When you are raised Seventh Day Adventist, prompted to question the world around you and probe for truth, then slapped around when you find irrational and illogical statements in the doctrine you are being force-fed it makes you start to question the validity of the premise you are led into.

Perhaps they should be reminded of the historical roots of their church. http://home.earthlink.net/~jcmmsm/EGW.html

Some humorous though non-doctrinal beliefs of the church:

1. The Pope is the Anti-Christ, and Catholics are the tools of the devil who will persecute the "true" believers in the end times - the only True Believers are of course... Adventists, and perhaps the occasional fellow Protestant or two who are sadly misguided but essentially good at heart.

2. The ultimate goal of an Adventist is to travel the world saving brown babies. Apparently the only people who haven't heard of Jesus yet are Africans, South Americans, and oddly - Russians... probably because they are a bunch of heathen Commies, and Eastern Orthodox isn't real Christianity anyway.
Jesus can't come back until everyone has heard about him. Even though deeds but only faith can earn salvation... apparently we haven't finished our job just yet... He's late where is he?!

3. The end of the world is almost here... in fact Jesus is actually running late by a century or so (read the link). Come on Jesus! My Ascension Robe is getting a bit tattered, and that property in Maryland where you are supposed to show up first is about to be parcelled off for tract-housing.

4. 144,000 are all that are going to be saved... er... is it only 144,000 that are alive in the end times that are going to be saved? Or 144,000 from all of time - the earth is only 6000 years old after all, and so that isn't really that many people... Oh well, the teachers and scholars were never really quite clear with me on that point.

5. Making friends with non-Adventists is only good if you can persuade them to come to Adventist church... since that 144,000 number is pretty hard-line, they better hurry up and be extra good Adventists too! After all - you get extra credit (special glittery gems in your crown) for all the conversions you make, and since the cosmic-carpet ride is limited to ticket holders only, you better make sure you bank-roll as many converts as possible - most of them aren't gonna make it!


... Sound silly to you? It isn't all that much better in any other mystical space-magician/earth-faerie type of belief system... I checked about quite a bit before deciding to give up the Holy Ghost.


I got turned onto Ayn Rand a few years ago... wouldn't call her anything like a saint, but she makes some very good points... Since she didn't believe in an afterlife I guess I'm safe from her ghost playing tricks on me, or zapping me if I pick and choose my way through her rational points.

Oh yeah... any Adventists that might find their way into this post and be offended or disagree, well you probably aren't real Adventists anyway and I won't have to worry about you when I'm sliding down the necks of those giraffes, or petting lions, or skipping my way down streets paved with gold... That's what all my sabbath school teachers taught me anyway.

Tomorrow is another general workout.... I'll probably do some core exercises tonight.

Still boils down too the same thing - G*O*D wanted to smite his children as a petulant child would smite playmates, or a drunken father would smite over active kids.

Yeah... so then we have to get into that sticky mess of defining who is worthy of receiving aid and who is not.

If you work 40-50 years, you should have put enough away to supplement you. If you are rendered incapable of working because of health... I'm sorry for you, but I think it should fall to you and your immediate family, or those close friends that care to donate too your care.

I'm all for private charity. I am not against charity at all, as long as it is my choice to give or not.

I think its just evidence that we have a manic-depressive sociopath for a space-daddy.

If Feral had all the proof she needed for herself, then she would not so vehemently post in a manner as to attract criticism from those who do not believe as she does.

There is a difference in them between those who "believe" and post open points of discussion, and those who post in a defensive manner that on one hand provokes criticism of logic, and yet denounces it.

Heh... that's very likely quite true.

The only problem is that somewhere in all of this we have to move from quantum waves to genome variance, phenotypes, and survival events.

It seems pretty absurd to think that the entire universe was created in an earth-week, with all life past, present, and future all together for only 6000 years.

There is just way too much universe out there. If there is an intelligence to the universe, it seems possible only from a very high level - a design was coded into every particle of mass and quanta of energy that was kicked of with the Big Bang event that would allow for all the variation of up/down quarks, protons, neutrons, atoms, and compounds to coalesce into the building blocks of this universe and eventually into biological units that were self replicating and genative under their own power.

And if that were the case, here we are insulting the intelligence behind all that by saying it was not so... that in fact some sort of space magician just miracled it all into being, or worse yet - that a group of incompetent giant space humans created things during some sort of drunken space orgy.

If we could get ourselves away from the socialist trends that are steadily insinuating their way into our federal system the US could still be the pinnacle.

The ideal that everyone has access too good medical care, and education is noble, but somewhat naive in that it seems to presume that everyone has a desire to be productive in some capacity.

I don't believe people have an inherent value, and find it reprehensible that I should via compulsion, contribute to the well-being if the listless and willfully dull.

Well, without the ability to fully transcend whatever frequencies or alternities divide up the different universes anything but Reference 0 - the shared physical reality of you and me and the rock I see you stub your toe on - are not relevant.

The potential existence of alternate universes is infinite. An intelligent entity in some alternate reality kicking off a catalytic reaction in this one is as plausible as any hypothesis of an all powerful supernatural being.

The problem originally presented seems to constrain itself to this particular reference, so the physical laws and evidence compiled here are the necessary basis for discussion.

Perhaps there are ancient alien civilizations that have seeded various planets with the components for life. Perhaps abiogenisis is not as infrequent as we think, we just have not replicated the right conditions to repeat the process yet.

There are quite a number of possible pre-origins. If we follow the big bang line however, there are several billions of years of mass/energy expansion - creating the physical configuration of space we have today... which all result from a quantum burp.

JB

That one is actually being tested and proven out by the deconstructionist physicians... now, the definition of space you provided is a bit liberal. The idea behind wave/particle theory is a complex interaction of probability with energy.

One of the classic examples is the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment. Everything has a number of possible states. Everything that can happen in some dimension of space time does.

The outcome of the experiment was that the cat could be alive or dead, and until it was actually observed and therefore fixed it was (mathematically, logically, and philosophically) existing in both states simultaneously.

Practically we know this isn't true. The cat is either alive or dead, it's just that we don't truly know till we open the box.

Incidentally, Sikhs have a metaphysical base to their religion that is very much in line with this theory - at least from what I have studied of it.

Well,

You have this part just a bit backwards



but are more or less on the money.

Natural Selection sort of informs evolution. The preexisting conditions of the universe sort of setup all the possible permutations and configurations of space, time, energy, and matter.

In trying to draw a direct line from the Big Bang to evolution and natural selection skips over a whole bunch of cosmology that has too take place before we get to the juicy parts of whether an intelligent hand was behind life and everything or not.

We are a very very young species, and have only really begun to understand the universe around us in any methodical and informed way in the last 200 years or so. We have a very limited understanding of how everything works... plenty of mathematical conjecture and hypothesis... and hundreds upon hundreds of man-years staring into deep space; and I mean using telescopes and modern optics that can clearly render things inside star clusters, perform radio-spectrometry, etc.

However, the more we observe, collect facts, and recompile our understanding the better off we are.

Philosophically this eats away at the role of a personal god in people's lives, more or less forcing them to educate themselves, or fight back against knowledge with ignorance.

People used to worship fire, the sun, and the rains. We understand now how to make our own fire very easily, are pretty much certain the sun will continue to rise and set for another several billion years, as it has for billions of years before, and the rain... well we still can't predict that with absolute certainty.

Perhaps there is a big cosmic unemployment office for obsolete gods, and they are the ones sowing all this dissent against science... they just want their jobs back.

That's the 3rd one of those stories I've heard... two were when I worked at a World Market in Virginia... two different customers, both women.

Well, yeah it's also got a bunch of stories about rape and pillage, and defecation, and the dashing of small children...

But I like the sexy parts... where David describes his mistresses as animals of various sorts that arouse him, and the young girls that "warm" his bed.

... All performed by God's "chosen" people.

"An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unlocked and unguarded."

If G*O*D wants to play silly hide and seek games with us, then I have very little confidence that he/she/it is really an all powerful being worthy of laud and hail.

Anyone or anything that claims to be God better be ready to prove it.

I say worship Gandalf... if we are going to cleave to long-bearded old-fellows that is. Hell, the LOTR trilogy is easier to follow and has just as much colorful good vs. evil imagery.

Christianity has yet to resolve whether or not it accepts the Bible as the literal word of God (which is a serious problem for sane and intelligent people), or the inspired word of God (which makes it a nice collection of stories that inform moral decisions and promote a generally pleasant life-style).

So it is or is not okay too assume then that there is not specific time frame prior the first "day", and that life could possibly have been there, just not in the listed forms given in Genesis?

That seems somewhat contradictory to me...

So the rate of erosion in the Grand Canyon is much greater than estimated? I guess that is plausible if water flow were much much higher, but where is all the sediment? That would leave some serious sand bars somewhere...

Not if you are planning on spending the majority of the day in the Tea Cups aiming at the folks in line....

A tall glass of water to clear up the shivers, a bit of coffee for the eye opener, and then we'll talk about the good stuff.