Yes, I am. Trying to splict the inexplicable does that to me.
God is way more than any box man attempts to confine him to.
Yet we all try to fit Him into our minds and hearts. Even an agnostic such as myself.
He spoke time and matter into existence - even physics agrees that reversing time brings one back to a singularity - for me that has to be God simply b/c of the order not just in all DNA but throughout the Universe.
One aches for an Ordering Principle in a random universe.
Second, yes, death and destruction entered His creation with the eating of the forbidden fruit.
We have a disagreement in degree, not in kind here. PHYSICAL death is implicit in life. I cannot accept it as a "Punishment".
He also said He gave us every seed-bearing plant for us to enjoy. So yes, the fruits and vegetables they produced did ‘die’ so to speak [even that is debatable since the entire plant was not killed nor consumed].
Yes, the cells in those fruits died. Yes, the plant lived.
With the fall He had to basically rewire all living things
I can accept the rule change being Man's fault.
- and even this was for the benefit of mankind [getting ahead of myself, but it will all make complete sense when we get to Heaven]
I hope so, to both halves.
Adam named the animals, indicating He endowed us with language [something that still confounds evolution for any reasonable explanation]
*gentle cough* Having different chirps for different predators improves survival, the finer the meaning the chirps can convey, the better the odds of passing on an improved linguistic skill, that and the same brain regions used for tool manipulation work the tongue and lips. Watch a kid thread a needle. He can scarce do it without sticking out his tongue!
Fourth God is not bound by rules
OK...
we are and He did intend for us to subdue creation and master it - meaning, yes, investigate what works and what does not.
A task made impossible if he arbitrarily changes the rules.
Attempting to understand it is not heretical but He does warn later on that when we increase knowledge we also increase suffering.
Yep. With enough foreknowledge we can suffer things that haven't happened yet!
IOW most of our new discoveries get used for evil, usually first, but I challenge you to find one new scientific discovery that has not been used at sometime for evil.
Not eeeeven gonna try!
I’m still trying to find what it is some folks think is good and useful regarding macro-evolution.
It's a bit early in the process for humans to create a useful and novel species. A clawless, hornless fangless friendly, cold blooded (ectothermic, doesn't need to constantly eat like a mammal just to stay warm) critter that makes milk, lays eggs and provides juicy steaks might be handy.
Wasn’t natural adaptation first discovered by Mendel btw not Darwin?!
No. Mendel figured out genetics. People were breeding better cattle sheep, wheat and whatnot for thousands of years. Mendel gave us the first glimpse of how to do it predictably. A remarkable leap of genius before DNA and chromosomes.
Old Erasmus Darwin beat him by 70 years or so in Zoonomia:
Would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!Where his more famous grandson and Mendel really out shown Old Erasmus was the vast amounts of carefully evaluated and organized data they brought to bear on the subject.
What took Charles thousands of miles, scores of stops on multiple continents and isles, tens of thousands specimens, living, dead, fossilized and bare rock, plus decades of meticulous study and theorizing, Mendel did in a monastery garden.
Apparently everything you have learned about God came from deists, agnostics, and atheists - sheesh.
Not even close.
I am laboring under a handicap though. I simply seem to lack the capacity to feel faith. I liken it to the phenomena called "blind sight". There are people who have no conscious perception of anything in their visual field. They can comfortably navigate a crowded room and avoid every obstacle, yet the see none of them.
I feel like a blind man trying to understand optics and appreciate the colors of a sunset.
Try studying what Lee Strobel found out - that which converted him from atheism to Christianity.
I'll check it out.
Please bear with me if that was all a bit rambling, a few hours ago, I found out one of my dearest and longest term friends was found dead this morning. I just talked to her a couple days ago. It's all still unreal to me. Talking about death, God and the universe is a bit more surreal than I can do coherently right now, but it does seem to help.