Your tooth fairy not mine

@moonbus said
If one assumes infinite time and finite matter, then everything repeats in all possible configurations, endlessly.

Is the assumption philosophical or scientific?

@moonbus said
I prefer my waffles with maple syrup, or blueberries and whipped cream.

You have good taste! I use the same toppings on my homemade pancakes.

-Removed-

3) 4.5 billion!

https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/the-world-before-darwin/how-old-is-earth

@suzianne said
It's not a "get-out-of-jail-free" card.

More like a work-release program.

You must be a Monopoly player.

@kellyjay said
People have all kinds of views in every walk of life, you want to talk about how old the earth is, do you know? Many theories abound, which are right because the actual age is set in reality, so we speculate coming up with our best guesses, theories, and hypotheses, if there were a start date, it is fixed, can we know it?

Some may be closer to the truth than others, do y ...[text shortened]... intelligible and our minds can tune into it and understand it, without that what would be the point?

The post was a response to someone else.

But tell me anyway, as to what was that which I came to believe you are wrong?

@bigdogg said
If that's all you want, that is easy. Science moved on, while there are still people today, including people in my own family, that believe the earth is 6000 years old!

Yes, science has moved on, and will keep moving on. But so have many believers, and they too, I anticipate, will keep moving on even further.

However, your selection was biased to the group of believers, those who have been made to believe that the age of the earth can be determined through the tracing of the genealogy of the descendants of Adam, and reckoning up the dates they compute the earth's birthday. And these same believers are those who are also made to believe everything written in the bible as being literal.

I imagine that for someone pro-science it must be hell to have family members who have been brainwashed into such beliefs.

@bigdogg said
4.5 billion!

That is sooo many millions!

@kellyjay said

As I said I don't believe science and religion are at odds, they just look at things from different perspectives, and anything true, will be true in both.

It is true that we evolved as a species on a planet billions of years old and didn't originate from a couple in a garden a few thousand years ago.

Here, science and your religion are very much at odds. It is absolutely not a case of looking at things from different perspectives.

@kellyjay said
works don't add to our salvation, they can even diminish our faith becoming legalistic, and making us feel we have to add to what Jesus did.

So a Christian should play it safe and avoid good works?

@pettytalk said
The post was a response to someone else.

But tell me anyway, as to what was that which I came to believe you are wrong?

I'm sorry, I'm trying to work out what you are asking about, I'm not sure what you are asking for.

@kellyjay said
I don't believe in reincarnation, as a Christian I believe there is an appointed a time for each of us to die and judgment. I don't fear judgment, not because I am worthy, but because of what Jesus did.

Appointed, we assume, by your god. Therefore people who kill other people, and women who abort their unborn children, are only doing your gods' will by ensuring that their victims keep their appointment. I don't think you've thought this through, you're ethics are completely at odds with your Christian beliefs.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
It is true that we evolved as a species on a planet billions of years old and didn't originate from a couple in a garden a few thousand years ago.

Here, science and your religion are very much at odds. It is absolutely not a case of looking at things from different perspectives.

Different worldviews have different beginnings and while all can be incorrect the one that does reflect reality will be the correct one, and others that do not reflect that will simply be wrong. You want to say the earth is billions of years old, I can say that may be entirely correct, but it does not address the question of beginning, how, and why.

You want to suggest we evolved as a species billions of years ago, which I have no issues with regarding the time period; however, you do not have scientific certainty as evidence for abiogenesis or evolutionary change.

What you do have is blind faith about what you think occurred without really knowing how or why. At the start of first life, there are only stories that vary widely on where, how, and why, those are not evidence, they are stories. The same can be said about the biological mechanisms that sustain life and its reproductive properties, these are information-driven, and forethought had to be in play to come up with error and repair mechanisms. Blood clotting, for example, requires information directing where, when, and for how long blood clotting should occur. A good story is inadequate to explain the information processing abilities to act with precision could come to be by chaos and chance directed by an after-the-fact natural section as a filter.

There isn't anything in the realm of evidence you have that can explain how the body's mechanisms for informational processing abilities got there. Information that directs any process is habitually there due to a single cause, a mind, and in the case of life's complex nature one greater than ours.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
So a Christian should play it safe and avoid good works?

No, the nature of God is love, this is not just a thing He does it is who He is, as is righteousness, goodness, and so on. Putting our faith in Jesus's blood redeems us by an act of God, not by our "faith" but by who we are putting our faith in, Jesus Christ. So our righteousness comes from God in Christ. When we give ourselves to Him we receive righteousness from God freely, not by our merit, we have none, but by His love.

From this, as we take on God's nature, being born again, He starts the sanctification of our lives making us more like Jesus. We will be doing good works, it is a natural outflow of having God in us. We learn to give to others for their good, not because of what we get anything out of it, or if they are worthy or not, because that is what God does. While we were His enemies He gave His life for us, we were not worthy of Jesus doing that for us we deserved wrath, but He gave mercy. So even forgiving and loving our enemies we are called on to do, when they ask, we are to forgive them restoring our relationships with them. We have been forgiven of everything, we should do the same.