Good point. Very good point. But, another argument all together, the Pope is seen as the "closest to God" so to speak. Like it or not, that is a small form of worship. But I realize what you mean Smeagol, and the way I wrote it was not the way I meant it. I very much understand that Catholics do not pray to the Pope.
I should have been less acute.
"I will never bow before another human being."
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Anyone ever question WHY we need to worship or why God display's such a horrible form of pride where he demands to be worshipped?
Yeah you know, a God who would say pride is wrong, then demand you worship him and only him doesn't quite add up in my head. I question not the existance of spirituality, I question - or deny rather - the legitimacy of christian/islamic/jewish churches which are supposubly carrying out his wishes.
I think you may have missed the point of my post.
We'll put on our best front, bend over backwards. kiss butt and even lie to get a job which equates to what, 40 years of expendable income. Yet when it comes to doing what it takes to obtain eternal life, (merely acknowledging that we are sinners who can receive eternal life with God by acknowledging that His Son died to remit those sins, thereby redeeming us) your position is that " I am who I am. Never killed anyone, etc. If that isnt good enough," too damn bad.
Obtaining fourty years of income is worth a much greater effort on our part than simply making a decision that allows us to receive eternal life?
Not trying to convince you of anything DR, just expounding on the point of my post.
I think you missed DR's point that somethings should be above grovelling for.
Thanks Manny. I guess you're trying to be helpful but DR's message that etennal life with God is not worth the decision it takes to obtain it was quite clear.
We worship Him out of gra ude for WHO HE is.
Holiness demands worship.
GOD is without beginning or end... HE has always existed. That is an amazing notion in and of itself that goes beyond human comprehension.
We are so insignificant in terms of size, strength, knowledge, and even the duration of our puny short-lived lives. And yet, GOD loves us... knows everything about us. Worship should be the normal response to His affection. Reverence is only required because again, He is supremely Holy. And deference should be shown simply out of awe for his grandeur.
All of this nonsense would be expunged if we all adhered to Hoff's theory of relativism.
Is Jesus without beginning or end?
I have a few follow-up questions, one of which includes the use of "greater than."
Last edited by Guru of Nothing; 08-22-2006 at 11:14 PM.
Yes
"Now, Father, glorify me with your own self with the glory which I had with you before the world existed." -- John 17:5
JESUS is GOD; hence since GOD is eternal so is JESUS.
The prophet Isaiah once had a vision (the whole passage is found in Isaiah 6):
"In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple." -- Isaiah 6:1
Then look what Jesus says in the Book of John Chapter 12 speaking about himself:
37 "But though he had done so many signs before them, yet they didn't believe in him,
38 that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke, "Lord, who has believed our report? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"
39 For this cause they couldn't believe, for Isaiah said again,
40 "He has blinded their eyes and he hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes, and perceive with their heart, and would turn, and I would heal them."
41 Isaiah said these things when he saw his glory, and spoke of him.
42 Nevertheless even of the rulers many believed in him, but because of the Pharisees they didn't confess it, so that they wouldn't be put out of the synagogue,
43 for they loved men's praise more than God's praise.
44 Jesus cried out and said, "Whoever believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me.
45 He who sees me sees him who sent me.
46 I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in the darkness.
47 If anyone listens to my sayings, and doesn't believe, I don't judge him. For I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
48 He who rejects me, and doesn't receive my sayings, has one who judges him. The word that I spoke, the same will judge him in the last day.
49 For I spoke not from myself, but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.
50 I know that his commandment is eternal life. The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father has said to me, so I speak." -- John 12:37-50
Last edited by hegamboa; 08-23-2006 at 08:10 AM.
So if Jesus is eternal, he has no beginning, correct?
Pardon me for not reading all your quotes; I assumed you were talking to yourself.
OK.
If under this society, say someone killed a person that you held dear to your heart claiming it was part of their belief system. Would you then accept his relativistic view of murder?
There has to be an inmovable standard. Otherwise the powerful would overcome the weak (the elderly, unborn children, social outcasts, the poor)... and the morals of society would decay even further.
He Always Was... Is... and Forever will be.
So that story about what happened in Bethleham was a ruse?
That was the story about how GOD became a man... birth included. While JESUS was on earth he was 100% man and 100% GOD. Yeah.
godv also says don't kill and doesn't mind doing some mass murders himself.
Whydoesn't America believe in evolution?
Public acceptance of evolutionHuman beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals: true or false? This simple question is splitting America apart, with a growing proportion thinking that we did not descend from an ancestral ape. A survey of 32 European countries, the US and Japan has revealed that only Turkey is less willing than the US to accept evolution as fact.
Religious fundamentalism, bitter partisan politics and poor science education have all contributed to this denial of evolution in the US, says Jon Miller of Michigan State University in East Lansing, who conducted the survey with his colleagues. "The US is the only country in which [the teaching of evolution] has been politicised," he says. "Republicans have clearly adopted this as one of their wedge issues. In most of the world, this is a non-issue."
Miller's report makes for grim reading for adherents of evolutionary theory. Even though the average American has more years of education than when Miller began his surveys 20 years ago, the percentage of people in the country who accept the idea of evolution has declined from 45 in 1985 to 40 in 2005 (Science, vol 313, p 765). That's despite a series of widely publicised advances in genetics, including genetic sequencing, which shows strong overlap of the human genome with those of chimpanzees and mice. "We don't seem to be going in the right direction," Miller says.
There is some cause for hope. Team member Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, finds solace in the finding that the percentage of adults overtly rejecting evolution has dropped from 48 to 39 in the same time. Meanwhile the fraction of Americans unsure about evolution has soared, from 7 per cent in 1985 to 21 per cent last year. "That is a group of people that can be reached," says Scott.
The main opposition to evolution comes from fundamentalist Christians, who are much more abundant in the US than in Europe. While Catholics, European Protestants and so-called mainstream US Protestants consider the biblical account of creation as a metaphor, fundamentalists take the Bible literally, leading them to believe that the Earth and humans were created only 6000 years ago.
good point Manny
Ironically, the separation of church and state laid down in the US cons ution contributes to the tension. In Catholic schools, both evolution and the strict biblical version of human beginnings can be taught. A court ban on teaching creationism in public schools, however, means pupils can only be taught evolution, which angers fundamentalists, and triggers local battles over evolution.
These battles can take place because the US lacks a national curriculum of the sort common in European countries. However, the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind act is ins uting standards for science teaching, and the battles of what they should be has now spread to the state level.
Miller thinks more genetics should be on the syllabus to reinforce the idea of evolution. American adults may be harder to reach: nearly two-thirds don't agree that more than half of human genes are common to chimpanzees. How would these people respond when told that humans and chimps share 99 per cent of their genes
FWIW, while two-thirds didn't get it right, the 99 percent is a bit high.
Human-chimp DNA difference trebled:
Scientists sort the chimps from the men
11 April 2002
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
We are more unique than previously thought, according to new comparisons of human and chimpanzee DNA.
It has long been held that we share 98.5 per cent of our genetic material with our closest relatives. That now appears to be wrong. In fact, we share less than 95 per cent of our genetic material, a three-fold increase in the variation between us and chimps.
The new value came to light when Roy Britten of the California Ins ute of Technology became su ious about the 98.5 per cent figure. Ironically, that number was originally derived from a technique that Britten himself developed decades ago at Caltech with colleague Dave Kohne. By measuring the temperature at which matching DNA of two species comes apart, you can work out how different they are.
But the technique only picks up a particular type of variation, called a single base subs ution. These occur whenever a single "letter" differs in corresponding strands of DNA from the two species.
But there are two other major types of variation that the previous analyses ignored. "Insertions" occur whenever a whole section of DNA appears in one species but not in the corresponding strand of the other. Likewise, "deletions" mean that a piece of DNA is missing from one species.
Littered with indels
Together, they are termed "indels", and Britten seized his chance to evaluate the true variation between the two species when stretches of chimp DNA were recently published on the internet by teams from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and from the University of Oklahoma.
When Britten compared five stretches of chimp DNA with the corresponding pieces of human DNA, he found that single base subs utions accounted for a difference of 1.4 per cent, very close to the expected figure.
But he also found that the DNA of both species was littered with indels. His comparisons revealed that they add around another 4.0 per cent to the genetic differences.
Junk and genes
"We're not any more different than we were," says Britten. "But we see a bit more divergence than before because insertions and deletions are taken into account. It almost triples the difference."
The result is only based on about one million DNA bases out of the three billion which make up the human and chimp genomes, says Britten. "It's just a glance," he says.
But the differences were equally split between "junk" regions that do not have any genes, and gene-rich parts of the genome, suggesting they may be evenly distributed.
Britten thinks it will be some time before we know what it is about our genes that makes us so different from chimps. He thinks the real secrets could lie in "regulatory" regions of DNA that control whole networks of genes. "It'll be a while before we understand them," he says.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.172510699)
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2833
He is the Author of Life... He can do as He pleases...
More specifically all sinners deserve death... so we should all be dead anyways... The only reason we live is out of GOD's infinite mercy.
Last edited by hegamboa; 08-23-2006 at 08:09 AM.
Furthermore, it disregards one of the findings from the article that started this whole thread. A finding that discovered that the supposed 'dead zones' in DNA were just as important to the functionality of our Genome as our active genes. This fact alone would add another 7% percent difference between the genomes of the species.
Again though, genetic similarity does not necesarily suggest genetic linearity or divergence from one source. Our DNAs should be very similar and that shouldn't be a surprise. We were all made by the same Engineer.
Last edited by hegamboa; 08-23-2006 at 08:21 AM.
No, I think your strict interpretation is far off. I will not beg God for entry to anywhere. If my entry into His kingdom is predicated upon me groveling for it, or somehow living on faith that he is truly good and loving without ever proving it, then He can keep it. Im sorry if this offends you or anyone else, but if you are willingly ignorant enough to try and pass a test no one is even sure exists, good for you. When your Creator whispers in your ear to jump off a bridge, or kill a bunch of people, or suppress certain ideas, as so many have claimed with fervency in the past, just keep it to yourself. You stand in righeousness from nothing you personally have ever done, have ever achieved, or have ever shared except that you worship a deity. Congratulations on being one of the crowd. I was raised to question everyone and everything, accept nothing at face value. Not even traditional religion. You know nothing more (or less) than I do. You just think you do. Which makes you a know-it-all loud-mouth. Stick with your flock and your sheppard, they might actually give a damn.
Manny had it spot on. I will not beg, anyone for anything. Not even my life, this one or the next. Prideful? Maybe. But just because your particular belief system is popular does not make it correct. Just ask the current Republican party (lol).
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I tire of this thread and this subject. There are really two camps, the Religion>Science crowd and the Science>Religion crowd. I dont care how many degrees from the greatest schools this Earth has to offer any member on this board has. Saying the Earth is 6000 years old and that carbon dating is a hoax is really very scary to me. To me alone. I respect your opinion, Boa. Youve obviously thought long and hard about your value system, your education, your life, etc.
But you do scare me. I would say your mindset and perversion of science is what mainly scares me. Evolution and the age of Earth are the only subjects you choose to attack because they directly contradict yor literal interpretation of the Bible. Challenging other popualr theories to the length and breadth at which you attacked Evolution and Carbon Dating wouldnt even be worth it. If you truly stood on scientific ground, you would be given endless streams of money to research and prove your theories.
My cousin just graduated with his masters in Chemical Engineering. He just got accepted into a research lab in Arizona (something to do with experimental plastics, dont ask me, not my area). He knows the Lab Director from grad school (professor-student relationship) and has a serious chance to be running his own lab in a couple of years (maybe more).
The Lab Director (PhD) is funding this thru a research grant he got from his dissertation (sp?). It was disseminated thru the usual venues and was picked up by a muil ude of large corporations offering money for specific research. Obviously, according to his NDA, he didnt tell me anything at all about what specifically he is working on. I mean nothing. Hes new, doesnt know exactly what he can discuss, so he doesnt discuss at all.
My point is, even theoretical science get research grants. Evolutionary scientists spend their lifetimes researching the comon links in current and extinct species. Yet you stand on your education providing minimal, controversial data to support your claims. Whilst the evolutionary scientists stand on decades of information, science, data and the like, yet you feel confidant enough to say "Nope, they are dead wrong."
Thats y. Some would say arrogant. I would say delusional, but yet I dont hold any degree in any field.
My point being, you can believe as you will. You can convince other like-minded religious types of the same ideals. But dont expect to be taken seriously when you denounce outright that carbon-dating is a hoax, that the world is 6000 years old and Noahs flood killed the dinosaurs.
Putting those 3 key points in one sentence really drives home your need, your desire, your agenda. That your God is right, and everyone else is wrong. Science, tradition, scientific method, known fact, common practices accepted the world over by leading scientists be damned. Its fanaticism that maybe you dont even realize or care to admit.
I accept their is a creator. I personally believe that he did in fact provide answers to the obviously curious mind. But we, humans, are not unique. We arent the only ones with souls, with minds, with ambition. If the universe is truly devoid of life outside of Earth, what a complete and utter waste of space.
Last edited by DarkReign; 08-23-2006 at 09:12 AM.
Again though, our belief system isn't as 'popular' as you make it out to be -- considering that more than 70% of professed Christians don't even live by what they preach.
You could make that 100%. No Christian is able to live up to the standards of the faith. We are all broken and fall short in the eyes of the Lord.
Now, the verdict is still out on how many Christians truly repent of their sins.
That's where the whole "judge not, lest ye be judged" thing comes in.
I'm not judging them.
I've said repeatedly that perfection is unattainable -- since only Christ was perfect. That doesn't mean we can't live a life of true worship and repentance (look to King David's example).
Now, I was addressing how many people claim to be Christians but know squat about the creeds of their faith. People who wouldn't be able to pick out the names of Biblical characters, the Books of the Bible or even describe the basic tenets of their faith. No one is judging them, I'm simply quoting a statistic.
Perfection is not only unattainable, it is not even expected.
How old was King David when laid Bathsheba and had her husband murdered? God forbid it takes a similar failing for all of us to reach pure repentance.
Well, unlike King David, most don't have the advantage of having their biblical history drilled into them from an early age by church elders and family. So, whose fault is that? The person who grows up not knowing their faith or the people who failed to impart it?
And, considering King David did have that advantage and still committed adultry and murder says alot for those who are obversely disadvantaged and have not.
Like I said, in the area of faith and eternal salvation/damnation, "judge not, lest ye be judged."
That goes for everything in life.
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