It's perfectly compatible to be a Christian and accept evolution.
We can share a common ancestor with the other great apes (or indeed with daffodils, I suppose, if one goes back far enough) [i]and[/i] remain special in the eyes of God.
(And more to the point, all life is special to Him, but human beings have a particular reasoning power which - as far as we can tell - other creatures even very intelligent ones, don't have. If dolphins or crows are ensouled as we are, are burdened with a tendency to sin, and if they therefore have need of salvation, you can be sure that God has in place some means to save them too...we just don't really need to know about it; it's just all the more reason to treat all life with respect).
@Persephonee [quote]It's perfectly compatible to be a Christian and accept evolution.[/quote]
No it isn't. It's group think and appeal to authority. It's wishful thinking and fantasy. It's an illusion.
Christ (meaning messiah), came to earth as a man from heaven where he was a spirit creature in order to die for our sins inherited by Adam who was listed as a real person in the genealogical record in the temple of those who were awaiting the messiah. If Adam didn't exist he didn't sin. If Adam didn't sin there is no need for a Christ.
Adam died in 3096 BCE. He had children who are listed in the same record. He is referred to throughout the Bible. Jesus said: "However, from [the] beginning of creation ‘He made them male and female." (Mark 10:6)
[quote]We can share a common ancestor with the other great apes (or indeed with daffodils, I suppose, if one goes back far enough) and remain special in the eyes of God.[/quote]
That doesn't mean anything. That's a bumper sticker slogan. A T-shirt. It isn't real. It's a fantasy. In effect that is even what you are saying. With daffodils, you suppose? With rocks? Trees? It doesn't mean anything. We are all alive. That's as much as you can get out of that.
Your problem is that you assume "Christianity" and "Evolution" must be true otherwise why would everyone think that. It's group think. Put some effort into it. Those illusions were designed to make you feel safe and smart. They don't.
[quote] Adam died in 3096BCE. He had children who are listed in the same record. He is referred to throughout the Bible.[/quote]
You read it hear first folks. Also only three male children of Adam are named. Some great record keeping.
God created a man and a woman, and he "called their name Adam." So the woman's name was Adam too!
When Adam was 130 years old he had a son that looked a lot like him. He called him Seth. Genesis doesn’t give Adam's age when Cain and Abel were born. Was Eve (Adam) the sole female?
@BlueSkyKing The Adam & Eve story in the Garden of Eden is related to the story about the King of Tyre being in the Garden of Eden and getting kicked out for collaborating with the enemy. Ezekiel 28 = https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ezekiel+28&version=TLB
Adam and Eve represent the founders of the Jewish line that led to Jesus. It has nothing to do with anyone else in other ethnic groups. In the Bible, and in the Jewish Babylonian Talmud, only Jews are considered men or humans. All others are beasts, animals, dogs, swine, etc.
@Diotrephes True that the Adam And Eve story is connected to the King of Tyre, but didn't Adam and Eve represent the founders of all lines, not just the Jewish?
Here's my take on it. The King of Tyre is a parallel to Satan. Satan was in the garden of Eden to protect Adam and Eve. He was the most beautiful of angels. That much is clear
An aside: for some reason people often say that one of Satan's responsibilities in heaven prior to his sin, was as chief of music in heaven. I have never seen any evidence of this in scripture and I have never seen any reason to think so indirectly, so I don't know what that is about or where it comes from.
@DocSavage Religion isn't a threat to science. The threat to science is conflict of interest - money. Science needs to be put back in the hands of REAL scientists. Not politicians or corporations. Not dependent upon funding and corrupted by patents.
Stop harping about religion because of your warped sociopolitical frustrations and put your time and energy into fixing the problem, because people like you are like religious idiots who give money and power to fake gurus who rape their children and live lives of luxury. Your problem is that you can't see that because you refuse to see the problems in your ideology and the damaging effect that has on what you profess to be so important. But just like the religious it isn't God that is important to them. It's their ideology and politics. Their fake morality. Your fake intellect. Science isn't important to you.
@Diotrephes [quote]Adam & Eve represent the founding of the Jewish line that result in the Jesus character. It does not involve any other ethnic groups.[/quote]
You've said that already, but how do you figure? How do they represent something that didn't exist until much later.
According to who? And what actually does it mean? That doesn't really make sense. Adam and Eve brought about everyone. All ethnic groups. From Adam, eventually Ham's descendants, the Hamitic descendants were some African and Arabian tribes, the Egyptians and Ethiopians.
From Shem, the Semitic descendants; some Arabian tribes, Assyrians, Aramaeans (Syrians), early Chaldeans, Elamites, Hebrews, Lydians.
From Japheth, the Japhetic descendants were Aryan (Indo-European/Indo-Germanic)
Careful taking mythology like the Babylonian Talmud and trying to retrieve truth from it without seeing where the truth comes from and what was done with it during the course. Even if you look at it from the mythological perspective.
@AkioTsukino Typical Christian, no one doesn’t believe, not really. I’ll choose my own opinion. You’re wasting my time, you talk a lot, but say nothing.
No wonder you’re so into the bible, it and you are both negative and depressing.
@AkioTsukino [quote] fake morality. Your fake intellect. Science isn't important to you.[/quote] Truth is, and science is the best path to it. So what is important to you, if not the truth and integrity of your god or the bible? What about the corruption in your own house ?
@AkioTsukino The biblical fairy tale is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, lie people have ever believed. It's sole purpose was to give the Jews special status and to make the dummies think that they have to worship a Jew. That is it in plain language and it's really that simple. Even the Bible says that you shouldn't believe Jewish myths.
@Diotrephes [quote]The biblical fairy tale is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, lie people have ever believed. It's sole purpose was to give the Jews special status and to make the dummies think that they have to worship a Jew. That is it in plain language and it's really that simple. Even the Bible says that you shouldn't believe Jewish myths.[/quote]
Why is it, as I have found, that some of the smartest people can be the dumbest? I think it's because our education system, for about the last 100 years or more, has been the biggest lie people have ever believed. It's sole purpose is to give consumers the illusion that they are smart when actually they've been conditioned on how not to think for themselves. The dummies that come from that system are almost incapable of doing that.
So, I'll help you. But you won't be helped, do you know why? You've been conditioned. Indoctrinated to be a thoughtless consumer. A slave to debt. A big part of that is taking away your ability to believe in anything. To have no beliefs. Not in God, or country, or anything that will get in the way of you becoming a thoughtless slave. As the adage goes, you have to believe in something or you will fall for anything.
The Bible was written by Jews. All of it. All Jews. For only Jews. This is the basic outline. . . .
1. God created man perfect, meaning innocent with great potential to be the fitting image of God. Not to withhold knowledge from him, but so that he could be like God.
2. Man fucked it up. All he had to do was fill and subdue the earth and recognize God's rightful sovereignty as man's creator. Like a parent who teaches his children well. This was represented by the tree of the knowledge of what is good and what is bad.
3. God, being challenged by Satan's lie that the tree was a representation of God withholding knowledge from man, thought it only fair, justice, to allow that challenge to be tested. Was Satan telling the truth? Could man, independent of his creator, decide for himself what was right and wrong and thereby effectively rule the Earth God had appointed man steward of? All of the suffering and destruction of Creation since then, is man's doing. Not God's. So, after man fucked it up God revealed his plan for man to fix it. That plan was this:
A. Select a people who demonstrated their willingness to have faith in their creator. Thus Abraham's willingness to sacrifice of his child, Isaac. Have you ever noticed that family members, even that you have never known, that may have lived long before you were born, behave similarly? You may act and behave just like they did. How do you inherit behavior, personality traits, of someone you've never known? God wanted to know that these people he was about to select had it in them to make the sacrifice that God himself had to make to conclude his plan like Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son.
B. Form a nation of imperfect laws that no one could follow, thus demonstrating the essence of sin. To instruct the people of that nation their sin, by showing them their own inability to follow the law. To be, as Micah 6:8 says, humble in walking with their God, Jehovah. The Hebrew word translated as humble means to be aware of one's own weaknesses. Special? In that regard, yes.
C. To provide a messiah, Christ; a savior from that sin so that they could be freed from it after death with a hope for resurrection to live forever in paradise Earth as God intended. As Adam was meant to. Only the people born or fully converted as Jews. No one else. Since Adam had been created equal he was, in effect, slowly killed by Satan's deception. Murdered. The soul, meaning life as represented by the blood of a breathing creature, (soul means literally breather) belongs to the one who created it. Justice would dictate that the soul of Adam be repaid by the life, the soul, of not just anyone who inherited sin from Adam, but of someone without sin. There is only one person in the history of mankind that could be. Meticulous records were kept to that effect. Proving without a doubt, who that person was. They knew, by prophecy, exactly when he would come to do that. As Messiah. That has been accomplished.
So, before the bad destroy everything they will be destroyed and the good, mankind who rejoice in Jehovah God's sovereignty, knowing it is the best way, the only way to live forever in peace are allowed to do that.
Then they will be special.
4. Like everything, science, religion, art, music, sports, entertainment, politics, medicine, fashion, literature, education etc. The meaning of the Bible was distorted for power, greed and ignorance.
So, in 332 BCE Alexander brought Greek philosophy into Jewish thinking, religion, fashion, sports and life in general. Greek culture took over the world. They put a Gymnasium in Israel. The youth learned of Greek mythology which was heavily tied to their religion through the games they played there. The Jews had already started doing that with the pagan gods of the nations which is why Jehovah had such difficulty with them, but now it was magnified.
The Jewish religious leaders in Jesus' time overstepped their significance. For example, where Moses' Law said to wash hands before eating or touching unhygienic items the Scribes and Pharisees insisted righteous people wash up to the elbows. They thought themselves righteous by increasing the law, some of which actually had a practical purpose.
That is why the Jews rejected the long awaited messiah. Because they allowed themselves to be warped by religion. They wanted the Messiah to deliver them from the bondage of Rome. Like Moses had in Egypt. Like David did from their oppressors. But Jesus had a bigger purpose. On a much bigger scale. The destruction of the world. So the hope was extended to gentiles.
They coveted the prestige and power they perceived the Aaronic priests as having, at least the potential of possessing. That's why Jesus had such a hard time with them. When Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE the Aaronic priests had no more authority so the religious Jewish leaders took over. The result is the Jewish religion as you know it.
The same thing happened with Constantine the Great in 325 CE. The immortal soul from Socrates, the trinity from Plato, the cross from Constantine, Hell from Dante and Milton, Christmas from Saturnalia, Easter from Astarte (Ishtar), and the Rapture from Darby. Earlier pagan teachings going back to ancient Sumer mixed with and distorting the original teachings.
Shortly after Adam's fall angels came from heaven and took on physical form to mate with women. Their offspring corrupted humanity to such a degree that their destruction was imminent so God destroyed them in the flood. After the flood the first king, the Sumerian Dumuzi (Tammuz Ezekiel 8) also known as Nimrod, invented the cross. A pagan phallic symbol. He also built a tower that he thought was too high for another flood to reach the top of. The result was that people wanted to gather there instead of spreading out over the Globe as God wanted. So he confused their language and they spread out. Taking with them stories of a great flood, giants, the cross and other nonsense that in turn would mix with all cultures, though separated by geographic and linguistic barriers.
So, that's what you find globally. Nonsense and ignorance. If, and I do mean if, a person has a keen sense that something isn't right with the world they look for hope. They find it in faith of something better and they leave the world, in effect, awaiting for the promise of the way it was meant to be.
Now here is where you come in. If your not interested, forget about it. Live your life without wasting another second on a God you don't believe in. Live in the world. And die in the world. And that's it. No hell. No literal torture. Just worm food.
There's no point in you wasting your time arguing with me or God or religion UNLESS you want that new system.
@DocSavage Your science doesn't allow for you to see the world around you which is almost entirely founded upon an illusion. Mythology. Even if that mythology isn't real, and it isn't, it is still far more relevant than science, which is just reaching in the dark for obvious truths.
If you removed mythology society would crumble. If you removed science nothing would happen. That isn't to say that science isn't a good effort, but it can only diminish into obscurity or warp and transmogrify just as religion has.
Beneath it all is the truth that matters. The Bible. If the Bible is wrong my promoting it will have caused no damage. The damage comes from the ignorance of it, which you yourself posses. If evolution is wrong its promotion will cost billions of people everlasting life in a paradise where there is no sickness, disease, aging, or death. No crime, corruption.
That fact doesn't make it (the Bible) true. It is up to the each of us to weigh the evidence. I've weighed it and accept it. Apparently you have weighed the evidence and reject it. I recommend you get on with your science and your life 'cause it's all you have. Don't waste time doing what you do here. You're not going to change or help anything or anyone and only do yourself a disservice.
You're a prisoner of your ideology. Do life, do science instead.
@AkioTsukino [quote] That fact doesn't make it true. [/quote]
The truth is what makes it fact. Your own arguments defeat you. The bible is one mythology out of thousands , those are based on who presents them. And when. History is full of people and events that prove that
You’re using Pascal’s wager now. If I’m right, we win everything, if I’m wrong, then at least we don’t lose anything. You’re afraid. And that fear limits you. You need the illusion to feel safe and secure. You don’t want to leave your safety zone. You want everything and everyone to stop with the bible it’s not going to happen. Why ? Because the bible is just a book of myths. Humans will always go looking and questioning. Evolution, what did it do to you ? It showed you the myth wasn’t true. You’ve seen the man behind the curtain. Do you stay in Oz now or go running back to Kansas ? Do you cling to the lie you know, or do you learn from the truth you closed your eyes to, and venture out in a new world, without the illusion ? The conditions are still the same. If the bible is true, than it will remain true, if it’s false, it will remain false. But if you know it’s false, why pretend it’s true ? And how will the new information, make it less true ? You, apparently aren’t interested in playing dice. You want to hide in your cave, that’s your choice. Some of us want to see what’s over that horizon.
@AkioTsukino [quote] Your science doesn't allow for you to see the world around you which is almost entirely founded upon an illusion. Mythology. [/quote]
Your hypocrisy never ceases to astound me. All science does, is let us understand what is there to begin with. It was illusion and mythology that created what you believe your god to be. It’s men who wrote the bible, primitive, uneducated men, god left the truth for us to see when we were grown up enough to see it. You’re fighting to keep the myth, the illusion, not the truth. What you said about facts earlier. The facts are there, they dispelled the fable. But the facts, are still there, and there are so many different fables aren’t there ? Only one can be true, but all of them can be false. Picking the right one, picking the fact out of all that fiction. There’s the rub.
@DocSavage [quote] science, which is just reaching in the dark for obvious truths. [/quote] And when it finds those truths, what then ? Do you embrace it, or bury it. You’ve admitted you want the lie. Why should anyone believe in it ?
@AkioTsukino [quote] It doesn't matter to you if the Bible is true or not, you just want it gone. It doesn't matter to you what evolution says, it is your own personal mechanism. [/quote] Finally, you finally got my point. It doesn’t matter if the bible is true or not. Nor should evolution, matter to you. You believe what you want to, and why you want to. You have your reasons for doing so. Evolution has plenty of evidence, to those that Of us that understand it. What’s the worst case scenario? We get to the pearly gates. And god takes a moment to school us. One of us is right, one of us is wrong. What is the overall cost ? Nothing, just the product of the times , and the education. Correct it, and we’re both back on the level playing field. No harm , no foul. So why your resentment to science ? You’re afraid of god. You have to believe, because that’s your ticket into heaven. Obey or get roasted. Don’t doubt, don’t question, don’t ask. Just obey. The bible was written, by Bronze Age goat herders. They didn’t have the information we have today. It’s just possible they got it wrong, and / or wrote it for their own agenda. And that others added their agendas to it. Why should god fear, or care . Once you’re dead, the truth will out. Regardless. So why are you so hostile to what the evidence points to ? Either way, god put it there, right. All anyone can say, is that they were misinformed. Easy problem to resolve. But you can’t accept that. Your religion demands perfection. The bible has to be right, even when it gets everything wrong. If the facts and evidence is against it. Then you have to change the equation. Twist it until the ends go we’re you want them to go. That’s not lying, it’s faith. Me, I’m not worried about god. If he’s a just god, he’ll understand it. I can’t be expected to believe in something that isn’t rational or reasonable to me. All he needs to do is give me a bit of schooling. I wasn’t raised in the faith, that’s not something you can blame on anyone. So, where does that put us ? Both of us have our own beliefs. Both of us will be judged. You’re hoping the mythology is truth, and brown nosing Jesus will grant you entrance to heaven. I’m willing to stand on my own. It’s now a question if god is in fact just. Will he be fair, or the selfish, petty bastard in the bible. In which case, I won’t get in anyway. But, at least, unlike you, I can’t be honest, and true to myself. And, I can still, learn new and wonderful thIngs, you can’t. Not until you’re dead, and probably not even then.
@AkioTsukino [quote] the question of why you were misinformed. Ignorance of the law. [/quote] What law would that be ? What exactly is “the Law” and who decreed it, and enforces it ? Anyone in particular. [quote] Sin, which we all have, are a product of, means not obeying. You got it all wrong. [/quote] Sin is non existent, unless you have someone or something with the authority to define it. Just like “the Law” [quote] The Bible was written by Kings, a Doctors, Lawyers, fisherman - over 40 different people over a period of hundreds of years.[/quote] All of whom could not have any actual knowledge as to what they were talking about. Nor any power and authority to call it law, or judge sin. [quote] You can't get it all wrong while claiming to be representing the truth. I've heard it all before.[/quote]
No doubt from everyone who wasted their time reading your post.
[quote]The Bible was written by Jews. All of it. All Jews. For only Jews. This is the basic outline. . . .[/quote] In the Bible and other Jewish literature, only Jews are considered men and humans. Everyone else are animals, dogs, swine, beasts.
The more secular books, such as Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and some of the Apocrypha, contain relevant ideas that are timeless and beneficial to everyone. The rest is garbage and the more I discuss it the more I become convinced that it is vile garbage and should be tossed into the dump.
While the Bible is based upon ethnocentric Jewish religious fairy tales I doubt that Jews were a significant part of the committee that wrote the Bible as a book in the 680's-early 690s. The writers included countless clues that it was just an elaborate hoax. In any case it is the most successful lie ever told on this planet.
