Imagine you read the eyewitness account of 500 people seeing a car crash, because you didn't see it would you doubt it didn't happen?

it seems odd there are no original written accounts .

it also seems odd that only paul ever made that claim. a man that never even knew jesus.

Hahaha,

When a non-believer posts on a Biblical topic they are asked if you don't believe in it why are you interested in it. Is there a parallel here?

Haha, who says believers don't believe in science. I see science as revelation. A glimpse, how be it very small, into the power of God Almighty.

Fair enough. If you read that 11 eyewitnesses saw a car crash, just because you didn't see it does that mean it didn't happen?

I used to be a kid and was taken to church and sunday school. had a thorough indoctrination. Then I began looking around and seeing the world with my own eyes

My primary doubts about evolution come from looking at humans... All other animals are suitably adapted to their environment. Humans are not. The fastest human is among the slowest of animals. We don't have fur to protect us from temperature extremes. We don't have a mouth full of sharp teeth. We don't have long sharp claws to fight with. We can't climb trees very well. Our sense of smell is pretty much worthless. Our vision is fairly decent but nowhere near the best. And we are not instinctively afraid of fire.

Yet somehow I am expected to believe that over successive generations spanning millions of years our cognitive ability alone improved enough to allow us to survive everything nature threw at us.

Our big brains provided enough of an advantage for us to shed fur, teeth, claws, speed, strength, and olfactory senses... Really?

Amongst animals we are the most ill-suited to our respective environments. And yet somehow we are at the top of the food chain... All by accident.

What are the odds for that kind of luck?

Mike

Im not sure what you mean by car crashes analogy ,but I would be skeptical if 200 years after a buggy crash, a crash there were no newspaper accounts of, suddenly appeared in print and was marketed as accurate information.

A faith based on miracles or "magic" is a shallow one.

One of the repeated lessons of the bible is exactly that.


Right after the ten plagues God performed in Egypt, they were worshipping the golden calf.

The religious powers that be in Christ's time hired the two guards for Christ's tomb. They reported what they saw, Christ's ressurection, and it was rejected.

I doubt a miracle could convince you.

Your existence is a miracle. You dont don't believe.

The Theory of Evolution is as accepted in science as the Theory of Gravity.

DNA science has only confirmed it.

Jim

Even if the exodus story is based on a real event I seriously doubt the biblical version is accurate. Hard to imagine that parting the red sea, magically making the bottom solid, filling back in and halting all pursuit, would create non-believers who felt a need to worship a calf made of gold. i also never have figured out how a bunch of runaway slaves had enough gold to make a calf.

Be fruitful and multiply. Subdue and have dominion. Check

Didn't say how big it was. The point was the lesson learned from it for your sake.



Gravity Is not the same.

Create life.

Just create something as complex as a human. And that will last 70 years.

So many parts of the body are incredibly complex and well engineered.

Mankind can't recreate something that supposedly happened on accident.

Life is an undeniable miracle.

I have been following this thread closely as I really enjoy discussions such as this. Mark June I see you are well-written as always. It does wound me some to see your distaste for those philosophers! I do think philosophical ethics offer a chance to examine how we interact with the world. I don't recommend taking them all literally and I suspect you would agree! But a temporary consideration of how a different lens might shape a view of the world can be interesting. Humanity and human behavior was sub-par prior to enlightenment, and arguably remains so.

I have been wanting to point something out for a few pages now....I see multiple people using the word theory.

A scientific theory is a hypothesis that has accumulated a large amount of supporting evidence AND undergone a tremendous amount of scrutiny and attempts to disprove the hypothesis. This theory is an assemblage of facts that are predominantly accepted as being the probable explanation. A theory is called a theory because it has survived extensive efforts to prove the idea false and, until proven otherwise, remains seen as the probable truth for now. It is not static. It can change. The step beyond a theory is a law (I think?)

When something is irrefutably proven as unwavering fact, it becomes a law. My biology is a little rusty, but I believe this to be fairly close. Go easy on me please.

So to say something is just a theory is a misuse of words. For a theory is actually a set of facts that, for the time being, seem to interrelate to prove a point. Which is kind of a big deal...

As long as I'm posting, just a reminder that recorded history accounts for a miniscule percentage of human existence. Rocks are not carbon and there is a lot that may never be known.

They swiped it on the way out the door... Payment for 400 years of labor.

Exodus 3:22 "But every woman shall BORROW of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians."

Mike

The more I studied religion, the more I came to believe in the science of evolution and the Big Bang theory.

Then....., the more I studied science and its inability to either create life from nothing or explain how the Big Bang could create something out of nothing, the more I came to believe in a Creator. True, science pretty much proves there was a Big Bang but it does not prove what caused it, how it was triggered, or how something (the entire fricking universe) came from nothing.

Neither theory can be proven, but I earnestly believe something can not be made from nothing without divine intervention. Life, in its variety of forms, requires intelligent design. The code in DNA was "written" so it could be passed from generation to generation. With genetic modifications, man is rewriting this code, but we have not been able to write a code from scratch, ergo a Creator.

I also believe there may be other life in our universe. Just because the bible and other religions don't specifically say there are other life forms out there, does not mean that they are not.

This is what I believe, prove me wrong.

BTW, I won't argue with you or tell you you are wrong. It is my belief and you are free to choose your own.

Some have faith in science, my faith is in the Creator.

danny, I can help your timeline quite a bit because I'm not sure where you get the number 200 you keep using? I just finished quite an extensive historical theology (I love history) project last semester and at my disposal (about 100 yards from our apartment here at seminary) is a top ten library in the world as far as theological works. 380,000 man written books... all about one book. Pretty wild when you step back and look at it all.

But the Christian writings did not start 200 years after the Christ's ascension in front of multiple witness in Anno Domini 33. The period of the Apostles and their writings is from 33AD- 100AD. The period of the early fathers is designated from 100AD-150AD. The apologists were from 150AD-300AD. And the Hebrew Scriptures upon which the New Testament is built is one long thread with the narrative consistent throughout, and the Pentateuch of the OT was written centuries earlier by Moses. No main line theologians dispute any of these time lines, but modern day, liberalists may (but they're outside the fold).
Early believers of "The Way" had first hand accounts from the Apostles, all but one of whom died for their steadfast accounts, and in the first fifty years post ascension there is the collection of Paul's letters to many churches, a letter from Peter, and three gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark and the physician Luke. A few years later John wrote what is now the last book. Early churches read these letters if they had them, but eye witness accounts is how Christianity started as they poured over the Hebrew writings that foretold all that was happening. By the year 100AD, (the end of the Apostle era, all the writings that are in our current bibles had been written. Not many had them, because this was foot, horse, or boat days.

And then early church fathers would emerge. Polycarp (69-155) and Papias (60-135) were discipled by the Apostle John. Justin Martyr (100-165), Irenaeus (140-202) and on and on. Most would be martyred. But eye witness accounts handed down and written about could not be stopped by Nero, who condemned many when he blamed Christians for Rome's fire in 64AD.

Isn't it amazing that 11 Apostles, themselves 17-23 years old, all but one who would die for his faith, spread news of a man who chose them as commoners, in a day when the elites were first chosen, to teach them, and send them out. And they changed the world forever.

Try that with 10 of your closest friends and see how many will die for a story.

Now we bask in the light of great philosophers like the German Georg Hegel (1770-1831) who argued that the human race, given enough time and resources, could accomplish perfection. Auguste Comte used these arguments to apply it to sociology in the late 1700's, who argued man had emerged from the religious age into the philosophical age and would go on to the sociological age of perfection.
Hegel influenced Karl Marx (nice dude), and Adolf Hitler, among others. And guess what they teach noodle heads in universities today? Hegelism and Comteism. Non-stop. They serve it up as liberated thinking. Where did "liberals" come from? These dudes and others.

Anyway, 200 years is plain incorrect.

Blessings,
Mark

MNCedar,
I think people do good things for good reasons that end up bad sometimes and your point about philosophers is fair. More than fair. Very fair. Thanks for the reminder.

Good people, doing the best they can to come up with answers for the problems and solutions of the day "they" live in, and their intentions and labor are done for good reasons. Time gives a perspective on how it all turned out. Good or not so.

But, I would say, some of these men and their ideas did not do use well at all. They empowered the evil minds amongst us to rationalize their way to power, and human suffering.

Question for you Mark.

I know there is no way to definitively answer this and would be pure conjecture, but I'll ask anyway...

Do you believe (or is there any evidence) that Paul physically wrote the letters himself? The reason I ask is that many of his letters were written while he was imprisoned. I can't imagine Roman guards being too accommodating in the pen/paper department.

Now I'm not implying the letters aren't his... Just wondering if it's possible that he dictated the letters from his cell to a visitor.

Way off topic, but just something I was curious about.

Mike

Mark,

You raise equally fair and intelligent points regarding the philosophers you mentioned. Excellent points. I always enjoy your writing.

Thanks to you as well.