I'm not trying to be sarcastic, difficult or disrespectful of anyone's beliefs, but i am generally an inquisitive and genuinely would like to know the answer to these questions if anyone could kindly oblige me.

1)Do creationists honestly believe that the world was created in 7 days in todays present form, if so, where do dinosaurs (which as far as i can tell are not mentioned in the bible) come into the equation?

2)Do creationists believe that God created every living thing in the world , and if so, why did God create pathogens? Why cancer?

3) How do believers rationalize the parts of the Bible which instruct that all adultererss, women who are not (or appear to not be)virgins on their wedding day, people who work on the sabbath, and homosexuals be killed.

4) Why is it that we are brought up to believe it is social taboo to question improbable claims of anyone's religion but in every other sphere of life it is a virtue to possess rational/critical thinking skills?

...no one can help me? i guess i need to find me a pastor and ask him...

1. The seven days thing is a farce, but it gives them something to hold on to and ward off darwinists. And the dinosaurs, well people in the time of the writing of the bible had no idea they were ever there, cause they never dug up fossils, thus they never existed.

2. Yes, God created everything, pathogens to test your will to live, cancer to test others compassion.

3. And people tend to skip over parts of the bible they don't particularly like. Such as all those you named, and you must stone a woman to death if she has sex while on her period. In fact, if you followed the bible completely, 8 outta 10 people would have to be put to death.

4. Religion is based on faith, because there are no tangible things to hold onto, you must just believe what is written. You either believe or you don't. Whereas everything else, you HAVE to prove it to be true to believe it.

um ok thanx gumbyvs

Good questions. In the same token, why DO parents teach belief in the toothfairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Clause and then tell their children not to lie or be dreamers?

That's amusing, I like that kinda thinking.

The earth was created in six days, not seven. Dinosaurs are mentioned twice in the book of Job: Behemoth and Leviathan. Dinosaurs existed, they were unable to survive in the post flood world. Before the flood, the earth had a very different environment. It rained for 40 days and nights. The rain caused mud slides, which created layers on the surface of the earth. We see the same thing happening now with volcanos and localized floods.



Yes, God created everything which exists. Before the fall, there were no carnivores, poisons or disease. After the fall, the universe was changed, so that it is gradually decaying. We see that the earth magnetism is reducing, the moon's orbit is changing, people get cancer, diseases are rampant, etc. This is all due to the fall.



There are many different reasons why those laws don't apply today. 1) The laws in the Bible are broken up into many sections, some sections were explicitly given to Israel as a nation. Those laws don't apply to anyone outside of Israelites. 2) The law is supposed to bring us to repentance, it's supposed to show us that none of us are good enough to go to heaven on our own. Once someone realizes this, they will no longer try to enforce the law and will instead repent and try to live a better life. For instance, when Judah learned that his daughter-in-law had had sex outside of wedlock, he called for her to be burned to death. When he learned that she had disguised herself as a prostitute and had sex with him, so that she could have a child, he was shocked to his core and said "She is more righteous than I".



Because there is no proof for or against the majority of religious beliefs. Questioning another's relgious beliefs serves no purpose, other than to annoy those with whom you speak. If you desire to learn about another's beliefs, that's one thing, but to try to pick someone elses beliefs apart, that's a completely different thing. Recently, it has become more and more popular for non-Christians to claim that Christian beliefs are dangerous (thus justifying their attacks against Christianity). Throughout the world, you find Christian charities helping the poor, sick and hungry. In Pakistan, one Christian ministry bought 20+ child slaves from slavers to return them to their families. It took great expense and risk, but they did it out of love. Without Christianity, those children wouldn't be free today. Maybe they were subjected to the horror of hearing about Jesus Christ, I don't know, but something tells me that hearing about Jesus isn't quite as bad as being anally raped by a grown man every night and forced to work all day. I work with a a Sikh and two Hindus. I would feel like a complete heel if I were to attack their beliefs. They are good people and so what if they believe in many gods or don't cut their hair or shave or whatever other beliefs they have. They can believe in stones, as long as they don't throw them at me. Another's beliefs, which don't hurt you, are of absolutely no concern to you. If you want to learn about their beliefs, ask. If you want to attack their beliefs, then you are nothing more than a bully without the social graces to be polite and respectful to those around you.

If you go to Timothy it reads a thousand years is as a day to God maybe look on it on them terms.

Exactly, and people wonder why society is so untrusting and decietful;^]

i appreciate the in depth response to my questions spidercmb.
I must apologize if i offended you by asking my questions, it wasn't my intention to attack anyone's religion or try to be a bully. I was asking because my own quest for religious faith is countered by my intellect and common sense. I really do want to believe blindly without daring to question it because religion seems to be a great comfort to some people, but i can't seem to rationalize certain things in my mind satisfactorily, hence why i ask questions. I ask questions of my professors, parents or anyone on any subject, simply to learn. That was my purpose, not to try to annoy anyone. Whether you want to believe in Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, or in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, i don't discriminate or think less of them, but as i said, i'm inquisitive, nothing sinister was in my intentions. Again, i'm truly sorry

You didn't offend me, I saw your post as someone who truely had questions. The comments about someone being a bully if they attack anothers beliefs was part of the answer to your fourth question and not statements on your behavior.

There is a very strong Christian apologetics community. Many of them are Old Earth Creationists. There are many theorys about how God created the universe. If you look around, you can find lots of sites that give you evidence of God from science. You can also look on YouTube and watch many great apologists teaching there. God encourages us to test our beliefs and only keep those which are good. God tells us "Come, let us reason together", which means that we are capable of understanding enough about God for our faith to not be blind.

You are on a spiritual journey and that's good. If you are interested in Christianity, here is what you should do. Ask yourself this question: If there is an all powerful creator, do you want to know him? If the answer is "yes", then you are ready for step two. Step two is to humble yourself before God, admit that you don't know anything, you aren't in control of anything and ask for Jesus to reveal himself to you. This isn't something that is going to happen immediately necessarily. You must be broken down first. Pride is a huge stumbling block, one which every Christian must overcome. Be patient with yourself and seek God diligently.

i appreciate the friendly push in what you perceive to be the right direction spidercmb , but i still have intense reservations about all of the religions i have looked into thus far, Christianity being one them, so I remain agnostic

It might help you a little to know that the secular history described in the Bible is amazingly accurate. A recent discovery has proven events described in the Bible that happened 2,500 years ago. There are many others, like the story of Joseph as being in charge of the food in Eqypt and the seven year famine. You can deny the supernatural content of the Bible, but the historical content is strongly supported and more evidence is found every year.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1200475897717&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

http://www.pytlik.com/observe/deliverus/acrobat/08-bible_history.pdf

http://www.christiananswers.net/archaeology/

Another thing that might help you is to actually dig into the Bible and study. I missed another mention of dinosaurs, which I will point out now.



The translators have actually failed us in this regard. The word they translated as "whales" is tanniyn. In every other case, tanniyn means "reptile" (aka dragon) , but in this case, they translated it as "whales". I suspect that they translated it as "whales" because they didn't know of any "great dragons", so they assumed that the author ment "whale".

but it is the supernatural content that is the real base of religion isnt it. If i wrote a book today describing real events such as hurricane katrina, war, terrorism, i could also completely make up that God came down and smited the entire earth with a mysterious black fog, that doesnt mean that just because 1000 years from now people are able to verify the historical events, that that is proof in itself that the supernatural embellishment is true.

Yes, you are right. But the supernatural is tied very closely into the story of Joseph. And as I said earlier, God has promised that those who dilligently seek him will find him. If you want proof of God, seek him with an open and humble heart. I couldn't imagine believing in God and rejecting evolution, but I found that the only way I could find God was by giving up everything I believed and admit I knew nothing. Maybe evolution DID happen, but God didn't want anything to do with me while I was holding onto what I thought I knew and thinking "I can't accept God if I have to believe/disbelieve X".

so what you are saying is that for me, or anyone for that matter, to believe the improbabilities of the bible and the christian religion, i must dumb myself down in order to accept things unquestioningly. I guess i will have to forego on the whole religion thing because in my humble view, blind faith and rational, independent thought are two mutually exclusive concepts. I prefer the latter. I respect your beliefs though and wish you all the best in life

That's not it at all. Let me try again, I don't think I am being clear.

You can't hold out any belief or ideal that you have and say "If God doesn't like this then I don't want to worship him." God expects to be the center of your life. If you aren't willing to give up all of your preconceived ideas for God, then God isn't going to accept you. Maybe Evolution is real, I don't know. But as long as I said to myself "I'll believe in the Bible, but only if it agrees with Evolution", I couldn't find God. That's not saying that God rejects science or reasoning, it's saying that God demands we accept him unconditionally. I used to place conditions on if I would accept Christianity or not. The Big Bang, evolution, old universe, etc had to be supported by the Bible or I wasn't going to believe. No matter how "hard" I tried, I couldn't find God. When I finally said "I will accept everything in the Bible and if something disagrees with the Bible, I will know it must be wrong" and then God finally revealed himself to me. I still wasn't a Christian, but I was on the right road. Is an old Earth contradicted by the Bible? Millions of OECs think not. Most of them believe in a Big Bang (caused by God) and evolution (guided by God). Maybe they are right, maybe not. It's not a salvation issue, so there is no reason to argue over it. You are saved through faith in Jesus Christ, not how you assume God created the universe or accepance of Noah's Ark or any other event in the Bible.

Of course.....you beat me to it spider.

Kat

Since you’ve mentioned that reason is important to you I would like to share some reasonable things about the biblical picture of God.

To begin with, the Bible, and the Quran are both based on many shared folklore from the Middle East. Islam, Judaism and Christianity are all basically the same religion that has fallen apart into many differnet factions. Christianity then went on to fall apart into the two major religious sects of Catholicism and Protestantism. Protestantism continued to fall apart into a myriad of sect from Amish to Zionists and everything in-between.

This history of the religion proves unequivocally that the stories these religions are based on are ambiguous. No one can seem to agree on precisely what these stories actually mean. Even the most educated and seasoned theologians disagree on the meaning of these stories. Uneducated layman who study the Bible on their own (i.e. most people on public forums) disagree with each other on almost ever detail. Yet ironically they will all tell you with passionate conviction that their interpretation is correct whilst everyone else is wrong. Many will even claim to have an spirit connections that guide them in their understanding of the scriptures. They claim to be devote followers of this ‘word of God’ yet they quite often display very egotistical behavior when challenged.

The real irony in all of this is that those same people will argue until they are blue in the face that their interpretation is divinely inspired and other people’s are not. Well, isn’t that a bit blasphemous? If God can inspire them, then why could he not also inspire you??? It is much more likely that a spirit of arrogance has pervaded these people rather than any spirit of divinity.

Now consider this,…

With the Bible there are only two possibilities. Either it is the word of God, or it is the word of Men who thought they were inspired by God (much like the aforementioned blasphemists).

On the other hand, the universe itself could only have one author. Its creator. There can be no question about that. Therefore if there are discrepancies between the Bible and the Universe which should we believe? I’ll leave the answer to that question for you to ponder.

Clearly the men who wrote the Bible did not understand the true nature of the world around them. They were very superstitious and believe that the ‘gods’ were responsible for everything. There were many such man-made stories describing what these gods were like and what they expect from men. So it is well established the men make these kinds of stories up all the time. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find any human civilazation on earth that didn’t make up a story about a master creator. So not only are these stories commonplace, but they are an inherent trait of what humans do.

In fact, having God give birth to mortal men through mortal women is very common theme in many of these stories that most people today brush off as laughable myths without a second thought.

Here’s a site that mentions just some of them:

http://www.pocm.info/getting_started_pocm.html

So it’s very reasonable to believe that Christianity is nothing more than just another Mediterranean myth. And there really is no sound reason to believe otherwise.

However, backing up again to view the overall collection of stories called “The Bible”, it’s clear that there are indeed many contradictions with what our actual universe has to say. As you pointed out these stories spark arguments about evolution versus creation. So which should we believe? A book written by men who were known to create unsubstantiated fairytales? Or the universe in which we live which we know had to have been created by our creator?

The Bible claims that mankind is responsible for the imperfections in this world because of his “fall” to sin. However, the universe clearly shows us that carnivorous animals existence long before man came onto the scene. The world was ‘dog-eat-dog’ long before the man ever had a chance to fall to sin. Death and disease were innate to nature long before man ever came onto the scene.

In order to believe the biblical account of creation one must denounce the reality of the real universe. Is this reasonable? Is it reasonable to believe a book that is known to have been written by men who were ignorant of the history of the universe? Men who were clearly making up all sorts of fairytales at the time?

The Biblical story might be impressive if it wasn’t just more of the same, but that precisely what it is. It’s not unique at all. It’s almost a carbon copy of all the other stories that were popular at the time. Even if we believed that a real God would inspire a book why would he write the same things that men had been making up all along? Are we supposed to believe that God has no originality of his own???

Now you might think that I’m being a be inconsistent by denouncing “Creationism” whilst simultaneously suggesting that “God” wrote the universe. I still refer to the universe as “Creation”. Yet at the same time I denounce the biblical picture of creation. This is because the choice is not so narrow-minded. Not by far!

People who advocate Christianity would like you to believe that it is indeed quite narrow-minded. Either you believe in their picture of God or you must be an atheist because there are no other ‘legitimate’ pictures of God out there! But that is a lie.

There are indeed other pictures of God. One such picture is the ‘pantheistic view’. This is the view that God is everything, and everything is God. God is a spiritual essence that ‘became’ the universe. In this way we are all part of God. God is not viewed as an egotistical jealous judgmental Satan Claus with a rule book keeping track of who’d been naughty or nice. In this ‘pantheistic view’ God is not seen as ‘person-like’. God is spirit and the spirit is the essence of all that exists.

I might add that this ‘pantheistic view’ is the basis for many religions and philosophies, such as Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and even religions of Native American Indians as well as other cultures around the world.

Pantheism is itself not a “religion”, but a philosophical view. Although, I’m sure you can find people today who have stolen the label to create a dogmatic religion. The point is that the Pantheistic view does not come with Dogma. It’s simply the view that God is all, and all is God. There is no egotistical judgmental Godhead.

Now you might say, “So how does this change anything? The world is still dog-eat-dog! There is still disease, and natural disasters, etc, etc, etc. How does the pantheistic view of God explain this?”

Well the complete explanation is far too complex to get into here, however, a short explanation is in order.

The pantheist view of God does not claim that man is responsible for these things! Therein lies the major difference. The pantheistic view is not a guilt trip blaming everything on man and focusing on the idea of sin and salvation. The pantheistic view does not expect men to wallow in shame and beg for forgiveness for having screwed up all of creation. The pantheistic view simply says that all is God. You can’t be separated from God to be tossed into an hellish fire to burn for all the rest of eternity. There’s no need for such a grotesque picture. The pantheistic God is not a judgmental Santa Claus.

You evolved out of God, and you will be reabsorbed into God when your body dies. You spirit is an eternal part of God and can never die. The pantheistic God’s love is truly unconditional there is nothing you can do to separate your self from God. It simply isn’t possible. You can have no existence separate from God. You are an eternal part of a truly all-loving God.

Pantheism – Its not just for breakfast anymore.

wow. what an essay lol. i read every word and thought it was fascinating, and i agreed with much of it with respect to the origins of the Bible, religion and the universe. This pantheistic thing you mentioned though, i've never heard of it and will look into it further.