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Fact, Fable, and Darwin
One America ^ | 09-2004 | Rodney Stark

Posted on 09/15/2006 3:39:45 PM PDT by ofwaihhbtn

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To: b_sharp

Answers to your questions will not get you or anyone else on the path to eternal life. Actually, your questions lead me to believe that you are on the wide road which leads to destruction.

Matthew 7:13-14 "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."


281 posted on 09/16/2006 9:52:12 PM PDT by taxesareforever (Never forget Matt Maupin)
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To: taxesareforever
"Answers to your questions will not get you or anyone else on the path to eternal life. Actually, your questions lead me to believe that you are on the wide road which leads to destruction.

"Matthew 7:13-14 "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

Sorry but I find passages from the Bible as useless as any other work of fiction.

282 posted on 09/16/2006 10:04:16 PM PDT by b_sharp (Objectivity? Objectivity? We don't need no stinkin' objectivity.)
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To: b_sharp
Sorry but I find passages from the Bible as useless as any other work of fiction.

"Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces." (Matthew 7:6). Of course, these words of Jesus are allegorical. I doubt that any were literally casting pearls before swine. The meaning is pretty simple to figure out; "Do not persist in offering what is sacred or of value to those who have no appreciation for it, because your gift will not only become contaminated and be despised, your generous efforts could also be rebuffed and perhaps even openly attacked."

283 posted on 09/16/2006 10:30:18 PM PDT by taxesareforever (Never forget Matt Maupin)
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To: taxesareforever
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." (Gen. 1:26,27) God was not an amoeba or a monkey before He was God. Neither was man.

So... God must be a man, IOW. QED.

284 posted on 09/17/2006 1:20:29 AM PDT by jennyp (There's ALWAYS time for jibber jabber!)
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To: taxesareforever
The answers are right in front of you in the book called the Bible. Because you don't like what it says you want to use your pea brain to try and understand an unfathomable God. This is typical of those who think they can find answers beyond what God has told us. In regards to your stars scenario. God put the stars, the sun and the moon in the sky and said "Let there be light". And there was light. What's so difficult about that? Oh yeah, you are a librarian who can't accept absolute truth. You believe that God has put mysteries here for intelligent beings, like librarians, to uncover. Here's to your dead end searches that just leave you frustrated and asking more and more questions.

But if God is unfathomable to our pea-brains, then what makes you think your concept of God, his personality, and his expectations for us (if any) are at all accurate? Even if the Bible was as exact a copy of God's Own Words as the Quran is supposed to be, since God's qualities & thoughts are unfathomable to you or I, what makes you think you could begin to understand anything about God accurately by reading it?

Are you in the habit of trusting all your thoughts, hopes, & expectations for the future on people who are unfathomable to you? Why ever would an unfathomable person be emotionally compelling to you?

285 posted on 09/17/2006 1:57:15 AM PDT by jennyp (There's ALWAYS time for jibber jabber!)
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"My cat is a god, therefore God is a pussy" placemark
286 posted on 09/17/2006 2:43:39 AM PDT by dread78645 (Evolution. A doomed theory since 1859.)
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To: andysandmikesmom
Thank you so much for your reply. My mother was a librarian before she retired, and my father worked in a library when he was in graduate school (at Columbia!). I've always been a bookworm and have always been curious. In school, I was either the teacher's pet or the bane of her existence because of all the questions I'd ask. I still read a lot, and the wide variety of books found on my shelves (and in my drawers, and on my floor...) might surprise you.

I happen to have a young nephew who loves to read and who is also extremely curious. Before he was 7 he knew all the dinosaurs' names, how to spell them and how to pronounce them. He's read books on the solar system, he's read biographies of great men and women. He asks questions constantly, and is learning how to find the answers to some on his own.

Life without questions and those who ask them would be unthinkably dull, and I truly pity those who don't have a need to learn new things and to better understand the world around them. I can only think that it's a case of them not knowing what they're missing and that, as the cliche goes, ignorance is bliss.

287 posted on 09/17/2006 3:00:00 AM PDT by kellynch ("Our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves." -- Bernard Baruch)
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To: b_sharp; Coyoteman

"You sure pontificate with a pile of confidence for someone who knows so little."

As Ronald Reagan would say "there you go again"


288 posted on 09/17/2006 5:06:12 AM PDT by razzle (darwinism is in its death throes)
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To: b_sharp
You keep this up and we'll have to start calling you 'Ichneumon Jr'.

High praise. Yes, I do imitations.

You evos can't account for the formation of a single protein, the odds of which are 1720 against. And you can't explain the platypus either.

289 posted on 09/17/2006 7:20:36 AM PDT by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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To: taxesareforever

It is called objectivity.

It means to take yourself away from your self imposed religious biases, and attempt to look at it from the outside looking in.

It means that you look at something from an entirely different viewpoint, one in which faith and such are put aside, to look at a subject from a nonprejudicial viewpoint.

To be objective and neutral, to use evidence and logic to view something, without emotional thought to confuse it.


290 posted on 09/17/2006 9:44:06 AM PDT by Jaguarbhzrd
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To: Ichneumon

Bravo!


291 posted on 09/17/2006 12:06:00 PM PDT by Marilolli
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To: taxesareforever

If you are capable of doubting that Christ was speaking literally of casting pearls before swine, why are you incapable of doubting that God created the Heavens and the Earth in 6 24-hour days?


292 posted on 09/17/2006 12:37:49 PM PDT by kellynch ("Our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves." -- Bernard Baruch)
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To: jennyp

John 8:31-32 "Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

I know the truth. It is sad that so many deny the truth to their own destruction.


293 posted on 09/17/2006 12:54:37 PM PDT by taxesareforever (Never forget Matt Maupin)
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To: taxesareforever

I know the truth. It is sad that so many deny the truth to their own destruction.


Please don't take too much of an offense to this, but all Muslims say this as well. They are just as positive as you are.


294 posted on 09/17/2006 1:14:28 PM PDT by Jaguarbhzrd
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To: taxesareforever
I know the truth. It is sad that so many deny the truth to their own destruction.

Every adherent of every religion has said this down through the millennia. Doubtless they all believed it fervently, down to the bottom of their hearts. Equally clearly most of them (if not all) must have been deluded, since the claims made by most competing religions are mutually exclusive.

295 posted on 09/17/2006 1:34:54 PM PDT by Thatcherite (I'm PatHenry I'm the real PatHenry all the other PatHenrys are just imitators)
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To: kellynch

Doubting is not something I consider when it comes to the Bible. So try something else.


296 posted on 09/17/2006 4:15:20 PM PDT by taxesareforever (Never forget Matt Maupin)
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To: Thatcherite

No religion, accept Christianity, bases it's belief upon the Old and New Testatment. That is what sets it apart from all the false religions. Also, Christianity believes in a God that is living, whereas many of the others believe in dead people. What kind of faith believes in a dead person?


297 posted on 09/17/2006 4:19:42 PM PDT by taxesareforever (Never forget Matt Maupin)
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To: Jaguarbhzrd

I'm sorry for you if you can't tell the difference between a loving God of the Bible and the hateful god of Islam.


298 posted on 09/17/2006 4:20:56 PM PDT by taxesareforever (Never forget Matt Maupin)
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To: taxesareforever

I'm sorry for you if you can't tell the difference between a loving God of the Bible and the hateful god of Islam.


Don't you mean of the New Testament, because the old testament's God is a pretty mean one.

But, that is not at all what I meant, but then again, you knew that.

I just asked you to be objective, I see now, that that is impossible.


299 posted on 09/17/2006 4:28:03 PM PDT by Jaguarbhzrd
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To: Jaguarbhzrd

#300?


300 posted on 09/17/2006 4:28:53 PM PDT by Jaguarbhzrd
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