Just wondering if those familiar with patent reform lobbying in the US could give a summary of what is happening. I'm not necessarily talking about the elimination of software patents, though that would be nice, but at least of reforming the system to only allow truly deserving patents through, and then for less time than is currently given.
Are there any organizations specifically dedicated to this fight? (EFF?)
> Does your particular religion really posit that the entire book is directly authored by God?
There are various viewpoints, but the general evangelical Christian view is that all is somehow inspired, maybe not word for word, but God managed to get His thoughts through. Also the doctrine of inerrency usually applies to just the original manuscripts.
Sure, there are parts where I might wonder what God was thinking, but for one thing, it's maybe a bit arrogant for any human to think he knows better than the One who created the universe.
Also you mentioned the bear incident with Elisha in another post. My brief attempt to explain that one: Elisha did not necessarily do what was right when he cursed the kids. In fact it's probably a warning to us not to take curses lightly!
> And what is your stance on translations?
We have several good modern translations today, but none are by themselves authoritative. My favorite is the NET Bible (New English Translation), as it has boatloads of notes about the original languages, as well as study notes.
I also believe that there is plenty of perfectly good evidence to believe that the Bible IS authored by God. The accuracy of the creation account, for example. The Old Earth Creationism model, IMHO, does a very good job at reconciling the Bible and science, and in fact if you take "day" in Genesis to mean millions of years, which is a perfectly acceptable Hebrew definition of the word, the whole Genesis 1 story fits amazingly well with our current scientific understanding. No time now, but I can explain more later if you're interested.
From my brief playing with DBs and coding in OOo, it has some OK tools for basic data management and merging, but the forms feature was rather clunky. Hopefully this will be improved upon in 2.0.
For an Access replacement in Linux, I'm leaning more towards Knoda or Rekall or maybe GNU Enterprise.
> In my opinion the "great flood" was perhaps a severe localized flood
I'm a Christian who takes the Bible fairly literally, and I actually agree with this statement. It is the position of Old Earth Creationism, which I believe in.
The Old Testament is simply the history of God's interaction with man. Like any history book, it contains some ugly episodes. Just because they exist does not mean that the author of the book (God) condones the behavior. Many senseless things have been done in God's name.
Where the Bible lists objectionable actions, there are a couple possibilities:
1. The action was influenced by Satan, not God. The Bible says much about spiritual warfare. God is not the only supernatural being. He IS the most powerful, but His nature requires for all creation (humans and angelic beings) to choose Him for themselves. Satan is described as one who comes to "steal, kill, and destroy." That to me fits fairly well with much of the violence, both in the Bible and in modern times.
2. The action was actually initiated by God, as a way of carrying out His justice. That is, I believe, why God led the Israelites to slaughter all the tribes living in Canaan. The Bible makes it fairly clear that they were allowed to do that because the wickedness in that area was so great. That does NOT mean we as humans should be following their example. It IS evidence that God can use nations to accomplish His will and justice.
Only in the United States. I work for a non-profit in Ecuador, and we have to pay the full price for MS products. In the past, we got a huge donation from someone in MS, which is why we are currently using Exchange and Office 97.
But the time has come to think about upgrades and we can probably no longer get the donation. We'll probably be replacing Exchange with Postfix very soon, and I'll be pushing like heck to get OpenOffice in the door more.:-) Our biggest problem is Access; once we can find a reasonable replacement for that, hello Linux desktops! (Well, for some people. A lot of folks here are into advanced media stuff and Linux won't be practical for quite some time yet.)
Where did you see the 1998 eclipse? Yes, indeed it was a truly perfect day in Maracaibo. There are two photos of it on my page... click my URL and scroll down to the Photos section.
Cool, I forgot about that eclipse. Looks like it will be 60% or so in Ecuador, but looks like the path goes through Cartagena, Colombia just before sunset. There's a reasonably good chance I could go up there for that. I wonder if it will be total or annular there -- it's a little hard to tell from the map. Maybe Panama would be better - looks like it goes straight through Panama City, and it's earlier in the path. More expensive to fly to though.
OTOH, I can't immagine how hard or expensive it will be to get there. LanChile is the only airline that flies to the place, only has two flights a week to Santiago and to Tahiti, and they cost like $800. Unless they plan special runs (and I bet they will), you'll probably want to book a year in advance!
I agree about coordinating travel with astronomical events. I went to Venezuela for the eclipse of 1998 (did you see that one?) and had a blast traveling around the country, seeing things such as Angel Falls and a Llanos safari.
You can find great stuff to do in nearly any country on earth.
Currently I live in Ecuador and won't be able to get to Europe for this.:( Might have to aim for Easter Island in 2010.
Scary fact: I saw the total solar eclipse iin Venezuela a few years ago, and street vendors were selling "viewing glasses" that were clearly NOT of the material needed for safe viewing.
Take care, folks, especially if you're in the third world or dealing with people who don't understand this stuff.
Ok, another comment or two, then I'm done. You can ignore at will, but this is for the archive...:)
From the Drake Equation site.
> Question: For each star that does have a planetary system, how many planets are capable of sustaining life? > Answer: Current estimates range from 1 to 5.
Really? This is what Ross' calculation shows to be infintessimally small. Ross gives a whole bunch of relevant factors used to come up with the number. This site does not; it only speculates 1 to 5 per star. What the heck?
I'd love to see Ross debate whoever came up with this.:D
Also, your "conservative" estimate of 1000 was the default on the page, and seems highly optimistic for several of the values. I changed some of the values, and not to the lowest choices available, and came up with 0.0165 communicating civilizations in the galaxy.
I *do* understand how big the universe is (well, maybe not, but I know intellectually!). But to me, the conclusion that it is highly fine tuned for our life seems unescapable.
Look what I found, the table of attributes necessary for life in a table. This is, I think, the same one as in Creator and the Cosmos. The book goes into much more detail obviously.
Obviously, some of these factors are subjunctive, but he's have to be wrong by many orders of magnitude for it to really matter...
> i will just say, the crap about the planets is indeed crap.
It's one thing to say that if you want to find reasons to not believe in a God. It's another thing to take a look at it and make an objective rebuttal.
There really are a lot of factors that have to be just right for intelligent life to exist. The planet has to have the right atmosphere, tilt on its axis, distance from the star, have the right minerals and other elements in the right quantities. The galaxy must be a spiral galaxy, and the planet's star must be in just the right place between two arms of the galaxy so as to not get sucked into an arm, where there would be too much radiation. Ross mentions some other factors; those are the ones I remember right now. Some factors are relatively easy to satisfy -- maybe one in 5 planets. Some are significantly more difficult. It is not difficult for me to see how, when you multiply the chance for all the factors together, it would add up to 10^-30 or more.
I can see some possible rebuttals to that, like that we don't know how other possible forms of life might exist. If someone can think of a radically different life form that could survive in radically different conditions, please let me know.
> If life is found on Mars or elsewhere will that show you how unrare life really is?
That's highly hypothetical; we can get to that if/when it happens. I personally don't expect it to happen, but my belief in God is secure enough for it to not be that big a deal. I don't think it would contradict anything in the Bible.
> I believe there is more tangible evidence for evolution (aside from the simple fact it just makes sense)
There's some evidence for it, but even evolutionists have admitted that there is plenty they don't know.
I also would have a hard time agreeing that naturalistic, Darwinian evolution "just makes sense." With virtually no exceptions, all observed random gene mutations are harmful. It's also hard to see how evolution could produce the emotions that humans have.
For the record, I adhere to Old Earth Creationism, meaning I believe pretty much exactly what science says about the formation of the universe and earth, and I am fine with the timeframe given by evolutionists. I just tend to believe that instead of evolution, God created all the species at the appropriate times. If God used evolution for some things, it isn't that big a deal, but I do take Genesis 2, the special creation of man, literally.
> Without faith, there really is nowhere to stand on religion ~ the very premise is faith, evolution is based on evidence.
I'll be the first to admit that faith in religion with no evidence would be stupid. I think I've shown that faith in the Bible is reasonable. If you don't agree, that's completely your choice!
> if we have made it this far, is it really impractical to believe we are that far away from making life from scratch?
Like I said, we're several orders of magnitude away from that in complexity.
But what if it DOES happen? Then, after who knows how many decades of trying in carefully controled environments, scientists manage to create a living cell. It would certainly be an impressive feat.
But compare that to the early earth. It was rough! The winds and the waters were likely sloshing things around violently. You really think that an environment scientists have to spend decades carefully controling is going to happen in the ocean by chance?
Again, believing that, plus believing everything else in Darwinian evolution that is necessary for humans to form, takes faith the size of a galaxy! And that's not even including the faith necessary to believe that the universe expanded at just the right rate by pure chance.
Then there's the chance of an appropriate planet existing. Hugh Ross in his book Creator and the Cosmos has a table of all the attributes of a solar system and planet necessary in order to sustain life. He runs through a calculation of how probable that any given planet could have all the attributes by chance. It is many orders of magnitude greater than the maximum number of planets in the universe! IIRC (a friend has my copy of the book) the maximum number of planets was put at 10^25, and the probability for any given one being suitable for life was like 1 in 10^40.
> I want to believe. I really wish it was so easy.
Ok, cool. A lot of people don't.
> but those in the church ran out answers before I ran out of questions.
What kind of questions?
> I have no idea how different verses discussing stretched heavens represents accurate information about the big bang.
Maybe not specific to the BB, but certainly it indicates an expanding universe. And that almost certainly was not the standard view of the ancient philosophers...Ptolemy probably could not have immagined an expanding universe! IIRC he believed that all bodies had fixed (but rotating) positions.
> It is just a poetic way of saying "I made this stuff"
Exactly! Much of the Bible *is* somewhat poetic, yet it expresses Who God is and what He did. The ancient Israelites did not NEED to know what happened when the universe was 10^-40 seconds old. They just needed to know that God created it and was in control!
> Even a young child is aware that nature evolves - such is the nature of nature. Moses was just a human being. It makes sense, and therefore should somehow be represented everywhere. Because Moses had this intuition suggests nothing in the form of proof of God.
So, do you know of other ancient literature that can reasonably be read as saying that the universe had a beginning, the earth was barren and then covered by water under a thick atmosphere, then light penetrated and the water cycle and land formed?
> The nature of a scientist is to find truth. There is not some conspiracy to discredit the faithful, the faithful just do not base there faith in empirical truth.
I for one try to. Maybe we're not always successful, and there certainly are nutcase believers. As for me, I can say with reasonable certainty that everything I've seen and heard in my life points solidly towards the God of the Bible. The creation account is part of it. The explanation for the evil in the world is part of it. (That's another topic I could get into!) How God is real in the lives of Christians is a big part of it. Then there's miracles and visions. I have a college friend who was suddenly healed from Attention Deficit Disorder after we prayed for him. I personally had a very strong dream that Richard Nixon had died... two nights before his stroke! I hardly ever have memorable dreams, but when I woke up it was so real that I had to read the paper to see if it had been in the news, and it hadn't. (I think God does that occasionally, though not frequently, to confirm His prophetic nature.)
Could I convince a hardcore skeptic, one who simply does not want to believe? No, and I won't try to. Every person has a choice to accept or reject God.
> If you truly had a fleeting understanding of how large and old the Universe really is, you would realize that everything is not only possible, but WILL occur at one point or another. No matter how remote the possibilities are, they will occur. I believe the Universe is eternal, and as such dictates that all possibilities occur. In other words, our Universe had to happen.
That still requires an enormous amount of faith. How do we know that there are infinite possibilities for universes forming, over infinite time? Then you have to explain the fact that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, which pretty much rules out the steady state model.
> When researchers created a synthetic genome (genetic map) of the virus and implanted it into a cell, the virus became "biologically active," meaning it went to work reproducing itself.
LOL! It had to be implanted into a cell? And what exactly does that prove? If something like that happened in the early oceans, where would it find a cell to implant into?
DNA and RNA molecules are orders of magnitude more complicated than any virus. Plus, IIRC, for a working cell to form, DNA has to form in conjunction with other parts of the cell, or something else unlikely (I forget details now).
I gave evidence of the Bible's accuracy, but I think you have pre-determined the kind of evidence that is acceptable to you. If I had to guess, I'd say that you simply don't WANT to believe and would reject pretty much any evidence for the existence of the God of the Bible.
> Saying God created the heavens in the earth does not ACCURATELY suggest there was a big bang.
Like I said, the Bible isn't meant to have many scientific details, but those that are there are accurate. I can't imagine how Moses would have known on his own that the universe had a beginning, the early earth was void, then eventually watery, the Spirit did something in the waters, then after that light reached the earth. Genesis 1 continues to talk about the formation of the water cycle (day 2) and plate tectonics to form stable continents (day 3). That all matches the understanding of modern science surprisingly well.
Interesting theory. Nice way for atheists to try to avoid the theistic implications of the BB. But like the bottom of the page says, this isn't proven. It maybe avoids a singularity (and thus could pose a problem for Genesis 1:1), but does it really get rid of all theistic implications? How likely is it that the said collision could have happened? And the expansion of the universe would still need to be incredibly fine tuned for any life to exist.
Anyway, I'm not concerned about that idea unless it were proven. It is only attempting to get God's direct hand out of the BB. Since I believe in God, I have no reason to replace the BB, as long as evidence supports it; and it does, overwhelingly.
Also, if the Bible seems to say that the earth is the center of the universe (which I'm not sure that it does, although I know people have implied that from it), keep in mind frame of reference. ANYTHING can be the center of the universe. Same with it saying the sun rises and sets. Our frame of reference is on the earth.
Re:Setting the record straight on tithing
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SimChurch
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Yeah, I know the original post was somewhat tounge in cheek, but I know a wide variety of people read this and I don't want any to have the impression that the TRUE church is legalistic in this area. It isn't.
> actually sit them down and insist on knowing their income to calculate the "tithe" properly.
You're kidding. Do you mind saying what denomination/organization this "church" belonged to? I'm guessing it's some kind of cult. I've never seen a true Bible believing church do anything like that.
> I beseech you to offer ONE accurate example about the formation of the Universe
OK. Let's start with the first three verses of the Bible.
Verse 1 of Genesis 1 tells us that IN THE BEGINNING God created the heavens and the earth. The first three words are quite profound in themselves. Ancient man probably would have assumed that the universe had always existed. But no, the revealed word of God in Genesis said that it had a beginning. Science has shown that in the past century with the Big Bang and relativity. Relativity shows that time itself very literally began at the instant of the Big Bang.
Now we shift in frame of reference from the universe as a whole to the surface of the earth. Verse 2 tells us that the earth was empty and void. Science tells us that the early earth was molten and void. It also tells us that the early earth had a thick atmosphere. Little or not light would have reached the earth's surface. The Bible goes on to say the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Life was first formed in the early oceans about 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, so we know what the Spirit of God was doing... creating life! (Now, if the biologists who can't for the life of them figure out how life started would just accept this as a possibility, we'd be making progress!)
Verse 3 is when the atmosphere clears out enough for sunlight to reach the surface of the earth for the first time. It is NOT when the first light in the universe existed. Remember the frame of reference!
That's barely touching on the first 3 verses. I hope you can see that it can be fitted with science reasonably well, and is NOT simply symbolic mush that can be interpreted any way. I will in turn beseech you to show me any other ancient text with half as much scientific detail as to the origins of the earth.
For more info on Biblical creation (and not the demonstrably wrong fundy mush that comes out of groups like Answers in Genesis), you might want to watch some of the archived Reasons to Believe TV shows. There's an excellent (and lengthly) series on Psalm 104 from back a couple years. Hugh Ross goes into quite a bit of detail as to how Psalm 104 shows what God did and why it was important for life to exist.
It should be noted that the Bible was not meant to be a science text. Its purpose was to unmistakeably show that God created the universe. Much detail was left out. But the verses that are there are, indeed, accurate, and I'll stand by that statement.
I'll close by mentioning Jeremiah 51:15, which says God "stretched out the heavens by His understanding." Are you aware that if the universe had expanded from the Big Bang the TINIEST bit faster, stars with heavy elements would not have formed and no life would be possible at any time or place in the universe? Similarly, the tiniest bit slower, and too many heavy elements would have formed (not enough hydrogen and helium), and/or the universe would have collapsed on itself. That implies quite a bit of understanding if you ask me!
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks
> The patent application cost at least $400.
I thought I've heard that it costs $5000, but maybe I'm on drugs.
On my Epson Stylus C82, if you hold the ink button down two seconds, it cleans the heads. One second to change a cartridge.
> Does your particular religion really posit that the entire book is directly authored by God?
There are various viewpoints, but the general evangelical Christian view is that all is somehow inspired, maybe not word for word, but God managed to get His thoughts through. Also the doctrine of inerrency usually applies to just the original manuscripts.
Sure, there are parts where I might wonder what God was thinking, but for one thing, it's maybe a bit arrogant for any human to think he knows better than the One who created the universe.
Also you mentioned the bear incident with Elisha in another post. My brief attempt to explain that one: Elisha did not necessarily do what was right when he cursed the kids. In fact it's probably a warning to us not to take curses lightly!
> And what is your stance on translations?
We have several good modern translations today, but none are by themselves authoritative. My favorite is the NET Bible (New English Translation), as it has boatloads of notes about the original languages, as well as study notes.
I also believe that there is plenty of perfectly good evidence to believe that the Bible IS authored by God. The accuracy of the creation account, for example. The Old Earth Creationism model, IMHO, does a very good job at reconciling the Bible and science, and in fact if you take "day" in Genesis to mean millions of years, which is a perfectly acceptable Hebrew definition of the word, the whole Genesis 1 story fits amazingly well with our current scientific understanding. No time now, but I can explain more later if you're interested.
From my brief playing with DBs and coding in OOo, it has some OK tools for basic data management and merging, but the forms feature was rather clunky. Hopefully this will be improved upon in 2.0.
For an Access replacement in Linux, I'm leaning more towards Knoda or Rekall or maybe GNU Enterprise.
> In my opinion the "great flood" was perhaps a severe localized flood
I'm a Christian who takes the Bible fairly literally, and I actually agree with this statement. It is the position of Old Earth Creationism, which I believe in.
The Old Testament is simply the history of God's interaction with man. Like any history book, it contains some ugly episodes. Just because they exist does not mean that the author of the book (God) condones the behavior. Many senseless things have been done in God's name.
Where the Bible lists objectionable actions, there are a couple possibilities:
1. The action was influenced by Satan, not God. The Bible says much about spiritual warfare. God is not the only supernatural being. He IS the most powerful, but His nature requires for all creation (humans and angelic beings) to choose Him for themselves. Satan is described as one who comes to "steal, kill, and destroy." That to me fits fairly well with much of the violence, both in the Bible and in modern times.
2. The action was actually initiated by God, as a way of carrying out His justice. That is, I believe, why God led the Israelites to slaughter all the tribes living in Canaan. The Bible makes it fairly clear that they were allowed to do that because the wickedness in that area was so great. That does NOT mean we as humans should be following their example. It IS evidence that God can use nations to accomplish His will and justice.
Only in the United States. I work for a non-profit in Ecuador, and we have to pay the full price for MS products. In the past, we got a huge donation from someone in MS, which is why we are currently using Exchange and Office 97.
:-) Our biggest problem is Access; once we can find a reasonable replacement for that, hello Linux desktops! (Well, for some people. A lot of folks here are into advanced media stuff and Linux won't be practical for quite some time yet.)
But the time has come to think about upgrades and we can probably no longer get the donation. We'll probably be replacing Exchange with Postfix very soon, and I'll be pushing like heck to get OpenOffice in the door more.
Where did you see the 1998 eclipse? Yes, indeed it was a truly perfect day in Maracaibo. There are two photos of it on my page ... click my URL and scroll down to the Photos section.
Cool, I forgot about that eclipse. Looks like it will be 60% or so in Ecuador, but looks like the path goes through Cartagena, Colombia just before sunset. There's a reasonably good chance I could go up there for that. I wonder if it will be total or annular there -- it's a little hard to tell from the map. Maybe Panama would be better - looks like it goes straight through Panama City, and it's earlier in the path. More expensive to fly to though.
OTOH, I can't immagine how hard or expensive it will be to get there. LanChile is the only airline that flies to the place, only has two flights a week to Santiago and to Tahiti, and they cost like $800. Unless they plan special runs (and I bet they will), you'll probably want to book a year in advance!
Wow, that's a neat plan!
:( Might have to aim for Easter Island in 2010.
I agree about coordinating travel with astronomical events. I went to Venezuela for the eclipse of 1998 (did you see that one?) and had a blast traveling around the country, seeing things such as Angel Falls and a Llanos safari.
You can find great stuff to do in nearly any country on earth.
Currently I live in Ecuador and won't be able to get to Europe for this.
Scary fact: I saw the total solar eclipse iin Venezuela a few years ago, and street vendors were selling "viewing glasses" that were clearly NOT of the material needed for safe viewing.
Take care, folks, especially if you're in the third world or dealing with people who don't understand this stuff.
Ok, another comment or two, then I'm done. You can ignore at will, but this is for the archive... :)
:D
From the Drake Equation site.
> Question: For each star that does have a planetary system, how many planets are capable of sustaining life?
> Answer: Current estimates range from 1 to 5.
Really? This is what Ross' calculation shows to be infintessimally small. Ross gives a whole bunch of relevant factors used to come up with the number. This site does not; it only speculates 1 to 5 per star. What the heck?
I'd love to see Ross debate whoever came up with this.
Also, your "conservative" estimate of 1000 was the default on the page, and seems highly optimistic for several of the values. I changed some of the values, and not to the lowest choices available, and came up with 0.0165 communicating civilizations in the galaxy.
I *do* understand how big the universe is (well, maybe not, but I know intellectually!). But to me, the conclusion that it is highly fine tuned for our life seems unescapable.
And the neighbor's @%$#@% barking and squealing dogs that wake me up a couple hours before I want to get up?
Please???
> is this the original holder of sd 56, or the guy who bought it for $115?
Crimony!!! Would my account go for that?
been studying Spanish too much lately...
Look what I found, the table of attributes necessary for life in a table. This is, I think, the same one as in Creator and the Cosmos. The book goes into much more detail obviously.
Obviously, some of these factors are subjunctive, but he's have to be wrong by many orders of magnitude for it to really matter...
> i will just say, the crap about the planets is indeed crap.
It's one thing to say that if you want to find reasons to not believe in a God. It's another thing to take a look at it and make an objective rebuttal.
There really are a lot of factors that have to be just right for intelligent life to exist. The planet has to have the right atmosphere, tilt on its axis, distance from the star, have the right minerals and other elements in the right quantities. The galaxy must be a spiral galaxy, and the planet's star must be in just the right place between two arms of the galaxy so as to not get sucked into an arm, where there would be too much radiation. Ross mentions some other factors; those are the ones I remember right now. Some factors are relatively easy to satisfy -- maybe one in 5 planets. Some are significantly more difficult. It is not difficult for me to see how, when you multiply the chance for all the factors together, it would add up to 10^-30 or more.
I can see some possible rebuttals to that, like that we don't know how other possible forms of life might exist. If someone can think of a radically different life form that could survive in radically different conditions, please let me know.
> If life is found on Mars or elsewhere will that show you how unrare life really is?
That's highly hypothetical; we can get to that if/when it happens. I personally don't expect it to happen, but my belief in God is secure enough for it to not be that big a deal. I don't think it would contradict anything in the Bible.
> I believe there is more tangible evidence for evolution (aside from the simple fact it just makes sense)
There's some evidence for it, but even evolutionists have admitted that there is plenty they don't know.
I also would have a hard time agreeing that naturalistic, Darwinian evolution "just makes sense." With virtually no exceptions, all observed random gene mutations are harmful. It's also hard to see how evolution could produce the emotions that humans have.
For the record, I adhere to Old Earth Creationism, meaning I believe pretty much exactly what science says about the formation of the universe and earth, and I am fine with the timeframe given by evolutionists. I just tend to believe that instead of evolution, God created all the species at the appropriate times. If God used evolution for some things, it isn't that big a deal, but I do take Genesis 2, the special creation of man, literally.
> Without faith, there really is nowhere to stand on religion ~ the very premise is faith, evolution is based on evidence.
I'll be the first to admit that faith in religion with no evidence would be stupid. I think I've shown that faith in the Bible is reasonable. If you don't agree, that's completely your choice!
> if we have made it this far, is it really impractical to believe we are that far away from making life from scratch?
Like I said, we're several orders of magnitude away from that in complexity.
But what if it DOES happen? Then, after who knows how many decades of trying in carefully controled environments, scientists manage to create a living cell. It would certainly be an impressive feat.
But compare that to the early earth. It was rough! The winds and the waters were likely sloshing things around violently. You really think that an environment scientists have to spend decades carefully controling is going to happen in the ocean by chance?
Again, believing that, plus believing everything else in Darwinian evolution that is necessary for humans to form, takes faith the size of a galaxy! And that's not even including the faith necessary to believe that the universe expanded at just the right rate by pure chance.
Then there's the chance of an appropriate planet existing. Hugh Ross in his book Creator and the Cosmos has a table of all the attributes of a solar system and planet necessary in order to sustain life. He runs through a calculation of how probable that any given planet could have all the attributes by chance. It is many orders of magnitude greater than the maximum number of planets in the universe! IIRC (a friend has my copy of the book) the maximum number of planets was put at 10^25, and the probability for any given one being suitable for life was like 1 in 10^40.
> I want to believe. I really wish it was so easy.
... two nights before his stroke! I hardly ever have memorable dreams, but when I woke up it was so real that I had to read the paper to see if it had been in the news, and it hadn't. (I think God does that occasionally, though not frequently, to confirm His prophetic nature.)
Ok, cool. A lot of people don't.
> but those in the church ran out answers before I ran out of questions.
What kind of questions?
> I have no idea how different verses discussing stretched heavens represents accurate information about the big bang.
Maybe not specific to the BB, but certainly it indicates an expanding universe. And that almost certainly was not the standard view of the ancient philosophers...Ptolemy probably could not have immagined an expanding universe! IIRC he believed that all bodies had fixed (but rotating) positions.
> It is just a poetic way of saying "I made this stuff"
Exactly! Much of the Bible *is* somewhat poetic, yet it expresses Who God is and what He did. The ancient Israelites did not NEED to know what happened when the universe was 10^-40 seconds old. They just needed to know that God created it and was in control!
> Even a young child is aware that nature evolves - such is the nature of nature. Moses was just a human being. It makes sense, and therefore should somehow be represented everywhere. Because Moses had this intuition suggests nothing in the form of proof of God.
So, do you know of other ancient literature that can reasonably be read as saying that the universe had a beginning, the earth was barren and then covered by water under a thick atmosphere, then light penetrated and the water cycle and land formed?
> The nature of a scientist is to find truth. There is not some conspiracy to discredit the faithful, the faithful just do not base there faith in empirical truth.
I for one try to. Maybe we're not always successful, and there certainly are nutcase believers. As for me, I can say with reasonable certainty that everything I've seen and heard in my life points solidly towards the God of the Bible. The creation account is part of it. The explanation for the evil in the world is part of it. (That's another topic I could get into!) How God is real in the lives of Christians is a big part of it. Then there's miracles and visions. I have a college friend who was suddenly healed from Attention Deficit Disorder after we prayed for him. I personally had a very strong dream that Richard Nixon had died
Could I convince a hardcore skeptic, one who simply does not want to believe? No, and I won't try to. Every person has a choice to accept or reject God.
> If you truly had a fleeting understanding of how large and old the Universe really is, you would realize that everything is not only possible, but WILL occur at one point or another. No matter how remote the possibilities are, they will occur. I believe the Universe is eternal, and as such dictates that all possibilities occur. In other words, our Universe had to happen.
That still requires an enormous amount of faith. How do we know that there are infinite possibilities for universes forming, over infinite time? Then you have to explain the fact that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, which pretty much rules out the steady state model.
Ok, from the "life" article:
> When researchers created a synthetic genome (genetic map) of the virus and implanted it into a cell, the virus became "biologically active," meaning it went to work reproducing itself.
LOL! It had to be implanted into a cell? And what exactly does that prove? If something like that happened in the early oceans, where would it find a cell to implant into?
DNA and RNA molecules are orders of magnitude more complicated than any virus. Plus, IIRC, for a working cell to form, DNA has to form in conjunction with other parts of the cell, or something else unlikely (I forget details now).
I gave evidence of the Bible's accuracy, but I think you have pre-determined the kind of evidence that is acceptable to you. If I had to guess, I'd say that you simply don't WANT to believe and would reject pretty much any evidence for the existence of the God of the Bible.
> Saying God created the heavens in the earth does not ACCURATELY suggest there was a big bang.
There are several verses that indicate that the universe has been expanding. Here's a quick search to get a subset of them.
Like I said, the Bible isn't meant to have many scientific details, but those that are there are accurate. I can't imagine how Moses would have known on his own that the universe had a beginning, the early earth was void, then eventually watery, the Spirit did something in the waters, then after that light reached the earth. Genesis 1 continues to talk about the formation of the water cycle (day 2) and plate tectonics to form stable continents (day 3). That all matches the understanding of modern science surprisingly well.
Interesting theory. Nice way for atheists to try to avoid the theistic implications of the BB. But like the bottom of the page says, this isn't proven. It maybe avoids a singularity (and thus could pose a problem for Genesis 1:1), but does it really get rid of all theistic implications? How likely is it that the said collision could have happened? And the expansion of the universe would still need to be incredibly fine tuned for any life to exist.
Anyway, I'm not concerned about that idea unless it were proven. It is only attempting to get God's direct hand out of the BB. Since I believe in God, I have no reason to replace the BB, as long as evidence supports it; and it does, overwhelingly.
Also, if the Bible seems to say that the earth is the center of the universe (which I'm not sure that it does, although I know people have implied that from it), keep in mind frame of reference. ANYTHING can be the center of the universe. Same with it saying the sun rises and sets. Our frame of reference is on the earth.
Yeah, I know the original post was somewhat tounge in cheek, but I know a wide variety of people read this and I don't want any to have the impression that the TRUE church is legalistic in this area. It isn't.
> actually sit them down and insist on knowing their income to calculate the "tithe" properly.
You're kidding. Do you mind saying what denomination/organization this "church" belonged to? I'm guessing it's some kind of cult. I've never seen a true Bible believing church do anything like that.
Nat Friedman recently identified Linux as 5 platforms:
:)
1) Gnome
2) KDE
3) OpenOffice.org
4) Mozilla
5) Eclipse
He forgot Motif, the insensitive clod!
> I beseech you to offer ONE accurate example about the formation of the Universe
... creating life! (Now, if the biologists who can't for the life of them figure out how life started would just accept this as a possibility, we'd be making progress!)
OK. Let's start with the first three verses of the Bible.
Verse 1 of Genesis 1 tells us that IN THE BEGINNING God created the heavens and the earth. The first three words are quite profound in themselves. Ancient man probably would have assumed that the universe had always existed. But no, the revealed word of God in Genesis said that it had a beginning. Science has shown that in the past century with the Big Bang and relativity. Relativity shows that time itself very literally began at the instant of the Big Bang.
Now we shift in frame of reference from the universe as a whole to the surface of the earth. Verse 2 tells us that the earth was empty and void. Science tells us that the early earth was molten and void. It also tells us that the early earth had a thick atmosphere. Little or not light would have reached the earth's surface. The Bible goes on to say the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Life was first formed in the early oceans about 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, so we know what the Spirit of God was doing
Verse 3 is when the atmosphere clears out enough for sunlight to reach the surface of the earth for the first time. It is NOT when the first light in the universe existed. Remember the frame of reference!
That's barely touching on the first 3 verses. I hope you can see that it can be fitted with science reasonably well, and is NOT simply symbolic mush that can be interpreted any way. I will in turn beseech you to show me any other ancient text with half as much scientific detail as to the origins of the earth.
For more info on Biblical creation (and not the demonstrably wrong fundy mush that comes out of groups like Answers in Genesis), you might want to watch some of the archived Reasons to Believe TV shows. There's an excellent (and lengthly) series on Psalm 104 from back a couple years. Hugh Ross goes into quite a bit of detail as to how Psalm 104 shows what God did and why it was important for life to exist.
It should be noted that the Bible was not meant to be a science text. Its purpose was to unmistakeably show that God created the universe. Much detail was left out. But the verses that are there are, indeed, accurate, and I'll stand by that statement.
I'll close by mentioning Jeremiah 51:15, which says God "stretched out the heavens by His understanding." Are you aware that if the universe had expanded from the Big Bang the TINIEST bit faster, stars with heavy elements would not have formed and no life would be possible at any time or place in the universe? Similarly, the tiniest bit slower, and too many heavy elements would have formed (not enough hydrogen and helium), and/or the universe would have collapsed on itself. That implies quite a bit of understanding if you ask me!