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To: Sentis

Why do you continue to duck my question? Further, why do you resort to such heated rhetoric--what are you so angry about? My guess is that one has to do with the other. Perhaps you've become angry and agitated because you have no answer to the question I posed to you based on what you, yourself, acknowledged--that you believe in some god, but can't explain what leads you to that belief. What is your god like? What is He/She/It capable of? What does She/He/It do? What role, if any did It/He/She play in creating, say, the energy that brought about the Big Bang? The matter that impacted at the Big Bang? Initiating the processes you call evolution? Creating the first protein? Producing the system of information we call DNA? Your unwillingness to give answers about the god you believe in and, more importantly, what leads you to faith in this god shows you to be both disingenuous (when it comes to talking about the belief-systems of others) and arrogant (by spewing invectives at those trying to engage in conversation, instead of giving answers to simple questions.

Further, why do you believe in this god? What stirred your heart to faith in the first place? What is faith anyhow? Why do you (why does anyone) have it? Why do you have faith in a god? Again, why does anyone have such faith? Do you (do we) need there to be a god out there? Why?

As to my beliefs, I admit to placing my faith in the Bible and the God of the Bible--though I wouldn't exactly describe the creation He intitiated in exactly the same way as you, I believe in the Biblical account. Makes far too much sense to me to believe that, given all the order, all the precision, all the detail, all the vastness, all the delicacy of creation, that it is evident there is a mind at work, and not some vast series of events that, by all statistical accounts, are impossible.


207 posted on 08/16/2006 8:13:11 PM PDT by MarDav
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To: MarDav; Sentis; Conservative Texan Mom; metmom; antonius; js1138
I hope you do not take offense, I would like to address a few things in your post to Sentis.

You offered, "... given all the order, all the precision, all the detail, all the vastness, all the delicacy of creation, that it is evident there is a mind at work, and not some vast series of events that, by all statistical accounts, are impossible." First, the advent of life from the pre-life conditions is supportable in Genesis, thus not 'statistically impossible'. Second, there is an astonishing delicacy in the record of life on this marvelous orb. The Genesis account implies that life was the proper order of things as started with the first 'bara', and even states that the earth brought forth life. Science is gradually figuring out the particulars of how the Earth brought forth life.

Before addressing the biblical connections, allow me to offer that, as a big fan of minds which find patterns and seek to define the patterns, I see what Charles Darwin did as one of the finest examples of a mind discerning a pattern and then giving a pretty darn good accounting of that pattern given the current science of his day; Darwin's revelation of the pattern was downright inspiration! Subsequent developments in genetics and the discoveries regarding DNA complexity in gene expression have actually reinforced the better portions of Darwin's amazing pattern discovery. Now to the biblical connections.

The Hebrew word 'bara' (there should be a little 'tent' mark over each "a") conveys creation, as in something brand new brought into existence not shaded from something already existing. The word is used three times in Genesis: the creation of spacetime and light, the creation of land species taken broadly to mean multicellular animals, the creation of Adam as a living soul.

The second instance regarding multicellular animals may well be evidenced with the Cambrian explosion and the scarcity of such complex creatures gradually showing up in fossil records leading to the Cambrian explosion.

Reading Genesis with a seeking mind allows one to see that Adam (adamah is the Hebrew word for dust or slime of earth) was already an alive being but became a living soul with the breath of God into his nostrils. If one takes a long view in Genesis, God actually did form Adam from the dust of the ground, except it took billions of years to reach the Adam into whom God breathed His Spirit such that Adam's soul of life became spiritually endowed.

As to Eve and the rib ... red bone makes an excellent source for the stem cells one might use to alter existing genetic status in order to allow Adam to have a mate after being remade so special that he was unique on the Earth in his day. That wouldn't necessarily mean he could not mate with existing hominid females, but he was given a special mate perhaps having non-degraded mitochondria (for example). Scripture says plainly that Cain went into the land of Nod and took himself a wife. He wasn't mating with his sister there. And it is also likely from the biblical account that Adam fathered sons and daughters with females other than Eve. we are given the names of only three children resulting from the mating of Adam and Eve: Cain, Abel, and Seth.

211 posted on 08/16/2006 9:58:06 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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