I'll respond to the flamebait. Actually, the Bible can be taken literally as the Word of God. You may not choose to do so, but that doesn't make it otherwise.
It was written over a large expanse of time by various authors in various localities, yet holds together as a combined work with remarkable harmony. There are hosts of prophecy that were written down many hundreds of years before they happened, and were fulfilled exactly as predicted. The predictions about the timing of the birth of the Messiah, his life, his death, and his resurrection alone should be all the proof you need that there is something special about the Bible. The probability of all those details being randomly correct are remote.
I'll willingly grant you that the Christian church today isn't doing a very good job of carrying on the work of the New Testament church. This is to our shame. I don't think the course requirements of that class help matters. Yet there are spots around the world where God is still active in His church if you bother to look. You'll be amazed when you discover Him.
Christianity does not throw out the Old Testament as you imply. We simply accept Christ's sacrifice for our sins as the promised sacrifice of which the O.T. sacrificial system was a type and pointed to. The law's purpose was to expose sin, and it will still be used at the final judgment for those who reject Christ.
You object to the extreme punishments that were meted out for various societal abnormalities in Old Testament law. Yet nobody yet has ever shown me how frequently these were enforced. Perhaps the extreme penalties simply kept society in the order that God wanted without many people actually being killed by actions at Law.
As you noted, similarly "over the top" punishments still exist for various crimes in the Middle East today that are not based on Biblical law. The incidence of crimes occurring that would qualify for an extreme penalty (if you ignore the abnormal terrorist led actions which are not necessarily rational in the first place) is much lower than in the U.S. So perhaps these work...
That doesn't minimize the many instances where a Holy God punished His people for their disobedience or ordered peoples with belief systems that rejected Him destroyed. Yet even there, the people knew they were wrong to start with. Some simply chose to doubt that God would take notice or act if He did. Others had failed to heed the warnings passed down through the generations.
WRT your description of the creation story, all the Bible actually says is that God created the heavens and the Earth in the beginning. Nowhere does it say that this was 4,004 B.C. or that it happened in 7 days. A careful reading of Gen. 1 would, in fact, refute that.
Actually, we don't. You can find people with absolutely literal interpretations falling in both camps, depending on your interpretation of the verses translation from the original Hebrew.
For example. a different Hebrew word is used for the English create in 1:1 according to the commentaries I have read when compared to the Hebrew word translated create in later verses of Ch. 1. The significance of this can radically alter your concepts of the literal creation story if you follow through with it. It may push you from Young Earth to Old Earth/Wiped Out (either locally or overall)/Restored to habitable state and still allow you to maintain that the Bible rendition is accurate. But if you just look at Genesis 1, you'll never have a complete creation story as there are passages throughout the Old Testament that must be examined to really discover what the Bible says about creation.
Only a small percentage of the posts would ever be remotely considered debate when this subject comes up on Slashdot. That isn't to say that debate doesn't occur. It is simply rare to be able to have debates about particular subjects that are useful, and ID is one of those subjects.
I'm a Christian. I think ID is one of the more extreme examples of scripture twisting and willful ignoring of other scriptures that I've ever seen. But I'd still debate someone with an ID viewpoint in an appropriate setting.
On the other hand, as one who wants to observe the world, I would recommend that you observe some evangelical Christian services yourself with the same open mind you claim to have for science (going once or twice on Christmas or Easter doesn't count) and see that Christianity isn't really concerned with Genesis 1 much at all. It's about the power of God working through the Holy Spirit in His people day by day (or it should be). If God isn't working in the church you pick (or the denomination you were raised in), pick another. Once you've observed Him in action, many of these silly questions and debates lose interest. The attitudes about what the Bible says does become as clear as a mathematical equation.
My life, for one, isn't staked on the outcome of Science or Science+Creation or Creation or ID. My life isn't staked on anything except me. Your life is entirely staked on you. Our lives after death - well that's another story, but it would be off topic.
Like any other work of literature, metaphorical and poetic passages may be found scattered throughout the Bible. In places where no such language is used, however, the Bible should be interpreted literally. The problem is that we have too many people in the church today that have gone to seminary in recent years and not enough who are filled with the power of God.
ID is nonsense. Satan is using it to distract the church from the work he commanded it to do. You can interpret Genesis (and other related portions of the Bible) in a way that is consistent with most of what science teaches. If you doubt that, you need to study it some more. You won't end up with ID as a result though.
It's easier on my eyes after a full day of computing.
I'd rather have a complete view of all the articles and possibly miss something I consider important than rely on a search engine's article popularity ranking. I'm happy to use on-line for a summary of the vast majority of articles and papers out there. My local news will never percolate up in the Google rankings enough to be seen (or at least I hope it doesn't because it would probably be bad). Local news filters on Google help, but still doesn't give a full enough view. Likewise, the WSJ has enough news that I consider important to want to see the whole thing, and navigating their website takes a lot more work (and time even with a high speed connection) than just reading the print edition.
I'm just as effective at skipping ads in newsprint as adblock is on-line, so that isn't a real problem. I recycle the local papers and pass the print WSJ on to other people (which probably irritates Murdoch) so it's cost isn't that bad.
Bandwidth does have cost. I'd rather get this block of information delivered in a non-electronic fashion and save my bandwidth for more important uses.
Finally, there are newspapers that I just happen to like, and supporting them is a good thing. I like the WSJ outlook on news. "General Dynamics stock rose 16% today on anticipated orders for M1A2 Abrams tanks (See page A3), Lockheed Martin and Oshkosh also post large gains (See articles on page A5, A6) In other news, WWIII broke out in Europe. Details on page C12." That was an extreme future example, but it serves the point.
Paying a subscription to help support that organization is fine with me. If you are in certain businesses, then you need certain information and paying to get it isn't unreasonable. I'm all for heads up articles on companies I'm interested in or own delivered on-line by the search engines shortly after they happen. You still get a valued feel for the market by perusing a daily printed snapshot that is missed by filtered news.
God gave you the ability to choose whether to believe in Him or not. He also gave you the ability to choose whether to believe His written word or not. I doubt if any comment I make will make an impression on you, but I must make the effort and ask that you hold back the flames in return.
The acts of homosexuality are condemned in both the Old and New Testaments. So is a bunch of other stuff. A lot of people say some things are black, some are gray areas, and some are white. There is only white or not-white with God and the not-white stuff cuts you off from Him (regardless of whether it's the topic at hand or something else... lying, stealing, or any of a host of sex sins outside homosexuality to name just a few). That is fact, and implying it isn't condemned by God is incorrect.
You may not want to believe that those words express God's thoughts, but they are part of what the Christian Church accepts as His transmitted words to us. We accept His plan for salvation as presented in that work as fact and depend on it for eternal life. We accept His plan for those who do not accept His plan for salvation equally as fact. But let's be clear. God loves all His creation and isn't willing for any to perish. He wants all to accept His plan for their life and His plan of salvation and repent of all their sin. That's also in the manual you don't want to believe. I have no animosity toward those who haven't accepted that plan and don't go around trying to beat them up physically or verbally, regardless of what they've done that keeps them separated from God. But my belief system says that they are, in fact, separated, and it isn't the way God wants it to be.
I've seen enough unexplained things happen that the world would call healings or miracles (in people I know) to believe that God exists and is still acting in ways that the Bible says He will. Seeing current events unfold like the Bible says I can expect makes me believe that the future events will also unfold as it describes. I don't pretend to understand why He chose to condemn some things that He did, but that doesn't change the fact that He did so. I don't have to like that. You don't have to like that. It doesn't change His nature a bit, and I can assure you He doesn't care what either of us thinks. He is a righteous judge who will execute judgment (probably sooner rather than later looking at the world today). The Bible implies that His basic nature is unchanging, and from near one end of recorded Bible history to the other end of prophetical history, certain things consistently stand out as actions He will judge. It's a good time to accept His plan of salvation and start working out your daily repentance just as I must.
Your history with Christians doesn't appear to be very good, and sadly we haven't done a very good job of living up to Christ's standards when trying to present the truths we believe. Perhaps I haven't here either. The acceptance of those truths is up to the hearer or reader. I hope you can get over the hate from the past and find Him. Once you discover that He actually is, it changes your outlook on your life and the world. Until that happens, it's easy to believe there is no merit to the Christian argument and to rail against it. Salvation is the easy part. The road of repentance isn't easy, regardless of what background you are coming from.
They are also a business. They have purchased and upgraded computer equipment (including laboratory and bedside test equipment) since the 60s/70s to handle larger volumes of people, tests, etcetera with fewer people. In addition, the number of tests ordered by doctors when treating patients has gone up a bunch since the 60s and 70s since more tests can be done at the local hospital rather than having to be sent to a specialty lab.
All hospitals have back up plans to handle power failures, but in many cases newer hires only know how to work the new machines and haven't been trained in how to do the tests by hand. In other cases, doing the tests by hand takes more time or needed reagents may not be kept in large supplies since most tests are handled by the machines. They can function without computers for a certain amount of time, and in a federally declared emergency, for example, they would do so even past the safe limit, I'm sure, since they have an iron clad legal "you can't sue us since..." type of argument if something goes wrong.
They are always worried about billing (since the government will be all over their case if they find out that they gave away service X for free (or at the wrong price) while charging their Medicare patient a higher price for service X). They're also worried about being sued. Lives are at stake, but having the hospital permanently shut down also can put lives at stake.
Paper is great, and is in place as a backup for most result reporting if some lab system is down temporarily or if the front office reception and billing and other sundry things are working for some reason, but it is a stopgap measure and the number of patients that you can process is reduced (sometimes significantly).
As other posters have said, it's about the ability to provide an expected standard of care. If there's another hospital to go to that can give you a higher standard of care when a power failure and its attendant problems takes down hospital A, why would you want to go to hospital A?
It doesn't surprise me a bit. I know someone who works in a hospital lab. In any large hospital these days the lab equipment automates the reporting of results into "the system". When some part goes down, they can revert to paper for a period of time. At some point, with how short hospitals are running staff, you reach a point that you do not have enough people and free time available to catch back up manually re-entering the data once the failed system comes back up. The time frame varies with the size of the hospital and the patient load.
In today's litigious society, it is perfectly reasonable to believe that a major hospital would close to new admissions to get the paperwork caught up rather than risk being sued because the electronic trail was missing. With a health records system not being available to produce histories on patients I could see shutting down even sooner.
It's certainly something to be concerned about and it's going to get worse as time goes on. Unfortunately, as the electrical load increases outages are likely to be more frequent as well.
My point was simply that the "at the expense of everyone else" is not as huge a group of people as you seem to think it is. Why shouldn't people who put resources at risk be compensated for doing so?
You didn't mention anything local but you were talking about employees and expenses which I assumed you were implying would be made locally. The localization effect of property taxes is simply one of the few ways that corporate taxes benefit the people where the work is being done by helping to support fire, police, and other first responders. I used that as an example. I do admit that there is a difference between many corporations which have been established for a long time and thus are only trading existing stock between individuals and newly minted companies which are doing IPOs. Getting rid of corporate taxes wouldn't, by itself, prevent a company from making local donations or providing local services. Many companies do that as a matter of good will even though the tax benefits of those actions don't necessarily cover their cost. If you think they should act differently, become a shareholder and petition the board at the annual meeting to change their course of action. If enough people agree with you, change will happen. If enough people are like me and prefer to quietly donate to local charities ourselves instead of having some company we own stock in do that work for us, the status quo will remain in place.
There are many excesses in the system, and there is concentration of wealth that has the potential to be destabilizing in the long run. All people who have received benefits from the system should be charitable. Carnegie certainly was, to name one who leaps to mind. The same can be said of Gates and Buffett. At some point, before or after death, each will have to give an account for what they've done with what God has given them. I'd still rather live in a society where there were uber-rich individuals who were stingy and everyone had a chance to become a shareholder and invest or to start their own company than a communist state where everything was spread around liberally to people who had put no work into the system. Wait a minute... Considering how many people don't pay taxes now but yet get lots of direct and indirect government rewards, maybe the U.S. has already fallen....
It doesn't matter what the taxes are collected on (profit, revenue, number of chairs around the board of director's table, number of spoons in the cafeteria, percentage of days that the weather was cloudy at corporate headquarters, number of trips the CEOs took in business jets to name a often mis-maligned legitimate business expense) or where the taxes are collected (local, state, national, world wide, or the expanding operations on Omicron Ceti III). In the end, whatever dollar amount the companies remit to the taxing authorities in any jurisdiction is a line item expense to them. The either recover that expense in the form of higher prices that are passed on, marked up, and eventually paid by the consumer or they go broke.
The only marginal benefit that ever accrues by taxing companies in any manner whatsoever, is that occasionally local jurisdictions benefit from the physical plant property taxes to help recover the expenses of protecting their physical property from fires or crime. Many large companies have their own security forces, and some in our area have their own fire fighting crews (think refineries) so even that is not necessarily ever an expense to the community. Even this minor benefit would be outweighed by the greater value that could potentially accrue to employees or shareholders or both by eliminating the ever multiplied tax burden on corporations. Don't knock the shareholders. I happen to own stocks individually, but there's a huge slice of America that owns stocks through mutual funds, pension plans, IRAs, 401k(s) and the like. Maybe you aren't a shareholder, but if you aren't, you're missing a great way to save for the future. Yes, the market just took a huge plunge, and it may take another before it's over. I've had some pretty big losses. I had some in 1987 as well. But if you haven't gotten wild with margin and aren't in a position where you have to sell, most of the securities will be able to be sold for a profit at some time in the future. For companies that are likely to stay around, the depressed prices of earlier in the year were a tremendous buying opportunity. That isn't a short term view. When the stress tests are announced, the market may reverse direction again. That's what it does. It fluctuates. But it's time to quit beating up on the investors. The majority of the investors in the country are little guys like me, buying a few hundred shares here and there or investing through mutual funds or retirement accounts. What Mr. Obama is doing to Chrysler's bond holder is just wrong. I hope the bankruptcy judge doesn't go along but instead goes by the normal legal channels.
Unfortunately, eliminating corporate taxes would require other reforms to the tax code or everyone would incorporate as individuals. But don't think that raising taxes on corporations will do anything other than increase the cost of the goods you buy.
I usually read the posts in reverse order, so I apologize if I'm slighting an earlier post when I say this is the first intelligent post I've seen on this subject.
Everyone repeat after me. Corporate taxes, regardless of their form (federal, state, local, excise,...) is just a line item on their corporate expense sheet. For normal corporations, this is offset by income from the sales of goods and/or services. Hopefully, the net result is a profit or you're going to go out of business.
If you increase the expense side of the business equation, they raise the price side of the equation so they end up making a profit. What is horrible about this is that each company that buys that company's products to make their own products or which uses that company's services to produce, transport, or sell their products marks the price for their part of the finished good's chain up to cover both the higher cost of their inputs and whatever higher taxes they have to pay so they return the same profit. If they can't do that they become less profitable or go out of business.
The farther away the finished goods are from raw materials, the greater percentage of the final cost that the consumer (you and I) pays for the goods ends up being returned to the federal government when the companies all along the chain pay their taxes. This is on top of making the U.S. products less competitive with respect to other countries equivalents.
Yes. Although I tend to do most debugging on a Linux based hardware emulator I wrote, at times when debugging hardware issues, we still dig out our old Arium and plug it into the boards.
Well, I don't know. Perhaps because we don't want to have to back up and reinstall the Linux operating system we actually use most often because Microsoft can't install itself in a friendly way?
Linux didn't have any trouble installing along side Vista. I had to remove Vista first and reinstall it before I started because its brain dead partition management couldn't shrink a partition due to some fixed position NTFS block stuck way out in the middle of the disk, but that was Vista's problem. The Linux install went just fine and didn't hurt the reinstalled Vista partition at all. Can't say the same going the other way. From what I hear you have issues even installing other Microsoft O/Ss alongside each other unless you go oldest to newest. What utter garbage.
Read the post again. I have pointed you in the best direction I can where you can find the evidence you seek. I have purposely not specified a denomination or a church because I don't want to be accused of trying to drive people to a particular place and there is no way for me to know if a particular denomination's church is any good at place XYZ anyway. But if you don't choose to go and examine the evidence for yourself, at length, and possibly at multiple locations, then I agree it is not a useful discussion. The only way you can know for yourself is to experience it with your own eyes and ears. You won't do that if you avoid everyplace where you could experience it for the rest of your life.
I think you are missing my point. I'm not saying that you have to go to one particular church in the world to see God work. I'm not even saying that you have to go to one particular denomination to see God work. Most importantly, I'm also not saying that God is an actor and we are directors who can make Him perform on demand just to satisfy someone's curiosity. I do feel that you are more likely to see God at work in certain denominations than others if you observe for a long enough time. Going one Sunday, seeing nothing, and then declaring that God must not exist because He didn't choose to do anything during that one or two hour period that was sufficiently out of the ordinary to satisfy you is an invalid test. Such a one time or two time observation wouldn't be acceptable to science either. That would be especially true for those who choose to make those one or two time observations on Christmas or Easter where the services are pretty packed with little time for God to do anything out of the ordinary anyway.
Over my lifetime I have seen things occur in churches that I have attended to people that I know personally that cannot be explained by medical science or normal life. That's my own individual data point, and it is all that matters to me. Faith alone should be enough, but it's nice to have some real time confirmation as I live my life as well.
I'm not saying the things that I have observed should be sufficient for you, nor am I saying that my data point should be sufficient for any other Slashdot member. You don't know me any better than you know Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. It doesn't make that data point any less valid. Some of the inputs to my data point are second hand, but some are first hand where I directly observed, and some are personal where I was the recipient. You can choose to dismiss them and not believe me, just as many here dismiss the Bible, but I cannot ignore them for I observed them. They are anecdotal to you, simply because you didn't observe them.
It would, indeed, be an interesting experiment to actually research any of the three items you mention, but there isn't any money in it, so it isn't going to happen in the real world in which we live.
The thing is, God doesn't act in a general denomination wide or church wide way. When He does act, it is individually. He's not required to perform on demand. He's not required to repeat Himself. He's not an experiment you can perform and say true or false. He also isn't doing things world wide 24x7 (and if any blame should be assigned there, I'm pretty sure it can all fall squarely on us Christians who don't want to get involved in actually working for Him when He wants and how He wants or living up to His standards). Even in the New Testament, everyone wasn't healed just because Jesus walked the earth. Yet the Bible tells that many were in fact healed. The same is true today. Every Christian isn't healed of every disease to live forever on this earth. We all die of something at some time. Yet there are many who are healed. If you want to hear about how God is working, you should involve yourself with His people. The world has no interest in promoting Christianity in the media.
If you personally get to know a body of Christians, and they get to know you well enough to open up about some of the things that have gone on in their lives, you would at least have more information than you have now to make your decision. That sort of opening up is more likely to happen in a small group setting or Sunday School class than a main worship service. Maybe God would even chose to do something for you in particular at some point that would form the basis for your own individual data point in the whole experiment of life and religion. I wouldn't count on that happening until you start believing in Him though.
The bottom line, though, is it is up to you to get involved. You will never believe any study presented unless you know the participants. Your heart seems too hard. Too many are like the Pharisees of Christ's time wanting to see signs and wonders to believe. God doesn't require extreme belief. Simple belief is enough.
you have zero observations to support the story... Fixed that for you.
I don't accept the Bible as fact because the religion I follow says it is true and you shouldn't either. I believe that there are few conflicts between science and an accurately interpreted Bible and am appalled at the twisting that I.D. does to the scriptures. I think that the only way the entire Bible can be correct is to put Gen. 1:1 long, long ago and make what you consider to be creation stories to be instead restoration to a habitable state after a cataclysm. 2 Pet. 3, Jer. 4 and Isa. 14 don't work otherwise.
But I would also stress that the purpose of the Bible has nothing to do with science. Its purpose is to declare Christ as the Savior and to lead people to Him. For all of those multiple writers and time delays you speak of, it is a remarkably self-consistent piece of writing. Yes, there are a few translation errors here and there due to the age and condition of the original documents, but in general they are few and far between.
Let's assume you're a scientist. If you want to study the life in the oceans do you live in or visit the desert instead?
If you want to study whether God exists or not, you should attend church with an open mind and get to know the people there and experience what happens in their lives. Don't pick some dead fossilized church or denomination to try to find out about Him either. He can be found there (or anywhere for that matter), but it will take more effort than you are probably willing to put in.
If you get to know the people who attend a particular church, then you'll believe them when they tell you they have been prayed for and healed from a medically diagnosed illness and their doctor backs up their story. You won't have to depend on the healing acts described in that Bible you don't trust. When a person you know well tells you they were driving and came up over a rise flying low and there was a herd of deer in the road, and they covered their face and took their foot off the gas and a few seconds later realized there hadn't been a crash and both they and their car was OK, that a miracle happened (because a herd of deer just doen't tend to get out of the way on their own) and you won't have to rely on a Bible you don't trust.
The evidence is all around me that God is at work. I've had members of my immediate family go up for prayer (in one case after having had confirmed diagnosis from a doctor) and be healed. So when I see and hear God working today in the same ways that the Bible says He would work in the New Testament, it lends credence to the entire work, and I am forced to see how science and the Bible, along with His work today can coexist and fit together. If I didn't see God working around me, as many people even in some Christian denominations today do not, then it would be harder for me.
Seek out Pentecostal churches with an open mind and put your scientific method to work instead of just refusing to believe old books or things you hear because they don't line up with your hypothesis.
Everyone makes mistakes. This is true of both scientists and individuals acting in the name of religion.
To paint all religion black, and by inference all religious people black as you do, is no more correct than to paint all scientists as black just because there are a few who try to pass off some cold fusion experiment or cloning experiment or any of a list of other scientific fiascos of the recent past (to say nothing of what science thought was right back in the ages you mention) as the "right" thing just because it was believed to be right at one time.
Bad science is eventually disproved by scientists as better theories are found. Attempts to scam the system are eventually uncovered when experiments can't be reproduced. That's the way science works.
If you substitute interpretation for experiment, you might discover that it is the way that many religions work as well. People in the past have made some interpretations of the Bible that were simply incorrect because they took items out of context or just weren't careful in their reading. Many of these interpretations have caused problems in the world and are still being spouted today. I.D. is our equivalent to the cold fusion mess. It just doesn't match what most of the Bible declares.
A correct interpretation of all the Bible finds that there is little in conflict with science. We still disagree that the plants and animals that we have today came about from continued evolution over the eons because we believe in a cataclysmic judgment on the world (not Noah's flood) that occurred at some point and which was of unknown length between Gen 1:1 and the restoration process in the rest of Genesis. The rest of Genesis records the acts of God clearing the air so that the Sun and Moon could be seen again and the recreation of plants and animals after the cataclysm. What may have gone on before has little mention in the Bible. If you want to say there was evolution, I won't debate that, although I do personally believe that God had His hand in the creation of each of the major groups of life that the planet saw. Regardless of this, what we have today started over in the recent past. The fossil record of man would seem to support this. There are several pre-modern man lines running that all stop at about the same time. Then modern man starts.
The vast majority belonging to religious orders today wouldn't support the actions of the individuals cited in your post today either. You can't call something win-win unless both sides come out ahead. I think, followed to its correctly balanced extremes, your suggestion would be better classified as lose-lose.
When I went to school, back in the old days, other creation Myths were taught in public schools. We learned what the U.S. Indians believed about their gods. We learned about the Greeks and Romans. But you couldn't mention the Christian creation story.
This is what most Christians find offensive. We can study the rest of the world under the guise of multi-culturalism. But when someone mentions Christianity (as opposed to Hindu or Muslim religious systems), everyone gets up in arms about separation of church and state.
The Constitution of the United States of America, as amended, does not say that religious concepts (even of the majority of the population) can never be discussed in a government run setting like a school. What it says is that the government cannot declare the Episcopal church (to pick a church that I'm not a member of) to be the official religion of the United States of America and that to hold office or participate in government you have to belong to that church. A lot of people here on slasdot seem to wish it was more specific about promoting the religion of atheism, but it isn't.
You don't have to discuss every creation idea that is out there. You just don't get to squash one that comes up for discussion. Most school districts just want the whole controversy to go away, so they adopt a just say no approach. That doesn't mean it is in line with the constitution.
I personally would prefer the evolution theory be presented as that, and religious aspects be left for discussion elsewhere. I'm perfectly comfortable discussing my religious beliefs with my kids and surprisingly, there isn't much conflict between a good understanding of what the Bible actually says and science, so it's pretty easy to do. Just don't slam the religious kids while teaching.
The school systems have way too much to teach to waste time with trying to argue at length over religious issues. Teach the theory and move on. It isn't worth the time it gets either in the school systems or here on slashdot.
FWIW, the fruit didn't destroy immortality. It caused God to seal off access to the garden of Eden where a particular tree whose fruit was sustaining them in an effectively immortal state was located.
I'm Christian. I'm not a big fan of the theory of evolution, but certainly don't have a problem with my kids being taught it in school. I'd rather they be taught it while young and I'm around to explain the Christian side of things to give them a different perspective and show how the science they are hearing could actually fit in with the Bible's reporting of history.
I think the whole Intelligent Design theory (as I understand it) does a miserable job of Biblical interpretation, so I'm against it too, in case you wondered. I have no problems with dating methods, fossils, and a very old age of the Earth and solar system. That Big Bang in Genesis 1:1 is OK by me. I haven't heard anything except evolution itself that doesn't fit in with the Bible. I look at horses today, and compare them to horses in fossils and they look similar. Different sizes but similar. I personally don't see what the real problem with a Creator reusing bits of design that are suitable to this planet over and over with slight modifications for diversity as the mood struck Him. To say that everything came about by itself, however is a huge stretch of the imagination (and I have a very active imagination).
e = m * c * c. That just happened? All things circular have this neat pi variable in them that goes on forever. That just happened? Look closely at flowers and their perfect symmetry. That just happened? The theory of relativity and gravity (to mention something from another post). That just happened? To me, to say things started from nothing and just turned out this way all on their own is a far greater stretch of the imagination than the atheists seem to think that God is.
Christians believe the Bible is the inspired word of God. I won't debate that there have been improper translations over the years due to the fragmentary and degraded original writings or problems with oral retelling. Regardless of that, the Bible, as a whole appears to be remarkably consistent for a document written over several thousand years. The more that archeologists dig up and discover, the more of the Bible accounts are verified.
So the question I ask is this... How much evidence do you need to believe in God? Cause if you believe in God, then you really should give a boost to believing His word.
I read about healings in the Bible. I see healings today. You can't explain them with science and many are medically verified before and after.
I hear about miracles that happen in the lives of Christians today. They have no explanation. These are in people I know well or were directly observed by people I know well - they aren't stories that I read in a 2,000 year old document or saw on TV. They happened to friends that I have known for years and years.
I hear prophecy that comes true, spoken today just as in the New Testament. I have people come up and say things to me that they couldn't have known except through God telling them. So it begs the question... What does it take to get the average slashdotter to believe in God? If you're thinking of a smart comeback list, be careful that God doesn't pick His own way.
It's perfectly all right to go after people trying to mix religion with science in the classroom. But when science is presented it is reasonable to expect that it won't be presented in an anti-religious way. That's all I ask. I don't try to belittle science when talking to my kids. I aced Physics and Chemistry in a high ranked private college and made a lot of pre-meds mad in Chemistry Lab with an A that I didn't even care about. Why shouldn't I get the same courtesy from the science teachers? Teach the facts as facts, the theories as theories, and try to realize that you just might be wrong.
First, in two places Christ spoke that people needed to become like little children in their faith and belief to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Mt. 18:1-10, 19:14. The wording suggests that little children are under grace to start with and start out part of the kingdom of God.
For the book of life reference, my interpretation is by inference from only a couple of scriptures. I can't make a really strong case for it. Rev. 3:5 refers to blotting out a name from the Lamb's book of life, which at the very least allows for backsliding. At the end of Revelation in 22:19, there is a reference that if any man (not just people who have accepted Christ) shall take away from the prophecy of Revelation, his part shall be taken from the book of life. I will freely admit that this is perhaps weak, but it does seem to be consistent. Many other references refer to sin being something that will cause your name to be blotted out of the book of life (Ex 32:32-33, Ps. 69:27-28, 109:13 (Here some codices refer to let his name instead of let their name, making this a prophecy of Judas Iscariot).
The second reference is much easier. Let's start with the prophecy of it in the Old Testament - read Ps. 68:18. For Christ's prophecy of the period of time between his death and resurrection, see Mt. 12:38-40 (and yes, that means that He was crucified on Wedn. and not Fri. as some teach), and finally Paul's account of what He did during that time Eph. 4:7-11.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll respond to the flamebait. Actually, the Bible can be taken literally as the Word of God. You may not choose to do so, but that doesn't make it otherwise.
It was written over a large expanse of time by various authors in various localities, yet holds together as a combined work with remarkable harmony. There are hosts of prophecy that were written down many hundreds of years before they happened, and were fulfilled exactly as predicted. The predictions about the timing of the birth of the Messiah, his life, his death, and his resurrection alone should be all the proof you need that there is something special about the Bible. The probability of all those details being randomly correct are remote.
I'll willingly grant you that the Christian church today isn't doing a very good job of carrying on the work of the New Testament church. This is to our shame. I don't think the course requirements of that class help matters. Yet there are spots around the world where God is still active in His church if you bother to look. You'll be amazed when you discover Him.
Christianity does not throw out the Old Testament as you imply. We simply accept Christ's sacrifice for our sins as the promised sacrifice of which the O.T. sacrificial system was a type and pointed to. The law's purpose was to expose sin, and it will still be used at the final judgment for those who reject Christ.
You object to the extreme punishments that were meted out for various societal abnormalities in Old Testament law. Yet nobody yet has ever shown me how frequently these were enforced. Perhaps the extreme penalties simply kept society in the order that God wanted without many people actually being killed by actions at Law.
As you noted, similarly "over the top" punishments still exist for various crimes in the Middle East today that are not based on Biblical law. The incidence of crimes occurring that would qualify for an extreme penalty (if you ignore the abnormal terrorist led actions which are not necessarily rational in the first place) is much lower than in the U.S. So perhaps these work...
That doesn't minimize the many instances where a Holy God punished His people for their disobedience or ordered peoples with belief systems that rejected Him destroyed. Yet even there, the people knew they were wrong to start with. Some simply chose to doubt that God would take notice or act if He did. Others had failed to heed the warnings passed down through the generations.
WRT your description of the creation story, all the Bible actually says is that God created the heavens and the Earth in the beginning. Nowhere does it say that this was 4,004 B.C. or that it happened in 7 days. A careful reading of Gen. 1 would, in fact, refute that.
Actually, we don't. You can find people with absolutely literal interpretations falling in both camps, depending on your interpretation of the verses translation from the original Hebrew.
For example. a different Hebrew word is used for the English create in 1:1 according to the commentaries I have read when compared to the Hebrew word translated create in later verses of Ch. 1. The significance of this can radically alter your concepts of the literal creation story if you follow through with it. It may push you from Young Earth to Old Earth/Wiped Out (either locally or overall)/Restored to habitable state and still allow you to maintain that the Bible rendition is accurate. But if you just look at Genesis 1, you'll never have a complete creation story as there are passages throughout the Old Testament that must be examined to really discover what the Bible says about creation.
Only a small percentage of the posts would ever be remotely considered debate when this subject comes up on Slashdot. That isn't to say that debate doesn't occur. It is simply rare to be able to have debates about particular subjects that are useful, and ID is one of those subjects.
I'm a Christian. I think ID is one of the more extreme examples of scripture twisting and willful ignoring of other scriptures that I've ever seen. But I'd still debate someone with an ID viewpoint in an appropriate setting.
On the other hand, as one who wants to observe the world, I would recommend that you observe some evangelical Christian services yourself with the same open mind you claim to have for science (going once or twice on Christmas or Easter doesn't count) and see that Christianity isn't really concerned with Genesis 1 much at all. It's about the power of God working through the Holy Spirit in His people day by day (or it should be). If God isn't working in the church you pick (or the denomination you were raised in), pick another. Once you've observed Him in action, many of these silly questions and debates lose interest. The attitudes about what the Bible says does become as clear as a mathematical equation.
My life, for one, isn't staked on the outcome of Science or Science+Creation or Creation or ID. My life isn't staked on anything except me. Your life is entirely staked on you. Our lives after death - well that's another story, but it would be off topic.
Like any other work of literature, metaphorical and poetic passages may be found scattered throughout the Bible. In places where no such language is used, however, the Bible should be interpreted literally. The problem is that we have too many people in the church today that have gone to seminary in recent years and not enough who are filled with the power of God.
ID is nonsense. Satan is using it to distract the church from the work he commanded it to do. You can interpret Genesis (and other related portions of the Bible) in a way that is consistent with most of what science teaches. If you doubt that, you need to study it some more. You won't end up with ID as a result though.
Here are some reasons...
Gotta be a record for a chair throw, even for someone with so much practice.
God gave you the ability to choose whether to believe in Him or not. He also gave you the ability to choose whether to believe His written word or not. I doubt if any comment I make will make an impression on you, but I must make the effort and ask that you hold back the flames in return.
The acts of homosexuality are condemned in both the Old and New Testaments. So is a bunch of other stuff. A lot of people say some things are black, some are gray areas, and some are white. There is only white or not-white with God and the not-white stuff cuts you off from Him (regardless of whether it's the topic at hand or something else... lying, stealing, or any of a host of sex sins outside homosexuality to name just a few). That is fact, and implying it isn't condemned by God is incorrect.
You may not want to believe that those words express God's thoughts, but they are part of what the Christian Church accepts as His transmitted words to us. We accept His plan for salvation as presented in that work as fact and depend on it for eternal life. We accept His plan for those who do not accept His plan for salvation equally as fact. But let's be clear. God loves all His creation and isn't willing for any to perish. He wants all to accept His plan for their life and His plan of salvation and repent of all their sin. That's also in the manual you don't want to believe. I have no animosity toward those who haven't accepted that plan and don't go around trying to beat them up physically or verbally, regardless of what they've done that keeps them separated from God. But my belief system says that they are, in fact, separated, and it isn't the way God wants it to be.
I've seen enough unexplained things happen that the world would call healings or miracles (in people I know) to believe that God exists and is still acting in ways that the Bible says He will. Seeing current events unfold like the Bible says I can expect makes me believe that the future events will also unfold as it describes. I don't pretend to understand why He chose to condemn some things that He did, but that doesn't change the fact that He did so. I don't have to like that. You don't have to like that. It doesn't change His nature a bit, and I can assure you He doesn't care what either of us thinks. He is a righteous judge who will execute judgment (probably sooner rather than later looking at the world today). The Bible implies that His basic nature is unchanging, and from near one end of recorded Bible history to the other end of prophetical history, certain things consistently stand out as actions He will judge. It's a good time to accept His plan of salvation and start working out your daily repentance just as I must.
Your history with Christians doesn't appear to be very good, and sadly we haven't done a very good job of living up to Christ's standards when trying to present the truths we believe. Perhaps I haven't here either. The acceptance of those truths is up to the hearer or reader. I hope you can get over the hate from the past and find Him. Once you discover that He actually is, it changes your outlook on your life and the world. Until that happens, it's easy to believe there is no merit to the Christian argument and to rail against it. Salvation is the easy part. The road of repentance isn't easy, regardless of what background you are coming from.
Out of curiosity, what's wrong with NFS?
They are also a business. They have purchased and upgraded computer equipment (including laboratory and bedside test equipment) since the 60s/70s to handle larger volumes of people, tests, etcetera with fewer people. In addition, the number of tests ordered by doctors when treating patients has gone up a bunch since the 60s and 70s since more tests can be done at the local hospital rather than having to be sent to a specialty lab.
All hospitals have back up plans to handle power failures, but in many cases newer hires only know how to work the new machines and haven't been trained in how to do the tests by hand. In other cases, doing the tests by hand takes more time or needed reagents may not be kept in large supplies since most tests are handled by the machines. They can function without computers for a certain amount of time, and in a federally declared emergency, for example, they would do so even past the safe limit, I'm sure, since they have an iron clad legal "you can't sue us since..." type of argument if something goes wrong.
They are always worried about billing (since the government will be all over their case if they find out that they gave away service X for free (or at the wrong price) while charging their Medicare patient a higher price for service X). They're also worried about being sued. Lives are at stake, but having the hospital permanently shut down also can put lives at stake.
Paper is great, and is in place as a backup for most result reporting if some lab system is down temporarily or if the front office reception and billing and other sundry things are working for some reason, but it is a stopgap measure and the number of patients that you can process is reduced (sometimes significantly).
As other posters have said, it's about the ability to provide an expected standard of care. If there's another hospital to go to that can give you a higher standard of care when a power failure and its attendant problems takes down hospital A, why would you want to go to hospital A?
It doesn't surprise me a bit. I know someone who works in a hospital lab. In any large hospital these days the lab equipment automates the reporting of results into "the system". When some part goes down, they can revert to paper for a period of time. At some point, with how short hospitals are running staff, you reach a point that you do not have enough people and free time available to catch back up manually re-entering the data once the failed system comes back up. The time frame varies with the size of the hospital and the patient load.
In today's litigious society, it is perfectly reasonable to believe that a major hospital would close to new admissions to get the paperwork caught up rather than risk being sued because the electronic trail was missing. With a health records system not being available to produce histories on patients I could see shutting down even sooner.
It's certainly something to be concerned about and it's going to get worse as time goes on. Unfortunately, as the electrical load increases outages are likely to be more frequent as well.
Read part of your blog. Apologies if I caused any offense. Hope things start looking up for you.
Economies care about nothing.
My point was simply that the "at the expense of everyone else" is not as huge a group of people as you seem to think it is. Why shouldn't people who put resources at risk be compensated for doing so?
You didn't mention anything local but you were talking about employees and expenses which I assumed you were implying would be made locally. The localization effect of property taxes is simply one of the few ways that corporate taxes benefit the people where the work is being done by helping to support fire, police, and other first responders. I used that as an example. I do admit that there is a difference between many corporations which have been established for a long time and thus are only trading existing stock between individuals and newly minted companies which are doing IPOs. Getting rid of corporate taxes wouldn't, by itself, prevent a company from making local donations or providing local services. Many companies do that as a matter of good will even though the tax benefits of those actions don't necessarily cover their cost. If you think they should act differently, become a shareholder and petition the board at the annual meeting to change their course of action. If enough people agree with you, change will happen. If enough people are like me and prefer to quietly donate to local charities ourselves instead of having some company we own stock in do that work for us, the status quo will remain in place.
There are many excesses in the system, and there is concentration of wealth that has the potential to be destabilizing in the long run. All people who have received benefits from the system should be charitable. Carnegie certainly was, to name one who leaps to mind. The same can be said of Gates and Buffett. At some point, before or after death, each will have to give an account for what they've done with what God has given them. I'd still rather live in a society where there were uber-rich individuals who were stingy and everyone had a chance to become a shareholder and invest or to start their own company than a communist state where everything was spread around liberally to people who had put no work into the system. Wait a minute... Considering how many people don't pay taxes now but yet get lots of direct and indirect government rewards, maybe the U.S. has already fallen....
It doesn't matter what the taxes are collected on (profit, revenue, number of chairs around the board of director's table, number of spoons in the cafeteria, percentage of days that the weather was cloudy at corporate headquarters, number of trips the CEOs took in business jets to name a often mis-maligned legitimate business expense) or where the taxes are collected (local, state, national, world wide, or the expanding operations on Omicron Ceti III). In the end, whatever dollar amount the companies remit to the taxing authorities in any jurisdiction is a line item expense to them. The either recover that expense in the form of higher prices that are passed on, marked up, and eventually paid by the consumer or they go broke.
The only marginal benefit that ever accrues by taxing companies in any manner whatsoever, is that occasionally local jurisdictions benefit from the physical plant property taxes to help recover the expenses of protecting their physical property from fires or crime. Many large companies have their own security forces, and some in our area have their own fire fighting crews (think refineries) so even that is not necessarily ever an expense to the community. Even this minor benefit would be outweighed by the greater value that could potentially accrue to employees or shareholders or both by eliminating the ever multiplied tax burden on corporations. Don't knock the shareholders. I happen to own stocks individually, but there's a huge slice of America that owns stocks through mutual funds, pension plans, IRAs, 401k(s) and the like. Maybe you aren't a shareholder, but if you aren't, you're missing a great way to save for the future. Yes, the market just took a huge plunge, and it may take another before it's over. I've had some pretty big losses. I had some in 1987 as well. But if you haven't gotten wild with margin and aren't in a position where you have to sell, most of the securities will be able to be sold for a profit at some time in the future. For companies that are likely to stay around, the depressed prices of earlier in the year were a tremendous buying opportunity. That isn't a short term view. When the stress tests are announced, the market may reverse direction again. That's what it does. It fluctuates. But it's time to quit beating up on the investors. The majority of the investors in the country are little guys like me, buying a few hundred shares here and there or investing through mutual funds or retirement accounts. What Mr. Obama is doing to Chrysler's bond holder is just wrong. I hope the bankruptcy judge doesn't go along but instead goes by the normal legal channels.
Unfortunately, eliminating corporate taxes would require other reforms to the tax code or everyone would incorporate as individuals. But don't think that raising taxes on corporations will do anything other than increase the cost of the goods you buy.
I usually read the posts in reverse order, so I apologize if I'm slighting an earlier post when I say this is the first intelligent post I've seen on this subject.
Everyone repeat after me. Corporate taxes, regardless of their form (federal, state, local, excise, ...) is just a line item on their corporate expense sheet. For normal corporations, this is offset by income from the sales of goods and/or services. Hopefully, the net result is a profit or you're going to go out of business.
If you increase the expense side of the business equation, they raise the price side of the equation so they end up making a profit. What is horrible about this is that each company that buys that company's products to make their own products or which uses that company's services to produce, transport, or sell their products marks the price for their part of the finished good's chain up to cover both the higher cost of their inputs and whatever higher taxes they have to pay so they return the same profit. If they can't do that they become less profitable or go out of business.
The farther away the finished goods are from raw materials, the greater percentage of the final cost that the consumer (you and I) pays for the goods ends up being returned to the federal government when the companies all along the chain pay their taxes. This is on top of making the U.S. products less competitive with respect to other countries equivalents.
Eliminate all corporate taxes.
Yes. Although I tend to do most debugging on a Linux based hardware emulator I wrote, at times when debugging hardware issues, we still dig out our old Arium and plug it into the boards.
Well, I don't know. Perhaps because we don't want to have to back up and reinstall the Linux operating system we actually use most often because Microsoft can't install itself in a friendly way?
Linux didn't have any trouble installing along side Vista. I had to remove Vista first and reinstall it before I started because its brain dead partition management couldn't shrink a partition due to some fixed position NTFS block stuck way out in the middle of the disk, but that was Vista's problem. The Linux install went just fine and didn't hurt the reinstalled Vista partition at all. Can't say the same going the other way. From what I hear you have issues even installing other Microsoft O/Ss alongside each other unless you go oldest to newest. What utter garbage.
Read the post again. I have pointed you in the best direction I can where you can find the evidence you seek. I have purposely not specified a denomination or a church because I don't want to be accused of trying to drive people to a particular place and there is no way for me to know if a particular denomination's church is any good at place XYZ anyway. But if you don't choose to go and examine the evidence for yourself, at length, and possibly at multiple locations, then I agree it is not a useful discussion. The only way you can know for yourself is to experience it with your own eyes and ears. You won't do that if you avoid everyplace where you could experience it for the rest of your life.
I think you are missing my point. I'm not saying that you have to go to one particular church in the world to see God work. I'm not even saying that you have to go to one particular denomination to see God work. Most importantly, I'm also not saying that God is an actor and we are directors who can make Him perform on demand just to satisfy someone's curiosity. I do feel that you are more likely to see God at work in certain denominations than others if you observe for a long enough time. Going one Sunday, seeing nothing, and then declaring that God must not exist because He didn't choose to do anything during that one or two hour period that was sufficiently out of the ordinary to satisfy you is an invalid test. Such a one time or two time observation wouldn't be acceptable to science either. That would be especially true for those who choose to make those one or two time observations on Christmas or Easter where the services are pretty packed with little time for God to do anything out of the ordinary anyway.
Over my lifetime I have seen things occur in churches that I have attended to people that I know personally that cannot be explained by medical science or normal life. That's my own individual data point, and it is all that matters to me. Faith alone should be enough, but it's nice to have some real time confirmation as I live my life as well.
I'm not saying the things that I have observed should be sufficient for you, nor am I saying that my data point should be sufficient for any other Slashdot member. You don't know me any better than you know Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. It doesn't make that data point any less valid. Some of the inputs to my data point are second hand, but some are first hand where I directly observed, and some are personal where I was the recipient. You can choose to dismiss them and not believe me, just as many here dismiss the Bible, but I cannot ignore them for I observed them. They are anecdotal to you, simply because you didn't observe them.
It would, indeed, be an interesting experiment to actually research any of the three items you mention, but there isn't any money in it, so it isn't going to happen in the real world in which we live.
The thing is, God doesn't act in a general denomination wide or church wide way. When He does act, it is individually. He's not required to perform on demand. He's not required to repeat Himself. He's not an experiment you can perform and say true or false. He also isn't doing things world wide 24x7 (and if any blame should be assigned there, I'm pretty sure it can all fall squarely on us Christians who don't want to get involved in actually working for Him when He wants and how He wants or living up to His standards). Even in the New Testament, everyone wasn't healed just because Jesus walked the earth. Yet the Bible tells that many were in fact healed. The same is true today. Every Christian isn't healed of every disease to live forever on this earth. We all die of something at some time. Yet there are many who are healed. If you want to hear about how God is working, you should involve yourself with His people. The world has no interest in promoting Christianity in the media.
If you personally get to know a body of Christians, and they get to know you well enough to open up about some of the things that have gone on in their lives, you would at least have more information than you have now to make your decision. That sort of opening up is more likely to happen in a small group setting or Sunday School class than a main worship service. Maybe God would even chose to do something for you in particular at some point that would form the basis for your own individual data point in the whole experiment of life and religion. I wouldn't count on that happening until you start believing in Him though.
The bottom line, though, is it is up to you to get involved. You will never believe any study presented unless you know the participants. Your heart seems too hard. Too many are like the Pharisees of Christ's time wanting to see signs and wonders to believe. God doesn't require extreme belief. Simple belief is enough.
you have zero observations to support the story... Fixed that for you.
I don't accept the Bible as fact because the religion I follow says it is true and you shouldn't either. I believe that there are few conflicts between science and an accurately interpreted Bible and am appalled at the twisting that I.D. does to the scriptures. I think that the only way the entire Bible can be correct is to put Gen. 1:1 long, long ago and make what you consider to be creation stories to be instead restoration to a habitable state after a cataclysm. 2 Pet. 3, Jer. 4 and Isa. 14 don't work otherwise.
But I would also stress that the purpose of the Bible has nothing to do with science. Its purpose is to declare Christ as the Savior and to lead people to Him. For all of those multiple writers and time delays you speak of, it is a remarkably self-consistent piece of writing. Yes, there are a few translation errors here and there due to the age and condition of the original documents, but in general they are few and far between.
Let's assume you're a scientist. If you want to study the life in the oceans do you live in or visit the desert instead?
If you want to study whether God exists or not, you should attend church with an open mind and get to know the people there and experience what happens in their lives. Don't pick some dead fossilized church or denomination to try to find out about Him either. He can be found there (or anywhere for that matter), but it will take more effort than you are probably willing to put in.
If you get to know the people who attend a particular church, then you'll believe them when they tell you they have been prayed for and healed from a medically diagnosed illness and their doctor backs up their story. You won't have to depend on the healing acts described in that Bible you don't trust. When a person you know well tells you they were driving and came up over a rise flying low and there was a herd of deer in the road, and they covered their face and took their foot off the gas and a few seconds later realized there hadn't been a crash and both they and their car was OK, that a miracle happened (because a herd of deer just doen't tend to get out of the way on their own) and you won't have to rely on a Bible you don't trust.
The evidence is all around me that God is at work. I've had members of my immediate family go up for prayer (in one case after having had confirmed diagnosis from a doctor) and be healed. So when I see and hear God working today in the same ways that the Bible says He would work in the New Testament, it lends credence to the entire work, and I am forced to see how science and the Bible, along with His work today can coexist and fit together. If I didn't see God working around me, as many people even in some Christian denominations today do not, then it would be harder for me.
Seek out Pentecostal churches with an open mind and put your scientific method to work instead of just refusing to believe old books or things you hear because they don't line up with your hypothesis.
Everyone makes mistakes. This is true of both scientists and individuals acting in the name of religion.
To paint all religion black, and by inference all religious people black as you do, is no more correct than to paint all scientists as black just because there are a few who try to pass off some cold fusion experiment or cloning experiment or any of a list of other scientific fiascos of the recent past (to say nothing of what science thought was right back in the ages you mention) as the "right" thing just because it was believed to be right at one time.
Bad science is eventually disproved by scientists as better theories are found. Attempts to scam the system are eventually uncovered when experiments can't be reproduced. That's the way science works.
If you substitute interpretation for experiment, you might discover that it is the way that many religions work as well. People in the past have made some interpretations of the Bible that were simply incorrect because they took items out of context or just weren't careful in their reading. Many of these interpretations have caused problems in the world and are still being spouted today. I.D. is our equivalent to the cold fusion mess. It just doesn't match what most of the Bible declares.
A correct interpretation of all the Bible finds that there is little in conflict with science. We still disagree that the plants and animals that we have today came about from continued evolution over the eons because we believe in a cataclysmic judgment on the world (not Noah's flood) that occurred at some point and which was of unknown length between Gen 1:1 and the restoration process in the rest of Genesis. The rest of Genesis records the acts of God clearing the air so that the Sun and Moon could be seen again and the recreation of plants and animals after the cataclysm. What may have gone on before has little mention in the Bible. If you want to say there was evolution, I won't debate that, although I do personally believe that God had His hand in the creation of each of the major groups of life that the planet saw. Regardless of this, what we have today started over in the recent past. The fossil record of man would seem to support this. There are several pre-modern man lines running that all stop at about the same time. Then modern man starts.
The vast majority belonging to religious orders today wouldn't support the actions of the individuals cited in your post today either. You can't call something win-win unless both sides come out ahead. I think, followed to its correctly balanced extremes, your suggestion would be better classified as lose-lose.
Gen 3:22-24
When I went to school, back in the old days, other creation Myths were taught in public schools. We learned what the U.S. Indians believed about their gods. We learned about the Greeks and Romans. But you couldn't mention the Christian creation story.
This is what most Christians find offensive. We can study the rest of the world under the guise of multi-culturalism. But when someone mentions Christianity (as opposed to Hindu or Muslim religious systems), everyone gets up in arms about separation of church and state.
The Constitution of the United States of America, as amended, does not say that religious concepts (even of the majority of the population) can never be discussed in a government run setting like a school. What it says is that the government cannot declare the Episcopal church (to pick a church that I'm not a member of) to be the official religion of the United States of America and that to hold office or participate in government you have to belong to that church. A lot of people here on slasdot seem to wish it was more specific about promoting the religion of atheism, but it isn't.
You don't have to discuss every creation idea that is out there. You just don't get to squash one that comes up for discussion. Most school districts just want the whole controversy to go away, so they adopt a just say no approach. That doesn't mean it is in line with the constitution.
I personally would prefer the evolution theory be presented as that, and religious aspects be left for discussion elsewhere. I'm perfectly comfortable discussing my religious beliefs with my kids and surprisingly, there isn't much conflict between a good understanding of what the Bible actually says and science, so it's pretty easy to do. Just don't slam the religious kids while teaching.
The school systems have way too much to teach to waste time with trying to argue at length over religious issues. Teach the theory and move on. It isn't worth the time it gets either in the school systems or here on slashdot.
FWIW, the fruit didn't destroy immortality. It caused God to seal off access to the garden of Eden where a particular tree whose fruit was sustaining them in an effectively immortal state was located.
I'm Christian. I'm not a big fan of the theory of evolution, but certainly don't have a problem with my kids being taught it in school. I'd rather they be taught it while young and I'm around to explain the Christian side of things to give them a different perspective and show how the science they are hearing could actually fit in with the Bible's reporting of history.
I think the whole Intelligent Design theory (as I understand it) does a miserable job of Biblical interpretation, so I'm against it too, in case you wondered. I have no problems with dating methods, fossils, and a very old age of the Earth and solar system. That Big Bang in Genesis 1:1 is OK by me. I haven't heard anything except evolution itself that doesn't fit in with the Bible. I look at horses today, and compare them to horses in fossils and they look similar. Different sizes but similar. I personally don't see what the real problem with a Creator reusing bits of design that are suitable to this planet over and over with slight modifications for diversity as the mood struck Him. To say that everything came about by itself, however is a huge stretch of the imagination (and I have a very active imagination).
e = m * c * c. That just happened? All things circular have this neat pi variable in them that goes on forever. That just happened? Look closely at flowers and their perfect symmetry. That just happened? The theory of relativity and gravity (to mention something from another post). That just happened? To me, to say things started from nothing and just turned out this way all on their own is a far greater stretch of the imagination than the atheists seem to think that God is.
Christians believe the Bible is the inspired word of God. I won't debate that there have been improper translations over the years due to the fragmentary and degraded original writings or problems with oral retelling. Regardless of that, the Bible, as a whole appears to be remarkably consistent for a document written over several thousand years. The more that archeologists dig up and discover, the more of the Bible accounts are verified.
So the question I ask is this... How much evidence do you need to believe in God? Cause if you believe in God, then you really should give a boost to believing His word.
I read about healings in the Bible. I see healings today. You can't explain them with science and many are medically verified before and after.
I hear about miracles that happen in the lives of Christians today. They have no explanation. These are in people I know well or were directly observed by people I know well - they aren't stories that I read in a 2,000 year old document or saw on TV. They happened to friends that I have known for years and years.
I hear prophecy that comes true, spoken today just as in the New Testament. I have people come up and say things to me that they couldn't have known except through God telling them. So it begs the question... What does it take to get the average slashdotter to believe in God? If you're thinking of a smart comeback list, be careful that God doesn't pick His own way.
It's perfectly all right to go after people trying to mix religion with science in the classroom. But when science is presented it is reasonable to expect that it won't be presented in an anti-religious way. That's all I ask. I don't try to belittle science when talking to my kids. I aced Physics and Chemistry in a high ranked private college and made a lot of pre-meds mad in Chemistry Lab with an A that I didn't even care about. Why shouldn't I get the same courtesy from the science teachers? Teach the facts as facts, the theories as theories, and try to realize that you just might be wrong.
First, in two places Christ spoke that people needed to become like little children in their faith and belief to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Mt. 18:1-10, 19:14. The wording suggests that little children are under grace to start with and start out part of the kingdom of God.
For the book of life reference, my interpretation is by inference from only a couple of scriptures. I can't make a really strong case for it. Rev. 3:5 refers to blotting out a name from the Lamb's book of life, which at the very least allows for backsliding. At the end of Revelation in 22:19, there is a reference that if any man (not just people who have accepted Christ) shall take away from the prophecy of Revelation, his part shall be taken from the book of life. I will freely admit that this is perhaps weak, but it does seem to be consistent. Many other references refer to sin being something that will cause your name to be blotted out of the book of life (Ex 32:32-33, Ps. 69:27-28, 109:13 (Here some codices refer to let his name instead of let their name, making this a prophecy of Judas Iscariot).
The second reference is much easier. Let's start with the prophecy of it in the Old Testament - read Ps. 68:18. For Christ's prophecy of the period of time between his death and resurrection, see Mt. 12:38-40 (and yes, that means that He was crucified on Wedn. and not Fri. as some teach), and finally Paul's account of what He did during that time Eph. 4:7-11.