we tell ourselves, and are subject to Nature's whims. She can run us over with a truck as we go to our jobs tomorrow, just as easily as she can wipe out all of a town with a storm. No matter how much we try to protect and distance ourselves, we are always at her mercy. The cycles of life and death are always in play. Why not learn to work with Nature and better life for all?

The truth is that you don't know for 100% sure any more than I am, but you're afraid to admit as much because it would force you to think about other possibilities. And that's ok too.

"Make sense out of?" If you need the scientific evidence to make sense to you, then please really study what it has to say. Other people make sense out of differing worldviews. Just because you are unable to accept that maybe evidence from science don't fit completely into your worldview doesn't mean others are. All throughout our discussion you have presumed to speak for me, atheists and even people who use the bible as inspiration, and not as a source of inerrancy, when even you yourself use three bibles to try to understand what other people think about what is supposed to be one set of words, and don't appear to have an opinion that is all your own.

The interesting thing is I get a sense of peace and acceptance of NOT trying to delude myself into thinking I have any sense of control about the end of my life and/or what happens afterward, if anything. I get a sense of peace and love from Nature and interactions with my deities/spirits, in a similar manner. As well as an incredible sense of wonder at the mystery and majesty of it all. Isn't that neat? Two different ideas, that lead to the same end.

If we could take the energy that is invested in argument and creation of barriers and replace it with real understanding and work our butts off to create a better life for all of us, can't you just imagine what a great world it could be? That is my hope.

I look forward to reading your comments on my other postings as well.

Hi PriveR,

Hope you had a good weekend.

I typed out a fairly lengthy response to a couple of your previous statements only to have it vanish when I went to save it to a Word document. I will attempt another shortly, but it is back to work tomorrow so it will not be until at least Wednesday.

Hi PriveR,

Sorry for not responding Friday. Things got busy. You asked a couple of poignant/relevant questions that I would like to answer before returning to the other posts.

"Sincere question though. What do you get from your beliefs, personally?"

What I get is a living/loving relationship with the one true God, a sense of purpose and meaning for life and basic answers to the difficult questions in life; questions that no other worldview is capable of answering or can even make sense of.

In the process of going back over some of your statements and answers I see both inconsistency and contradiction in your belief. After a passionate defense of the doctrines of evolution, (I also discovered by reading Starhawk's blog on "Faith during Wartime", evolution is a tenet or principle you and the Wicca community support - referring to the 13 principles disclosed in that blog) you show the uncertainty of your belief by statements like this:

""The questions you pose as far as 'how far back does evolution go... etc' are good ones. Something for me to look into. To be honest, I'm not really sure if paganism answers such questions explicitly, because time is not necessarily perceived as something linear.”

"“I don't think there is necessarily any one fixed truth or reality. I think it's all in the eye of the beholder.”

"“Actually I recently came across a pretty good take on origins, which includes evolution, written from a Pagan perspective. Taking into consideration the Gaia Hypothesis, and then taking it a step further. Are there criticisms of it? Of course. But it's also one that has not been completely tossed out.”

The question I ask myself is if your worldview supports the science of evolution why do 1) you contradict it with the Gaia Hypothesis and other statements that do not support evolutionary science and 2) how much of it do you really believe?

For instance, when you say,

"As far as origins go, I don't know if there is an explanation for it. Right now I'm leaning towards what can be found from science. If something better presents itself, I can change my mind. I don't think evolutionists think that it was all random either. I think that there are patterns, cycles, to just about everything. just ones that we haven't figured out yet."

What can be found from science textbooks on origins is a universe that came about by a random, chaotic, chance explosion. PriveR, how do you get patterns out of chaos and chance?

Sorry to take so long in replying.

Um.. the OT portion of the bible was written in hebrew. Translated hundreds of years later to Greek. At best what you have is a second level translation. Third, actually, assuming you don't speak Greek as a general rule. (If you do speak ancient Greek, my apologies. That would be fantastic to learn!) Anything that is put there in an attempt to explain things is done by people who 'think' they have a better idea of what was actually said or intended. As was the authors of the book itself. Done by people with a political agenda. Where scrolls from the same time period that may be able to illuminate what 'some' consider to be the 'word' of 'god' were left out. For no real good reason except the pursuit of power.

Why do you need three bibles? they all are supposed to say the same thing, right? Interpreting interpreters' interpretations must make it hard to find your OWN interpretation. Do you even have an interpretation that is not dependent upon what others think but based on what you think? What mechanism do you use to try to figure out which book to consult?

Besides, if ANYTHING has actually been preserved, it's because of man. Man thought it was valuable enough to save and protect. Not your god.

What I understand is that you want me to submit to some arbitrary, power mad, jealous deity that subjects their followers to kill others not like them to prove how big he is. Including their own children. To be scared because of some supposed 'retribution' that won't matter to me at all anyway because I'm going to be.. dead. In the arms of the Earth one way or the other.

If the energies that encapsulate and make up me/my soul go back into the Earth, that would be fine. If some cosmic mechanism said that my energies would be best served in another form, that would be just as good. If not, that's ok too. :)

Sorry, my friend. I cannot submit to your version of 'god.' I'm free. Finally. Free of control and in love with nature and all her processes. Learning to walk in balance with the earth and admiring and acknowledging divinity within all I see. Even you. :)

Sincere question though. What do you get from your beliefs, personally?

Also, since I think there is some Deity out there, and that it is smarter than all of us, let me ask this: If Deity, in all its knowledge, wanted us to believe and have faith, wouldn't it make the path to that belief something that we can most easily accept and understand, by form, culture and grace, as faith and religion?

Hi PriveR,

I don't have time to answer your post today but could not resist answering one comment on what you said,

"Actually you haven't. You assume that your version of an oft-translated version of.. I'm guessing, King James bible? is the correct one."

Well, your guess is wrong. I do not use the King James Bible. I find the language archaic. I usually use two, the NASB and the NIV translations. I also like the Amplified Version.

Since they have all been translated from the Greek I can refer to what the original language meaning of a word in Greek is in a concordance to get a better idea of the scope of the word and why it was translated by experts in Koine Greek to English the way it was. Again you presuppose that language cannot be translated accurately from one language to another, forgetting that God is fully able to get the correct meaning to Christians who do not speak common Greek, being removed from that culture by many centuries and that languages are translated correctly every day.

As for transmission errors, I will need more time to explain how we know that even though Scribes made errors the original Scriptures can still be determined because God has preserved His Word.

Also we as Christians compare Scripture with Scripture to get a clearer idea of the nuances of a word in Greek. There is a science to interpretation and you use it to some extent without realizing it every time you read something, because chances are that you do understand what I am saying much of the time.

Thanks for the chat!

The weird thing is that I don't hate anyone. Please don't attempt to speak for me. I really don't hate Christians. Or Jews or Muslims. Our experiences are really similar in a lot of ways. People are so intent on being right instead of just being happy. I think we all use different languages to describe something that ultimately cannot be described, but only felt. It is about the journey, ultimately. The destination, if there even is one, is not all that important.

Where I take issue is when someone of ANY faith comes along saying they have all the answers. And that I should somehow throw away science, natural laws, and my own experiences and my own ability to think for myself and take everything they or their version of a book(s) say without questioning. And then presume to speak for me and say that I 'hate the Christian god' or anything else for that matter. And then tell me that they want 'their version of 'reality'' to be taught as some sort of fact when in fact all it ever is and is going to be is opinion.

We've seen the effects that thinking in absolutes has had on our world, especially in the last 7 years. Perhaps it's time for a change.

"I have given you enough Scriptural references to dispute any points I have made in my interpretation of Scripture."

Actually you haven't. You assume that your version of an oft-translated version of.. I'm guessing, King James bible? is the correct one. I assume that you do not speak ancient Hebrew fluently and I also assume that you do not have 2000 year old scrolls in front of you.
Please see my remarks above about inerrancy of the bible.

I repeat: Again, what makes you think your interpretation of that book is the correct one? On what do you base that? Answer: your own subjective experience of those words, plus imagination. And that's ok. Just please don't hold me to some standard that you yourself don't.

2000 years have gone by. Looking. No Jesus that I can see.

"Hopefully God will bring you to repentance and faith.."
Hopefully? i thought you were sure of such things. What if he doesn't? I already have faith. In something bigger than me. That's all I ever need. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I'll have a good laugh because I'm certainly enjoying the ride. Makes no difference to me. I'm in love with this life and this earth. And you cannot change that. Nor can your book or your god.

what I find really funny is that you say that I'm not living in reality but I use science and other ideas and laws of how nature works to back up my claims. And then you propose to tell me that *your version* of a god is found ONLY in a series of 'myths' that people die over. The only difference between the two of us, people will kill others for your god. Just for having an opinion. When all are equal. Sorta like the guy who is caught by his wife in bed with two other women and says to her, 'you gonna believe what you see or what I tell you to?'

I believe that like all stories, the bible contains some good ideas. And some bad ones. All designed to help one contemplate the unknown.
For me, it wasn't even a choice to believe what i do. Paganism in and of itself is a way of life, not even so much a religion. I was led by experiences I cannot rationally explain nor could I control. They spoke to the deepest parts of me. It chose me. As a result, I'm home. And fully alive for the first time.

someone said it better than me on another thread:
All religion can be boiled down to two things: we're a part of something bigger than ourselves and 2) be nice to one another.

You are free to believe as you like, as am I. That's the beauty of America (I am assuming you are American. Please correct me if I'm wrong.). Just keep your religion out of my children's public school and out of my government.

Hi PriveR,

You said,

"Again, what makes you think your interpretation of that book is the correct one? On what do you base that? Answer: your own subjective experience of those words, plus imagination. And that's ok. Just please don't hold me to some standard that you yourself don't."

I have given you enough Scriptural references to dispute any points I have made in my interpretation of Scripture. If you have issue with any of them please challenge me on those particular references and we can get into the hermeneutics and exegesis of the passage in relation to the context. I am very willing to do that. Your saying something does not necessarily make it so, neither does mine. But to which authority are you going to appeal? I appeal to God's Word. Imagination would be interpreting something from His Word that is not there. Can you show me where I am/have doing/done so?

Your presupposition is that a correct interpretation of Scripture cannot be established. I go by the authority of God's Word that says otherwise.

"Do you best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth." (2 Timothy 2:15)

In order to correctly handle the truth there must be a correct way of interpreting God's Word otherwise the text would not have said so. God has spoken to mankind in a way that we are able to understand. Mankind just suppresses the Word of truth. Notice it says "correctly handles."

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, CORRECTING, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16)

God gave use Scripture so that we could know Him personally and relationally and also so that we could correct faulty ideas of who He is and what He has done. Scripture is given to show the utter foolishness in answering existence and the problems that arise from existence other than by God.

"For although we (Christians) live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

That is the confidence I have in God's Word. That it will do the purpose that God has sent it out to do.

"For the Word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account." (Hebrews 4:12)

One day you too will give account to God. Hopefully God will bring you to repentance and faith, for only He can do so. Hopefully you will see your need for a Savior before you die and place your complete trust in Him.

"And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will." (2 Timothy 2:24-26)

I am running out of time for today. I will be working the next two nights so, the Lord willing, I will catch up with this thread on Friday.

Thank you for the chat again! I appreciate it.

Hi PriveR,

I found a brief outline from the online Britannica Concise Encyclopedia on the Gaia Hypothesis.

"Model of the Earth in which its living and nonliving parts are viewed as a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism.

Developed c. 1972 largely by British chemist James E. Lovelock and U.S. biologist Lynn Margulis, the Gaia hypothesis is named for the Greek Earth goddess. It postulates that all living things have a regulatory effect on the Earth's environment that promotes life overall; the Earth is homeostatic in support of life-sustaining conditions. The theory is highly controversial."

A few points, the first being that this does not give an account of how it all came about. It is just a model of the earth that had a beginning. From what? Second, again you are putting your fate and trust in fallible human beings that have their own agenda in promoting the things that they believe, in that they have learned from someone else that was promoting the things that they believed in, on and on it goes. What authority does James Lovelock or Lynn Margulis have in determining that this is actually what happened? Again, it is just their subjective viewpoint that is "highly controversial" which is another way of saying that the evidence to support it is scanty at best. Again, it boils down to what authority he/she has to make such claims? Third, if you want to believe in a myth (and I use it in the sense of "A traditional story or tale that has no proven factual basis" and "Any fictitious idea accepted as part of an ideology by an uncritical group"), that is your prerogative/privilege, but in doing so you are not living in reality.

Gaia

"Gaia, in Greek myth, the Earth, personified as a goddess, the daughter of Chaos, the mother and wife of Uranus, Heaven; their offspring included the Titans and the Cyclopğs. On the advice of Gaia, Cronus, the youngest of the Titans, castrated his father; fertilized by the blood, Gaia became the mother of the Giants and the Furies. Later she bore Typhon to her son Tartarus. Her cult can be traced in many places in Greece, but for the most part it was superseded in classical times by that of later gods; at Delphi she seems to have been thought of as the original holder of the oracular shrine, before Apollo seized it by killing the serpent Python. Her characteristic function was to be a witness to oaths, as one who knows all that is done on earth."

All quotes taken from Answers.com and from Encyclopedia Britannica for convenience.

Why do you want to believe in a mythological goddess when you can believe in the real God? Again, I contend from Scripture which is the ultimate authority that you have an hatred towards the God of Christianity as you have sustained over and over again by your comments. This again just confirms what God says, Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires....the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to His law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God." (Romans 8:5, 7) or "...don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." (James 4:4b)

In other words, adopting the values of the world puts you at enmity with God because the two value systems oppose each other. God is holy and pure and always does right. One day every evil deed will be judged and punished by God in the unbeliever, because only in the believer has the deed already been judged and punished in the death of God's Son on the cross on our behalf.

I don't want this post to get to long so will continue with your last post thread on my next post.

Actually I recently came across a pretty good take on origins, which includes evolution, written from a Pagan perspective. Taking into consideration the Gaia Hypothesis, and then taking it a step further. Are there criticisms of it? Of course. But it's also one that has not been completely tossed out.

Again, what makes you think your interpretation of that book is the correct one? On what do you base that? Answer: your own subjective experience of those words, plus imagination. And that's ok. Just please don't hold me to some standard that you yourself don't.

Your god's spirit has RESTRAINED man from evils? Are you aware of the atrocities that are happening as we speak, a lot of it done in his name? Please tell me that was sarcasm.

That god couldn't possibly be all knowing or not all powerful. If he was, he could have spelled out in plain English what to think without the problems of mistranslations, selections left out or unusual interpretations such as yours. A committee of people came together at the council and decided that some pieces should be put into the book and others left out. And even then they put in different tellings of different stories with very few internal consistencies.

As far as the question about the philosophers, I wasn't intending to be sarcastic. Sorry if it came off that way. I actually thought you were asking a question.

You hold that book above everything else, including criticism. You have yet to prove to me that you do not also worship the 'words' over the meaning within them.

Your book also says that 'happiness is dashing the little children against the rocks.' Your book says that. Do you practice such a thing? I am going to assume that you do not. You don't even live by what you claim to believe in. I am also going to assume that you do not hold slaves, nor do you stone adulterers. Am I correct in this assumption?

Everything fits together for me, even more so now than they ever have. I have all the proof I need. And a LOT of work ahead of me. But that's the beauty of it.

I am not in 'enmity' with anything. Since I and everything are a product of Nature, I embrace her thoroughly. I seek to understand all of her processes by any means necessary.

I actually had to question my most basic assumptions. The more I asked, the more I could not ignore what I was being shown.

Oh, and btw: my soul is just fine. Better than ever, in fact. There is no need to for me fear anything. I am happier than I've ever been in my whole life. Fear of your god? Not necessary.
What if it IS all just a dream? That would make this whole discussion pretty silly then. And that's ok, too.

The possibilities are endless.

Hi PriveR,

Again, if you read the whole context you would understand that God's wisdom is being juxtaposed with human wisdom and the two do not compare because God's wisdom is so much wiser than ours, since He created us and is all knowing where we are finite and limited in our understanding, as you yourself just admitted in your current post.

Human wisdom is foolish in comparison to God's wisdom because it cannot answer basic questions like I have asked you to, such as explaining origins, meaning and purpose resulting from a chance random explosion, how we can establish morality without an absolute, objective standard and measure, etc. You are without answer. It just becomes your perspective, your feelings, your experience, your preference pitted against the next person’s perspective, feelings, experience and preferences in a world without meaning and purpose that cannot be explained. Do you not think that such views are foolish?

So how can you say such is right or such is wrong? Your worldview does not allow it, whereas mine does, because I know that God's standard is absolute. Anything else is like being on a treadmill that is going nowhere but to absurdity - same old, same old. Nothing else makes sense; it is just a dream world of the imagination used to escape the real world that sinful man has messed up. Thank goodness for the grace of God, that His Spirit has restrained man from some of the evils that man could aspire to. The only way off the treadmill is to come to Christ to set you free. "The Spirit and the bride say "Come!" And let him who hears say, "Come!" Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life." (Revelation 22:17)

I understand that you do not understand Christianity and that you will not come to the only wise and true God who offers salvation to all who will believe. You are at enmity with your Maker. There is nothing I can do about that except to offer the hope of knowing the true God by the one means that He has appointed, Jesus Christ.

You said,

"What I am saying that you so casually dismiss, is that if you use the idea of something 'imaginary' as something 'made up', then by that very same definition, your god is just as made up."

Again, how do you know that? I am telling you He is real and not part of the imagination, that He does exist in reality and you are telling me that I made Him up. You are wrong and have no way of knowing it without God.

Since you say,

"I seek to understand the world around me by using and not dismissing my instinct, imagination AND my intellect. The result is that the world is more strange and wonderful than anyone knows."

You admit that it is more strange and wonderful than anyone knows, except I might add, the one true God Almighty, who also happens to be the Christian God. Again you are just affirming what the Bible already tells us.

"I know that You can do all things; no plan of Yours can be thwarted. You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things to wonderful for me to know." (Job 40:2,3)

"Blessed is the man who makes the LORD his trust, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods. Many, Oh LORD my God, are the wonders you have done. The things You have planned for us no one can recount to You; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare." (Psalm 40:4, 5)

Even though you take your Creator for granted and have turned to other gods you still see the wonders of His creation but do not recognize the small mercies such as the gift of life and breath you breathe that come from Him every day.

"I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well." (Psalm 139:14)

You said,

"People decide what to put in and why. It's majority consensus. Just like the bible."

I believe that God superintended exactly the number of books that are the Bible. You have no way of proving otherwise. Your statements come from your starting point, that inner web of belief that denies the one true God. That is your starting assumption because you are angry with God and do not want to play by His rules.

You said,

"I'm not saying we should dominate, by any means, but that perhaps if other people were willing to take ideas from all religions into account that might have something useful to teach to others, then we can all advance forward."

Which way is forward without divine and absolute guidance? Man has known from the beginning that murder is wrong because God has put this in his conscious. Because man is in open rebellion against his/her Maker he/she willfully sins and does his/her own thing. You know that in any society that inflicting pain on a baby is wrong and yet it is still done. Without God evil cannot be determined and yet everyone who has not suppressed the truth completely knows from their conscious that certain things are wrong.

In the evolutionary scheme of things why does stealing or lying or murder become wrong if all I am doing what it takes/struggling to survive?

You said,

"It used to be considered 'good' to burn someone for 'practicing witchcraft' or 'heresy'."

God sets the standard for Good not me. I do not include burning witches as good. But the Bible has lots to say about it, most of which I am not familiar with, not having read/studied it for a while. Because you practice it you justify it and those who do it. Why do you believe that your standard of "good" is good?

You said,

"If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. So what? It makes no difference to you whatsoever."

It makes a difference to you. Being wrong means you are believing something that is not true.

You said,

"'Where are the philosophers?' You mean you haven't found any yet?"

Okay, I recognize the sarcasm, but the quote is a rhetorical question. The context contrasts God's wisdom with man's wisdom then asked the question that is self evident in comparison to God; there are none.

You said,

"When something is looked at as an either/or, rather than as an 'and', that's where argument begins and rational exchange of ideas within a context of respect ends."

Actually reason is used in an argument by presenting the premise and then the conclusion. If such… then such. An argument in the sense I am using it is the presentation of reasoning a premise through to a conclusion. It can be very logical and rational as long as the argument is valid and can be used to test truth claims.

The thing about and/both is sometimes the claims cannot be reconciled. When the Bible says that there is only one way to a living, loving relationship with God and that is by faith in His Son and then the New Age believer or pluralist comes along and says there are many ways to God and Jesus is but one way it is not and/both but either/or.

When you say,

"I don't think there is necessarily any one fixed truth or reality. I think it's all in the eye of the beholder" that is your personal opinion and as such it is only valid if true. Since you have no way of determining this as you have admitted that absolute truth is not something we can know as humans (are you absolutely sure about that?), you have no way of backing up your assertion. It's just mere speculation on your part.

As for me and those who trust in God's Word, I can know what truth is and be sure it is absolute.

"Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, He confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchanging things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure..." (Hebrews 6:17-19a)

This is the hope that we as Christians can tell the world of, and it is the hope that I would hope for you also PriveR. But that is not for me to decide.

"Now this is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." (John 17:3)

"We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may KNOW Him who is TRUE. And we are in Him who is true - even in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life." (1 John 5:20)

You said,

"To question is not to dismiss, but to understand.
I tried to understand the god of the bible. The more I thought I understood, the more questions were raised. For me, I had to ask completely different questions, and not to dismiss my own experiences out of hand. I finally had to get rid of assumptions I didn't even know I had."

I would like to make a few points here. You said the question is not to dismiss but to understand and then your very next thought is a dismissal after trying to understand. If you truly understood you would not have dismissed. Your assumptions were wrong about the Christian faith. God's promise still stands to those who believe, because "without faith it is impossible to please God, because any one who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him." (Hebrews 11:6)

You said,

"Just because I don't know something doesn't mean that an answer isn't there. It just means I haven't found one yet. I am new to all of this and have a LOT of study ahead of me. I will most likely need to study mythology, history, of both the world and it's religions, anthropology, archaeology, languages and the development thereof, science.. and who knows what else. I can't wait to get started."

I can save you a lot of trouble in your search by pointing you to the true God. Jesus said, "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul. Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mark 8:36, 37) Have you heard the saying, "only one life soon to be past...?"

You said,

"The thing about it all is, the more I find out, the less I know. that's what makes it so wonderful."

The thing about all this that I would like to point out that if you want to know what is true; the fear [awesome respect] of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. (see Proverbs 1:7 or 2:6 if you are interested)

Thank you again for the chat!

Your god is pleased by the foolishness that is preached in his name so that others can be 'saved'? He must be roaring with laughter at the chaos, death and destruction that has been created in his name. Again, not a god I will ever worship.

What I am saying that you so casually dismiss, is that if you use the idea of something 'imaginary' as something 'made up', then by that very same definition, your god is just as made up. Therefore, all are equally true, or equally false. Who decides that? We all do. I seek to understand the world around me by using and not dismissing my instinct, imagination AND my intellect. The result is that the world is more strange and wonderful than anyone knows.

Oh,btw: People wrote the dictionary. Just like the bible. People decide what to put in and why. It's majority consensus. Just like the bible. People can be wrong. Including you. And me. And whoever wrote the bible.

When results are obtained through use of other systems that science cannot account for, should those results be dismissed? I cannot do that. Not if others can benefit.

Actually, if you look at history of the world and world cultures, morality HAS INDEED changed throughout time. It used to be considered 'good' to burn someone for 'practicing witchcraft' or 'heresy'. It used to be acceptable to keep slaves in America. Nothing has remained as it was many years ago. It appears, looking at what is happening these days, that those people who insist on an 'absolute truth' are still willing to kill and die for such a thing. Leaving the rest of us behind to pick up the pieces, assuming of course we are able to not get swept up in it all. Which we do. I'm not saying we should dominate, by any means, but that perhaps if other people were willing to take ideas from all religions into account that might have something useful to teach to others, then we can all advance forward. I have proof enough for me of my system.

If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. So what? It makes no difference to you whatsoever.

'Where are the philosophers?' You mean you haven't found any yet?

When something is looked at as an either/or, rather than as an 'and', that's where argument begins and rational exchange of ideas within a context of respect ends.

I don't think there is necessarily any one fixed truth or reality. I think it's all in the eye of the beholder.

To question is not to dismiss, but to understand.
I tried to understand the god of the bible. The more I thought I understood, the more questions were raised. For me, I had to ask completely different questions, and not to dismiss my own experiences out of hand. I finally had to get rid of assumptions I didn't even know I had.

Just because I don't know something doesn't mean that an answer isn't there. It just means I haven't found one yet. I am new to all of this and have a LOT of study ahead of me. I will most likely need to study mythology, history, of both the world and it's religions, anthropology, archaeology, languages and the development thereof, science.. and who knows what else. I can't wait to get started.

The thing about it all is, the more I find out, the less I know. that's what makes it so wonderful.

Hi PriveR,

You said,

"What I don't understand is why you come after me and denounce my view as subjective when you do the same thing."

With any view of looking at the world it needs to answer three important basic questions; its understanding of why and how the world exists (what is out there); how it answers the nature of truth (How do you know what you believe is true); and what difference it makes (which has to do with the standards of ethics and how you determine good is always good). From what I have gathered your view is lacking in all three areas. It is inconsistent with reality, it is subjective in that it has no objectivity in which anything can be known as absolutely true; the ethical standard it uses is just a standard of human conventions that change from culture to culture (as I said before; in some countries they love their neighbors and in others they eat them. Given enough time and the relative nature of ethics shifting so that what was once considered taboo - i.e. - the killing of the unborn baby - now becomes acceptable as a right of the person to decide). So if ethics constantly shift over time how can you know that something that is now considered "wrong" will not be considered "right" in five, ten, twenty years from now - i.e. gay marriage. If it was once considered wrong why should I believe it is right now. If I do not believe it to be right then I make the definition of right and wrong as you are proposing. So who is anyone to tell anyone else that what they are doing or believing is wrong? As long as I decide it is hurting no one else to the best of my ability to determine hurt and as long as I feel it is beneficial to me to the best of my ability to determine beneficial then what right do you have to impose any restriction on me? But that is not the way the world operates because humans have been created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) and know deep down that there is a standard we measure everything else by. The Christian worldview is consistent with this standard. Your worldview is not and has no way of explaining "good." As you yourself have said,

"Morals? I think that a good rule of thumb is the Wiccan Rede: An it harm none, do as you will. The 'harm none' part also includes self, too. That is my standard. I look to correct harm if I have done so where I can, but I have to take extra caution to walk in balance, to understand my emotions and the darkest parts of myself and to try always to put love first. But even still, ultimately I am responsible for my actions and must accept the consequences."

First, you think but do you know? Second, as I have said before what happens when we both have different definitions of what it means to harm someone else? Third, why would you be responsible for your actions in a universe that sprang to life from a random, chance explosion 14-19 billion years ago? Why be accountable to yourself? Who is going to judge you when you die, after all, you have yourself said that you just go back to the ground and are used as plant food. Why be good, as good implies that you have someone to answer to, someone who sets the standard that is above you.

To define a standard you need a fixed, absolute, objective starting point or it changes with the whim of each particular culture and over a period of time. So for any standard to make sense it needs God as its rule to succeed. Otherwise how can you argue at all that something is right or wrong? As you just said in your last statement, what right do I have to denounce yours or any other standard or viewpoint? Without God I have none whatsoever. Because I look outside of myself for that standard to One claiming absolute authority and because without His standard nothing can make sense (as I said before, unconsciously you keep borrowing from the Christian standard in order for anything to make sense)I can see the world as it truly is and I can explain why it is so.

I can operate in the laws of logic without getting tripped up and remain consistent with Christianity. The Lord Jesus said that "No one can serve two masters...." (Matthew 6:24) That is an either or situation. The Bible makes the claim to be the inspired, inerrant word of God. That is an either/or situation. The Scriptures declare that Jesus is the only way to the Father and only means of salvation, of right standing before God. That is an either/or situation. The God of the Bible claims to be the only true God. That is an either/or situation.

As Joshua said in Joshua 24:15, "But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." Or consider the words of Elijah the prophet, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God follow Him; but if Baal is God, follow him." (1 Kings 18:20) There is no neutrality, Jesus said we would either be for Him or against Him. (Matthew 12:30; see also Matthew 10:32) He did not give us a third option and it is stated throughout the Scriptures.

So the Scriptures confirm the law of non-contradiction; the law of Excluded Middle and the law of ethical absolutes. In doing so it makes sense of the world, because we use these very laws every day in all we do and they are universal. Do you know of anywhere that the laws of logic or for that matter, gravity do not apply in this universe? To even understand or form a sentence they immediately kick in. Can you in your view of the world explain where they came from? Please do. Again, as a Christian they make perfect sense to me because my God has said, "Come now, let us reason together...." (Isaiah 1:18) My God constantly uses reason in the Scriptures, but because you do not look at things the way He does your reasoning does not hold together when examined. How do you account for the principle of logic as being something that applies to all rational human beings? They are no physical objects. They cannot be empirically examined. How do we get intangibles out of a tangible universe?

When you say,

"You have no proof that your god exists anymore than I do. The difference between us is that I am prepared to be wrong. Paganism is so much more fluid and able to change as one learns more."

Without the God of the Bible you cannot make sense of anything. I have kept asking you to do so and keep getting statements like I have no more proof "than [you] do" or statements like "I am prepared to be wrong" or "Sure, why not? I'll go with that" or "You are assuming something that I do not. I believe..." or "As someone I love likes to say 'just because something is imaginary, doesn't mean it's not real.'" or a whole bunch of hypotheticals. Imaginary means it is not real, it is an image or something that is made up in the mind and not the real thing.

i·mag·i·nar·y (ĭ-măj'ə-nĕr'ē) pronunciation
adj.

1. Having existence only in the imagination; unreal.

[i.e. Something made up]

What gets me is your statements on origins,

""As far as origins go, I don't know if there is an explanation for it. Right now I'm leaning towards what can be found from science. If something better presents itself, I can change my mind. I don't think evolutionists think that it was all random either. I think that there are patterns, cycles, to just about everything. just ones that we haven't figured out yet."

That is very uncertain and skeptical to me. You don't know if there is an explanation for it. Your leaning towards what can be found from science. You don't think evolutionists think that it is all random. You can change your mind if you find out it is wrong and something better presents itself. What can you be sure of?

It just keeps proving the God of the Bible when He says "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe." (1 Corinthians 1:19-21)

Thanks for the chat PriveR! I appreciate your willingness to discuss and argue for the validity of your worldview.

"That sounds awfully like what you would like them to be. But are you forgetting that no position comes from neutrality. Your framework of looking at the world comes from you and your subjective idea/ideal of what is should be."

As does yours. Especially since a lot of people don't agree that your interpretation of the bible is the correct one. What I don't understand is why you come after me and denounce my view as subjective when you do the same thing. You have no proof that your god exists anymore than I do. The difference between us is that I am prepared to be wrong. Paganism is so much more fluid and able to change as one learns more.

You start with the definitions of presupposition.
"Presuppositions are often hidden assumptions".. And then claim that your god is the only truth. That in and of itself is a presupposition. I made a presupposition like that once. It answered nothing for me. It left me feeling hollow and empty. No matter how much I tried, the god of the bible didn't answer anything. Once I changed my most basic presuppositions, then worlds began to open up for me. I started realizing that i wasn't alone and that there were definite patterns to things in my life that I hadn't seen previously. I started to get answers from Nature and all the proof I needed.

What I think is that you and I are using very different language to describe basically the same thing. I think there is some wisdom in the bible, just not having to get stuck in the idea of the book and words itself as somehow unsubject to scrutiny.

"..just like it is a figment of imagination that each person is constructing and projecting."

You are correct. The difference there is that we place importance in the idea of what imagination and the mind can do. As someone I love likes to say 'just because something is imaginary, doesn't mean it's not real.' That's why I think that yours and my truth can be complementary, since both are created through the use of imagination. We seek to not discount imagination as something that cannot be utilized. We use all of ourselves and all of our minds. We're not afraid of our intuition or our imaginations. It's about using EVERY faculty available to us, alongside reason and logic to come up with something useful.

As far as the Rede goes, I never said you should adopt it if you don't agree with it. I just said that is my standard. I do not tell anyone else what they should or shouldn't do. I am fully aware that the only person I control is myself. People are going to believe whatever they want regardless of what you and I say. That's why the second part of the Rede says 'live and let live, and fairly take and fairly give'.

Such an approach is used a lot more than you might think. The Hippocratic oath used by doctors says 'above all else, do no harm'. This leads to tough decisions that they have to make all the time about patient care.

"As soon as my instinct tells me "I'm threatened should I not do the harm to the animal before he/she can do it to me?"

In a situation like you describe, I would never strike first. I would seek to find out if my feeling threatened has any basis. I could be feeling something that could be a result of something else that happened earlier that day. If I find out any information about planning something like you said, I would contact the authorities and have them check it out. That's far different than hurting someone before they hurt me. I try to figure out what the least harm would be and then act accordingly.

No system is perfect. This is how I choose to live. It keeps me honest and allows me to change my mind. It forces me to take responsibility for my actions. It also gives me an incredible sense of peace and wonder at life and the majesty of it all.

Hi PriveR,

When you say,

"As far as truth, I'm not so sure yours and mine are opposites. What if they just 'are'?

That sounds awfully like what you would like them to be. But are you forgetting that no position comes from neutrality. Your framework of looking at the world comes from you and your subjective idea/ideal of what is should be. Mine comes from the reality and revelation of the only true God, by the authority of His Word. Your worldview does not accept His Word as truth (at least it suppresses the idea). The Christian way of looking at the world does accept His Word as authoritative and true.

From what I have seen of your worldview you have no way of explaining origins and you pick and choose from the evolutionary worldview what you will and will not accept of it. When you read any basic textbook on evolutionary beginnings where do you read about anything other than random chaotic chance?

To quote from two of your statements,

"As far as origins go, I don't know if there is an explanation for it. Right now I'm leaning towards what can be found from science. If something better presents itself, I can change my mind. I don't think evolutionists think that it was all random either. I think that there are patterns, cycles, to just about everything. just ones that we haven't figured out yet."

and,

"You are assuming something that I do not. I believe that the patterns are not random or chaotic, just things that we don't have an answer for. For me I think there are limits to what science can tell us, but those are expanding all the time. Maybe one day the scientists can give us more information."

That is the great thing about my God. I can know for certain because He does not lie. Take for instance the opening statement of the Old Testament, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

It asserts God exists (It does not have to argue for His existence because we, as humans, understand He exists, yet we suppress the truth to elevate ourselves to the place He rightfully deserves), that He is the Creator of all things and that the universe is not eternal since it had a beginning and that God was around before it existed to create it. Therefore God cannot be the universe as one of your friends suggested on the Starhawk blog. Nature or the universe is part of His creation, not God.

You also said,

"It's not about using force to dominate. It's about seeking to understand one another in a way that we can know as much as possible that others want the same things we do. And especially in this country,for us to really rise to the occasion. We keep saying that we believe in freedom for all, including those who do not see things as we do. Our actions, especially in recent years, suggest otherwise."

I appreciate your effort to at least try to understand how I see the world and not automatically write it off just because you don't necessarily agree with it."

For me it is not about force or domination either but about truth. I to appreciate your willingness to talk about the issues and to really engage me in thinking about these issues. I thank you for that, but I also care enough about the truth to engage in a discussion in which I do not have all the answered, but know the One who does. No way of looking at the world comes from neutrality. I like Greg Bahnsen's quote of Van Til's Apologetic in "Pushing the Antithesis" p. 44

"A 'presupposition' is an elementary assumption in one's reasoning or in the process by which opinions are formed....[It] is not just any assumption in an argument, but a personal commitment that is held at the most basic level of one's network of beliefs. Presuppositions form a wide ranging, foundational perspective (or starting point) in terms of which everything else is interpreted and evaluated. As such, presuppositions have the greatest authority in one's thinking, being treated as one's least negotiable beliefs and being granted the highest immunity to revision."

p. 45 "Presuppositions are often hidden assumptions that you reflexively depend upon for such foundational issues of human experience as the nature and structure of reality, the possibility and method of knowledge, and the standard and universality of morality....They govern the way you think and act, all the way down to how you select and employ specific facts from the countless number of facts ceaselessly flowing through your senses and into your mind each and every moment of the day. They form the very basis for your world and life view."

What I would like to know is how you know with 100% certainty that you know your position is true?

Most of the world has bought into a god who is not all powerful, omnipresent, eternal, the creator, the one who sets the rules. That is totally opposite from the God of the Bible, the only true God. His Son came to this earth to set us free from the lies and deception all around us.

Another thing I noticed when I read the postings of Paganplace, Terra, Lepidopteryx, etc., and yourself is that all your concepts of nature and god/goddess seem to start from different places, just like it is a figment of imagination that each person is constructing and projecting. Paganplace explains that there are different concepts of who/what the gods are. It certainly is a mystery religion or a mythological one at least.

Paganplace said,

"Two major schools of thought within Paganism can be: 'Hard polytheism' (seeing the Gods as distinct and separate personalities: this is very common among those who choose to try and recreate specific ancestral traditions, (*lots* of these sort of branch off or subdivide within the community, or even have split off, theologically, to focus on their own thing:) most particularly the Nordic ones that picture a more permanent sort of afterlife, and the world in a much longer cycle of rebirth, one might say. A lot of these folks prefer to call themselves Heathens, which is sort of a separate thing, (they can justifiably call themselves a religion all their own, even if many turn up for the 'family reunions.' :) ) but there's 'hard polytheism' in general Paganism, too. There's certainly a common dynamic of learning from cultures of the past, from culture and myth, and applying it in the present.

'Soft polytheism' often incorporates the idea that all the Gods, like people, may be distinct in some ways, and part of a greater whole, themselves: appearing to us in different ways for whatever reason. This often connects with The Great Goddess (or or *as* a union of the God and Goddess) being the biggest being in, indeed, the entirety of the universe, if not multiverse. :) '

You could call me a 'soft polytheist,' myself."

When you say,

"Morals? I think that a good rule of thumb is the Wiccan Rede: An it harm none, do as you will. The 'harm none' part also includes self, too. That is my standard."

or, in reply to my question

"Do morals come about by the instinct to survive?"

you said

"Sure, why not? I'll go with that. I think instinct itself is part of the package for us as part of the animal kingdom."

In that case if, as Judges 17:6; 21:25 say, "every man did what was right in his own eyes" then who are you to tell another human that it is wrong to take another persons life. Animals do it all the time to other animals. They do not stand trial for it. Since your evolutionary definition of a person is an animal, why can I not "employ and enjoy" the same rights as my evolutionary cousins?
Why should I adopt "An it harm none, do as you will" approach when the animal next to me may be plotting my demise and flying a jet into the building next door? As soon as my instinct tells me "I'm threatened should I not do the harm to the animal before he/she can do it to me?

Besides, since our two views of "good" are different, which they are, whose subjective preference are we going to go by and how long before that preference changes? Without an absolute standard you cannot make sense of any moral value. It is just personal preference. The only objective standard, PriveR, is the only true God.

Hi PriveR,

Can you check back in Monday night. I am working 12 hour shifts this weekend. I have read about 3/4's of the Starhawk blog on Christopher Hitchens. I will have some thoughts and questions after thinking it through. I understand more of what you believe now.

I mentioned before, I tend toward symbolism. I don't necessarily think of the divine specifically as male or female. Perhaps you are familiar with the idea of personification? Very basic concept used by authors all the time. 'the sun smiled on me today'. It's the same sort of thing. I use the 'she' aspect to have a handle on it, as a way of describing something that ultimately cannot be described, but also as something that is distinctly different than the god of that book. I see it as an attempt to describe the patterns of the seasons, the interplay between light and dark, creation and destruction. I actually don't really have a personal Goddess at the moment, that part i think will come later, the more I study and learn. I may end up with more than one god. or goddess. I'm open. Who knows?

I believe that there are something else out there that we cannot see, but that impact us and we impact them. Spirits of one form or another, for lack of a better word. They use synchronistic events in nature in order to help us learn how to work with nature and not against it as we are tending to do. The world can be understood by synchronicities plus science. Both give us information. But they are all a part of a much larger force that can be tapped into by using meditation, creative expression and imagination. I tend to think that none of us can get to where we are in life, especially as an adult, without help, in whatever form. For some people it's Jesus. For others it might be an animal spirit.

The way I see it, it takes an incredible amount of imagination in order to try to 'imagine' your god, my god/desses/spirits, what have you. Wars are fought when one tries to claim that their versions of their imaginations are somehow more 'valid' than another. I say that they're all either equally true, or equally false. What you decide is up to you. I wonder if an atheist looks at the results and wants to get rid of religion altogether. Given the state of affairs today, I can't blame them. I actually empathize with their positions. I just wonder for the atheist, raising a child, should it stop at no god? or should it also include Santa, the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, creative expression, arts, beauty, wonder?

Oh, I referred you to the thread with his question on it because there on Starhawk's thread are some really great responses by some of the other pagans about how the Goddess works for them. They are far more eloquent than I and have definitely researched and learned more than I have at this point. I never said I agreed with everything that Hitchens says, although sometimes he makes some good points underneath all the bluster.

As far as origins go, I don't know if there is an explanation for it. Right now I'm leaning towards what can be found from science. If something better presents itself, I can change my mind. I don't think evolutionists think that it was all random either. I think that there are patterns, cycles, to just about everything. just ones that we haven't figured out yet.

Morals? I think that a good rule of thumb is the Wiccan Rede: An it harm none, do as you will. The 'harm none' part also includes self, too. That is my standard. I look to correct harm if I have done so where I can, but I have to take extra caution to walk in balance, to understand my emotions and the darkest parts of myself and to try always to put love first. But even still, ultimately I am responsible for my actions and must accept the consequences.

"Do morals come about by the instinct to survive?"

Sure, why not? I'll go with that. I think instinct itself is part of the package for us as part of the animal kingdom. All animals have it, and that it evolved as we did. Recent studies have found that other animals even have the capacity for self sacrifice and empathy. The difference with us is that we have some abilities that other animals don't. We have the capacity to create on such a scale that we can destroy what we create on. Our thoughts can become things. Someone can imagine your god and make a book out of it. The more we develop technologically and challenge and change Nature, the more Nature will work to try to restore a balance. For one disease that we cure, 10 other possible epidemics will show up. For me, no matter how I try to get away from it, all roads lead me back to Nature.

"You keep borrowing capital from my God to make sense of your world, but you do so inconsistently because there are so many things that do not make sense in your world."

Nope, wrong again. I use your language because you have refused in the past to try to see things as I do. Plus, I was brought up with the god of the bible. It takes a radical shift to really consider a possibiity outside of that, and such things take time. My religion is based on experience and not something codified in any book.

Everything makes plenty of sense in my view, actually more so now than ever, but hey- I am new at this (new at paganism altogether, and even far newer at posting on any blog, never mind this one.) and may not always be quite so good at finding the right words to explain it. Give me some credit. I'm actually a bit better at this than i'd feared i'd be.

If humanity survives. How's that for an objective standard? If it is something that will benefit those here now, and will ensure the survival of humanity, done out of love, that can be an objective standard.

"In a universe that started by a random, chance, chaotic explosion.. "

You are assuming something that I do not. I believe that the patterns are not random or chaotic, just things that we don't have an answer for. For me I think there are limits to what science can tell us, but those are expanding all the time. Maybe one day the scientists can give us more information.

I never claimed to have all the answers, but the more I seek out based on these views that I talk about, the more excited I am about the path that's chosen me. I'm really home. It's so much less about destination, rather than about the journey.

The questions you pose as far as 'how far back does evolution go.. etc' are good ones. Something for me to look into. To be honest, I'm not really sure if paganism answers such questions explicitly, because time is not necessarily perceived as something linear.

you said:
(Granted, I still need to rightly interpret it)

Ah, therein lies the rub. How do you know your interpretation is the correct one?

How on Mother Earth did abortion come into this?

As far as truth, I'm not so sure yours and mine are opposites. What if they just 'are'?

It's not about using force to dominate. It's about seeking to understand one another in a way that we can know as much as possible that others want the same things we do. And especially in this country,for us to really rise to the occasion. We keep saying that we believe in freedom for all, including those who do not see things as we do. Our actions, especially in recent years, suggest otherwise.

I appreciate your effort to at least try to understand how I see the world and not automatically write it off just because you don't necessarily agree with it.

Hi PriveR,

When you said "The closest 'definition' that you presented is in the Latin root of the word meaning 'country dweller'. Not 'offensive, hedonist,' or any other insult you wish to throw out there" I'm not throwing out insults, just asking a question as to the definition posted by the America Hertiage Dictionary. That is the definition THEY posted. I asked if any of the four definitions described what you believe.

You said,

"We don't see the divine as outside of the creation. We see the divine in nature and in ourselves. We seek to strive for balance in all endeavors. We love to learn. We seek to play, and recognize the benefit of science, but also to recognize that there are things that science is not built to find out. And that's ok. That doesn't make science or evolution diametrically opposed to our faith. We believe that imagination and the mind, all given by nature, holds incredible power and by reconnecting with it that we can try to restore some of the balance that has been lost."

This seems very confusing to me. Maybe you will be good enough to explain further. Are you saying that "nature" is a personal being since you refer to your goddess as "She", giving us personality, imagination and mind over matter ("We believe that imagination and the mind, all given by nature")? In that case are you not going against evolutionary scientific thinking that looks upon mankind as a biological accident that happened from an explosion from nothing 14-20 billion years ago? How does your goddess "nature" answer the question of origin? How does she/it answer the questions of morality and ethics, that are obviously evident in every society today. Do morals come about by the instinct to survive? For that matter where does instinct come from, as evolution suggests we gradually evolved from matter? Ever seen a rock with the desire for anything? A look at the beginning of many of the text books used to train your children on the origin of life explain it by random, chance, chaotic processes over billions of years.

By the way, you refer to Christopher Hitchens' book and how he argues that religion is man made. Have you seen the debate between him and Douglas Wilson on Christianity.com?

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/119-12.0.html

When you say "You decided that it's the ultimate authority" I respond by saying that you cannot make sense of anything unless God exists because it all boils down to personal preference and individual opinion. Truth cannot be established without an objective standard. That standard is not science because science continues to change as we learn more of the world we live in.

Some points about your statements "We don't see truth as any ONE thing. We see it as coming from many different places, all complementary. Think of it as a puzzle. Having one little tiny piece and claiming the puzzle is finished and you know best tends to be the basis for hate. When more pieces are put together, the picture that is slowly revealed is far bigger and more amazing than any one thing."

I agree that truth is complimentary. That is why when we have two beliefs that oppose each other, in that they state to opposite and not complimentary things, cannot both be true. Do you believe that the way I look at God is true, because I believe you do not have a true understanding of Him. You deny the existence of knowing universal truth, I affirm it. Are you absolutely sure truth is not absolute? You see, the way you look at the world is not coherent with the way things actually are. Without God as the Judge and Sovereign of what truth is, it cannot be established, especially in the realm of ethics. When you say "that may be true for you" and I say "no, truth must always be true regardless of whether you believe it or not" we are both saying something completely different. Are you telling me that my truth is not the same as your truth, or just that we have to mutually agree upon what truth is before it becomes truth?

Either way I disagree and therefore you are wrong and that settles it. (See how arrogant that is if what is said is not true) Without the God of the Bible you cannot make sense of truth, because truth does not change.

At this moment I am typing on my computer. It is true and it will be true twenty, forty and an eternity from now that at this particular juncture in time, this is what I was doing. Because you can get ten people to agree that I was not typing on the computer at this point of time does not make it any less true that that is what I am/was doing. Would you not agree, thinking like that is dangerous in that it leads to situations such as happened in Germany during the 1940's in which an estimated six million Jewish people were exterminated because people using evolutionary thinking looked upon Jewish people as a weaker link that needed eliminating so that the super race may become the dominate race. In God's eyes we are created equal and all humans are to be valued.

When you say "You are your own highest authority in deciding that your interpretation of that book is the correct one. We all do the same thing" yes we do, but I argue that it is not my subjective opinion but God's Word that tells me this. I take His standard as truth, not my own. I can know truth because God has disclosed and revealed it to me (Granted, I still need to rightly interpret it).

"Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth." (John 17:17)

When you say "Having one little tiny piece and claiming the puzzle is finished and you know best tends to be the basis for hate" is not what I am claiming. What I claim is that the Christian God has the whole picture and in order to put it together correctly we need to follow His instruction. God tells me "It is finished" (John 19:30) in the sense that Jesus Christ has accomplished the one and only means by which mankind can be right with God. He has completed the picture for those who would believe since we kept muddling the pieces.

You said, "You are your own highest authority in deciding that your interpretation of that book is the correct one. We all do the same thing."

No I am not, God's Word is. He superintended its being put together.

You said,

"They can't. You can't verify your position any more than I can. But that's ok. Such is the nature of faith. But what does it matter as long as we work for the betterment and increased understanding and acceptance of all?"

Your subjective position cannot establish what truth is, the standard for goodness or why there is such a thing as evil let alone how out of chaos and chance mutations comes logic. You keep borrowing capital from my God to make sense of your world, but you do so inconsistently because there are so many things that do not make sense in your world.

For instance, we both believe that we should treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated, even better than we ourselves would like to be treated? Why? And better in relation to what. How do you measure better, because there are countless millions out there that measure it differently, and who are you, or who am I to determine what "good" is? Good can only be determined on an objective ultimate absolute standard.

In response to my question on the suicide bomber you said

"It comes afterwards, in the doctors who care for the wounded. It comes from the community that bands together to rebuild. There can be no creation without destruction."

You are missing my point. In a universe that started by a random, chance, chaotic explosion, how and where does order and complexity and care come from? Did the explosion say to itself, "I must regroup and create out of chance, chaos and random mutations something that is loving and caring and nurturing and orderly and complex?" Why did it do so and how come when anything that we witness exploding happens we do not see the same results? Instead we see something going from orderly and complex and designed to disorderly and chaotic and dysfunctional.

How far back do you go in your belief in evolution? Is it the start of all life? Did something impersonal create personality or is personality just atoms randomly colliding together?

You said,

"Punishing someone is one way that we have of restoring a balance for the betterment of the community. That's what law is for. Is it always the best way? Don't know."

How do you determine what the betterment of the community is when another group is opposed to your betterment? Does it all just boil down to who can impose their beliefs or force over another? If I can convince enough people that abortion is not destroying a human life, does majority determine the betterment of the unborn child, who incidentally has no say until after birth? Is not the child growing in the womb? At what point do we determine it to be a child?

Who determines the law. The group that shouts the loudest? The most forceful? The most convincing? Is it "always the best way." Do you determine truth by majority rule?

There is a better way. God has told us what truth is. "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb." (Luke 1:41)

Notice that what was in her womb was a baby before it was born. God determines when life begins.

"...Mary, you have found favor with God.You will be with child and give birth to a Son..." Notice the distinction is made before the Son is born.

Thanks for the chat!

Mr. Huff:

First of all, I would really check your sources. One of the answers that was given was 'non christian'. by that definition, Jews and Muslims are also 'pagan'. Which isn't true, seeing as how they follow either the Bible or Koran that lays it all out there for them. 'Offensive' is not a definition. It is an emotional state.

The closest 'definition' that you presented is in the Latin root of the word meaning 'country dweller'. Not 'offensive, hedonist,' or any other insult you wish to throw out there.

The lovely witches I practice with all follow their own tradition. We gather together as the seasons change to celebrate the turning of the Wheel of the Year. There are no 'good' or 'bad' witches. Just the actions of the person and the intent of those performing it.

I am going to assume for the purposes of our discussion that you are actually interested in what is meant when I use the term of the Goddess.

Starhawk describes it better than I can:

"The Goddess is not just God-in-a-skirt, she represents a different spiritual orientation, one which locates the sacred in this world, in the cycles of nature, in the body and all its processes, that sees sexual communion, birth, maturation, healing, and even death and decay as sacred processes."

There are different schools of thought within paganism as to when the Goddess is referred that is She her own Separate thing, or is she symbolic of a larger connection to the universe and everything in it that can be observed and interacted with.

I tend to fall somewhere on the side of symbolism. We use language to basically attempt to describe the indescribable, but that doesn't mean we have no direct involvement or relationship with energies that abound in us and all things. We don't see the divine as outside of the creation. We see the divine in nature and in ourselves. We seek to strive for balance in all endeavors. We love to learn. We seek to play, and recognize the benefit of science, but also to recognize that there are things that science is not built to find out. And that's ok. That doesn't make science or evolution diametrically opposed to our faith. We believe that imagination and the mind, all given by nature, holds incredible power and by reconnecting with it that we can try to restore some of the balance that has been lost.

There are posts on Starhawk's thread of this site, if you go to the last question that had just been posted. Look under May, then the question about Christopher Hitchens' book and how he argues that religion is man made. Starhawk has a short post to that. The comments that follow by Terra Gazelle and Paganplace, are a really good, in depth overview of where and how our system develops and where it came from.

"These questions cannot be answered unless you assume an absolute authority who has revealed Himself to us so that by His standard we are able to know truth."

You decided that it's the ultimate authority. Others think differently. Doesn't make them bad or wrong.

We don't see truth as any ONE thing. We see it as coming from many different places, all complementary. Think of it as a puzzle. Having one little tiny piece and claiming the puzzle is finished and you know best tends to be the basis for hate. When more pieces are put together, the picture that is slowly revealed is far bigger and more amazing than any one thing.

You are the one who keeps insisting that it's all chemical and random events. I never said that. Science tells us that's not true, that there are patterns to it. If it was all random we wouldn't have science at all in the first place. Nor would we be here.

"Since you speak for nobody but yourself is "yourself" your highest authority? As I said before, its a weak argument because someone else can claim the same thing, their own subjective standard of authority as the highest standard and since they are likely to oppose each other in making their truth claims,..."

You are your own highest authority in deciding that your interpretation of that book is the correct one. We all do the same thing.

"How can either position be validated?"

They can't. You can't verify your position any more than I can. But that's ok. Such is the nature of faith. But what does it matter as long as we work for the betterment and increased understanding and acceptance of all?

"When you see the horrible aftermath of a suicide bomber who has detonated himself/herself in a crowded marketplace, where does the order and complexity and life come from in this explosion?"

It comes afterwards, in the doctors who care for the wounded. It comes from the community that bands together to rebuild. There can be no creation without destruction.

Punishing someone is one way that we have of restoring a balance for the betterment of the community. That's what law is for. Is it always the best way? Don't know.

There seems to be no end to misunderstanding in this world. I only hope I can be one who seeks to educate.

Hi Craig,

Thanks for the comments.

The thing I find interesting about PriveR's replies is that she thinks "natural imbalances caused by pain" result in mans inhumanity to man. If that is all it is how can we ever punish someone for murdering or raping or creating pain in another persons life. It is just a biological or chemical reaction that we have no control over. As Douglas Wilson said, some people fizz one way and others another. Were just fizzing.

Hi PriveR,

My apologies for not including my source in the bit about hedonism. It was one of four definitions given at Answers.com. I was just showing you that there is more than one way to understand the term "pagan." I understand from your postings that you are worshiping something that you call "Nature" and "the Goddess" whatever that means?

From the last post I would like to remind you again my question was, "Would you say any of these definitions meets your criteria?"

That is different than calling you a hedonist.

I think it would be great for you to expand upon your belief. You know what I believe to an extent, but your mystery religion is not something I have been able to get a handle on. Are you involved in a coven of "good" witches?

I just can't figure out how it ties into evolution. Is evolution the way you answer origins? Is it more ultimate than "the Goddess?" Is "Nature" the "goddess"? Is evolution "Nature"? If the "goddess" is not a personal being then how do you account for morality because nature, if you are using the term as Richard Dawkins would is "blind physical forces and genetic replication" in which "some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won't find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music." (Quote from Letter from a Christian Citizen by Douglas Wilson, p. xiii)

If DNA just is, then how do you get good or bad from it? How do you make value judgments and why do these judgments have meaning (I say this because of your past comments)? Since you tell me you are not an atheist how does your concept of "god" or "goddess" answer this? How do you get purpose from "blind matter"?

"All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." (John 1:3)

Why do you get upset with me if all I am and all you are are bags of matter made up and originating from the same random chance chemicals as a rock or algae, that resulted from an explosion of nothing 14-19 billion years ago.

How does a random chaotic chance explosion create intelligent matter? When you see the horrible aftermath of a suicide bomber who has detonated himself/herself in a crowded marketplace, where does the order and complexity and life come from in this explosion?

How does God prove Himself. He has by the absurdity of making sense of anything apart from Him. That is why I want to establish what your standard is and how your standard makes sense. Is it ultimate? If not it is mere opinion.

Obviously you believe your belief is true as I do mine. Since we are both saying something totally contrary to the others belief how do you determine truth. Does truth ever become false?

These questions cannot be answered unless you assume an absolute authority who has revealed Himself to us so that by His standard we are able to know truth.

You have already admitted to Lepidopteryx "Trying to explain how we can arrive at moral decisions on our own and how we as pagans derive our own beliefs without framing them in Biblical language is really hard. "

That is a statement, not an answer. Nor do your other statements answer the question, such as,

"I do not understand why my view is considered 'weak'. I never claimed that I do not make moral judgments without a source."

The very fact that you make moral judgments does not explain how you know your ideas are true or explain how your source is true.

"Mine spring from a different source, that's all. I speak for nobody except myself, nor do I discount the possibility that others may feel differently."

Since you speak for nobody but yourself is "yourself" your highest authority? As I said before, its a weak argument because someone else can claim the same thing, their own subjective standard of authority as the highest standard and since they are likely to oppose each other in making their truth claims, if the person opposing your authority decides people with views like yours need to be eliminated, where does that leave you? Hitler is a prime example.

When you "take issue with anyone who uses a book that I do not agree with to find examples of how I am wrong" what matter is it if our standards oppose each other? How can either position be validated?

I thank my Lord that there is a standard we can look to for determining right, that has kept man from the evil that he/she is capable of.

So you need to explain to me why.

Thank you for the chat. I appreciate your effort!

Mr. Huff:

Seeing as how I've only ever loved my husband, never done drugs, never smoked cigarettes or taken a drink ever in my life, I'm not sure where you get the idea of 'hedonism' from.

Offensive? to whom? You? Perhaps, but not to me. I wear it proudly.

Something tells me you've gotten some bad information that I am willing to correct if you are willing to be receptive.

Please try again. I am willing to share what I believe without such angry presuppositions. I thought we were having a civilized dialogue, rather than jumping to arbitrary conclusions. I am very disappointed in you, sir. I had started to enjoy our back and forth exercises.

Craig,

1) Priver...your right if He cant prove Himself he is not God...so go ahead and ask God to prove himself.

I did. For many years. Got no answer. I learned to look at the divine in a way that stepped out of the bible. No longer needing it, I fell in love with the world. With Nature in all Her aspects. Once I did, I got all the answers I need. I never said I didn't believe in a divine something, I just think it's far bigger than any book. I don't have a problem with those who find their inspiration in the bible. Just those with a claim to 'one truth'.

and
2) For the person who thinks evil is an infantile concept.....ever seen a guy get killed who was just minding his own buiseness, meet a child that was raped or worked with AIDS victims...go help some of those people...then you u will have an infomed opinion.

I never said I thought it was infantile. I just think it occurs as a result of a natural imbalance that tends to happen as a result of pain created throughout our lives. I just don't see the world as black and white as you seem to be or Mr. Huff is. read again.

Seeing as how I work to help babies and children with developmental delays, sometimes disabilities, many of whom have been through such descriptions as you provide, obtain services that can make their families whole again, and cared for people with debilitating disease in my own home, I do not understand what your point is. Please make sure you know of which you speak before making such claims.

I have read through a bit of this material and two things strike me as someone who has travelled extensivly:

1) Priver...your right if He cant prove Himself he is not God...so go ahead and ask God to prove himself.

2) For the person who thinks evil is an infantile concept.....ever seen a guy get killed who was just minding his own buiseness, meet a child that was raped or worked with AIDS victims...go help some of those people...then you u will have an infomed opinion.

Hi PriveR,

A couple of quick responses to your comments,

"By the way, I am a pagan, not an atheist. You seem to forget that.

Question for you:

If your god is so all powerful, then please explain to me why that god is not able to convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bible should be taken literally?"

The definition of a pagan can include many things, including someone who does not believe in a supernatural being. Would you say any of these definitions meets your criteria?

pa·gan (pā'gən) pronunciation
n.

1. One who is not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew, especially an adherent of a polytheistic religion in antiquity.
2. A Neo-Pagan.
3. Offensive.
1. One who has no religion.
2. A non-Christian.
4. A hedonist.

[Middle English, from Late Latin pāgānus, from Latin, country-dweller, civilian, from pāgus, country, rural district.]

Your question for me,

"If your god is so all powerful, then please explain to me why that god is not able to convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bible should be taken literally?"

He is totally able and has by His general revelation of what He has created (Romans 1:18-32).

Although I believe that the plain meaning of Scripture is the one that should be sought, I am not going to take something literally or plainly that does not warrant doing so. The context and type of speech is important in how it is interpreted. I mentioned that to Rob Adams.

Have you ever thought that possibly one of the reasons why you have never been convinced is because you will never let yourself be convinced? A skeptic will always look for another reason not to believe, even when the evidence is compelling. You do not fully recognize your need for a Savior because you have wronged God by breaking His laws. Since your understanding is completely subjective and wants to be autonomous, you will not submit to God. Proverbs 3:5 says, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding: in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight." You are leaning completely on your own understanding and it does not make sense.

Hebrews 11:6 says that "without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him." You deceive yourself into believing that He does not exist, so how will He convince you? Only if He choses to by His grace.

Sorry, I have to go. Thanks for the chat!

My post has been held. I do not have time until Wednesday to try again. Thanks for your response!

By the way, I am a pagan, not an atheist. You seem to forget that.

Question for you:

If your god is so all powerful, then please explain to me why that god is not able to convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bible should be taken literally?

Mr. Huff:

"As I have mentioned before, how can you even reconcile an evolutionary framework if we and everything else are just atoms colliding together in random happenstance?"

Because if you knew anything about evolution, you would know that the whole basis for the theory is that it is most certainly NOT 'colliding together in a random happenstance'. Evolution, and any basic understanding of it shows that there are repeatable, observable, patterns, and the theory gives evidences to support it.

"PriveR, The difference between the Civil War and origins was that we have lots of historical references from people who lived through the event of the Civil War; not so with Creation.

not so? I thought you said that your book was full of 'historical references' about the origins of life. You just admitted that you do not believe such a thing. But you have to believe that if you're really taking the bible literally. Which is it?

As for your fossils:

1. Most fossils, by themselves, are not a problem for a young earth. The problems come from geological context, including the following:
* Independent dating of sediments via any number of techniques.
* Multiple layers of fossils. Sometimes each layer preserves an entire ecosystem, which would have taken decades to establish.
* Large number of fossils, beyond what the earth could support at once, showing multiple generations were necessary.
* In-place marine fossils on mountains, showing that the mountain must have risen since the fossil was deposited.
* Reworked fossils, showing that a mountain must have risen and eroded since the fossil was deposited.

2. Many fossils occur in amber, and the formation of amber cannot happen rapidly. First, plant resin polymerizes to produce copal, which takes thousands of years. Then the volatile oils must evaporate, which can take millions of years more.

Also:
1. Bones can survive for over a year before being buried. Shells can last decades or even centuries. In fact, some fossils that have been eroded or encrusted or bored by other animals have been found, showing that long times passed before they were buried, and discrediting catastrophic burial. Only soft tissues need to be preserved quickly.

2. Rapid burial is not necessary for rapid preservation. Fossils can also be preserved by falling in a peat bog or on an anoxic lake bottom, areas where decay is slow or nonexistent. Other fossils are preserved in tree sap, which can become amber over time.

3. Rapid burial is common as a result of processes that are local catastrophes or that can scarcely be considered catastrophes at all, such as
* burial in sediments in a river delta
* burial in sediments from a local river flood
* burial in a small landslide, as along an eroded stream bank
* burial in ash from a volcano
* burial in a blown sand dune

4. Patterns of fossilization are consistent with noncatastrophic processes such as those mentioned above. Fossilization occurs as a result of all those different processes, not as a result of a single catastrophe. And it occurs where we would expect on the basis of commonplace processes. Bison fossils, for example, are found in active floodplains, not in upland areas.

So I am assuming, then that you wish your view, and your view only to be taught in schools? In that case, it becomes a class on religion, not science. And if we teach your view, we teach every other creation myth from every other culture, from shamanism to tribal beliefs, to vodoun, to every single branch of religion out there. I'd love to have a child of mine learn about what other religions think. It would broaden their understanding of the world they live in. But it becomes a history or religion class. There is NOTHING in any mainstream science that somehow proves that literally reading the bible is the correct way.

Actually, evolution is an empirical scientific fact. You misuse the idea of a theory as found within the scientific community.

1. The word theory, in the context of science, does not imply uncertainty. It means "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena" (Barnhart 1948). In the case of the theory of evolution, the following are some of the phenomena involved. All are facts:
* Life appeared on earth more than two billion years ago;
* Life forms have changed and diversified over life's history;
* Species are related via common descent from one or a few common ancestors;
* Natural selection is a significant factor affecting how species change. (hence, NOT random chance occurrances!)
Many other facts are explained by the theory of evolution as well.

2. The theory of evolution has proved itself in practice. It has useful applications in epidemiology, pest control, drug discovery, and other areas (Bull and Wichman 2001; Eisen and Wu 2002; Searls 2003).

3. Besides the theory, there is the fact of evolution, the observation that life has changed greatly over time. The fact of evolution was recognized even before Darwin's theory. The theory of evolution explains the fact.

4. If "only a theory" were a real objection, creationists would also be issuing disclaimers complaining about the theory of gravity, atomic theory, the germ theory of disease, and the theory of limits (on which calculus is based). The theory of evolution is no less valid than any of these. Even the theory of gravity still receives serious challenges (Milgrom 2002). Yet the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is still a fact.

5. Creationism is neither theory nor fact; it is, at best, only an opinion. Since it explains nothing, it is scientifically useless.

As for reading the bible literally:

1. A literal reading of the Bible misses the meaning behind the details (Hyers 1983). It is like reading Aesop's Fables without trying to see the moral of the stories. Finding the meaning in a figurative reading requires more thought, but is thinking about the Bible a bad thing?

2. There are many inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the Bible that cannot be resolved without excessive pseudological contortions unless one does not take them literally. Augustine said,

It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn (Augustine 1982, 42-43).

Augustine's warning has merit. The invalid "proofs" necessary to support antievolution, a global flood, and a young earth, and the contradictions implied by literalism have pushed people away from Christianity (Hildeman 2004; Morton n.d.).

3. There are several passages of the Bible itself that indicate that it should not be taken literally:
* 2 Corinthians 3:6 says of the new covenant, "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."
* 1 Corinthians 9:9-12 says that one of the laws of Moses is figurative, not literal.
* Galatians 4:24 says that the story of Abraham is an allegory.
* Jesus frequently taught in parables, with the obvious intention that the lesson from the story, not the details of the story, was what was important.

4. There is extensive tradition in Christianity, including Catholicism and Protestantism, of accepting nonliteral interpretations (Rogerson 1992). Biblical literalism is not a requirement; it is a fashion.

5. Reading the Bible requires consideration of the society in which and for which it was written. The pressing issue in Israel when Genesis 1 was written was monotheism versus polytheism. Genesis 1 is written to show that different aspects of nature -- light and dark, earth and sky, sun, moon, and stars, plants and animals -- do not have their separate gods but all fall under one God (Hyers 1983).

6. Nobody reads the Bible entirely literally anyway. For example, when God says, "into your hands they [all wild animals] are delivered" (Gen. 9:2), the phrase is obviously meant metaphorically.

7. Even reading the Bible literally requires interpretation. For example, what does "fountains of the deep" (Prov. 8:28) mean?

You claim to take the bible literally. I ask you again, how many children have you dashed upon the rocks in pursuit of happiness?

As for intelligent design theory:

1. The terms used in design theory are not defined. "Design", in design theory, has nothing to do with "design" as it is normally understood. Design is defined in terms of an agent purposely arranging something, but such a concept appears nowhere in the process of distinguishing design in the sense of "intelligent design." Dembski defined design in terms of what it is not (known regularity and chance), making intelligent design an argument from incredulity; he never said what design is.

A solution to a problem must address the parameters of the problem, or it is just irrelevant hand waving. Any theory about design must somehow address the agent and purpose, or it is not really about design. No intelligent design theorist has ever included agent or purpose in any attempt at a scientific theory of design, and some explicitly say they cannot be included (Dembski 2002, 313). Thus, even if intelligent design theory were able to prove design, it would mean practically nothing; it would certainly say nothing whatsoever about design in the usual sense.

Irreducible complexity also fails as science because it, too, is an argument from incredulity that has nothing to do with design.

2. Intelligent design is subjective. Even in Dembski's mathematically intricate formulation, the specification of his specified complexity can be determined after the fact, making "specification" a subjective concept. Dembski now talks of "apparent specified complexity" versus "actual specified complexity," of which only the latter indicates design. However, it is impossible to distinguish between the two in principle (Elsberry n.d.).

3. Intelligent design implies results that are contrary to common sense. Spider webs apparently meet the standards of specified complexity, which implies that spiders are intelligent. One could instead claim that the complexity was designed into the spider and its abilities. But if that claim is made, one might just as well claim that the spider's designer was not intelligent but was intelligently designed, or maybe it was the spider's designer's designer that was intelligent. Thus, either spiders are intelligent, or intelligent design theory reduces to a weak Deism where all design might have entered into the universe only once at the beginning, or terms like "specified complexity" have no useful definition.

4. The intelligent design movement is not intended to be about science. Phillip Johnson, who spearheaded and led the movement, said in so many words that it is about religion and philosophy, not science (Belz 1996).

Also,
1. Even by the most generous criteria, the peer-reviewed scientific output from the intelligent design (ID) movement is very low, especially considering the long history and generous funding of the movement. The list of papers and books above is not exhaustive, but there is not a lot else. One week's worth of peer-reviewed papers on evolutionary biology exceeds the entire history of ID peer-review.

Virtually none of the papers show any original research. The only paper for which original data was gathered is Axe (2000), and see below regarding it.

The point which discredits ID is not that it has few peer-reviewed papers, but why there are so few. ID proponents appear to have no interest in conducting original research that would be appropriate for peer-reviewed journals, and other researchers see nothing in ID worth paying attention to. Despite empty claims that ID is a serious challenge to evolution, nobody takes ID seriously as a science, so nobody writes about it in the professional literature.

2. The papers and books cited by the Discovery Institute do not make a good case for peer-reviewed intelligent design for one or more reasons.

1. Many of the papers do not talk about design. Some do not even attempt to. For example:

* Axe (2000) finds that changing 20 percent of the external amino acids in a couple proteins causes them to lose their original function, even though individual amino acid changes did not. There was no investigation of change of function. Axe's paper is not even a challenge to Darwinian evolution, much less support for intelligent design. Axe himself has said that he has not attempted to make an argument for design in any of his publications (Forrest and Gross 2004, 42).

* Behe and Snoke (2004) argues against one common genetic mechanism of evolution. It says nothing at all in support of design. Its assumptions and conclusion have been rebutted (M. Lynch 2005).

* Lönnig and Saedler (2002) cite Behe and Dembski only in a couple long lists of references indicating a variety of different options. Neither author is singled out; nor is the word "design" used.

* Denton and Marshall (2001) and Denton et al. (2002) deal with non-Darwinian evolutionary processes, but they do not support intelligent design. In fact, Denton et al. (2002) explicitly refers to natural law.

* Chiu and Lui (2002) mention complex specified information in passing, but go on to develop another method of pattern analysis.

2. The peer-review that the works were subject to was often weak or absent. The sort of review which books receive is quite different from the stringent peer review of journal articles. There are no formal review standards for trade and university presses, and often no standards at all for popular presses. Dembski has commented that he prefers writing books in part because he gets faster turnaround than by submitting to journals (McMurtrie 2001). Anthologies and conference proceedings do not have well-defined peer review standards, either. Here are some other examples of weak peer review:

* Dembski (1998) was reviewed by philosophers, not biologists.

* Meyer (2004) apparently subverted the peer-review process for the sole purpose of getting an "intelligent design" article in a respectable journal that would never have accepted it otherwise. Even notwithstanding its poor quality (Gishlick et al. 2004, Elsberry 2004a), the article is clearly not appropriate for the almost purely taxonomic content of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, and the Biological Society of Washington repudiated it (BSW n.d., NCSE 2004). For more information, see Elsberry (2004b).

* Wells (2005) was published in Rivista di Biologia, a journal which caters to papers which are speculative and controversial to the point of crackpottery (J. M. Lynch 2005). Its editor, Giuseppe Sermonti, is a Darwin denier sympathetic to the Discovery Institute.

3. With some of the claims for peer review, notably Campbell and Meyer (2003) and the e-journal PCID, the reviewers are themselves ardent supporters of intelligent design. The purpose of peer review is to expose errors, weaknesses, and significant omissions in fact and argument. That purpose is not served if the reviewers are uncritical.

This same criticism applies to any reviewers who are "true believers" of any aspect of biology. However, mainstream scientists recognize that science grows stronger through criticism, not through mere agreement, because criticism helps weed out the bad science. Most any evolutionary biologist can attest that supporting evolution is not enough to get a paper accepted; the paper has to describe sound science, too.

3. Publishing is not an end in itself. Scientific ideas mean nothing unless they can withstand criticism and be built upon. None of the "intelligent design" publications have led to any productive work. Most have had their main ideas rebutted (e.g. Behe 1996, Dembski 1998, Dembski 2002, Gonzalez and Richards 2004).

You raise some 'refutations' of evolutionary theory. Correct? Consider this:

1. On the fundamental issues of the theory of evolution, such as the facts of common descent and natural selection, there is no scientific controversy. The "teach the controversy" campaign is an attempt to get pseudoscience taught in classrooms. Lessons about the sociological issues of the evolution-creation controversy may be appropriate in history or other nonscience classes.

If the object is to keep bad science from the classroom, the same standards should be applied to the counterarguments from creationists, which are all bad science.

2. There are controversies over details of evolutionary theory, such as the relative contributions of sympatric versus allopatric speciation. These controversies require a great deal of background in biology even to understand what they are about. They should not be taught to beginning students. They should be taught to graduate-level students in biology, and they are.

3. Evolution is almost certainly the most hated scientific theory in history. Many people think it threatens morals, civilization, and their very souls, and virtually nobody wants it to be true. Starting from the first day that Origin of Species was published, it has faced constant challenges from some of the most powerful politicians and religious leaders, not to mention incessant disapproval and attacks from the general public. The only thing evolution has going for it is the evidence. If that evidence were not extremely strong, evolution would have been torn to irreparable shreds decades ago.

Like all theories, evolution is subject to scientific attack, too. Achieving a major revision of established theory is something that many scientists dream of. Plus, many scientists feel the same emotional opposition to it that so many non-scientists do. If a credible alternative to evolution appeared, biologists would race to publish it. Indeed, scientists have made some significant revisions of details to the theory of evolution, but there has been no such race to overthrow the basic theory.

The theory of evolution is stronger than ever, accepted around the world without a hint of informed scientific challenge to the basic theory. The controversy surrounding evolution has made it one of the most scrutinized theories of all time, and evolution has withstood that scrutiny with flying colors.

4. Should teaching the controversy be expanded to include so-called alternatives to evolution? There are many mutually contradictory creationist positions, with disagreement on such fundamental issues as how old the universe is and which religion's book best describes the creator. Since the basis for creationism is its emotional religious appeal, and since such attraction varies between cultures and individuals, creationism will always be hopelessly controversial. Surely any lesson on the controversy should include the whole controversy.

The thing about my worldview is that is allows for both science and a greater appreciation of deeper mysteries. It is only when those claim that real scientists should take the bible literally and teach it as some sort of fact that I have an issue.

Continuing, you said,

"Again, there are references historically that the Civil War existed, even the time and dates of battle and the movement of the leaders of both sides. Witnesses and historical records bear this out. It doesn't mean that Scarlett O'Hara or any of the fictional characters in Gone with the Wind ever existed either.

PriveR, The difference between the Civil War and origins was that we have lots of historical references from people who lived through the event of the Civil War; not so with Creation.

The Lord Jesus Christ is unlike Scarlett O'Hara who is gone with the wind (sorry, couldn't resist it)in that besides four separate gospel accounts and numerous epistles, written by various authors, many of whom claimed to be eyewitnesses (Luke 1:2; i John 1:1; 1 Corinthians 15:5, etc), we also have many secular accounts such as Josephus Flavius and Pliny the Young, plus a multitude of early church fathers, some of whom had associated with the apostles. Then there is the facts of the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament) which contain prophecies about Him and the explanation on how Christianity started and spread if He was a fictitious character. You go against the wealth of evidence that says otherwise when you say He was not historical.

You said,

"If you are so concerned about the validity of science, then by all means, become a scientist and test it for yourself. We teach science in schools, not religion. When there is debate about these things there is one thing the biblical 'inerrantists' forget. I assume by your statements you mean that creation and evolution should be given equal time in the classroom. Yes?"

There are far more qualified people than myself to teach science. But when science talks about origins these things are not experiments that can be duplicated in the classroom or elsewhere. Remember, evolution is just a theory (that does not work). You make the gigantic assumption that creation science does not have any evidence or facts to support its premises.

You sad,

"It is based on personal religious belief, not on evidence. For the most part, creationism can fit with anything we find, making it unscientific. Where creation models do make specific predictions that can be tested against evidence, they fail the tests."

Again I use Ian Taylor, because he is handy to show you how the same can be said for evolutionary sciences,

""The Stuttgart Museum of Natural History in Germany contains a fossilized ichthyosaur, or sea-dwelling dinosaur, fossilized at the moment of feeding her young. In the Ludwigsburg Museum of Natural History in Germany, there is an even more spectacular specimen of an ichthyosaur fossilized in the process of giving birth with the young clearly visible in the birth canal. In the Princeton Museum of Natural History there is a perch fossilized in the act of swallowing a herring. In each of these examples, the creatures were sea-dwelling, and their burial under fine sediment and subsequent fossilization had to have been sufficiently rapid to leave no trace of decomposition."

These evidences support quick rapid burial, not slow evolutionary time frames as Darwinian evolution has led us to believe.

""Until 1938 the coelacanth was known to paleontologists only by its fossils found in rocks of the Cretaceous and the Jurassic periods. These large, lobe-finned fish were thus believed to have thrived 300 million years ago and then became extinct 70 million years ago -- about the time of the dinosaur extinction. It was thought that the lobe fins were a very early stage in the evolution of legs. Fishing about five miles off the East coast of South Africa in December 1938, fishermen of a commercial trawler hauled up a living specimen of the coelacanth five feet long and steely blue in color. By 1972 a further sixty-six specimens had been caught and examined. The fish was clearly not extinct and had changed very little in the alleged 70 million years! (Ellis 1995, 11).[32]"

"Clearly, experimental work on sedimentation was needed to test these proposals. Almost thirty years later, Guy Berthault and others working in France, carried out a series of experiments with sediments in flowing water. This work demonstrated that hydraulic sorting, otherwise known as pro-gradation, does indeed take place during a flood and this has contributed significantly to the general understanding of Flood dynamics. The importance of the work is that it shows conclusively that the fossil-containing sediments, that is, the geologic column, can better be explained by simultaneous deposition from one flood rather than sequential deposition from multiple floods; the time frame is thus reduced from millions of years to a few months." [Chapter 4 of the same CD-ROM quotes in previous posts]

Again, evidence that refutes the evolutionary process and supports the creation position.

Again I would refer you to the video evidence I posted previously on just twenty five lies in the evolutionary text books. I'm looking for your answers to some of these. The evidence is plain. Things that are now proven to be false are still found in high school text books that indoctrinate people into believing something untrue.

If you are going to be fair to the students around your country you would present both sides of the argument so that they can decide which is the more reasonable position, instead of censoring the information and not allowing one side of it to be taught because it goes against the current standard of what science should be - evolutionary. As I have mentioned before, how can you even reconcile an evolutionary framework if we and everything else are just atoms colliding together in random happenstance?

You said,

"3. Equal time would mean teaching

* other versions of creationism from other denominations of Christianity (including young-earth, old-earth, day-age, gap theory, geocentrism, and flat earth). All have equal basis for being taught, since they are all based on exactly the same Bible. All are mutually incompatible (DYG 2000; Watchtower 1985, 186; Morris 1984, 215-247)."

Again, the Bible is specific about origins as historical narrative, and as I pointed out before, to come up with some of these theories the person has to read into the Bible something it does not say. Tell me how someone can twist billions of years out of "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, ...For IN SIX DAYS the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and ALL that is in them, but He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." (Exodus 20:8-10)

Hello again,

"10. Scallops of the genus Chesapecten show gradual change in one "ear" of their hinge over about 13 million years. The ribs also change (Pojeta and Springer 2001; Ward and Blackwelder 1975)."

This is evidence of adaptation, variation or mutation within a species, not change to another kind of species, just like the Galapagos Finch shows a built in survival adaptation because of the environment, not a change of species. God made His creatures with the ability to adapt to different environments, but not the ability to change into a new kind.

Ian Taylor in his book "In the Minds of Men," Chapter 4, had this to say about fossil evidence found in some of our museums,

"The Stuttgart Museum of Natural History in Germany contains a fossilized ichthyosaur, or sea-dwelling dinosaur, fossilized at the moment of feeding her young. In the Ludwigsburg Museum of Natural History in Germany, there is an even more spectacular specimen of an ichthyosaur fossilized in the process of giving birth with the young clearly visible in the birth canal. In the Princeton Museum of Natural History there is a perch fossilized in the act of swallowing a herring. In each of these examples, the creatures were sea-dwelling, and their burial under fine sediment and subsequent fossilization had to have been sufficiently rapid to leave no trace of decomposition." Chapter 4]

In other words, fossilization takes place rapidly.

You still haven't answered how an animal is fossilized. What is the process that causes fossilization?

PriveR, you said,

"* Multiple layers of fossils. Sometimes each layer preserves an entire ecosystem, which would have taken decades to establish."

Please expand upon this.

I think a great explanation of why we have marine fossils and other specialized communities of organisms buried together in rock layers throughout the earth is because many communities of life are found in special environments that support their kind, and with the mud and rock slides created during the Flood many communities would have been buried together. The reason you would not find human remains in most of these sites is because humans do not live in the water or in some of these other specialized land areas in great numbers.

* Large number of fossils, beyond what the earth could support at once, showing multiple generations were necessary.

That is just a presupposition. God's Word says,

"Let the water teem with living creatures,..." Genesis 1:20 "How many are Your works,' O LORD! In wisdom You made them all; the earth is full of Your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number-" Psalm 104:24-25.

Your assumption, PriveR, is the same as Charles Lyell; the present is the key to the past]

* In-place marine fossils on mountains, showing that the mountain must have risen since the fossil was deposited.

That is a good explanation; the time line is what we disagree with.

* Reworked fossils, showing that a mountain must have risen and eroded since the fossil was deposited.

[Yes, so? There are theories for that too.]

2. Many fossils occur in amber, and the formation of amber cannot happen rapidly. First, plant resin polymerizes to produce copal, which takes thousands of years. Then the volatile oils must evaporate, which can take millions of years more.”

PriveR, most of these fossils are insects and considering that insect life cycles are shorter than most animals, these fossils, millions of supposed life cycles later, show the insects as virtually the same as we have today, which presents a problem for the supposed evolutionary framework of random chance mutations and natural selection creating new species, especially since some of these amber fossils have been categorized as being around 230 million years old. The Flood explains things much better.

Again, with tree resin, the insect gets stuck in the resin and then more runs down and encases the insect (or usually small creature) which preserves it. They are encased rapidly again, enough so to preserve their bodies.

"The bible was written long before any scientific methods popped up. So naturally people today have to make incredible and unsupported leaps of logic to make their worldview fit.”

I would call the "big bang" an incredible leap of logic, as well as life coming from non-life. Give me one example you have SEEN of life coming from non-life. Then you have the problems of how you establish logic and morals in a material universe. Do non living material objects think? Does a lion make a moral judgment when it kills another animal? If we are all animals why is it wrong to kill another human being if he/she is competing for my food chain? These are all questions where I see you failing to answer or answer logically.

PriveR, just to emphasis a few points from the last post quoting Ian Taylor that I think are significant.

"Although in a practical sense the age of the rock makes little or no difference to the geologist, the system is based upon circular reasoning whereby the fossil order is said to be the evidence for process (evolution) over time. This is then held to be prime evidence for process over time. In fact, index fossils show no evidence of evolution but they do show evidence for extinction."

"Lyell had made his proposal in the 1830s, before the rocks of the world had been studied. It has since been discovered that the percentage of living species found in rocks believed to be of the same age varies from region to region and country to country."

"The ages of the various geological eras were originally derived during the nineteenth century by a combination of guesswork and calculation. For example, by estimating the depth of sediment deposited in one year by a river when in flood and knowing the total depth of sediment by drilling a hole, the age of the river system could be calculated. Often the annual rate was a fraction of an inch, and with a total depth of sediment of hundreds of feet, great ages were assigned to that particular layer of sediment. It was argued that the calculations should be based upon the thickest layer of any given strata discovered because similar strata of lesser thickness would have been the result of erosion. Further, the calculations assumed that the measured deposition rate over one year had been the same throughout Earth's history. The assigned ages, particularly for the earliest forms of life, seem to have been put on a sliding scale that has increased in direct proportion to our understanding of the complexities of the living cell. In Lyell's day, for example, the beginning of life was thought to have occurred about 200 million years ago, but this estimate has since escalated to 3,870 million years, almost twenty times longer."

"In recent years the claim is sometimes heard that the radiometric methods ( but not the Carbon Fourteen method) provide an independent, foolproof confirmation of the ages ascribed to the strata. However, this is quite untrue as the radiometric themselves are in fact calibrated against the dated strata."

All this goes to show the uncertainty of the evolutionary model. Again, the foundation on which the theory was first built is extremely shaky and has in fact collapsed. Punctuated equilibria is the theory of the day, proposed by such men as Gould and Elderidge.

Continuing on, I'm wondering if the time of night has anything to do with the posts not getting posted. Or could it be the amount of information or the sources used? Anyway, to answer some of your points such as,

""Also, in regards to fossils:

1. Most fossils, by themselves, are not a problem for a young earth. The problems come from geological context, including the following:
* Independent dating of sediments via any number of techniques.

My thoughts exactly, except the problem comes from the evolutionist in dating the geological column. To quote from Ian Taylor, In the Minds of Men" (I do not have the book but the CD-ROM so I cannot quote the page, only the Chapter)

""While Lyell’s geologic column and today’s grander version is a vital part of every geologist’s training, there is a philosophical subtlety inherent within this system that should be made clear to the reader. It was assumed that the rising order of the index fossils reflects the time in which they were deposited, that is, the oldest at the bottom and the recent at the top. This is not necessarily the case, however, because there are at least three mechanisms known to geologists that will sort minerals, and presumably marine crustaceans, simultaneously. By any one of these mechanisms stratification occurs very rapidly effectively producing the same evidence in weeks that are assumed to have taken millions of years. Nevertheless, the earth sciences identify each stratum with a particular index fossil and that stratum immediately assumes the declared age of the fossil. Although in a practical sense the age of the rock makes little or no difference to the geologist, the system is based upon circular reasoning whereby the fossil order is said to be the evidence for process (evolution) over time. This is then held to be prime evidence for process over time. In fact, index fossils show no evidence of evolution but they do show evidence for extinction." [Chapter 3, CD-ROM]

"Naturalists such as Cuvier and Deshayes, working in Paris a few years before Lyell was born, discovered that strata often contained fossils of shell-bearing marine species such as small mollusks and clams. The uppermost beds contained shells of species that still live today while successively lower groups of strata were found to contain shells of fewer living species and more extinct species. Later, Lyell saw this as a principle and proposed a classification based on the percentage of still-living shelled invertebrates, the clams for example, and coined age names for rocks based upon this arbitrary division. Thus, he said that those rocks containing 50-90 percent of modern species would be called Pliocene, from the Greek meaning "more recent". Rocks containing 20-40 percent of the fossils represented by modern species would be called Miocene, meaning "less recent", while those containing less than 5 percent would be called Eocene, meaning "dawn". The historical background to Lyell's work on index fossils was given in the previous chapter. Lyell had made his proposal in the 1830s, before the rocks of the world had been studied. It has since been discovered that the percentage of living species found in rocks believed to be of the same age varies from region to region and country to country. Thus, index fossils are far from universal and the Australian, British, and the American geologists are obliged to use different lists of these fossils.

"Nevertheless, like-minded followers of Lyell quickly elaborated on his scheme, subdividing and extending further backwards in time and assigning ages to each geological era. In spite of the deficiency of Lyell's method, certain fossils came to be recognized as typical of each age, while some juggling of the various fossil forms was necessary to fit the assumed upward gradation of complexity into proper chronological sequence; these particular fossils ? the marine crustaceans -- became the "index" fossils for the system. The existence of a particular index fossil found in a rock sample then immediately associates that particular strata with an age name and, of course, with the age that has been assigned to it (Dunbar 1960, 352)."

"Strictly speaking, the age of rock strata is of no practical importance to the working geologist. This should be self-evident knowing that the assigned ages have increased twenty to thirty times in the past century without making any difference to say, oil or mineral exploration. The ages of the various geological eras were originally derived during the nineteenth century by a combination of guesswork and calculation. For example, by estimating the depth of sediment deposited in one year by a river when in flood and knowing the total depth of sediment by drilling a hole, the age of the river system could be calculated. Often the annual rate was a fraction of an inch, and with a total depth of sediment of hundreds of feet, great ages were assigned to that particular layer of sediment. It was argued that the calculations should be based upon the thickest layer of any given strata discovered because similar strata of lesser thickness would have been the result of erosion. Further, the calculations assumed that the measured deposition rate over one year had been the same throughout Earth's history. The assigned ages, particularly for the earliest forms of life, seem to have been put on a sliding scale that has increased in direct proportion to our understanding of the complexities of the living cell. In Lyell's day, for example, the beginning of life was thought to have occurred about 200 million years ago, but this estimate has since escalated to 3,870 million years, almost twenty times longer. In recent years the claim is sometimes heard that the radiometric methods ( but not the Carbon Fourteen method) provide an independent, foolproof confirmation of the ages ascribed to the strata. However, this is quite untrue as the radiometric themselves are in fact calibrated against the dated strata." [Chapter 4]

* Multiple layers of fossils. Sometimes each layer preserves an entire ecosystem, which would have taken decades to establish.

PriveR, returning to the debate on evolution, hopefully this will post!

In response to your question and comment,

"Didn't your god say something about 'no more floods' after that one? Recent events say otherwise. There goes your inerrancy."

there again you misinterpret the Scriptures to suit your worldview and show how much you really know about God and His Word.

"I will remember My covenant between Me and you and all living creatures of EVERY KIND. NEVER AGAIN will the waters become a flood to destroy ALL LIFE." (Genesis 9:15; see also Gen. 7:21-24)

These verses do not say that God will never bring floods on the earth again, only that He will not destroy the earth again by a flood. The difference between what you just did and what I am doing in hermeneutics is called Isogesis and Exegesis. Isogesis is reading into the text something that is not there, whereas exegesis is taking out of the text the meaning intended by the Author.

"We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." --- NIV 2 Corinthians 4:2

"Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth." --- NIV 2 Tim 2:15

"Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." --- NIV Acts 17:11

PriveR, you said,

"Every single reference I have given has been published in a peer reviewed, mainstream scientific journal, with the credentials of each person established.

Big deal, as I said before, no scientist comes to the facts without baggage. These scientists are just interpreting the data through their own filters. None of them were around when these fossils formed and you admitted in your last post that catastrophic events occurred which would create fossils after the Flood on a small scale. The fact remains that Darwinian evolution has all these holes in it that scientists continually have to patch up to stop the dike bursting (please forgive the pun).

The problem with modern day evolutionary science is that it is an exclusive boys club which will not tolerate opposition. That is why you do not hear much in opposition to the cherished theory, except by those in the club.

PriveR,
To carry on with the dodging of atheist Christopher Hitchens Douglas Wilson continues to push the question of authority, especially in making value judgments,

"I have been asking you to provide a warrant for morality, given atheism, and you have mostly responded with assertions that atheists can make what some people call moral choices. Well, sure. But what I have been after is what rational warrant they can give for calling one choice "moral" and another choice "not moral." You finally appealed to "innate human solidarity," a phrase that prompted a series of pointed questions from me. In response, you now tell us that we have an innate predisposition to both good and wicked behavior. But we are still stuck. What I want to know (still) is what warrant you have for calling some behaviors "good" and others "wicked." If both are innate, what distinguishes them? What could be wrong with just flipping a coin? With regard to your retort that my "talent for needless complexity" has simply gotten me "God's coexistence with evil," I reply that I would rather have my God and the problem of evil than your no God and "Evil? No problem!"

After this many installments, I now feel comfortable in asserting that I have posed this question to you from every point of the compass and have not yet received anything that approaches the semblance of an answer. On this question I am tempted to quote Wyatt Earp from the film Tombstone—"You gonna do something or just stand there and bleed?"—but I think I'll pass. Earp was not very much like the Good Samaritan."

The same can be said for your arguments against the God of Christianity. Where do you get your authority to pronounce such judgments as the Christian God is a myth? From science? To quote Douglas again in the article,

"So if LaPlace is why you think belief in God is now "optional," this appeal of yours actually turns into quite a fun business. This doctrine means (although LaPlace admittedly got distracted before these implications caught up with him) that you, Christopher Hitchens, are not thinking your thoughts and writing them down because they are true, but rather because the position and velocity of all the atoms in the universe one hundred years ago necessitated it. And I am not sitting here thinking my Christian thoughts because they are the truth of God, but rather because that is what these assembled chemicals in my head always do in this condition and at this temperature. "LaPlace's demon" could have calculated and predicted your arguments (and word count) a century ago in just the same way that he could have calculated the water levels of the puddles in my driveway — and could have done so using the same formulae. This means that your arguments and my puddles are actually the same kind of thing. They are on the same level, so to speak.

If you were to take a bottle of Mountain Dew and another of Dr. Pepper, shake them vigorously, and put them on a table, it would not occur to anyone to ask which one is "winning the debate." They aren't debating; they are just fizzing. You refer to "language in which to write this argument," and you do so as though you believed in a universe where argument was a meaningful concept. Argument? Argument? I have no need for your "argument hypothesis." Just matter in motion, man."

From such a view as evolution, everything becomes meaningless.

PriveR,

I forgot to give you the web address. It is
http://www.christianitytoday.com/
Type in Christopher Hitchens or Douglas Wilson to read the debate. Notice how Hitchens keeps dodging the question of authority.

As Douglas said in response to Mr. Hitchens,

"On the question of morality, you say that you are "simply reluctant" to say that if religious faith falls, then the undergirding decency must fall also. But your behavior goes far beyond a mere "reluctance to concede." Your book and your installments in this debate thus far are filled with fierce denunciations of various manifestations of immorality. You are playing Savonarola here, and I simply want to know the basis of your florid denunciations. You preach like some hot gospeler—with a floppy leather-bound book and all. I know the book is not the Bible and so all I want to know is what book it is, and why it has anything to do with me. Why should anyone listen to your jeremiads against weirdbeards in the Middle East or fundamentalist Baptists from Virginia like Falwell? On your terms, you are just a random collection of protoplasm, noisier than most, but no more authoritative than any—which is to say, not at all.

You say that I need to admit that a "good person can be born" who can't get his mind around what I am saying about Jesus. But my initial claim has been far more modest. I am simply saying that a good person needs to be able, at a minimum, to define what goodness is and tell us what the basis for it is. Your handwaving—"ordinary morality is innate"—does not even begin to meet the standard.

There are three insurmountable problems for you here. The first is that innate is not a synonym for authoritative. Why does anyone have to obey any particular prompting from within? And which internal prompting is in charge of sorting out all the other competing promptings? Why? Second, the tangled skein of innate and conflicting moralities found within the billions of humans alive today also has to be sorted out and systematized. Why do you get to do it and then come around and tell us how we must behave? Who died and left you king? And third, according to you, this innate morality of ours is found in a creature (mankind) that is a distant blood cousin of various bacteria, aquatic mammals, and colorful birds in the jungle. Your entire worldview has evolution as a key foundation stone, and evolution means nothing if not change. You believe that virtually every species has morphed out of another one. And when we change, as we must, all our innate morality changes with us, right? We have distant cousins where the mothers ate their young. Was that innate for them? Did they evolve out of it because it was evil for them to be doing that?

Now this is how all this relates to the assigned topic of our debate. We are asking if Christianity is good for the world. As a Christian discussing this with an atheist, I have sought to show in the first place that atheism has nothing whatever to say about this topic—one way or the other. If Christianity is bad for the world, atheists can't consistently point this out, having no fixed way of defining "bad." If Christianity is good for the world, atheists should not be asked about it either because they have no way of defining "good." Think of it as spiking your guns—so that I can talk about Jesus.

Hi PriveR,

I was just visiting the debate between atheist Christopher Hitchens and Christian pastor Douglas Wilson and came across this piece which I thought put the dilemma of anyone who denies the Christian God quite well:

Among many other reasons, Christianity is good for the world because it makes hypocrisy a coherent concept. The Christian faith certainly condemns hypocrisy as such, but because there is a fixed standard, this makes it possible for sinners to fail to meet it or for flaming hypocrites to pretend that they are meeting it when they have no intention of doing so. Now my question for you is this: Is there such a thing as atheist hypocrisy? When another atheist makes different ethical choices than you do (as Stalin and Mao certainly did), is there an overarching common standard for all atheists that you are obeying and which they are not obeying? If so, what is that standard and what book did it come from? Why is it binding on them if they differ with you? And if there is not a common objective standard which binds all atheists, then would it not appear that the supernatural is necessary in order to have a standard of morality that can be reasonably articulated and defended?

Again, what is your standard? How do you know it is true?

P.S.
America is a country with freedom of speech as a basic right. In a forum "On Faith" is it not possible to express yourself? I do not believe I have been rude or vulgar have I? I certainly do not have any ill feelings towards any of the people I have shared ideas with.

PriveR, it seems that the webmaster will not post my rebuttals. I keep getting the message "Your comment has been received and held for approval by the blog owner."

There have been three failed attempts today. I guess your side is the only one that will be posted? Are there ground rules to these message boards that I do not know of? Are there certain views they will not accept? Sorry, it does not look like I will get my say. I keep having to modify my message.

also,
* creation traditions from other religions and cultures, at least over 350 individual systems with all differing creation myths.

I would have no problem with teaching the creation myth of any or all of these religions, just not in a science class. None of these claims are based in scientific fact. But that's the nature of religion. More appropriate in a religious studies of the world class. Optional, with any parent having ultimate say over whether or not their child can take it if they wish to.

* other ideas for the origin of life and the universe, such as
o solipsism
o Last Thursdayism, the unfalsifiable view that the universe and everything in it was created last Thursday with only the appearance of earlier history
o multiple designers (Hoppe 2004)
o Raelianism or other extraterrestrial involvement
o creation by time travellers.

Creationists do not want all of these taught in science class any more than science educators do. Clearly, creationism in school is an attempt to get greater time than all the opposing views, not equal time. That is not fair.

4. Creationists do not advocate equal time for evolutionary theory in church services. Why?

Also
1. On the fundamental issues of the theory of evolution, such as the facts of common descent and natural selection, there is no scientific controversy. The "teach the controversy" campaign is an attempt to get pseudoscience taught in classrooms. Lessons about the sociological issues of the evolution-creation controversy may be appropriate in history or other nonscience classes.

If the object is to keep bad science from the classroom, the same standards should be applied to the counterarguments from creationists, which are all bad science.

2. There are controversies over details of evolutionary theory, such as the relative contributions of sympatric versus allopatric speciation. These controversies require a great deal of background in biology even to understand what they are about. They should not be taught to beginning students. They should be taught to graduate-level students in biology, and they are.

3. Evolution is almost certainly the most hated scientific theory in history. Many people think it threatens morals, civilization, and their very souls, and virtually nobody wants it to be true. Starting from the first day that Origin of Species was published, it has faced constant challenges from some of the most powerful politicians and religious leaders, not to mention incessant disapproval and attacks from the general public. The only thing evolution has going for it is the evidence. If that evidence were not extremely strong, evolution would have been torn to irreparable shreds decades ago.

Like all theories, evolution is subject to scientific attack, too. Achieving a major revision of established theory is something that many scientists dream of. Plus, many scientists feel the same emotional opposition to it that so many non-scientists do. If a credible alternative to evolution appeared, biologists would race to publish it. Indeed, scientists have made some significant revisions of details to the theory of evolution, but there has been no such race to overthrow the basic theory.

The theory of evolution is stronger than ever, accepted around the world without a hint of informed scientific challenge to the basic theory. The controversy surrounding evolution has made it one of the most scrutinized theories of all time, and evolution has withstood that scrutiny with flying colors.

4. Should teaching the controversy be expanded to include so-called alternatives to evolution? There are many mutually contradictory creationist positions, with disagreement on such fundamental issues as how old the universe is and which religion's book best describes the creator. Since the basis for creationism is its emotional religious appeal, and since such attraction varies between cultures and individuals, creationism will always be hopelessly controversial. Surely any lesson on the controversy should include the whole controversy. I'm all for teaching that, just not in a science class.

Oh, and by the way, just because someone lampoons the way it is laid out in a book, doesn't mean that they have any scientific basis to stand on.
Besides, the guy can only find 25 'lies'? With all the millions of pieces of evidence that exists out there? Surely he can do better than that. As can you.

'Biblical science' is neither biblical nor science. Discuss.

If you are so concerned about the validity of science, then by all means, become a scientist and test it for yourself. We teach science in schools, not religion. When there is debate about these things there is one thing the biblical 'inerrantists' forget. I assume by your statements you mean that creation and evolution should be given equal time in the classroom. Yes?

1. The teaching of creationism does not belong in science classes because creationism has no science to teach. It is based on personal religious belief, not on evidence. For the most part, creationism can fit with anything we find, making it unscientific. Where creation models do make specific predictions that can be tested against evidence, they fail the tests. Asking for equal time is asking for nonscience to be taught in science classes.

A 1999 United States poll found that most people favor teaching evolution -- and teaching it as science -- and that when creationism is taught, most prefer that it be taught either in nonscience classes or as a religious belief (DYG 2000).

2. Equal time would open creationism, and by extension Christianity in general, to ridicule and attack. Saint Augustine recognized this in the fifth century:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, . . . and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. (Augustine 1982, 42-43) This is proving true, seeing as how so many people around the world look at our country claiming to be some sort of superpower and leader in the world with so many of our people getting one view of the world and demanding that everyone accept their way of thinking without questioning, and they are LAUGHING at us. No wonder we're going to be left behind. When you lose the ability to think critically, you lose freedoms that had been previously taken for granted. The past 7 years are an indication of that. Is that how you would like your worldview to be perceived? as some sort of laughingstock? I wouldn't, and I think it does a disservice to those Christians who really are working to live and restore the teachings of the one they purport to follow. The difference between you and me is that my world won't come to an end if I'm wrong. If the world comes to an end, then Nature is working to restore the pattern that was meant to be. And none of us can escape it.

3. Equal time would mean teaching

* other versions of creationism from other denominations of Christianity (including young-earth, old-earth, day-age, gap theory, geocentrism, and flat earth). All have equal basis for being taught, since they are all based on exactly the same Bible. All are mutually incompatible (DYG 2000; Watchtower 1985, 186; Morris 1984, 215-247).

* other versions of scientific creationism from other religions. Claims have been made for Muslim, Hindu, and Native American versions of creationism.

The only legal precedent favoring creationism in the United States in the last fifty years was an Interior Department decision finding, on the basis of native creation and flood myths, that 9400-year-old Kennewick Man was associated with present-day Native American tribes (Chatters 2001, 266).

I forgot the two backslashes after http: in the last post

Hi PriveR,

You said,

"What the bible proposes in terms of some sort of scientific fact is actually diametrically opposed to what science actually is. The bible was written long before any scientific methods popped up. So naturally people today have to make incredible and unsupported leaps of logic to make their worldview fit. I have no problem with that as long as those people don't waste my time/tax money on such false claims and somehow try to convince others, especially vulnerable people and children that these are somehow true and should be taught in schools as some sort of fact, when it is religion."

[Yeah right PriveR, just like the school and university systems have been doing since the Scopes Trail in the USA; indoctrinating young children on evolutionary assumptions and here in Canada using my Canadian tax dollar to support the indoctrination process in our school systems]

There is one website were a former high school teach, who is a creationist and has been collecting science text books for many, many years, lampoons and exposes some of the indoctrination put in these text books to answer the fool according to his folly. He lists twenty five lies in the text books. Here is the site:

http:drdino.activeforjesus.com/videos/seminar4_300k.wmv

local floods etc.

Didn't your god say something about 'no more floods' after that one? Recent events say otherwise. There goes your inerrancy.

Also, in regards to fossils:

1. Most fossils, by themselves, are not a problem for a young earth. The problems come from geological context, including the following:
* Independent dating of sediments via any number of techniques.
* Multiple layers of fossils. Sometimes each layer preserves an entire ecosystem, which would have taken decades to establish.
* Large number of fossils, beyond what the earth could support at once, showing multiple generations were necessary.
* In-place marine fossils on mountains, showing that the mountain must have risen since the fossil was deposited.
* Reworked fossils, showing that a mountain must have risen and eroded since the fossil was deposited.

2. Many fossils occur in amber, and the formation of amber cannot happen rapidly. First, plant resin polymerizes to produce copal, which takes thousands of years. Then the volatile oils must evaporate, which can take millions of years more.

Also:
1. Great numbers of fossils in one area indicate great numbers of animals dying in that area (or, in some cases, their bodies being transported there). Usually, this argues against rapid burial, because that many animals are not found together at once in life. A simpler explanation is that animals have died in the area over many years. For example, one mass burial is at the La Brea Tar Pits, which have been trapping animals for thousands of years.

2. In fact, vast fossil beds are evidence against catastrophic rapid burial. One formation alone (the Karroo Formation in Africa) is estimated to contain 800 billion vertebrate fossils. If that is just 1 percent of the world's fossils, there must be 2100 vertebrate animals per acre, far more than we see today (Schadewald 1982). Fossil plant remains, such as coal, are almost 100 times more massive than living plant biomass (Poldervaart 1955; Ricklefs 1993).

3. Mass kills can occur through normal processes. Every year, hundreds of wildebeests drown during river crossings on their annual migration. Their bodies wash up on river banks. Collapse of the stream banks could bury many. Other local catastrophes can also kill many animals at once.

References:

1. Poldervaart, Arie, 1955. Chemistry of the earth's crust. pp. 119-144 In: Poldervaart, A., ed., Crust of the Earth, Geological Society of America Special Paper 62, MD: Waverly Press.
2. Ricklefs, Robert, 1993. The Economy of Nature. New York: W. H. Freeman
3. Schadewald, Robert J., 1982. Six 'Flood' arguments Creationists can't answer. Creation/Evolution 9: 12-17.

Every single reference I have given has been published in a peer reviewed, mainstream scientific journal, with the credentials of each person established.

Again, there are references historically that the Civil War existed, even the time and dates of battle and the movement of the leaders of both sides. Witnesses and historical records bear this out. It doesn't mean that Scarlett O'Hara or any of the ficitonal characters in Gone with the Wind ever existed either.

Please see my remarks above about biblical inerrancy.

Hi PriveR,

Tell me something, since no human alive on planet earth today was around during the forming of either the earth or the universe, how certain are you that your evolutionary scientists have it right? Do you believe you are 100% certain? How do you know that the evidence has been interpreted rightly? How do you know that the evolutionary theory is not just some philosophical assumption coming from outside of science? Do facts interpret themselves, or would you agree that they are interpreted from a framework of ideas relying on basic assumptions? Just because Creationists do not play by the rules of your game how do you know they are not the ones who are right? For every strand of evidence you use to frame your arguments I could find a strand that would validate mine. That does not necessarily make it right.

You assume so many things on the authority of evolutionary science, which is after all, a theory. It is not proven.

I start from the belief in God and the worldwide flood to explain the evidence and build a case that I contend is a more viable explanation of why we have million and millions of fossils buried in rock layers throughout the earth. I can also show you why a young earth is feasible, but neither one of us is going to convince the other by citing evidences from a subjective authority, of which my God is not. That is why I keep bringing you back to the standard or measure in which you gauge all truth. If it is not absolute, it is subjective to each person and change and nothing can be known truly. And that is where your belief system betrays itself (its subjectivity), otherwise you would not have taken the time and trouble to refute the claims of the Bible. You definitely believe your science to be true otherwise you would not place your trust in it.

Some of your citations you have selected show that Darwinian evolution is no longer an acceptable way of explaining origins.

"16. Malmgren, B. A., W. A. Berggren and G. P. Lohmann, 1984. Species formation through punctuated gradualism in planktonic foraminifera. Science 225: 317-319."

As I said before and you confirm by some of these citations there is a dispute between a slow gradual process of Darwinian evolution (uniformitarianism) and one that is rapid such as the punctuated equilibrium theory pushed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould.

Operational science deals with processes that are observable and repeatable. The rest is just theory. Evolution is not something that can be proven to be repeatable, because, although I am not familiar with many of the citations in your post, the evidence for them happening in the present is unavailable. Species have the ability to adapt within themselves, but not change into a different species. A dog is still a dog although there is a vast variety, just as a man is still a man even though we have differences in characteristics. There is no missing link to prove that man descended from the planet of the apes. All the supposed fossil transitions have been shot down, much of the time by the evolutionary communities.

You said,

"Evolutionary Scientists don't look for ideas of a big bang, either. That's for Quantum physicists. If any scientist starts out with a bias that ends up in the experiment, it is invalidated and the results are unusable."

A few points to make here.
1. Evolution is a philosophy that pervades every field of science. Whether a quantum physicist or a marine biologist, if he/she believes in evolution he/she is an evolutionary scientist no matter what department they are associated with.
2. In studying origins every scientist has a bias in the way they look at the evidence. Since origins cannot be replicated or repeated all evidence is translated according to basic presuppositions. The whole web of belief is built upon certain foundational principles. In the case of evolution "in the beginning nothing" and in the case of Creationism "in the beginning God."
3. What experiment? If you mean looking at a bunch of fossils that do not speak for themselves and determining that they had their origin by a "big bang" where has that experiment been duplicated? Because it occurred in the past, where is the evidence for it occurring in the present?

Believing the sun, earth and solar system formed from a cloud of dust 4.3 or 4.5 billion years ago (depending on who you cite) is not something we were there to see, can duplicate or determine by by looking at the evidence without building on our own preconceived ideas. Any thought about origins has other thoughts attached to it. And without God as our reference point whose authority are you going to believe with all the discrepancies in dating? Who is the latest guru you are trusting in? You are relying on someone who wasn't there to tell you how it all began.

You said,

"2. The geologic column is validated in great detail by radiometric dating, which is based on principles of physics, not evolution. Furthermore, different dating techniques are consistent, and they are consistent with the order established by the early pioneers of stratigraphy.

Please look up a reply at "answersingenesis under radiometric dating.

PriveR, you said,

" 2. There are many different kinds of surface features preserved in the middle of the geological column. These features include soils, mud cracks, evaporate deposits, footprints, raindrop impressions, meteor craters, worm burrows, wind-blown sediments, stream channels, and many others. For example:

* The Loess Plateau in China has a layer of loess more than 300 m thick. Loess is wind-blown sediment that would not occur during a global flood. The Loess Plateau occurs around the downwind edges of the Ordos Desert, its source of sediments, and the grain size of the loess decreases the further one gets from the desert (Vandenberghe et al. 1997).

* The Loess Plateau includes paleosols within it. These are buried fossil soils, some of which would require tens of thousands of years to form (Kukla and An 1989; Liu et al. 1985)."

Other catastrophic events since the flood could explain many different kinds of events, such as volcanic eruptions, earth quakes, local floods etc. Take Mt. St. Helen in Washington State and the accumulation of layers of ash by the feet forming in a period of a few days, or the movement of glaciation in depositing soils from different places."

The question for you is how do fossils form? Do you really believe that it takes ten thousand years to form a fossil? How would wind blown sediment encase millions of dead animals to form fossils? Watch time lapse photography of an animal dying in the plains and see how long it takes the body and bones to decompose.

To answer just a few of your points on missing links, please use the search engine on the "answersingenesis" website to refute points 11, 20, 23, 24, since the webmaster will not let me post the links myself for some reason?

Last one was mine again. keep forgetting to put my name in.

What amazes me about all of this is that inerrantists miss the point entirely of mythology and the purpose of such stories.

Stories are written down as ways to instruct and inspire people on ways to live a good life. All stories have equal validity. People back in those days and earlier would take events that were LOCAL to themselves, not global, and put it in a fictional story as a way to find some meaning in those events. They were and are never meant to be searched to see if they apply today in a literal sense, but as metaphor. It's all fiction intended to be used to inspire, sometimes heal, and sometimes used as a tool for political control in the wrong hands.

Myths are generally broken down into three types:
creation myths (where did we/Earth/deity/nature/animals/morality come from);
Explanation myths (why are we/earth/animals/nature the way it is)
and destination myths (where are we/earth/animals/etc headed) and any and all mythology, stories, including biblical, fits under these criteria.

Every culture has them, but seems like only inerrantist Christians are trying to find some sort of pseudoscience to 'prove' their case, because they know that without it, their entire claims to 'one truth' fall apart at the seams. What the bible proposes in terms of some sort of scientific fact is actually diametrically opposed to what science actually is. The bible was written long before any scientific methods popped up. So naturally people today have to make incredible and unsupported leaps of logic to make their worldview fit. I have no problem with that as long as those people don't waste my time/tax money on such false claims and somehow try to convince others, especially vulnerable people and children that these are somehow true and should be taught in schools as some sort of fact, when it is religion.

You do not think that the Almighty has the ability to preserve what He inspired and give His creatures the ability to know Him from His revelation to us?

Actually, no. if your god actually existed he would be laughing at the way some of your folks have interpreted that book.

1. There are many transitional fossils. The only way that the claim of their absence may be remotely justified, aside from ignoring the evidence completely, is to redefine "transitional" as referring to a fossil that is a direct ancestor of one organism and a direct descendant of another. However, direct lineages are not required; they could not be verified even if found. What a transitional fossil is, in keeping with what the theory of evolution predicts, is a fossil that shows a mosaic of features from an older and more recent organism.

2. Transitional fossils may coexist with gaps. We do not expect to find finely detailed sequences of fossils lasting for millions of years. Nevertheless, we do find several fine gradations of fossils between species and genera, and we find many other sequences between higher taxa that are still very well filled out.

The following are fossil transitions between species and genera:

1. Human ancestry. There are many fossils of human ancestors, and the differences between species are so gradual that it is not always clear where to draw the lines between them.

2. The horns of titanotheres (extinct Cenozoic mammals) appear in progressively larger sizes, from nothing to prominence. Other head and neck features also evolved. These features are adaptations for head-on ramming analogous to sheep behavior (Stanley 1974).

3. A gradual transitional fossil sequence connects the foraminifera Globigerinoides trilobus and Orbulina universa (Pearson et al. 1997). O. universa, the later fossil, features a spherical test surrounding a "Globigerinoides-like" shell, showing that a feature was added, not lost. The evidence is seen in all major tropical ocean basins. Several intermediate morphospecies connect the two species, as may be seen in the figure included in Lindsay (1997).

4. The fossil record shows transitions between species of Phacops (a trilobite; Phacops rana is the Pennsylvania state fossil; Eldredge 1972; 1974; Strapple 1978).

5. Planktonic forminifera (Malmgren et al. 1984). This is an example of punctuated gradualism. A ten-million-year foraminifera fossil record shows long periods of stasis and other periods of relatively rapid but still gradual morphologic change.

6. Fossils of the diatom Rhizosolenia are very common (they are mined as diatomaceous earth), and they show a continuous record of almost two million years which includes a record of a speciation event (Miller 1999, 44-45).

7. Lake Turkana mollusc species (Lewin 1981).

8. Cenozoic marine ostracodes (Cronin 1985).

9. The Eocene primate genus Cantius (Gingerich 1976, 1980, 1983).

10. Scallops of the genus Chesapecten show gradual change in one "ear" of their hinge over about 13 million years. The ribs also change (Pojeta and Springer 2001; Ward and Blackwelder 1975).

11. Gryphaea (coiled oysters) become larger and broader but thinner and flatter during the Early Jurassic (Hallam 1968).

The following are fossil transitionals between families, orders, and classes:

1. Human ancestry. Australopithecus, though its leg and pelvis bones show it walked upright, had a bony ridge on the forearm, probably vestigial, indicative of knuckle walking (Richmond and Strait 2000).

2. Dinosaur-bird transitions.

3. Haasiophis terrasanctus is a primitive marine snake with well-developed hind limbs. Although other limbless snakes might be more ancestral, this fossil shows a relationship of snakes with limbed ancestors (Tchernov et al. 2000). Pachyrhachis is another snake with legs that is related to Haasiophis (Caldwell and Lee 1997).

4. The jaws of mososaurs are also intermediate between snakes and lizards. Like the snake's stretchable jaws, they have highly flexible lower jaws, but unlike snakes, they do not have highly flexible upper jaws. Some other skull features of mososaurs are intermediate between snakes and primitive lizards (Caldwell and Lee 1997; Lee et al. 1999; Tchernov et al. 2000).

5. Transitions between mesonychids and whales.

6. Transitions between fish and tetrapods.

7. Transitions from condylarths (a kind of land mammal) to fully aquatic modern manatees. In particular, Pezosiren portelli is clearly a sirenian, but its hind limbs and pelvis are unreduced (Domning 2001a, 2001b).

8. Runcaria, a Middle Devonian plant, was a precursor to seed plants. It had all the qualities of seeds except a solid seed coat and a system to guide pollen to the seed (Gerrienne et al. 2004).

9. A bee, Melittosphex burmensis, from Early Cretaceous amber, has primitive characteristics expected from a transition between crabronid wasps and extant bees (Poinar and Danforth 2006).

The following are fossil transitionals between kingdoms and phyla:

1. The Cambrian fossils Halkiera and Wiwaxia have features that connect them with each other and with the modern phyla of Mollusca, Brachiopoda, and Annelida. In particular, one species of halkieriid has brachiopod-like shells on the dorsal side at each end. This is seen also in an immature stage of the living brachiopod species Neocrania. It has setae identical in structure to polychaetes, a group of annelids. Wiwaxia and Halkiera have the same basic arrangement of hollow sclerites, an arrangement that is similar to the chaetae arrangement of polychaetes. The undersurface of Wiwaxia has a soft sole like a mollusk's foot, and its jaw looks like a mollusk's mouth. Aplacophorans, which are a group of primitive mollusks, have a soft body covered with spicules similar to the sclerites of Wiwaxia (Conway Morris 1998, 185-195).

2. Cambrian and Precambrain fossils Anomalocaris and Opabinia are transitional between arthropods and lobopods.

3. An ancestral echinoderm has been found that is intermediate between modern echinoderms and other deuterostomes (Shu et al. 2004).
References:

1. Caldwell, M. W. and M. S. Y. Lee, 1997. A snake with legs from the marine Cretaceous of the Middle East. Nature 386: 705-709.
2. Conway Morris, Simon, 1998. The Crucible of Creation, Oxford University Press.
3. Cronin, T. M., 1985. Speciation and stasis in marine ostracoda: climatic modulation of evolution. Science 227: 60-63.
4. Domning, Daryl P., 2001a. The earliest known fully quadupedal sirenian. Nature 413: 625-627.
5. Domning, Daryl P., 2001b. New "intermediate form" ties seacows firmly to land. Reports of the National Center for Science Education 21(5-6): 38-42.
6. Eldredge, Niles, 1972. Systematics and evolution of Phacops rana (Green, 1832) and Phacops iowensis Delo, 1935 (Trilobita) from the Middle Devonian of North America. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 147(2): 45-114.
7. Eldredge, Niles, 1974. Stability, diversity, and speciation in Paleozoic epeiric seas. Journal of Paleontology 48(3): 540-548.
8. Gerrienne, P. et al. 2004. Runcaria, a Middle Devonian seed plant precursor. Science 306: 856-858.
9. Gingerich, P. D., 1976. Paleontology and phylogeny: Patterns of evolution of the species level in early Tertiary mammals. American Journal of Science 276(1): 1-28.
10. Gingerich, P. D., 1980. Evolutionary patterns in early Cenozoic mammals. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 8: 407-424.
11. Gingerich, P. D., 1983. Evidence for evolution from the vertebrate fossil record. Journal of Geological Education 31: 140-144.
12. Hallam, A., 1968. Morphology, palaeoecology and evolution of the genus Gryphaea in the British Lias. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 254: 91-128.
13. Lee, Michael S. Y., Gorden L. Bell Jr. and Michael W. Caldwell, 1999. The origin of snake feeding. Nature 400: 655-659.
14. Lewin, R., 1981. No gap here in the fossil record. Science 214: 645-646.

16. Malmgren, B. A., W. A. Berggren and G. P. Lohmann, 1984. Species formation through punctuated gradualism in planktonic foraminifera. Science 225: 317-319.
17. Miller, Kenneth R., 1999. Finding Darwin's God. New York: HarperCollins.
18. Pearson, P. N., N. J. Shackleton and M. A. Hall. 1997. Stable isotopic evidence for the sympatric divergence of Globigerinoides trilobus and Orbulina universa (planktonic foraminifera). Journal of the Geological Society, London 154: 295-302.
19. Poinar, G. O. Jr. and B. N. Danforth. 2006. A fossil bee from Early Cretaceous Burmese amber. Science 314: 614.
20. Richmond B. G. and D. S. Strait, 2000. Evidence that humans evolved from a knuckle-walking ancestor. Nature 404: 382-385. See also Collard, M. and L. C. Aiello, 2000. From forelimbs to two legs. Nature 404: 339-340.
21. Shu, D.-G. et al., 2004. Ancestral echinoderms from the Chengjiang deposits of China. Nature 430: 422-428.
22. Stanley, Steven M., 1974. Relative growth of the titanothere horn: A new approach to an old problem. Evolution 28: 447-457.
23. Strapple, R. R., 1978. Tracing three trilobites. Earth Science 31(4): 149-152.
24. Tchernov, E. et al., 2000. A fossil snake with limbs. Science 287: 2010-2012. See also Greene, H. W. and D. Cundall, 2000. Limbless tetrapods and snakes with legs. Science 287: 1939-1941.
25. Ward, L. W. and B. W. Blackwelder, 1975. Chesapecten, A new genus of Pectinidae (Mollusca: Bivalvia) from the Miocene and Pliocene of eastern North America. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 861.

As for your geologic column:

1. The geologic column was outlined by creationist geologists. For example, Adam Sedgwick, who described and named the Cambrian era, referred to the theory of evolution as "no better than a phrensied dream" (Ritland 1982). The geologic column is based on the observation of faunal succession, the fact that organisms vary across strata, and that they do so in a consistent order from place to place. William "Strata" Smith (1769-1839) recognized faunal succession years before Darwin published his ideas on biological evolution.

2. The geologic column is validated in great detail by radiometric dating, which is based on principles of physics, not evolution. Furthermore, different dating techniques are consistent, and they are consistent with the order established by the early pioneers of stratigraphy.

As for the flood:

1. Varves within the geologic column show seasonal layers over many, many years. In many cases, such as the Green River formation, these layers are too fine to have settled out in less than several weeks per layer. Varves in New England show evidence of climate change 17,500 to 13,500 years ago, which matches climate patterns in other parts of the world (Rittenour et al. 2000). These layers prove that the geological record was not produced in just one event.

2. There are many different kinds of surface features preserved in the middle of the geological column. These features include soils, mud cracks, evaporite deposits, footprints, raindrop impressions, meteor craters, worm burrows, wind-blown sediments, stream channels, and many others. For example:

* The Loess Plateau in China has a layer of loess more than 300 m thick. Loess is wind-blown sediment that would not occur during a global flood. The Loess Plateau occurs around the downwind edges of the Ordos Desert, its source of sediments, and the grain size of the loess decreases the further one gets from the desert (Vandenberghe et al. 1997).

* The Loess Plateau includes paleosols within it. These are buried fossil soils, some of which would require tens of thousands of years to form (Kukla and An 1989; Liu et al. 1985).

Evolutionary Scientists don't look for ideas of a big bang, either. That's for Quantum physicists. If any scientist starts out with a bias that ends up in the experiment, it is invalidated and the results are unusable.

You're going to have to do better than that.

Hi PriveR,

When you say,

"So basically you're telling me that the earth is 6000 years old and was created in six 24-hour periods? When the whole of geology states otherwise? Are you serious?"

Yes, I'm serious. I believe the earth is roughly 6000-10000 years old. Are you serious in believing that it is roughly 4.3 billion years old?

With all the bad science out there on origins you really believe that

"Science is self correcting. Even if a scientist did come with some bias or something, (which they are trained not to do, anyway,) in order to be a true scientific experiment, if they results don't come back like they want it to, they must find a better explanation for why they are seeing what is happening. 2+2 equals four, not your god."

The problem with origins is that we cannot duplicate origins to show the conclusion was true. As God said to Job,

"Where were you when I laid the earth's fundation? Tell me if you understand." (Job 38:4)

Both evolutionists and creationists start with basic presuppositions that they build their web of beliefs on. The evolutionary scientist looks at the evidence with their rosy colored glasses on presuming a big bang 14-19 billion years ago is responsible for everything we have today. The creation scientist looks at the evidence from the biblical perspective to arrive at the age of the earth. Neither one is unbiased. Neither one is neutral. They both bring to the table fundamental starting points. Both look at the facts differently.

So when you say,

"When the whole of geology states otherwise? Are you serious?"

The geologic age system is the basic time frame evolutionists use for interpreting the history of the earth. Go back to the nineteenth century and one of the reasons Darwin was so comfortable in proposing the theory of evolution was because Charles Lyell had come up with "Principles of Geology" in which uniformitarianism, [geological deposits laid down continuously and uniformly over long periods of time rather than resulting quickly by catastrophic event(s)] was a way of explaining the fossil evidence in the different rock layers as the beginning and evolving of life. "Index fossils" were believed to be found in different layers that determined the age of the fossil according to the layer.

The theory that so much of evolution is based on is pretty well abandoned today because of the many holes in the geological column. [PriveR, do a web search on uniformitarianism or the geological column to get a perspective] There is only one place you will find this supposed geologic column, in textbooks to indoctrinate from a young age your belief system.

One of the problems with uniformitarianism is that fossils do not happen without a catastrophic event. An animal dying on the plains will slowly decay until it eventually disappears. For a fossil to form the animal or plant must be buried and encased quickly usually with a lot of pressure placed on it. That is why the Flood is a more feasible explanation of why we find millions of fossils buried in rock layers throughout the earth. Vast amounts of water can have quite an effect on layering and sculpturing the landscape as well as providing a fossil graveyard of animals and plants throughout the earth. (Ever watch how when you shake a glass of water mixed with sand how different layers of sediment form?)

It also gives an explanation why you have petrified trees encased in numerous layers of the geologic table, which represent millions of years of earth history (supposedly). They are called "Polystrates." [Check it out]

Then you have the problem of the "missing link." It is still missing. Where are all the supposed transition forms between species? Can you name but one? Why do we not see a change from one species into another happening today?

I have an explanation for that,

"So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teams, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind...let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds..." (Genesis 1:20-25)

You said,

"Cherry picking pseudoscience to try to prove your cause is like putting a weather vane on top of a house that hasn't even been built yet."

Ditto!

Finally, you said,

"Doesn't your god get awfully pissy at those who presume to know what he thinks?"

You do not think that the Almighty has the ability to preserve what He inspired and give His creatures the ability to know Him from His revelation to us? You suppress the knowledge when reading the Scriptures that it is God speaking to you.

"But about the resurrection of the dead - have you not READ what GOD SAID to you, "I AM the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living." (Matthew 22:31, 32)

Have you, PriveR, not read what God said to you?

"To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said, "If you hold to My teaching, you are really My disciples. Then you WILL KNOW the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31, 32)

Thanks for the chat. I will get to your other questions during the week.

Hi PriveR,

My last post is being held. I should have learned to copy it so that I could resubmit it.

"That is general revelation."

No, actually, it's not. Its far more powerful, pervasive and interactive than that.

So basically you're telling me that the earth is 6000 years old and was created in six 24-hour periods? When the whole of geology states otherwise? Are you serious?

The thing about biblical creationism that I don't understand at all is that there is a very serious misunderstanding of what science is, and how it works. Science is self correcting. Even if a scientist did come with some bias or something, (which they are trained not to do, anyway,) in order to be a true scientific experiment, if they results don't come back like they want it to, they must find a better explanation for why they are seeing what is happening. 2+2 equals four, not your god.

Cherry picking pseudoscience to try to prove your cause is like putting a weather vane on top of a house that hasn't even been built yet.

And I think atheists are perfectly capable of making sense of the world for themselves. To assume otherwise is really condescending and presumptuous. Seeing as how you and I are not atheists, it would be better left up to them to speak for themselves anyway.

"To correctly interpret the truth we think God's thoughts after Him."

Doesn't your god get awfully pissy at those who presume to know what he thinks? Seems like folks in your book are always dying arbitrarily for that reason.

Again, all you have said in this time is:
"The bible says it, i believe it and that settles it."
Please see my response to that above.

Good morning!

Your question PriveR,

What if there were ways to obtain knowledge of the divine through Nature that came outside of any book? I happen to believe there is, and have experienced little glimpses of this for myself.

That is general revelation. The creation confirms that God exists by what has been made so that men/women are without excuse before God (Romans 1:18-19 says,

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world [notice that God attributes man's knowledge of Himself since the creation of the world] God's invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that man is without excuse."

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." (Psalm 19:1-4)

But to come to a truthful understanding of what is we have to think God's thoughts after Him. An atheist cannot make sense of the world. His/her reasoning is always inconsistent with truth.

"The fool says in his heart, "There is no God" is pretty foolish, don't you think? To state absolutely "There is no God" would definitely place you in the category of God, being all knowing and having an objective standard. We know that is not the case since the atheist, along with the rest of us are continually learning new things every day. His knowledge, like ours, is finite.

To continue, you said,

"Through science is only part of this, but is equally important. Are you making a claim that you can obtain knowledge of your god through science?"

Yes, true science confirms God's truth. As I have said before, scientist's do not come at the evidence without baggage and bias. When you look at origins, man was not part of the creation until Day Six. They use laws and principles that God has put in place, like 2 + 2 = 4.

Since all facts need to be interpreted our conclusions depend on what our starting points are. How do we know we are correctly interpreting God's word in such matter's, in that mankind was on this earth since the beginning of the creation? You cannot make sense out of the Bible without the earth being created six to ten thousand year's ago, because of the unity throughout the Bible on the creation accounts. Since the Bible does not contradict itself because God is the source of logic and He does not say one thing and then another totally different thing somewhere else, the Bible interprets the Bible and words with the context plays an important part in correctly handling the word of truth (2 Timothy 3:16 with 2 Timothy 2:15)

For instance, the genealogies of Jesus trace His human lineage from both His adoptive father's side of the family and His mother's side of the family. From the one side of the family the genealogy is traced back 42 generation's to Abraham and from the other side of the family to Adam, the first human. We know from Jesus to the time of Abraham there are 42 generations. The genealogies from Adam to Noah and Abraham are traced also in other sections of the Bible. They are traced along the family linage of Jesus to show us that Genesis is an actual account of creation until the Christ is born. The prophetic nature of Scripture is first revealed in Genesis 3:15 onwards concerning God's progressive revelation to mankind, culminating in the Lord Jesus Christ.

"In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe." (Hebrews 1:1-2)

The history of the first 11 chapters of Genesis are significant in a number of ways; teaching on the nature and origin of the universe, the study of man and salvation. They are not mythological stories that, at best, convey religious truth. They are the accounts of the origin of life created by God out of nothing.

"First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "where is this 'coming' He promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." (2 Peter 3:3-4)

You said,

" If so, then that goes against your idea that 'there is only one way' to discover truth."

To correctly interpret the truth we think God's thoughts after Him. In other words, if what is believed does not line up with what He has said we are in error. So to look at the universe and say it created itself goes against the truth of God. To look at the universe and say it was created from 14 to 19 billion years ago, depending upon which "authority" you use, goes against the truth of God.

Here are some of the ways we can know we are correctly interpreting the Word of God in answering the question Genesis being an historical account of origins from Robert Reymond's Systematic Theology p. 393-395.

1. The word "day" (yom), in the singular, duel and plural, occurs some 2,225 times in the Old Testament with the overwhelming preponderance
of these occurrences designating the ordinary daily cycle. Normally, the preponderate meaning of a term should be maintained unless contextual considerations force one to another view....
2. The recurring phrase, "and the evening and the morning [taken together] constitute day one, etc." (1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31), suggest as much. The qualifying words, "evening and morning," attached here to each of these recurring statements occur together outside of Genesis in 37 verses (e.g. Exodus 18:13; 27:21). In each instance these words are employeed to describe an ordinary day.
3. In the hundreds of other cases in the Old Testament where yom stands in conjunction with an ordinary number (first, second, third, etc.), e.g. Exodus 12:15; 24:16; Leviticus 12:3, it never means anything other than a normal, literal day.
4. With the creation of the sun "to rule the day" and the moon "to rule the night" occurring on the fourth day (Gen. 1:16-18), days four through six would almost certainly have been ordinary days. This would suggest that the seventh would have also been an ordinary day. All this would suggest in turn, if we assume the earth was turning on its axis at that time, that days one through three would have been ordinary days as well.
5. If we follow the anologia Scripturae principle of hermeneutics enunciated in Westminister Confession of Faith to the effect that "the infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly" (I/X), then the "ordinary day" view has most to commend it since Moses grounds the commandment regarding seventh-day Sabbath observance in the fact of the divine Exemplar's activity: "In six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the seventh day and made it holy" (Exodus 20:11; see also 31:15-17)
6. In the 608 occurrences of the plural "days" (yamim) in the Old Testament (see Ex. 20:11), their referents are always ordinary days. Ages are never expressed by the word yamim.
7. Finally, if Moses had intended to express the idea of seven "ages" in Genesis 1 he could have employees the term olam, which means "age" or "period of independent duration."

The fact that throughout the Old and New Testaments the age of the earth and history of the earth is associated with man being created in the beginning is evidenced throughout the whole Bible. Jesus Himself (Matthew 19:4; Mark 10:6) confirms the beginning of the earth with the creation of mankind.