I was mainly disagreeing with your claim that a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation stories are consistent with the theory of evolution. I was mainly just needling you when you claimed to accept the a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation stories since there is pretty clearly two stories.

"Genesis 3:8They heard the sound of (G)the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, (H)and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

9Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "(I)Where are you?"



Kind of a lie sense the biblical God had to know where they where.

Not at all. Have you ever asked someone a question, to help them understand and realize something?

Same thing here, God was teaching him something.....

In that case you aren't taking it literally...


Rizeagainst, I hope you realize I've just been playing Devil's, or perhaps, Angel's advocate in our most recent posts.

Yeah i know, i said kind of.

But... if an all seeing God asked me where is was. Well i wouldn't hide in the first i place but if for some strange reason i did and he did ask. Id have to give him a wise ass answer because i know hes just messing with me.

sorry been away from the compu for a couple days and really want to address these points.

track record
First...yeah that was pretty vague! what I intended here is a couple of things. I think we all know that the Bible has been the most widely sold, reproduced and dispersed book of history. ok?

Two, and as a result and the implications of its content it has been the most arduously scrutinized and criticized work in human history. R.C. Sproul states it better, "No book ever written has been subjected to such comprehensive critical scrutiny as has the Bible" (p.190 Defending Your Faith).

Third, and most importantly the accuracy of the Bible(with this I am NOT referring to the content, which I am sure we don't agree on). Ravi Zacharias in one of his lectures said something to the effect that scholars have found that the reproduction of the Bible has had about a 99.5% or 99.7% (I don't recollect exactly) accuracy. And, the Dead Sea Scrolls solidified this with regards to the Old Testament.

Religious deaths

I really have to disagree with your logic here!!! Obviously in my previous post I was referring to the history of the Jews.
Lots of people have died for religious belief therefore the Holocaust represents nothing more than any one individual dying for a religious belief.

I would strongly argue that the Jews were not killed for Judaism, but rather for their ethnicity! Not all the Jews of the holocaust and current Jews follow Judaism. In fact many Jews in L.A. could be regarded as atheists, but still strongly maintain their ethnic heritage.

Anyhow, for example in the old Testament their are numerous references to the diaspora of Jews and the promise of reuniting. For the sake of time and 'thread' space I will give just one (one of the strongest):
Deuteronomy 30:1-5
"When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations, and when you and your children return to the LORD you God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on your and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD you God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your fathers, and you will take possession of it.

May 14th 1948 Israel became a state again. What the Jews have done is no small thing but extraordinary. They are the only people to have done this. To assert that this is just coincidence is an exertion of faith. During my times of doubt and questioning of the Judeo-Christian faith I have looked at this and thought this is beyond coincidence.

So, as for your Easter Bunny analogy: yes if the people of the Easter Bunny had suffered what the Jews had, had a long lasting historical record and made a claim such as Deuteronomy 30.
Then YES I think that would desire some strong examination

If I am still being vague or ambiguous in something I am writing this quickly and am pressed for time.

You are very intelligent.
Thank you for delighting.

Your child has done something wrong, and now he knows he has done something wrong. He is ashamed and dodges behind the couch. Now you know he is behind the couch but you don't want to add to his feeling of shame another shame, by acting in a way that he recognizes he cannot even hide from you.
So you call your child and say to him:"Where are you?"
Now I come and tell you that you are a lier.
What would you think about me?

He is willingly allowing his message to be misrepresented and due to misrepresentation many will go to hell , hell he created and is going to place people in it to cause them misery for eternity, does this make him an all good being? NO WAY..

I never get this argument of free will.. GOD did not want to send a clear and persuading message to us cause it would rob us of free will, yet he does miracles everyday, he comes to earth and acts like he wants to be seen by people around him so that they could believe in him (evidently robing those people from free will , correct?) , answers prayers, has a grand plan, constantly intervenes in lives of many as described in the old testament, wipes out 99.99999% of humans and animals due to the "wickedness of human" he poorly designed in the first place), and at the end will send you to hell if your free will guided you into the wrong conclusions.. LOL, this just sounds so illogical.

Didn't read the entire thread, but let me say this: I believe the existence of a conscious (and the right/wrong feeling we ALL experience) is a strong case for God's existence. I'll probably get slammed for that, but C.S. Lewis writes it far more eloquently than I ever could.

so according to you if there was a universe that was not created by god then all the living creatures would never be social creatures even if that is what's needed to survive?

this can't happen if there is no god right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR9X3gFTpL0

Not at all what I said, and honestly, your point is kind of out of left field in regards to my comment.

you implied that knowing right from wrong is somehow a gift from GOD and this type of thinking cannot happen by the evolutionary changes. right?

Ugg. I said kind of.

Do you think intelligence cannot arise by natural causes and GOD is needed to explain existence of it?

I did not say that

Well you're saying that knowing what action causes good or bad or knowing what is good or bad is a gift from GOD..

ahahahahahaha....what makes you think the stories in the bible are in any way true? Or, since you're so hung up on your "point" - more true than stories of the Easter Bunny?

Pretty clearly he doesn't claimed that the Bible stories are in any way true, or more true than the stories of the Easter Bunny. He is claiming that they have more evidence.

It's how we study/discuss everything else.
You're like a scientist who won't give up his pet theory even when it doesn't fit the facts on the ground. "well, electrons SHOULD do xyz, dammit". It's a bit like the problem Albert hand with QM.
Put yourselves in a martian suit. You closely watch/study baseball games, you can rebuild the game from your observations.
Christianity is the religion that christians practice and it's not the same christianity they practiced in 441 in Rome or in 981 in Lyons. To dig out what were the beliefs of christians then and say "THIS is christianity" is silly.
That's what you're doing with your egg-head example. HE knows what christians believe. phooey.

"Talk is cheap, it takes money to buy whiskey".
There is absolutely no way that what a person says overrides what they actually do when it comes to informing you ( or them ) about what their beliefs are.
That's not in a simplistic way, but taking their actions in total and the situational variables into account.
"It is amazing how little people know about how they actually are". Tardy people often say "what, me always late? oh, sure, it happens at times when it's unavoidable but .... "
Rude people think they're just frank.

As I see it, this isn't going to help rizeagainst's argument at all - Christians don't live according to a literal reading of the bible. Therefore he can't use what the bible says to demonstrate some inconsistency - what the bible says is (according to you) not Christianity. How does people's behaviour imply that the bible should have mentioned evolution?

Perhaps you could say what you think Christianity is - what traits does it have? (Hockey is played with sticks, between two teams, there are goals, .....christianity is...?)

How does someone behave who believes in a God who would have included evolution in his bible compared to someone who believes in a God who would not have included evolution?

Isn't this the opposite of rizeagainst's view? You seem to be suggesting that in order to know what Christianity really is we should look at how it is actually practiced rather than just what a few theologians say. In other words, we should look at Christianity as a social movement, not just as history of ideas. As a social movement we look at how widespread certain ideas are, how they influence the actions and identity of their members and so on. I largely agree with this view (although I might think that theologians are more influential than you do).

Obviously this means that we can't say that Christian beliefs = claims made in the Bible. This would only be true for those Christian communities that accept the claims made in the Bible. And as you say, even if many/most/all Christians claim that they accept the claims made in the Bible, if their actions and other beliefs indicate that they don't, then you should regard this as either something they don't actually believe or as a mistaken belief.