matter created from light

Originally posted by Suzianne
If you have read anything I write here, you'd see that I happen to agree with you.

"God did it" is more than obvious, but it doesn't explain anything. We need to see *how* He "did it". Science neatly answers this.

I know you agree with me. [on this limited point 😉 ]

I was just pointing out that RJHinds would have absolutely no trouble
'answering' your question.

Because he allows 'god did it' as a 'valid' explanation he isn't troubled
by anything you throw at him.


However you have a similar problem.

Because you allow 'Faith' [and you know what I mean by that word] as
a 'valid' reason for believing things, you can justify believing ANYTHING
based entirely on what feels right for you. The boundaries that you happen
to draw are purely arbitrary, as demonstrated by the very different boundaries
drawn by different faith based believers. And the total lack of rational and/or
coherent reasons for their [the boundaries] location.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Except you're missing the fact that we now know how long it took, and lo and behold, it was a long period of time. Pretending it wasn't doesn't make anyone take anything you say very seriously.

Jesus spoke in parables and stories made up to prove his points, punctuated by real life conversations he had with others. What makes you think the OT was any different?

Because Jesus said the following:

"For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

(John 5:46-47 NKJV)

Why is it that you say you believe the end of the book, but not the beginning?

Originally posted by RJHinds
Because Jesus said the following:

[b]"For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

(John 5:46-47 NKJV)

Why is it that you say you believe the end of the book, but not the beginning?[/b]

You believe Revelation? That anti-Rome tract by John of Patmos touted by
Bishop Athanasius 360 years later where other 'revelations' were never allowed into the bible?

Which he forced to become part of the bible so he could have a weapon against his own dissidents?

Originally posted by RJHinds
Because Jesus said the following:

[b]"For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

(John 5:46-47 NKJV)

Why is it that you say you believe the end of the book, but not the beginning?[/b]

What is wrong with you, Ron? I didn't say I did not believe Moses, I said he wrote about the beginning in a way the common man could understand. I believe what Moses wrote, alright. I just do not believe he was writing exactly what happened. I happen to believe the universe was created by God, but I do not believe in the limited vision of those who call themselves "creationists". They limit God by their own limited imaginations. There is absolutely zero reason to believe it took 6 24-hour days to create the universe when we now know it took billions of years. There is nothing in the Genesis account to indicate that billions of years is not possible. Moses was writing so the people of the time would "get it". They have experience of what a day is, but they have no experience of billions of years. Even the most hard-boiled creationists understand when the Bible says "a thousand years is like unto a day" with God. It's a clue as to what Moses was actually saying and that the perceived time-restraint was superfluous.

I believe Moses alright. I just don't take his exposition entirely literally. And if he could do this with the creation account, who's to say his relation of the Noah story was completely literal as well? The man knew his target audience and he made sure he wasn't writing over their heads. His stories remain as articles of faith regardless whether you take them completely literally or not.

Originally posted by sonhouse
You believe Revelation? That anti-Rome tract by John of Patmos touted by
Bishop Athanasius 360 years later where other 'revelations' were never allowed into the bible?

Which he forced to become part of the bible so he could have a weapon against his own dissidents?

Revelation stands as a time-map of the latter days of this earth. Surely even you can see that we are poisoning this planet and warming it up beyond its ability to recover. What will you do the day the AntiChrist turns on the world population and he announces all who will not worship him will die? You thought the Jewish Holocaust of 1939-1945 was bad enough. Many times more Christians will die during the Tribulation.

Originally posted by Suzianne
What is wrong with you, Ron? I didn't say I did not believe Moses, I said he wrote about the beginning in a way the common man could understand. I believe what Moses wrote, alright. I just do not believe he was writing exactly what happened. I happen to believe the universe was created by God, but I do not believe in the limited vision of those who call ...[text shortened]... tories remain as articles of faith regardless whether you take them completely literally or not.

As I said above, you are drawing arbitrary boundaries as to where you believe
based on faith and where you believe based on science.

While it's stupider, at least creationist literalists like RJHinds are more consistent.

And there would have been absolutely nothing stopping a god like the one you
believe in inspiring [or just directly creating out of thin air] a book which contained
the mysteries of the universe that continually had new revelations as the readers
knowledge and understanding grew. Having deep secrets which can only be learned
after long study could easily have added mystery and attraction to the religion.
Also the bonuses of actually making genuine predictions that just kept being proven
to be indisputably correct. Unlike the actual bible where you have to keep admitting
that it wasn't really meant literally, and you have to cover over inconsistencies and
errors where it flatly says thing that are wrong. Like the world being flat, and slavery
ever being a good thing, ect ect... If god had really inspired the bible then it alone
out of all the holy books would just keep proving to be undeniably 100% correct.

'Just writing for the audience of the day' would be incredibly short-sighted and stupid
for a being of such great intellect as you claim and to whom time means almost nothing.
Particularly as the bible doesn't even do a good job even of that.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Revelation stands as a time-map of the latter days of this earth. Surely even you can see that we are poisoning this planet and warming it up beyond its ability to recover. What will you do the day the AntiChrist turns on the world population and he announces all who will not worship him will die? You thought the Jewish Holocaust of 1939-1945 was bad enough. Many times more Christians will die during the Tribulation.

What will you do the day the AntiChrist turns on the world population and
he announces all who will not worship him will die?

Lock him in prison, or a mental health facility.

And we are not warming up the planet beyond it's ability to recover.
We are changing the climate in ways that will cause US and our civilisations a great
deal of harm and expense, and will cause many species to go extinct... as has
happened many times before. But the planet has been warmer in the past, the
planet and the biosphere will bounce back. Different than before, just as it was
different after every mass extinction.

Otherwise, this is pretty much the best time to be alive in the history of civilisation.
I'm not saying we can't make it better, but the idea that things are just getting worse
and heading into some kind of biblical apocalypses is just ignorant and stupid.

It baffles me beyond belief that you can spout this stuff.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Revelation stands as a time-map of the latter days of this earth. Surely even you can see that we are poisoning this planet and warming it up beyond its ability to recover. What will you do the day the AntiChrist turns on the world population and he announces all who will not worship him will die? You thought the Jewish Holocaust of 1939-1945 was bad enough. Many times more Christians will die during the Tribulation.

Why don't you google that great bishop and find out exactly why and when Rev came to be the last book and not others. It was exactly as I said, originally written as a way to get back at Rome for the sac of the temple at Jerusalem, then picked up by that assshole bishop 360 years later who liked the idea of all that doomsday crap specifically so he would have something to hang over the heads of his dissidents.
THAT is the truth of Rev.

Originally posted by Suzianne
What is wrong with you, Ron? I didn't say I did not believe Moses, I said he wrote about the beginning in a way the common man could understand. I believe what Moses wrote, alright. I just do not believe he was writing exactly what happened. I happen to believe the universe was created by God, but I do not believe in the limited vision of those who call ...[text shortened]... tories remain as articles of faith regardless whether you take them completely literally or not.

I am a common man and I understand Moses meant to write exactly what happened. Why should the common man not understand evening and morning as being a normal 24 hour day. Jesus seems to understand it that way when He refers to the beginning of creation in his reply to the Pharisees.

The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”

And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

(Matthew 19:3-6 NKJV)

So did God make man and woman at the beginning when He made the heavens and earth or was it billions of years after that. I don't believe the common man would understand it that way and I don't see why Moses would be trying to deceive the common man.

Originally posted by googlefudge
As I said above, you are drawing arbitrary boundaries as to where you believe
based on faith and where you believe based on science.

While it's stupider, at least creationist literalists like RJHinds are more consistent.

And there would have been absolutely nothing stopping a god like the one you
believe in inspiring [or just directly creating ...[text shortened]... m time means almost nothing.
Particularly as the bible doesn't even do a good job even of that.

Isaiah 40:22

New King James Version (NKJV)

It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

There is nothing there that says the earth is a flat circle. The circle of the earth could easily refer to the circular arc of a curved surface like an orange or sphere, which is definitely not flat.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Isaiah 40:22

New King James Version (NKJV)

[b]It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

There is nothing there that says the earth is a flat circle. The circle of the earth could easily refer to the circular arc of a curved surface like an orange or sphere, which is definitely not flat.[/b]

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

http://www.goatstar.org/the-bibles-flat-earthsolid-sky-dome-universe/

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Biblical_flat_earth_claims

Isaiah 40:22: "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in." Indeed, this quote is used to prove that bible claims that the earth is spherical. However Isaiah never uses the Hebrew word for sphere Kadur anywhere.

However the far more important point is that it is in the very least highly ambiguous.

And no text inspired by god should be the slightest bit ambiguous, when you know all
the answers for a certainty you can be crystal clear and completely definitive, the bible
is none of those things.


EDIT: I also notice that you went for trying to contort the bible to at least getting the
shape of the earth correct... rather than trying to justify it's advocating slavery...

Originally posted by googlefudge
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

http://www.goatstar.org/the-bibles-flat-earthsolid-sky-dome-universe/

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Biblical_flat_earth_claims

[quote]Isaiah 40:22: "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like ...[text shortened]... ing the
shape of the earth correct... rather than trying to justify it's advocating slavery...

It was God that had Moses go to the Pharoah and request that the slaves be freed. And I don't recall anything said about a flat earth or that slavery was good. Just because God allows death, slavery, lying, cheating, etc. does not mean He said they were good.

Originally posted by RJHinds
It was God that had Moses go to the Pharoah and request that the slaves be freed. And I don't recall anything said about a flat earth or that slavery was good. Just because God allows death, slavery, lying, cheating, etc. does not mean He said they were good.

Then why wasn't there an 11th commandment "Thou shalt not own or use slaves"?

Originally posted by RJHinds
It was God that had Moses go to the Pharoah and request that the slaves be freed. And I don't recall anything said about a flat earth or that slavery was good. Just because God allows death, slavery, lying, cheating, etc. does not mean He said they were good.

"Just because God allows death, slavery, lying, cheating, etc."
You say that christians listen at such an immoral god?
That's one reason I will never be christian.
I have moral, christians don't.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Why don't you google that great bishop and find out exactly why and when Rev came to be the last book and not others. It was exactly as I said, originally written as a way to get back at Rome for the sac of the temple at Jerusalem, then picked up by that assshole bishop 360 years later who liked the idea of all that doomsday crap specifically so he would have something to hang over the heads of his dissidents.
THAT is the truth of Rev.

It's a leading non-believer theory, nothing more.

How many times do I have to say this? Free will must be maintained. If God went around just telling everyone what was going on, there would be no need for free will, it would be as if he came down and spoke to each one of us. But God doesn't want mindless sycophants, he wants people to come to the truth via faith. So it is and will always be necessary to present an alternate solution to the 'God question'. This version of why Revelation was written fits the bill nicely.

God wants you to believe in Him and to accept His Son as Savior. This is the only way mankind can be saved. But not merely because He tells you to. He wants you to believe it for yourself. This is why there must always be a choice between the worldly solution and God's solution.