You know, I think it is a problem with smart people.
While raised Jewish, I felt very called to Christianity from a very early age.
But it seemed every Bible-believing Christian I met was a dour, generally closed-minded, legalistic, unfunny, twit. Often hypocrits, too. Christians like the guy posted above who makes the false offer about evolution --- by falsely twisting what evolution is. The kind of people who got mad at Laura Bush's comedy bit.
I call them Christian pharasees, who think man was made for the Law, not the other way around.
It was not until the Army that I found smart, Bible-believing guys that pointed out that Jesus drank wine and educated me on the fact that so much of the "twittedness" of Christiandom is man-added rules.
It made all the difference.
This is an obscure part of the Bible. It is open to interpretation.
And God speaks unclearly --- on purpose, I suppose, so it only becomes clear when we need to know what He meant. For example, at the end of John (on the shore, right after Jesus reinstated Pete), there is a statement by Jesus that is most easily read as "John will live forever."
Well, it didn't mean that. And John made clear that Jesus did not mean that. But people still interpreted it that way.
I think that difficult-to-read statement was a reminder to keep one's mind open when reading the scriptures to what is going on around you. To again use the example of the 2,000 years ago Pharasee --- they were so confident in their interpretation of the scriptures that they missed what was going on right in front of them.
That is a dangerous mistake. And the close-minded anger at the mere topic of evolution by so many Creationist is very similar.
"I think that difficult-to-read statement was a reminder to keep one's mind open when reading the scriptures to what is going on around you. "
Agreed! More should think like that, and then I think real progress could be made in education and philosophies.
You believe Alan Greenspan is ... NAH!!!