... Zionism is of course not synonymous with either....
Because they try to achieve by human effort, what ultimately only God can do. (...he's going to be mighty pissed at all the fools....) You're certainly right about that. But it is also true that Scripture says:" God gives grace to the humble, but is in opposition to the proud". (...If the messiah is coming, I'm all for it...) He surely is coming, physically to this earth, but you don't have to wait till then. You can have him come to you in your life right now. Ignore all religious teaching you may have heard. Simply read the story of his life and teachings as it is given in the first four books of the New Testament. Take what it says there at face value. The resurrected Christ says to you:
Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him and he with Me.
You can come to Jesus the Christ just as you are, but if you do, you will forever be changed into a better person.
....If your religion states that we're all "sinful and corrupt"....
But it also teaches that Jesus Christ came and died in order to make us clean and pure. He is ready to give eternal life to anyone who believes in him. Your body will die like everybody else, but if you ask Jesus in faith, the real you, will live again. Jesus said to his followers who loved him: "because I live you shall live also". The real you, your personality, can be likened to software that is upgraded and then loaded into vastly better hardware that will never break or wear out.
(...that religion is responsible for more deaths than disease and war, combined...) However I am not talking about religion, which indeed has caused untold suffering and pain on this earth. I am talking about a relationship with the eternal God, that you can have by faith in God through the person of Jesus Christ. People have done terrible things in his name, but if you would read about his life and teachings, you would get a vastly different picture. I dare you to read the story of his life, teaching, death and resurrection, because his words, if you accept them, will dramatically alter your life forever.
It's not that they deserve to stand, but they will in the end realize that it is God's grace and because of the promises he made to their forefathers thousands of years ago, that they are even still in existence after all these centuries. They have survived as a distinct group of people; they did not become mixed or assimilated. Unlike for example Latin, Hebrew is the only language that has ever died out from common usage in everyday life and then came back as a living language. It's interesting that in Jesus day most Jews spoke Greek, not Hebrew.
It is foretold in the holy Scripture, that because of their idolatry and disobedience, they would be driven out of their land, among the nations where they will be a stench unto them. But the same scriptures also foretell, that as they have been a curse to the nations, they will in the end be a blessing.
Human beings are under the persistent illusion, that they are in charge of history and their own destiny on this planet. This is not our world, we did not make it, we are not the boss over it and all our destiny is, whether we like it or not in the hand of an all-powerful, loving God. Of course, many no longer believe this.
We read in the holy scriptures, that God visited this world in the person of Jesus Christ, specifically Israel, but was rejected and murdered. However, scripture also foretells his coming again, at which time he will make all things the way they were meant to be in the first place. Evil and corruption will be lifted from the earth.
...if Israel has a thriving economy independent of donations from the US...
Israel thrives and continue to do so, because of the promises that Jehovah God made to Abraham thousands of years ago. Because of Israel's disobedience to God, he exiled her first to Babylon and then centuries later, under Roman rule, scattered them all over the world. However Scripture also foretold of a time when Israel would be regathered as a nation in their own land which God had promised Abraham so long ago. That took place in 1948 and in 1967 Jerusalem came under Jewish rule after having been trodden down by foreigners for thousands of years. This was also foretold and that Jerusalem would become a thorn in the side of the nations all around. God's promises concerning Israel are still valid today and his hand of blessing is upon her, even though they are still a secular state. When, not if, after the United States, like the rest of the world, abandons Israel and turns against her, she will not be abandoned by God Jehovah, but they will be and remain in the land of promise forever.
...choice 3: a god other than the one you believe in created the universe... That of course gets us into the debate that has raged in humanity and still does over which religion, if any of them, is "right". I could go into why I believe in the Judeo-Christian God, as chronicled in the Bible. However this is not the proper forum for that.
(...whereas scientific theories have to be testable by definition....) There's not a single mathematical equation, describing anything in nature, that works differently, whether you acknowledge God or not. I have no quarrel with actual scientific observation and experiment, but the atheistic interpretations thereof.
(....don't misrepresent your religion as science....) Again, it is only the interpretations, not the scientific experiments or observations that are at issue. Evolutionists interpret the observations in nature by specifically excluding God, whereas the creation model acknowledges him. The Bible encourages men to study God's great handiwork and honor him in worship.
(....we know that today no fossils form...) So can you tell me where fossils are being made today and how they are being made?
(...consistent with Shannon's definition of information,...) His definition is incomplete, because it does not address the issue of the source of information. Information only comes from a mind, not from matter or energy. A 737 airliner contains lots of information, all originating in the minds of engineers. A single living cell contains orders of magnitude more information than a jetliner. Whose mind does that information come from?
...it's that creationism wasn't-- and couldn't-- ever be scientific....
That is because you have DEFINED creation by God as unscientific. By definition, any explanation of origins that leaves God out is scientific. The forces of nature operate the same, can be studied the same, whether God is involved or not. The mathematical equations describing them do not change in the slightest, whether acknowledging God is included or not.
(...It's just not a scientific theory because it isn't falsifiable...) All that Darwin ever OBSERVED was the adaptation within a species. He and others have extended this to interspecies evolution, even though it is false and has never been observed. The facts are just the opposite. Thousands of experiments, for example, with fruit flies or even bacteria such as E. coli have shown that there is no crossing over to the creation of a new KIND of living organism. No matter what was done to fruit flies, they always remain fruit flies and the same can be said for E. coli. Bacteria can be given new abilities, such as for an example digest oil or cellulose, but they are still fundamentally the same organism they always were. Even through millions of generations, E. coli have remained forever E. coli, never becoming a coccus or spirochete, fundamentally different organisms. Evolutionists claim that this happened naturally over millions of years, but when they desperately try to duplicate nature, they have always without a single exception failed to evolve another organism. Therefore, with the exception of natural adaptation of living things, evolution is not only falsifiable, it is false, it cannot be demonstrated in the laboratory today. Last time I looked, science was about experiments in the laboratory and observations, not about models in the mind or computers and scientists. Mathematics in many disciplines has become the master rather than the servant of science.
(...But gravity only comes in positive quantities, so it never cancels...) It is still a deep mystery exactly what it is about matter that gives rise to gravity. They hope to shed more light on this with experiments at CERN in Switzerland. If you were placed in a sealed cabin in space accelerating at 32 ft./s per second, there is no possible experiment you could do, to determine whether that same cabin was not simply resting on the surface of the earth.
(...stabilized by gravity until it ultimately ends when nuclear fuel runs out, etc....) Humanity has wondered for a long time, what fuels the sun. It was realized early on that it could not be simply a big campfire in the sky. Then man discovered nuclear energy, and that is now ascribed to be the energy that supposedly powers the sun. However there several problems with that. Firstly, the observed temperature inversion between the surface of the sun and its corona, violates the well-known second law of thermodynamics. There are some theories that try to explain this in terms of the nuclear fire at the center of the sun model, but these theories have no observations behind them. Secondly, according to what we know about nuclear fusion and its attendant neutrino production, not nearly enough solar neutrinos arrive at Earth, if nuclear fusion as we know it takes place in the sun. Theories about oscillating, undetectable neutrinos have been put forth, but they don't solve the problem of the missing neutrinos. Thirdly, if the sun were truly almost 5 billion years old, it should have burnt up enough of its mass by now, to allow the orbit of the Earth to be further away from the sun, much too cold for life. There are also other observations of the Sun that put the theory of nuclear fusion occurring in the core of the sun in doubt. The truth is, that there is quite a bit of evidence, that the sun is powered by some mechanism other than nuclear fusion. The bottom line is that the currently accepted theory of nuclear fusion in the sun has some serious observational deficiencies.
All theory, especially scientific theory is gray, because it changes all the time. Theories of a century ago or even of last week change.
(...Presumably you wish to argue that evolution is gray...) It is not only gray, but also full of holes. For thousands of years, up until Darwin came along, scientific consensus was that the God theory of creation was the proper one. Now in the last couple of milliseconds of history, a new theory, the theory of evolution where God has been excluded has come about.
(...Neither is gravitation...) It's really funny that you should mention gravity, because that is the one force of nature we know the least about and it is also the weakest, being 36 orders of magnitude weaker than the electric force. There are more questions about gravity and unknowns, than any of the other forces that operate in the universe.
(...We can even see it working on island habitats...) Not so, but all we see is the amazing adaptability of living things to changing conditions. All Darwin actually observed was that the beaks of birds changed according to what seats were available. He and others extended that observation to theorize that birds could evolve into other animals that were no longer birds but something else. Evolution is not an observation of facts, but their interpretation extrapolated into the past.
(....record billions of years rather than a few odd thousands....) You apparently are ignorant that there are two ways to measure time. One is called atomic time, because it depends on the atom and the other is orbital time, because it depends on the orbit of the earth and the planets. Scientists assume, that is believe on faith, that these two timescales have always been identical. There is increasing evidence that the atomic time scale differed greatly from the orbital timescale in the past. All extrapolations from the present to the past are based on certain assumptions, that is beliefs, that nobody can check out because we have not yet invented time travel.
....except that it correlates well with our observations....
Actually, it only correlates with our interpretations of the observations, not the observations themselves. We can only observe how life works today, not how it worked thousands or millions of years ago. We assume, that is believe how things might have been a long time ago, but nobody can go back and actually observe what took place. All books which look at science from the evolutionary viewpoint, always use words of uncertainty, such as could have, might be, it is thought that and other such constructs.
In the Bible read over and over: The LORD said.... The question in this case becomes, as it had been in the Garden of Eden: "Did God really say....?" It now comes down to simply this: do I believe him or not? When someone says to you I don't believe you, are they not calling you a liar? I would hesitate to call the Almighty God a liar if I were you.
Of airplanes, automobiles and computers, but nobody suggests that these objects are descended one from another. Such man-made objects as these contain much information that came from human minds. Living things contain orders of magnitude more information than even the most complex man-made thing. The question is not really what descended from which, but where did the increasingly greater amount of information inherent in increasingly complex lifeforms arise.
All theory IS gray, by the mere fact that all theory is from humans and is subject to human interpretation. Also, theories change all the time. At one time, the scientific theory commonly accepted was that the earth is flat and at the center of the universe. Anybody who argued differently was ostracized. At one time, all doctors believed that disease was caused by bad air and bad humors. At one time, the commonly accepted theory for the existence of all things was that there is a Creator who made all. Now the theory is that it all sort of happened by natural means without any intelligent input or planning.
Science and the theories of man change all the time, but the Bible has endured for thousands of years and its truths are still relevant today. It accurately predicted events in the future that are now history. In spite of everything that people have done to belittle it and to claim it is false, it has been, by a wide margin, and still is the most likely distributed book on the planet. It was the first book ever printed and is available in more languages and dialects by far, than any other book.
Which then raises the question of where did those rules come from? In human experience, without exception, laws and rules always come from the human mind. From what mind then do the laws and rules of nature come from?
(....them to self-organise into the structures....)
I'll believe that on the day a pile of junk of nonliving material self organizes. If a working automobile ever comes out of a junkyard, all on its own, without human help, then I would believe that nonliving matter can self organize into complex structures.
(...rife with glaring Logical [wikipedia.org] Fallacies..)
There are only two choices in ascribing origins. One is that everything came into being by God specifically creating it and the other choice is an explanation that leaves God out of the picture. You have chosen to believe in the latter and I have chosen to believe in the former. Neither your belief nor my belief or anybody's belief for that matter can be proven.
I have never seen random atoms become anything complex by any means other than planning and thought by an intelligent human being. In nature everything left to itself decays and loses structure, if there is no information input. In human systems, information always comes from a mind without exception. It is natural and extremely logical to extend this into the realm of living creatures. All living things contain codes which represent information. This information came from a mind, the mind of God. When you de-clutter your room you have to input two things: first, information on where to put the stuff, and then secondly apply energy to actually do it according to the information. In the same way, living things need two things, one of them is information such as the supplied in the DNA code and the other is the needed energy to actually carry out the instructions of the code. Undirected energy alone cannot make or sustain life nor clean up your room.
....Isn't your God supposed to be unknowable and random...
That's maybe what your God is like, but mine has revealed himself as a human, Jesus Christ.
(...destroying whole cities because of the actions of a few....)
The God I know hates all forms of sin and corruption, in the same way that a surgeon "hates" germs. In a hospital operating room ALL infectious agents, germs viruses or whatever, have to be killed. If any of those poor bacteria, who of course also want to live, are not killed, they will make the patient sick at best or even kill him or her. If there is a cancer in your body, it has to be removed in total, with not even one innocent little cancer cell left behind.
A holy, pure and perfect God likens all of us humans, even the best and nicest of us, including women and children as sinful and corrupt. Back in Noah's day he destroyed not only a few cities, but wiped out all of humanity safe for Noah and his family. Even here it says that Noah found mercy in the eyes of the Lord.
Because we all are sinful and corrupt, we all, including you, can and must call upon God to be merciful. The only criteria that God has is to believe in him and in believing ask for his mercy and grace. Belief is the only criteria that is universal to all humans. Anybody, including a child can believe. That is why God chose BELIEF as the only acceptable path to him.
If you require evidence, here is some: There is a man by the name of Lee Strobel wrote a book named "The Case for Christ" You can get it here:
If you require more evidence, you can read a book that is little more than an essay by one of the founders of Harvard Law school. "The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence" by Siman Greenleaf
That is because the whole program, that is all of creation is now corrupted. If you would as I do, believe that the Bible is God's word and what he tells us in it is absolutely true you would have your answer. He tells us that we are both the object of the cosmic battle between good and evil and the battleground. We read that there is a malevolent being that is opposed to God and all of his creation including us humans. This evil entity, commonly known as Satan, convinced the first humans to believe him rather than God. Men fell away from God and with him all of Creation. We are now so used to death and entropy, that we call it normal, but from the beginning it was not so. We read that when God created, he called it very good, which sadly is no longer the case. God promised right at the beginning, after man disbelieved, that he was working to fix things up again by making everything new and he still is doing exactly that. In software terms, the perfect error-free program was corrupted and will be rewritten from scratch
God is in absolute control of human affairs and is still working out his perfect plan right now. If you want to know how it will all turn out, read the last two chapters in the Bible.
....but if he bothered to give us an answer, would we be capable of understanding....
Which is exactly what he did, when he came to earth as a human being in Jesus Christ. Here is part of the conversation Jesus had with one of his disciples named Philip:
John 14:7 If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. And from now on you know Him and have seen Him. Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Jesus said to him, Have I been with you such a long time and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. And how do you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? The Words that I speak to you I do not speak of Myself, but the Father who dwells in Me, He does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the very works themselves.
You have it right when you say that God is entirely alien from us. That's why he became one of us, Emmanuel, God with us. Gospel means good news; it is indeed good news that God wants to have fellowship with us, but is able to do so only if we are cleansed from our sinful nature by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.
(...It is hard for the scientific community to accept that the evolution and even extinction that they see has purpose and was planned from the beginning...)
That is not hard to understand if you truly believe that the Bible is God's word and what he tells us in it is absolutely true. He tells us that we are both the object of the cosmic battle between good and evil and the battleground. We read that there is a malevolent being that is opposed to God and all of his creation including us humans. This evil entity, commonly known as Satan, convinced the first humans to believe him rather than God. Men fell away from God and with him all of Creation. We are now so used to death and entropy, that we call it normal, but from the beginning it was not so. We read that when God created, he called it very good, which sadly is no longer the case. God promised right at the beginning, after man disbelieved, that he was working to fix things up again and he still is doing exactly that. God is in absolute control of human affairs and is still working out his perfect plan right now. If you want to know how it will all turn out, read the last two chapters in the Bible.
You can and must be already be part of the new order that God is in the process of creating. There can be no better way to state how this can be than as the Bible puts it in the most well-known verse in the entire Bible, John 3:16
Indeed that's what they are and they have to be believed. The idea that living things descended from one another can be countered with the idea that the Creator just used already working DNA codes to make the various creatures, including man. We humans do that all the time and the devices that we construct. Internal combustion engines have certain common parts and construction, that the designers of these engines have found to work well together. All cars have round wheels rather than square ones because the designers of automobiles have found that square wheels don't work so well. In the same way, living things don't you send one from another, but simply have common code that works in many creatures. For example, the hemochromatosis them in mammals is quite complicated, yet in all cases it has a common function of carrying oxygen in the blood.
(...the whole system could be just simulated....)
In computers and other systems, simulations and simulators are always intelligently designed, they don't just happen spontaneously. Programs and computers that run them are always the product of a mind without exception. So even if it were true that all of reality is just a simulation, such as the Matrix, such as simulation would still have to be intelligently designed.
I happen to believe that we were designed and created by an intelligent eternal God for his purposes. To me that is far preferable than to believe that I'm just a protoplasmic water bag that crawled out of the primordial ooze millions of years ago.
Yeah sure like the little boy in second grade came home from school, all excited, telling his father: "we learned in school today that we are come from from monkeys". To which the father replied: "that may be true of you because you act like a monkey so often but certainly not true of me".
....by sheer statistical analysis of decoded DNA, we're closest to chimps....
That's like saying a Buick and Cadillac are descended from a Chevrolet. Rather it is more logical to believe, that the engineers at General Motors decided that certain parts could be and are used in all three.
It is common for engineers to use working and tested parts in multiple applications and devices. It is common for software programmers to use thoroughly debugged parts and pieces of other programs over and over again. The creator simply made the DNA code as many small routines that he could assemble into dinosaurs, chimps, people and all other lifeforms. It so happens that humans have more DNA code in common with chimps or even pigs than with rattlesnakes. Why do humans have to be in a line of descent from chimps, rather than the Creator simply reusing sequences of already working code.
Done exactly what he chronicled for us in Genesis 1. It says there that Adam, the first human being, was formed from the dust of the ground, which contains all of the elements that your body is made out of. But then it says that God did something additional, over and above all animals. We read that Adam became a living spirit which God personally breathed into him.
So now you, as well as every human is an eternally existing spirit, a ghost if you will, living inside a flesh and blood body. It is only your body that enables you to interact with this physical world.
At death, the body and spirit part company and the body reverts back to the elements of the earth. What happens to the spirit or soul, the real you, depends on what you did here on earth while you lived in the body. If you believed and loved God, you will be eternally in his company, but if you disbelieved and disobeyed you will not want to be in his presence and he won't force you to be. Being away from the presence of God is hell.
All airplanes, automobiles bicycles and ice cream machines have nuts and bolts in them. Is that evidence that they all originated in a common ancestor or is that evidence that the designers of these things simply find nuts and bolts as a good way to hold the various parts together?
God created all life in such a way that it can modify its behavior and function in certain narrowly defined ways. We have labeled this modification and adaptation "evolution". In the end however, we have to BELIEVE that either randomness or God made the first living things. I find it much easier to have faith in an eternal, intelligent God making life, than to believe it came about by the random motions of molecules in the primordial ooze.
The Bible portrays the Creator God as an eternally self existent being. As such he is the first cause and originator of all things. He was never created, but just is, the one who exists. When Moses met God at the burning bush, he asked for his name. God replied simply "I AM". The universe and all things in it exist because they were created by God.
Belief in God or belief in evolution, whatever, they cannot be proven, but must be believed. I find it very difficult to believe in the idea that random chance created the universe and life itself. God created all life with the capability to adapt to changing environments and conditions. That is the only kind of "evolution" we see happening today.
The DNA code, programming all life, is not binary, as we have in our computers, but a four level code of incredible complexity. In our human experience, code complex or simple, always arises in the mind. God is not a hacker messing something up, but his superb programmer far above and beyond anything any human can even imagine.
...that humans and monkeys/apes come from some common ancestor...
is a belief in the same way that the origin of humans from Adam and Eve is a belief. When I look at the night sky, read about the complexity of a single cell or a human eyeball, I find it hard to believe that all this came about by processes NOT involving thought and planning. I would find it just as hard to believe that a 737 airliner came about by the processes evolutionists tell us made an eagle.
It is well established that thousand or even billions of almost all species can be bred from a single pair. Why is it then deemed so improbable and illogical that all humans could have descended from a single pair of Homo sapiens placed on this earth by an intelligent Creator God. It takes faith to believe that intelligent all-powerful God made the first humans, but it takes even more faith, vastly more faith in my estimation, to believe humans evolved from monkeys or some other common ancestor.
I don't know exactly what you're trying to say with this. It is because of Israel's sin that they were exiled to Babylon, a remnant returned, which endured until 70 A.D. after which the temple was destroyed and their punishment for their sin of rejection of their Messiah was that they were scattered all over the Roman empire and from there all over the world. However their history as well as the history of the rest of the nations is not yet complete. God does not enjoy the destruction of sinners, but gives them all a chance to repent and obtain forgiveness. In the end, a remnant of Israel will repent, be forgiven and welcome Jesus, as their Messiah. When they do, they will be a blessing for the whole earth and peace will radiate from Jerusalem throughout the entire world. You can read the relevant passage in Isaiah 2:1-4
The peace and prosperity that humankind has been dreaming about and yearning for throughout its entire history then becomes a reality. Peace never has been and never will be achieved by human effort. Only God can bring it about, but he does it through people who are wholly dedicated to him. God will use the Jews, with Jesus the Messiah in command, to bless all of humanity and give us the peace we all long for. In my opinion, that is a tremendous message of hope.
is the return of Jesus the Messiah, the prince of peace. The humans race has amply demonstrated throughout its history, that we are incapable of living in peace with each other. If you or any other human think we can have peace on earth by our own effort, you are under an illusion. God Jehovah, the God of Abraham will bring peace only through his Messiah, Jesus Christ. Personally I'm looking forward to that day.
There are scoffers saying that the early Christians thought that Jesus was going to come back in their day and has not. They and we humans in general forget that the eternal one does not reckon time as we do. The apostle Peter tells us: 2Peter 8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
(...someone who decides they can interpret God's words....) You don't need my interpretation or anyone else's, because you can read it yourself in Ezekiel 11:16 Therefore say, So says the Lord Jehovah: Though I have sent them far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the lands, yet I will be to them as a little sanctuary in the lands where they had gone. Eze 11:17 Therefore say, So says the Lord Jehovah: I will even gather you from the people and assemble you out of the lands, in those where you were scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.
....You seem to think that Saudi Arabs equate to Iranian Persians...
The common denominator here is not that these people were Arabs or some other nationality, but that they were all radical Muslims. Because at this time they control the government of Iran, it will be extremely dangerous for Israel and anyone who helps them, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons.
(....but your first link is The Jerusalem Post...)
I have neither the time nor the inclination to go through all the google hits that came up, over 1,700,000, for the phrase "Amadinejad quotes". Since you doubt the credibility of the Jerusalem Post, I am certain you can find these quotes somewhere else as well.
Ancient prophecies, from thousands of years ago, foretell of the scattering of the Jews all over the earth, but that they would be regathered in their own land before history as we have known it comes to an end. In 1948, Israel became a nation once again, in the Jewish homeland. Again, according to ancient prophecies, Jerusalem became the capital city of Israel in 1967.
It is also foretold that nations to the north of Israel would unite together in a very destructive war against her, but that they would be defeated. Today, much of Iran's nuclear support comes from the Russians and they support the Iranian government.
The promise Jehovah God made to Abraham concerning his descendants will come true. As it is written, the two brothers Isaac and Ishmael, the ancestors of the Jews and the Arabs respectively will live in peace in the end.
His blind hatred of Israel causes him to deny extremely well documented history. People like him and others who fly airplanes into buildings and blow themselves up, will have no qualms using nuclear weaponry on Israel and any nations who support them.
However, there is one vital element that the enemies of Israel forget. That is the promise of Jehovah God, thousands of years ago, that after being scattered all over the earth, the Jews would once again be a nation that will never again be dispersed or destroyed. The first part of that was fulfilled in 1948 when the state of Israel was re-created in the land of their ancestors. It was also foretold thousands of years ago, that Jerusalem would be once again the capital city of Israel and that this fact would be a stumbling stone and a rock of offense to the entire world, especially the surrounding nations. That was fulfilled in 1967.
The second part, concerning the enduring destiny of Israel will also be fulfilled, despite the hateful ramblings of their enemies.
Slashdot Mirror
... Zionism is of course not synonymous with either....
Because they try to achieve by human effort, what ultimately only God can do.
(...he's going to be mighty pissed at all the fools....)
You're certainly right about that. But it is also true that Scripture says:" God gives grace to the humble, but is in opposition to the proud".
(...If the messiah is coming, I'm all for it...)
He surely is coming, physically to this earth, but you don't have to wait till then. You can have him come to you in your life right now. Ignore all religious teaching you may have heard. Simply read the story of his life and teachings as it is given in the first four books of the New Testament. Take what it says there at face value. The resurrected Christ says to you:
Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him and he with Me.
You can come to Jesus the Christ just as you are, but if you do, you will forever be changed into a better person.
....If your religion states that we're all "sinful and corrupt"....
But it also teaches that Jesus Christ came and died in order to make us clean and pure. He is ready to give eternal life to anyone who believes in him. Your body will die like everybody else, but if you ask Jesus in faith, the real you, will live again. Jesus said to his followers who loved him: "because I live you shall live also". The real you, your personality, can be likened to software that is upgraded and then loaded into vastly better hardware that will never break or wear out.
(...that religion is responsible for more deaths than disease and war, combined...)
However I am not talking about religion, which indeed has caused untold suffering and pain on this earth. I am talking about a relationship with the eternal God, that you can have by faith in God through the person of Jesus Christ. People have done terrible things in his name, but if you would read about his life and teachings, you would get a vastly different picture. I dare you to read the story of his life, teaching, death and resurrection, because his words, if you accept them, will dramatically alter your life forever.
... If not - they don't deserve to stand....
It's not that they deserve to stand, but they will in the end realize that it is God's grace and because of the promises he made to their forefathers thousands of years ago, that they are even still in existence after all these centuries. They have survived as a distinct group of people; they did not become mixed or assimilated. Unlike for example Latin, Hebrew is the only language that has ever died out from common usage in everyday life and then came back as a living language. It's interesting that in Jesus day most Jews spoke Greek, not Hebrew.
It is foretold in the holy Scripture, that because of their idolatry and disobedience, they would be driven out of their land, among the nations where they will be a stench unto them. But the same scriptures also foretell, that as they have been a curse to the nations, they will in the end be a blessing.
Human beings are under the persistent illusion, that they are in charge of history and their own destiny on this planet. This is not our world, we did not make it, we are not the boss over it and all our destiny is, whether we like it or not in the hand of an all-powerful, loving God. Of course, many no longer believe this.
We read in the holy scriptures, that God visited this world in the person of Jesus Christ, specifically Israel, but was rejected and murdered. However, scripture also foretells his coming again, at which time he will make all things the way they were meant to be in the first place. Evil and corruption will be lifted from the earth.
Yes, Christians do have the promise of heaven, but while they're here they are told to love their enemies, not nuke them.
...if Israel has a thriving economy independent of donations from the US ...
Israel thrives and continue to do so, because of the promises that Jehovah God made to Abraham thousands of years ago. Because of Israel's disobedience to God, he exiled her first to Babylon and then centuries later, under Roman rule, scattered them all over the world. However Scripture also foretold of a time when Israel would be regathered as a nation in their own land which God had promised Abraham so long ago. That took place in 1948 and in 1967 Jerusalem came under Jewish rule after having been trodden down by foreigners for thousands of years. This was also foretold and that Jerusalem would become a thorn in the side of the nations all around. God's promises concerning Israel are still valid today and his hand of blessing is upon her, even though they are still a secular state. When, not if, after the United States, like the rest of the world, abandons Israel and turns against her, she will not be abandoned by God Jehovah, but they will be and remain in the land of promise forever.
...choice 3: a god other than the one you believe in created the universe...
That of course gets us into the debate that has raged in humanity and still does over which religion, if any of them, is "right". I could go into why I believe in the Judeo-Christian God, as chronicled in the Bible. However this is not the proper forum for that.
(...whereas scientific theories have to be testable by definition....)
There's not a single mathematical equation, describing anything in nature, that works differently, whether you acknowledge God or not. I have no quarrel with actual scientific observation and experiment, but the atheistic interpretations thereof.
(....don't misrepresent your religion as science....)
Again, it is only the interpretations, not the scientific experiments or observations that are at issue. Evolutionists interpret the observations in nature by specifically excluding God, whereas the creation model acknowledges him. The Bible encourages men to study God's great handiwork and honor him in worship.
(....we know that today no fossils form...)
So can you tell me where fossils are being made today and how they are being made?
(...consistent with Shannon's definition of information,...)
His definition is incomplete, because it does not address the issue of the source of information. Information only comes from a mind, not from matter or energy. A 737 airliner contains lots of information, all originating in the minds of engineers. A single living cell contains orders of magnitude more information than a jetliner. Whose mind does that information come from?
...it's that creationism wasn't-- and couldn't-- ever be scientific....
That is because you have DEFINED creation by God as unscientific. By definition, any explanation of origins that leaves God out is scientific. The forces of nature operate the same, can be studied the same, whether God is involved or not. The mathematical equations describing them do not change in the slightest, whether acknowledging God is included or not.
(...It's just not a scientific theory because it isn't falsifiable...)
All that Darwin ever OBSERVED was the adaptation within a species. He and others have extended this to interspecies evolution, even though it is false and has never been observed. The facts are just the opposite. Thousands of experiments, for example, with fruit flies or even bacteria such as E. coli have shown that there is no crossing over to the creation of a new KIND of living organism. No matter what was done to fruit flies, they always remain fruit flies and the same can be said for E. coli. Bacteria can be given new abilities, such as for an example digest oil or cellulose, but they are still fundamentally the same organism they always were. Even through millions of generations, E. coli have remained forever E. coli, never becoming a coccus or spirochete, fundamentally different organisms.
Evolutionists claim that this happened naturally over millions of years, but when they desperately try to duplicate nature, they have always without a single exception failed to evolve another organism. Therefore, with the exception of natural adaptation of living things, evolution is not only falsifiable, it is false, it cannot be demonstrated in the laboratory today. Last time I looked, science was about experiments in the laboratory and observations, not about models in the mind or computers and scientists. Mathematics in many disciplines has become the master rather than the servant of science.
(...But gravity only comes in positive quantities, so it never cancels...)
It is still a deep mystery exactly what it is about matter that gives rise to gravity. They hope to shed more light on this with experiments at CERN in Switzerland. If you were placed in a sealed cabin in space accelerating at 32 ft./s per second, there is no possible experiment you could do, to determine whether that same cabin was not simply resting on the surface of the earth.
(...stabilized by gravity until it ultimately ends when nuclear fuel runs out, etc....)
Humanity has wondered for a long time, what fuels the sun. It was realized early on that it could not be simply a big campfire in the sky. Then man discovered nuclear energy, and that is now ascribed to be the energy that supposedly powers the sun. However there several problems with that. Firstly, the observed temperature inversion between the surface of the sun and its corona, violates the well-known second law of thermodynamics. There are some theories that try to explain this in terms of the nuclear fire at the center of the sun model, but these theories have no observations behind them.
Secondly, according to what we know about nuclear fusion and its attendant neutrino production, not nearly enough solar neutrinos arrive at Earth, if nuclear fusion as we know it takes place in the sun. Theories about oscillating, undetectable neutrinos have been put forth, but they don't solve the problem of the missing neutrinos.
Thirdly, if the sun were truly almost 5 billion years old, it should have burnt up enough of its mass by now, to allow the orbit of the Earth to be further away from the sun, much too cold for life.
There are also other observations of the Sun that put the theory of nuclear fusion occurring in the core of the sun in doubt. The truth is, that there is quite a bit of evidence, that the sun is powered by some mechanism other than nuclear fusion. The bottom line is that the currently accepted theory of nuclear fusion in the sun has some serious observational deficiencies.
....Also, not all theory is gray.....
All theory, especially scientific theory is gray, because it changes all the time. Theories of a century ago or even of last week change.
(...Presumably you wish to argue that evolution is gray...)
It is not only gray, but also full of holes. For thousands of years, up until Darwin came along, scientific consensus was that the God theory of creation was the proper one. Now in the last couple of milliseconds of history, a new theory, the theory of evolution where God has been excluded has come about.
(...Neither is gravitation...)
It's really funny that you should mention gravity, because that is the one force of nature we know the least about and it is also the weakest, being 36 orders of magnitude weaker than the electric force. There are more questions about gravity and unknowns, than any of the other forces that operate in the universe.
(...We can even see it working on island habitats...)
Not so, but all we see is the amazing adaptability of living things to changing conditions. All Darwin actually observed was that the beaks of birds changed according to what seats were available. He and others extended that observation to theorize that birds could evolve into other animals that were no longer birds but something else. Evolution is not an observation of facts, but their interpretation extrapolated into the past.
(....record billions of years rather than a few odd thousands....)
You apparently are ignorant that there are two ways to measure time. One is called atomic time, because it depends on the atom and the other is orbital time, because it depends on the orbit of the earth and the planets. Scientists assume, that is believe on faith, that these two timescales have always been identical. There is increasing evidence that the atomic time scale differed greatly from the orbital timescale in the past. All extrapolations from the present to the past are based on certain assumptions, that is beliefs, that nobody can check out because we have not yet invented time travel.
....except that it correlates well with our observations....
Actually, it only correlates with our interpretations of the observations, not the observations themselves. We can only observe how life works today, not how it worked thousands or millions of years ago. We assume, that is believe how things might have been a long time ago, but nobody can go back and actually observe what took place. All books which look at science from the evolutionary viewpoint, always use words of uncertainty, such as could have, might be, it is thought that and other such constructs.
In the Bible read over and over: The LORD said....
The question in this case becomes, as it had been in the Garden of Eden: "Did God really say....?" It now comes down to simply this: do I believe him or not? When someone says to you I don't believe you, are they not calling you a liar? I would hesitate to call the Almighty God a liar if I were you.
....We can track the evolutionary history...
Of airplanes, automobiles and computers, but nobody suggests that these objects are descended one from another. Such man-made objects as these contain much information that came from human minds. Living things contain orders of magnitude more information than even the most complex man-made thing. The question is not really what descended from which, but where did the increasingly greater amount of information inherent in increasingly complex lifeforms arise.
All theory IS gray, by the mere fact that all theory is from humans and is subject to human interpretation. Also, theories change all the time. At one time, the scientific theory commonly accepted was that the earth is flat and at the center of the universe. Anybody who argued differently was ostracized. At one time, all doctors believed that disease was caused by bad air and bad humors. At one time, the commonly accepted theory for the existence of all things was that there is a Creator who made all. Now the theory is that it all sort of happened by natural means without any intelligent input or planning.
Science and the theories of man change all the time, but the Bible has endured for thousands of years and its truths are still relevant today. It accurately predicted events in the future that are now history. In spite of everything that people have done to belittle it and to claim it is false, it has been, by a wide margin, and still is the most likely distributed book on the planet. It was the first book ever printed and is available in more languages and dialects by far, than any other book.
...everything follows physical rules...
Which then raises the question of where did those rules come from? In human experience, without exception, laws and rules always come from the human mind. From what mind then do the laws and rules of nature come from?
(....them to self-organise into the structures....)
I'll believe that on the day a pile of junk of nonliving material self organizes. If a working automobile ever comes out of a junkyard, all on its own, without human help, then I would believe that nonliving matter can self organize into complex structures.
(...rife with glaring Logical [wikipedia.org] Fallacies ..)
There are only two choices in ascribing origins. One is that everything came into being by God specifically creating it and the other choice is an explanation that leaves God out of the picture. You have chosen to believe in the latter and I have chosen to believe in the former. Neither your belief nor my belief or anybody's belief for that matter can be proven.
I have never seen random atoms become anything complex by any means other than planning and thought by an intelligent human being. In nature everything left to itself decays and loses structure, if there is no information input. In human systems, information always comes from a mind without exception. It is natural and extremely logical to extend this into the realm of living creatures. All living things contain codes which represent information. This information came from a mind, the mind of God.
When you de-clutter your room you have to input two things: first, information on where to put the stuff, and then secondly apply energy to actually do it according to the information. In the same way, living things need two things, one of them is information such as the supplied in the DNA code and the other is the needed energy to actually carry out the instructions of the code. Undirected energy alone cannot make or sustain life nor clean up your room.
....Isn't your God supposed to be unknowable and random...
That's maybe what your God is like, but mine has revealed himself as a human, Jesus Christ.
(...destroying whole cities because of the actions of a few....)
The God I know hates all forms of sin and corruption, in the same way that a surgeon "hates" germs. In a hospital operating room ALL infectious agents, germs viruses or whatever, have to be killed. If any of those poor bacteria, who of course also want to live, are not killed, they will make the patient sick at best or even kill him or her. If there is a cancer in your body, it has to be removed in total, with not even one innocent little cancer cell left behind.
A holy, pure and perfect God likens all of us humans, even the best and nicest of us, including women and children as sinful and corrupt. Back in Noah's day he destroyed not only a few cities, but wiped out all of humanity safe for Noah and his family. Even here it says that Noah found mercy in the eyes of the Lord.
Because we all are sinful and corrupt, we all, including you, can and must call upon God to be merciful. The only criteria that God has is to believe in him and in believing ask for his mercy and grace. Belief is the only criteria that is universal to all humans. Anybody, including a child can believe. That is why God chose BELIEF as the only acceptable path to him.
If you require evidence, here is some:
There is a man by the name of Lee Strobel wrote a book named "The Case for Christ" You can get it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Case-Christ-Journalists-Personal-Investigation/dp/0310209307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1254515449&sr=1-1-spell
If you require more evidence, you can read a book that is little more than an essay by one of the founders of Harvard Law school.
"The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence" by Siman Greenleaf
You can get it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Testimony-Evangelists-Gospels-Examined-Evidence/dp/0825427479/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254515750&sr=1-1
....God never patches an error....
That is because the whole program, that is all of creation is now corrupted.
If you would as I do, believe that the Bible is God's word and what he tells us in it is absolutely true you would have your answer. He tells us that we are both the object of the cosmic battle between good and evil and the battleground. We read that there is a malevolent being that is opposed to God and all of his creation including us humans. This evil entity, commonly known as Satan, convinced the first humans to believe him rather than God. Men fell away from God and with him all of Creation.
We are now so used to death and entropy, that we call it normal, but from the beginning it was not so. We read that when God created, he called it very good, which sadly is no longer the case. God promised right at the beginning, after man disbelieved, that he was working to fix things up again by making everything new and he still is doing exactly that. In software terms, the perfect error-free program was corrupted and will be rewritten from scratch
God is in absolute control of human affairs and is still working out his perfect plan right now. If you want to know how it will all turn out, read the last two chapters in the Bible.
....but if he bothered to give us an answer, would we be capable of understanding....
Which is exactly what he did, when he came to earth as a human being in Jesus Christ. Here is part of the conversation Jesus had with one of his disciples named Philip:
John 14:7 If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. And from now on you know Him and have seen Him. Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Jesus said to him, Have I been with you such a long time and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. And how do you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? The Words that I speak to you I do not speak of Myself, but the Father who dwells in Me, He does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the very works themselves.
You have it right when you say that God is entirely alien from us. That's why he became one of us, Emmanuel, God with us. Gospel means good news; it is indeed good news that God wants to have fellowship with us, but is able to do so only if we are cleansed from our sinful nature by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.
(...It is hard for the scientific community to accept that the evolution and even extinction that they see has purpose and was planned from the beginning...)
That is not hard to understand if you truly believe that the Bible is God's word and what he tells us in it is absolutely true. He tells us that we are both the object of the cosmic battle between good and evil and the battleground. We read that there is a malevolent being that is opposed to God and all of his creation including us humans. This evil entity, commonly known as Satan, convinced the first humans to believe him rather than God. Men fell away from God and with him all of Creation.
We are now so used to death and entropy, that we call it normal, but from the beginning it was not so. We read that when God created, he called it very good, which sadly is no longer the case. God promised right at the beginning, after man disbelieved, that he was working to fix things up again and he still is doing exactly that. God is in absolute control of human affairs and is still working out his perfect plan right now. If you want to know how it will all turn out, read the last two chapters in the Bible.
You can and must be already be part of the new order that God is in the process of creating. There can be no better way to state how this can be than as the Bible puts it in the most well-known verse in the entire Bible, John 3:16
....That's all they are, theories...
Indeed that's what they are and they have to be believed. The idea that living things descended from one another can be countered with the idea that the Creator just used already working DNA codes to make the various creatures, including man. We humans do that all the time and the devices that we construct. Internal combustion engines have certain common parts and construction, that the designers of these engines have found to work well together. All cars have round wheels rather than square ones because the designers of automobiles have found that square wheels don't work so well. In the same way, living things don't you send one from another, but simply have common code that works in many creatures. For example, the hemochromatosis them in mammals is quite complicated, yet in all cases it has a common function of carrying oxygen in the blood.
(...the whole system could be just simulated....)
In computers and other systems, simulations and simulators are always intelligently designed, they don't just happen spontaneously. Programs and computers that run them are always the product of a mind without exception. So even if it were true that all of reality is just a simulation, such as the Matrix, such as simulation would still have to be intelligently designed.
I happen to believe that we were designed and created by an intelligent eternal God for his purposes. To me that is far preferable than to believe that I'm just a protoplasmic water bag that crawled out of the primordial ooze millions of years ago.
....we ARE descended from monkeys...
Yeah sure like the little boy in second grade came home from school, all excited, telling his father: "we learned in school today that we are come from from monkeys". To which the father replied: "that may be true of you because you act like a monkey so often but certainly not true of me".
....by sheer statistical analysis of decoded DNA, we're closest to chimps....
That's like saying a Buick and Cadillac are descended from a Chevrolet. Rather it is more logical to believe, that the engineers at General Motors decided that certain parts could be and are used in all three.
It is common for engineers to use working and tested parts in multiple applications and devices. It is common for software programmers to use thoroughly debugged parts and pieces of other programs over and over again. The creator simply made the DNA code as many small routines that he could assemble into dinosaurs, chimps, people and all other lifeforms. It so happens that humans have more DNA code in common with chimps or even pigs than with rattlesnakes. Why do humans have to be in a line of descent from chimps, rather than the Creator simply reusing sequences of already working code.
....with a spoken command could have ....
Done exactly what he chronicled for us in Genesis 1. It says there that Adam, the first human being, was formed from the dust of the ground, which contains all of the elements that your body is made out of. But then it says that God did something additional, over and above all animals. We read that Adam became a living spirit which God personally breathed into him.
So now you, as well as every human is an eternally existing spirit, a ghost if you will, living inside a flesh and blood body. It is only your body that enables you to interact with this physical world.
At death, the body and spirit part company and the body reverts back to the elements of the earth. What happens to the spirit or soul, the real you, depends on what you did here on earth while you lived in the body. If you believed and loved God, you will be eternally in his company, but if you disbelieved and disobeyed you will not want to be in his presence and he won't force you to be. Being away from the presence of God is hell.
....all species used different DNA bases....
All airplanes, automobiles bicycles and ice cream machines have nuts and bolts in them. Is that evidence that they all originated in a common ancestor or is that evidence that the designers of these things simply find nuts and bolts as a good way to hold the various parts together?
God created all life in such a way that it can modify its behavior and function in certain narrowly defined ways. We have labeled this modification and adaptation "evolution". In the end however, we have to BELIEVE that either randomness or God made the first living things. I find it much easier to have faith in an eternal, intelligent God making life, than to believe it came about by the random motions of molecules in the primordial ooze.
....which hacker made "God"?....
The Bible portrays the Creator God as an eternally self existent being. As such he is the first cause and originator of all things. He was never created, but just is, the one who exists. When Moses met God at the burning bush, he asked for his name. God replied simply "I AM". The universe and all things in it exist because they were created by God.
Belief in God or belief in evolution, whatever, they cannot be proven, but must be believed. I find it very difficult to believe in the idea that random chance created the universe and life itself. God created all life with the capability to adapt to changing environments and conditions. That is the only kind of "evolution" we see happening today.
The DNA code, programming all life, is not binary, as we have in our computers, but a four level code of incredible complexity. In our human experience, code complex or simple, always arises in the mind. God is not a hacker messing something up, but his superb programmer far above and beyond anything any human can even imagine.
...that humans and monkeys/apes come from some common ancestor...
is a belief in the same way that the origin of humans from Adam and Eve is a belief. When I look at the night sky, read about the complexity of a single cell or a human eyeball, I find it hard to believe that all this came about by processes NOT involving thought and planning. I would find it just as hard to believe that a 737 airliner came about by the processes evolutionists tell us made an eagle.
It is well established that thousand or even billions of almost all species can be bred from a single pair. Why is it then deemed so improbable and illogical that all humans could have descended from a single pair of Homo sapiens placed on this earth by an intelligent Creator God. It takes faith to believe that intelligent all-powerful God made the first humans, but it takes even more faith, vastly more faith in my estimation, to believe humans evolved from monkeys or some other common ancestor.
...not exactly the answer you were looking for...
I don't know exactly what you're trying to say with this. It is because of Israel's sin that they were exiled to Babylon, a remnant returned, which endured until 70 A.D. after which the temple was destroyed and their punishment for their sin of rejection of their Messiah was that they were scattered all over the Roman empire and from there all over the world. However their history as well as the history of the rest of the nations is not yet complete. God does not enjoy the destruction of sinners, but gives them all a chance to repent and obtain forgiveness. In the end, a remnant of Israel will repent, be forgiven and welcome Jesus, as their Messiah. When they do, they will be a blessing for the whole earth and peace will radiate from Jerusalem throughout the entire world. You can read the relevant passage in Isaiah 2:1-4
The peace and prosperity that humankind has been dreaming about and yearning for throughout its entire history then becomes a reality. Peace never has been and never will be achieved by human effort. Only God can bring it about, but he does it through people who are wholly dedicated to him. God will use the Jews, with Jesus the Messiah in command, to bless all of humanity and give us the peace we all long for. In my opinion, that is a tremendous message of hope.
...a pre-requisite for such peace...
is the return of Jesus the Messiah, the prince of peace. The humans race has amply demonstrated throughout its history, that we are incapable of living in peace with each other. If you or any other human think we can have peace on earth by our own effort, you are under an illusion. God Jehovah, the God of Abraham will bring peace only through his Messiah, Jesus Christ. Personally I'm looking forward to that day.
There are scoffers saying that the early Christians thought that Jesus was going to come back in their day and has not. They and we humans in general forget that the eternal one does not reckon time as we do. The apostle Peter tells us:
2Peter 8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
(...someone who decides they can interpret God's words....)
You don't need my interpretation or anyone else's, because you can read it yourself in Ezekiel 11:16 Therefore say, So says the Lord Jehovah: Though I have sent them far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the lands, yet I will be to them as a little sanctuary in the lands where they had gone.
Eze 11:17 Therefore say, So says the Lord Jehovah: I will even gather you from the people and assemble you out of the lands, in those where you were scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.
....You seem to think that Saudi Arabs equate to Iranian Persians...
The common denominator here is not that these people were Arabs or some other nationality, but that they were all radical Muslims. Because at this time they control the government of Iran, it will be extremely dangerous for Israel and anyone who helps them, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons.
(....but your first link is The Jerusalem Post...)
I have neither the time nor the inclination to go through all the google hits that came up, over 1,700,000, for the phrase "Amadinejad quotes". Since you doubt the credibility of the Jerusalem Post, I am certain you can find these quotes somewhere else as well.
Ancient prophecies, from thousands of years ago, foretell of the scattering of the Jews all over the earth, but that they would be regathered in their own land before history as we have known it comes to an end. In 1948, Israel became a nation once again, in the Jewish homeland. Again, according to ancient prophecies, Jerusalem became the capital city of Israel in 1967.
It is also foretold that nations to the north of Israel would unite together in a very destructive war against her, but that they would be defeated. Today, much of Iran's nuclear support comes from the Russians and they support the Iranian government.
The promise Jehovah God made to Abraham concerning his descendants will come true. As it is written, the two brothers Isaac and Ishmael, the ancestors of the Jews and the Arabs respectively will live in peace in the end.
....Citation Needed. And don't bother coming back with "wipe 'em off the map".....
If you will Google for "ahmadinejad quotes", you will find lots of material. Here is one of them:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1145961353170&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
He also denies that the Holocaust took place:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g0Y9-OC0R0qjZu-yysssZBQkGouAD9ASSH3G0
His blind hatred of Israel causes him to deny extremely well documented history. People like him and others who fly airplanes into buildings and blow themselves up, will have no qualms using nuclear weaponry on Israel and any nations who support them.
However, there is one vital element that the enemies of Israel forget. That is the promise of Jehovah God, thousands of years ago, that after being scattered all over the earth, the Jews would once again be a nation that will never again be dispersed or destroyed. The first part of that was fulfilled in 1948 when the state of Israel was re-created in the land of their ancestors. It was also foretold thousands of years ago, that Jerusalem would be once again the capital city of Israel and that this fact would be a stumbling stone and a rock of offense to the entire world, especially the surrounding nations. That was fulfilled in 1967.
The second part, concerning the enduring destiny of Israel will also be fulfilled, despite the hateful ramblings of their enemies.