The scripture's do state that God formed man from mud or clay! They also point out that man's time and God's time are not the same. This could be he explanation of the "missing link"! I know this will not set easy with a lot of people of faih out there. But remember, Some guy showing up about two thousand years ago and trying to get everyone to get along and love and care about each other didn't set to well with the leaders of church and state at that time either. Just please don't crucify me, mentally or physically, I'm getting a little worn out. I made things out of Granite for about ten years, so I have no desire to even pick up any rocks any more (stoning) lol...! I do believe that there are enough intelligent people on this planet to figure out how to meet the needs of every one alive. Maybe if we start here, It will grow! Love ya

I used to think of that possibility.

What changed, or why do you say used to?

I believe we have a spirit as well as a physical body. The reason I believe this is simple. I've had three out of body experiances or NDE's. This would be a different deminsion than the one we can pinch ourselves and feel it in! While in this "other deminsion" there were people there that had passed before me and people that had not yet passed that I recognized and could communicate with. It was not like talking, more like instantanious thought transfer or something. I wish I could have brought back more of the knowledge I was able to know, but for some reason I could not. One of the things I distinctly remember was that there was a reference point where all bad things had started. By all accounts, the one that seems to be common amoung most theories is the starting of greed. Surely you can see where that took me. If we are to change this world in time to stop from destroying it by our own hands, we have got to start changing our habits. If not, the effects of Global warming alone will destroy most human life on this planet. This may have happened many times before. We don't know. Carbon dating went out the window when we fired the hubble up and discovered that the universe was many times larger that thought. The further back we go, the less accurate Carbon Dating gets. Then when we discovered that Emc2 was not absolute a few years ago. Time became less of a science and more of a speculative. All that I have learned is but a tiny bit of the knowledge that is out there. But there is more than enough evidence that we are not alone in the universe as far as intelligent life goes. There was a group of men known as the Knights Templar. They are believed to have tried to keep the heads of religion and government from destroying some of the earlist records of man. The last of the Knights Templar were found murdered, probably by order of the king of England. I happened accorss a show on the history channel about the ark of the covenant. They even made mention of the Knights Templar. Who knows! Maybe it is all just a waste of time, but what the hell else am I supposed to do with time, kill it!

Okay, let me first kind of give this disclaimer. I'm an atheist, but I have been to church, and here's my belief, per se.

There's a lot of propaganda, but the message is still good. Science admits it doesn't know everything. If you look at the theory of the big bang, it mentions the start of universe as an explosion of a super dense ball of matter.

A subsequent theory, the big crunch, states that after the matter from the explosion reaches its apex, the matter will come back and crunch back to a single, super dense, ball of matter.

While the two theories expose a cyclical nature of the universe, and even assuming that they are both correct, neither explains how the whole thing started or where the matter initially came from.

Is there a God that started the whole thing? Science leaves room for faith.

Both sides could be right. Whatever happened it was God who brought it to being.

Faith ...the substance of things hoped for... is the basis of all what we see after all.

My question for everyone is really simple.

If there is a God why does it have to be the one described in the Bible?

I have no problem believing in a spiritual essence of our existence. But that's not going to send me running off to worship an ancient manmade religion. Especially not one as absurd as the Bible. And I feel very confident in saying that the biblical picture is indeed asburd with respect to a supposedly all-wise all-intelligent God. I certainly don't see the biblical stories as being something that an all-wise God would do.

Moreover, why the Bible? Why not the Torah, or the Quran? Why protestantism? Why isn't everyone bowing down to the Pope if they are so bent on having an authoritarian God and demanding that eveyrone believe the SAME.

Isn't Protestanism the most hypocritical of all the religions that came out of the Mediterranean folklore?

Protestantism rebelled against a single authoritarian religion and now it wants to be the new bully on the block. Isn't that the epitome of heresy?

These rebels proclaim that their religion is the ulimate authority? Protestantism truly is a joke in that sense.

I don't see any reason to beleive that any of the superstitious folklore that came out of the Mediterranean region has any merit at all. It is extremely similar to Greek Mythology and all the other mythological religions of the region. It's not even original in its stories. It still has the same old blood sacarifices to the gods that all the other myths had. It's not special in any sense of the imagination.

I see no reason to believe that the biblical picture has any more merit than any of the other myths of the Mediterranean region.

So yes, I can believe in a spiritual essence to humanity. But I see no reason to run out and worship a completely unsubstantiated myth. Especially when it dipicts God as truly being unwise asking people to stone each other to death for being sinners, and showing a high degree of male-chauvanism from the very beginning! Why would this supposedly unchanging God change if those were the things it initially wanted?

Clearly the story is an oxymoron of conflicting ideals. Page after page after page.

I don't believe that we are at odds with our creator and need to seek 'salavation' to be saved from some demonic boogieman.

I just don't understand why people are so narrow-minded about thinking that either the Bible is true, or there is no God!

How limited is that?

Why does God need to be associated with any particular manmade mythologies? And what about the pantheistic religions and philosophies from the far east? Why are people so quick to dismiss those pictures of spirituality?

They are truly more beautiful than a God who has us cornered as sinners that need to beg for his forgiveness. In the pantheistic religions you aren't guilty of anything unless you actually DO something to earn that guilt!

In Christianity you're proclaimed to be a sinner whether you've done anything wrong or not. How is that wise? I don't see any wisdom in that at all. What kind of a God would even want to create such a nightmare situation? Surely not an all-wise God.

I have no problem believing in spirituality. But I see no reason to demand that it's either the Bible or nothing. I don't believe that God ever had anything to do with writing any books that could be called "his word". And they most certainly wouldn't contain stories about God telling people to stone each other to death, or to murder the women and children of "heathens". Does that even sound like what Jesus would ask people to do? If not, then how could Jesus have been that God?

So, yes, I agree that evolution does not rule out a spiritual nature to the universe. Nor does it rule out a creator. But it certainly doesn't point to the Bible either!

The other thing too is that people seem to have no problem believing that they can continue to live as a spirit after they die.

Well, if they can believe that, then why is it so hard to believe that they were spiritual beings before they were born?

It could very well be that we are the spirit of the unvierse. This is the pantheistic view.

We are the intelligent spirit that we are seeking. This makes sense to a lot of pantheists, including myself.

All you need to do is believe just one thing!

With God all things are possible!

If you can truly believe that, then what's wrong with pantheism?

The biblical picture of God is truly a picture that severely limits what God is capable of. The Biblical God can't even seem to save the vast majority of souls the it creates!

In pantheism all souls return to the source. There is no such thing as a lost soul in pantheism.

Seems like a much wiser God to me.

So it is Ok if someone flys an airplane into a building that your loved ones are in? Is that what you are saying? Or are you just saying that you don't give a _____ about anyone or anything but your own s _ x life!

This is purely your own ignorance.

Where did I ever say that it's OK to do anything?

If you believe that if there is no God then it's OK to do bad things then you are a truly pathetic person even if you believe in the Biblical God.

All you are saying is that you have absolutely no moral values of your own and the only reason you would ever consider being 'good' is because of fear of punishment or a lust for an eternal reward.

You'd make a terribly pathetic atheist.

How sad you must be not to have an moral values of your own. You can only imagine morality in terms of a threatening authoritarian God.

Someone buy that man a Bible and send him to Sunday School ASAP!

you should quite posing insults as questions, you show your ingnorance every time you do. It's either that or you have no spine!

You seem to be the man who is suggesting that if there is no judgmental God then it's OK to do bad things.

I humbly disagree with you sir.

Where did you get that?

Can you actually comprehend what you are reading or do you just try to stir s..t?

No I am not, you are not even in the same reality as the rest of the world appearantly. Quite your silly little tattle tale antics and grow a set! Of course you could just quite trying to bash any thread that dosen't fit into your little psychosis!

I'm open to a lot of different possibilities.

You seem to be the one who gets all bent out of shape if you can't sell your specific brand of Spam.

You posted your beliefs in another thread, and at the very end it appears that your belief is that anyone who doesn't believe as you is a worshiper of some demon named Satan.

Did someone mention psychosis?

Yes, I think God could have used evolution. I believe that is a perfectly logical thing for him to do in fact.

Because I don't believe in God anymore. But when I did I thought about that.