(March 14, 2018 at 8:54 am)alpha male Wrote: I accept RR as a Christian, and I daresay he accepts me as one. So, stars and distances don't seem to be stopping either side from believing.

In general, people believe or don't due to matters of the heart. They then use their head to justify their desired conclusion.

That's the great thing about religion, "I'll believe my crap and let you believe your crap and we'll both get pissed at people who call it crap."

(March 14, 2018 at 12:24 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:

(March 14, 2018 at 8:54 am)alpha male Wrote: I accept RR as a Christian, and I daresay he accepts me as one. So, stars and distances don't seem to be stopping either side from believing.

In general, people believe or don't due to matters of the heart. They then use their head to justify their desired conclusion.

That's the great thing about religion, "I'll believe my crap and let you believe your crap and we'll both get pissed at people who call it crap."

Except when I will kill you for believing your crap rather than my crap.

(March 14, 2018 at 12:25 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:

(March 14, 2018 at 12:24 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: That's the great thing about religion, "I'll believe my crap and let you believe your crap and we'll both get pissed at people who call it crap."

Except when I will kill you for believing your crap rather than my crap.

Actually, it depends on the crap, the time, and the place. Believers are highly flexible and utterly rigid as it suit them.

alpha male Wrote:[quote=vulcanlogician]
I'll go first: The Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light years away from us. That means that when we look at Andromeda through a telescope, we do not see it as it exists today. We see it as it existed 2.5 million years ago. If the universe is only 6,000 years old as you say, this means that when God created the cosmos, he actually stretched the light from Andromeda to Earth.

Kind of odd to make a charge and supply an answer yourself, but OK.

Quote:Why?

So we could see it.

Quote:To give anyone with a telescope good reason to doubt the accounts in Genesis? It makes no sense.

A Creator who makes the universe seem to be older than it actually is, would be a Trickster.

---

On one hand we have an ancient collection of books declared to have been inspired by the Creator of the Universe ™. On the other we have the actual universe. If there is a God, we can only know for certain that it is directly responsible for one of these. When they conflict, which do you believe?

(March 14, 2018 at 8:54 am)alpha male Wrote: I accept RR as a Christian, and I daresay he accepts me as one. So, stars and distances don't seem to be stopping either side from believing.

In general, people believe or don't due to matters of the heart. They then use their head to justify their desired conclusion.

I am shocked and flabbergasted.   I had no idea that daresay was one word!



But yes, I agree, we can have different understandings in this regard, and not have to question whether the other is a Christian.

(March 14, 2018 at 12:13 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: The problem I have, is that any argument that you can make, I can make of the text.  Couldn't that just be an image of what it would be like? 
I don't deny the biblical accounts that you mention.  I also don't deny, what we can see. 

You can see that when someone is dead and buried on Friday, they're not up and about on Sunday. This is demonstrated thousands of times a day. Would you argue that the resurrection is just an allegory? Or do you actually believe it, despite what you see?

Quote:There are very early commentaries in the Talmud, that say that the beginning of Genesis should be read as poetry.  There are those who where held in high regard in the early Christian Church, who said very similar and held to and old earth.  If anything, while there has long been a controversy in how to exactly read the first part of Genesis the young earth view is fairly recent.

The young earth view is recent, but the controversy is long?

While I agree that there have been people who have approached Genesis other than literally all along, you're kidding yourself if you think that a literal reading has only occurred recently.

Theologically, you're going to run into difficulties if you try to reconcile with current science. God looked at creation and said it was very good...despite billions of years of suffering and death? Sin entered the world through one man...again despite billions of years of death?

(March 14, 2018 at 12:58 pm)alpha male Wrote:

(March 14, 2018 at 12:13 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: The problem I have, is that any argument that you can make, I can make of the text.  Couldn't that just be an image of what it would be like? 
I don't deny the biblical accounts that you mention.  I also don't deny, what we can see. 

You can see that when someone is dead and buried on Friday, they're not up and about on Sunday. This is demonstrated thousands of times a day. Would you argue that the resurrection is just an allegory? Or do you actually believe it, despite what you see?

Some People Were Dead For Several Days

(March 14, 2018 at 12:58 pm)alpha male Wrote:

(March 14, 2018 at 12:13 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: The problem I have, is that any argument that you can make, I can make of the text.  Couldn't that just be an image of what it would be like? 
I don't deny the biblical accounts that you mention.  I also don't deny, what we can see. 

You can see that when someone is dead and buried on Friday, they're not up and about on Sunday. This is demonstrated thousands of times a day. Would you argue that the resurrection is just an allegory? Or do you actually believe it, despite what you see?

You are talking about something else all together now.  This isn't about what is usual or making those types of assumptions.  This is about what you can see directly.

Quote:

Quote:There are very early commentaries in the Talmud, that say that the beginning of Genesis should be read as poetry.  There are those who where held in high regard in the early Christian Church, who said very similar and held to and old earth.  If anything, while there has long been a controversy in how to exactly read the first part of Genesis the young earth view is fairly recent.

The young earth view is recent, but the controversy is long?

While I agree that there have been people who have approached Genesis other than literally all along, you're kidding yourself if you think that a literal reading has only occurred recently.

Theologically, you're going to run into difficulties if you try to reconcile with current science. God looked at creation and said it was very good...despite billions of years of suffering and death? Sin entered the world through one man...again despite billions of years of death?

There are some difficulties with some traditions.   But I don't find that I need to reject one or the other.

"You know guys, GOD COULD HAVE JUST CREATED POTTERY THAT LOOKED LIKE IT WAS MADE BY THE CHINESE TO TRICK PEOPLE! I MEAN HE MADE A MATURE ADAM, COULDN'T HE HAVE ALSO MADE MATURE POTTERY THAT WAS MADE BY THE CHINESE BECAUSE... ERRR HE LIKES FUCKING WITH PEOPLE? HE ALSO DID CAVE PAINTINGS, BURIAL, AND THE DISCOVERY OF FIRE! SCIENTISTS ARE JUST WRONG CAUSE THE BIBLE IS TRUE!"

The levels of intellectual dishonesty Young Earthers have to have is outrageous. Apparently God decided to come up with a conspiracy to trick people into thinking that the Earth is actually older than it is. For...Reasons.

(March 14, 2018 at 8:54 am)alpha male Wrote: In general, people believe or don't due to matters of the heart. They then use their head to justify their desired conclusion.

But help is available.  You don't have to live this way.