Well, duh.
Posted on 01/27/2009 10:41:55 AM PST by smokingfrog
Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week's Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: "They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance."
Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."
Attenborough went further in his opposition to creationism, saying it was "terrible" when it was taught alongside evolution as an alternative perspective. "It's like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five ... Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Diehard, you must be aware that the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, in the very first chapter, lays out how God created the world in 6 days, and all very good.
Were I to believe in evolution, I would not be believing Genesis, or other references to God’s direct creation of the universe with all creatures within it sprinkled throughout the Bible.
no science is very rarely a product of feelings. and for centuries people have been killing each other over religious writings, so they have not stood the test of time.
and?
People’s misinterpretations of them have not stood the test of time.
“I believe Jesus used lots of tools in his teachings.”
Well, He quoted Scripture as authoritative (nothing else). He reasoned. He argued. He demonstrated. He raised people from the dead, healed lepers, made the blind see and the deaf hear. He drove moneychangers out of the temple with a whip. He spoke in parables. He confronted. I guess those are all tools in a manner of speaking.
The first books of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy, were written down during Moses’ time, by Moses. The Psalms were written by King David. Proverbs’ author was King Solomon. Every book of the Bible has a fairly easily discernible author, and historians, even non-Christian ones, generally accept the authorship and the approximate dates of writing.
Nothing was written hundreds of years after Christ. The first four gospels are eyewitness accounts by four of his disciples (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and were all written before they died (obviously).
> Diehard, you must be aware that the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, in the very first chapter, lays out how God created the world in 6 days, and all very good.
I believe God used the process of Evolution to achieve all of that, in 6 epochs. On the 7th epoch (which we are still in today) He rested.
Evolution and Creation can be entirely compatible.
No, he simply concluded that whatever created the world is not particularly benevolent. A look at the amount of evil and pain in the world makes that obvious on its face.
horses, zebras, asses, equivilent levels of evolution.
by that argument, shouldn’t we have a species of horse that has evolved as humans?
same could be asked of canines, felines, bovines, etc.
Well, duh.
The problem with that idea is that God doesn’t say He used 6 epochs, He says He used 6 days.
The word “day” is used throughout the Old Testament, it always means “day,” not “epoch.”
Indeed it does. However, the intention of this passage is to communicate that there is no such thing as a random event. Even the roll of dice are managed by God. Thus the contention of evolutionists that all processes involved in natural selection are undirected and wholly “accidental” flies in the face of the passage you quote.
If American slaves came from Africa, why are there still Africans?
Why? Is that YOU God?
How dare you assume to understand Gods handiwork.
Writing a book on gambling probabilities one must assume a random distribution and not tell your reader “if God wants you to win you will win”; you have to give them the odds of them winning, as they cannot know the mind of God.
Similarly when discussing biology and mutations, we find a probabilistic distribution of mutations. That is what we observe. Scientists cannot know the mind of God and say “this particular mutation is the one that God wanted”, we can only determine the distribution of mutations and the differential reproductive success that different variations will have.
I am OUTTA HERE.
have fun beating your collective heads against the wall.
> The problem with that idea is that God doesn’t say He used 6 epochs, He says He used 6 days.
Elsewhere He says that a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day — or words to that effect.
God is not time-bound like we are. He is eternal, moving at will thru time. Our world and existence comprises the dimensions of height, width, and depth, and is bound by time. His is not: he can move freely between any of these dimensions (and possibly more besides). And now, so can Jesus.
That is how God was able to turn back the sun, and that is how prophecy works. Time does not matter at all to God. That is how He knows the end from the beginning: he can move thru time as easily as we can walk up-and-down a sidewalk. Does He want to know what happens in a thousand years’ time? He merely goes and has a look.
Genesis 1 is a parable, written so that we can understand WHY things happened. Evolution tells us How.
“(A) - who ever said God was “benevolent”. HE made YOU. Don’t YOU apply labels to HIM that you think he ought have.
According to Merriam-Webster, “benevolent” means “marked by or disposed to doing good.” What do YOU think “benevolent” means? Of course if you think worms that burrow through children’s eyeballs are good things, then you can still call God “benevolent.” But you’re probably right. Best to avoid any labels, since an infinite being would be more different from us than we are from a slab of rock.
It puzzles me that people insist on sticking labels based on human nature onto a creature that is supposedly infinite. Emotions such as “love,” “anger,” and “sorrow” make no sense in an infinite being who exists outside of time.
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