I know what ya mean lol
However, when one looks for evidence of "divine intervention" many ppl are looking for something "miraculous". However, often times the miracle itself isn't the event, it's the TIMING of that event ie; The Battle of Jericho. When Joshua had the city surrounded, God told him to have all his trumpets blowing at the same time at the appointed hour. When that happened, the walls came a tumblin down. Scientific research has uncovered that in reality there was an earthquake at that site, so no miracle right? A simple natural disaster. See? the Miracle wasn't the trumpets blowing down the walls, the miracle was the timing of the trumpets blowing. Tell me, without the benefit of seismology that we have today, how could Joshua have POSSIBLY known when to blow those trumpets???

like all stories of old, they've been exgagerated.

i'm sure homer's stories were true too?

Well until science unearths some evidence they were true, I'm a gonna hafta say no they are not

Unlocking the Power of Myth

By Victor Wishna

The ancient city of Troy has endured the human imagination. Abandoned in the fifth century C.E. and not rediscovered until the 1870s, the city for centuries seemed no more real than Camelot or Valhalla.

No one knows exactly why the Trojan War was waged, when it took place, or whether it took place at all. Excavations at the ancient site of Troy have unearthed no wreckage of a giant wooden horse, no statues of Helen, no physical evidence that a warrior named Achilles ever existed.

Some of the strongest evidence for the Trojan War, or any war there, is that the city grew layer upon layer because of a series of destructions. "You can imagine destruction coming in many different forms, but clearly a lot of it had to do with military aggression," says Elizabeth Riorden, director of Troy on the Internet, a project under way with NEH funding at the University of Cincinnati. Riorden has spent fourteen years studying and excavating at Troy and is developing an online resource to bring that knowledge to schoolchildren.

Roughly three thousand years ago, a people known as the Mycenaeans--prehistoric settlers of mainland Greece--might very well have battled with an obscure population in Northwest Anatolia, what is now present-day Turkey. It would have been one of dozens of major skirmishes likely fought in that period for any number of reasons: a trade dispute; a dissolving alliance; territorial expansion; or perhaps, as the story of the Trojan War goes, for the lost love of the most beautiful woman in the world.

Troy sits on the entrance to the Dardanelles, the only route from the Mediterranean and Aegean to the Black Sea--and the only way for ancient traders to get goods such as amber, gold, timber, and wool from the Black Sea Region. "It was like a toll gate that everyone had to pass through," she says. "So you can be sure they probably made some enemies. And they wouldn't have built all those series of fortification walls unless they were afraid of being attacked by somebody."

Decades of digging and research have revealed that there was not one Troy but at least nine distinct cities over a period of two-and-a-half thousand years, one built on top of the other. Troy grew powerful in the Early Bronze Age, a thousand years before the kingdom of Homer's epic, and other societies followed in the centuries afterward. Based on structural remains and discovered plans, archaeologists have been able to envision--and with the help of computers, depict--what some of those impressive civilizations looked like. .....

http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2005-05/unlocking.html

I already posted this once. But I’ll do it again,

Here’s the quote:



The real definition of science is quite involved. It requires observation, measurements, hypothesis, conclusions, experiments (or observational repeatability such as in observational astronomy and in things such as paleontology), and finally, and most importantly, repeatability by other independent scientists.

How what Dr. Moore has done is change this ridge discipline into a casual definition of knowledge using our senses in the present, especially observation.

So then from there he’s going to make ‘casual observation’ as an untrained layman. Then jump to unwarranted conclusions that he will claim to be ‘knowledge using his senses in the present’. And then he’ll present those uncontested opinions as scientific facts.

That’s not science.

That’s just a layman making guess about what he thinks might have caused things, and not having to worry about anyone challenging his views and then calling those unchallenged opinions “scientific facts”.

It’s a brainwashing scheme to lead the reader to believe that your Dr. Moore’s unchallenged observations have the same credibility as diligently scrutinized science.

Then I’m sure that he goes on to make a whole lot of assertions that would be totally rejected by an scientist. I didn’t bother to read his claims because I’ve been down that road far too many times.

There is no question whatsoever in my mind that evolution occurred and that the earth is 4.5 billion years old.

Why? Because I believe this on faith?

On no!

I spent my entirely life in the field of science and questioned ever single step of it along they way first hand in laboratories. I understand the scientific techniques and why that are indisputable. I’ve tried to depute them myself.

Do you realize that if I could have disprove just ONE OF THEM, I would potentially be up for a Nobel Prize!!!

If you think for one second that I didn’t question EVERYTHING as hard as I possibly could then you are sadly mistaken. I would have given anything to be have been able to prove any of it WRONG!

I’d be rich and famous today if I could have done that.

Trust me, science is infallible! (well not quite because some people actually do win Nobel Prizes for finding small errors). But you aren’t going to topple the beast of Science. No way.

The best you might do is CONTRIBUTE to it! And that little tiny contribution might win you a Noble Prize.

You can shoot science down all day long on an Internet dating site with hot air from crackpot web sites.

But if you want to actually prove something for REAL, you in for some real difficulty.

In fact, Spider if you can seriously disprove anything in science I suggest that you genuinely DO IT FOR REAL!

You’ll be rich and famous for the rest of your life and people will be eager to listen to everything you have to say. I’ll bet you’d LOVE that!

I do see what you are saying, but there are over 20 gods or something like a god described to have almost the exact same story as Jesus. Look at the ejiption God Rah for instance.

I don't care who posted the answer, it was a LIE.
Even religious people need to learn to tell the TRUTH.




Your words and your judgement.......hmmmm

This may sound strange to you, but I could easily see this as being a coincidence.

Now I know that at first you are going to say COINCIDENCE !!! NO WAY!!!!

But that’s because you believe the story as having been written REAL TIME.

In other words, God really did tell Jericho to blow his trumpet at that particular moment and lo and behold there was an earthquake!

Yes, that would have been EXTREMELY UNLIKELY.

But that’s not how I see it having happened.

There were many battles back then. In most of them nothing seeming miraculous happened. So those battles didn’t get written about or become legends.

But then one day, a battle was about to begin, and the soldiers were all prepared and surrounded the city. Their leader was prepared to go into battle and gave them the signal to sound the trumpets. And so they did!

Just then, by pure coincidence and earthquake occurred. Hey, sh*t happens!

The ground begins to shake and the walls of the city begin to crumble. Everyone is totally amazed and shocked at the event. It becomes a legend and the story becomes that God told the leader to blow the trumpet ahead of time, BEFORE the earthquake occurred, but in truth, that’s not the way it happened. It was just a normal coincidence that became a ‘divine story’ BECAUSE it did seem so weird.

This is how these legends begin.

I’m totally comfortable with this.

Now sure, if you could PROVE to me that God really DID tell Joshua ahead of time to blow the trumpet right at that moment then I’d be impressed. But the scientific evidence doesn’t show that right?

This is what I mean about divine intervention. It’s almost impossible to prove divine intervention, you’d have to prove the sequence of events of the story and prove that it wasn’t made up after the fact.

I’m not out to disprove you case. Nor to I wish to change your view on it. I’m just giving you my perspective and why I’m not impressed.

I gave my reasoning in more detail that it was worth.

Plus I'm not a Christian. I don't morally judge anyone. When I say that it was a LIE, I'm not suggesting that anyone sinned. I'm just pointing out the logical fact that the information was wrong.

I'm using it as a noun, not a verb.

LIE = UNTRUE

Not like LIE = Bad Behvior.

But I do question why Chrisitans would choose to lie when they also consider it to be Bad Behavior.

I don't judge anyone's morals.

They haven't discovered where Noah's ark is. That does not mean it's vanished. Up until a few years ago - you could say the same thing about the Titanic.

well someone mention that an anomaly that looked like Noah's Ark was on top of Mt. Ararat but people was too lazy to climb up it to actually find out and that the turkish government would kill them if they did or that the CIA didn't bother to use it's spy satellites to zero-in on it and the vatican has no interest that one of the most remarkable religious icon in the history of the judeo-christian religion is sitting on top of a mountain and they just don't care that it is there decomposing

Geologically speaking, if there had been a true world-wide “flood” that killed every single animal and human being on the planet, and lasted for over a month, that geological layer in the earth crust would be so hugely prominent that it would be the most prominent layer in all of geological findings. It would stick out like sore thumb. No such single-layer exists in the geological record of the earth.

The idea that there was a single humongous flood at one point in history is simply not supported by the real world. The evidence for it just isn’t there.

Moreover, where would all the extra water come from? And where would it have then drained off to?

Without a doubt the flood would need to be the biggest miracle every pulled off by a magical God.

But why do such a messy trick for your greatest act? Why not show a little wisdom and do something that only affected the guilty sinners. Give them all AIDs, or heart attacks, or a plague. Something specific to them. Much clean. More like the work of a surgeon. Pouring water on the whole planet is more like the act of a drunken God who had to take a pee.

A much more reasonable explanation for the Story of Noah is that there was a local flood, of catastrophic proportions. Maybe caused by a tsunami, or a natural dam gave way and flooded an entire valley that contained a large civilization. Or maybe it was just a really huge flood caused by abnormally high amount of rainfall maybe combined with an abnormally warm spring thaw. Water came as rain, as well as from the snow melt. There are lots of explanations for potentially catastrophic floods on a local level.

It was a flood of this abnormal proportions that sparked the initial folklore. As the story was retold more details were added and it became a story about God telling some guy to build a boat because he was planning on peeing on the sinners. And that’s the final form we have today.

To me, this is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the story.

The idea that an all-wise, all-powerful God would choose this method of extermination to deal with sinners just makes no sense at all. It’s simply far too messy and requires killing all the animals, and let’s not forget all the innocent babies! Entire cities were flooded out! Hell, the entire earth was supposedly flooded out.

All those people were guilty????

Please, give me a break.

At best it was a local flood, even if it was committed by God. But then there would be no need to build an ark to save the animal kingdom. That was the only real purpose of the ark.

And finally, why even bother?

If it only took God 6 days to build this world why even bother trying to save a handful of people and animals? Why not just shut down the whole show and start over? Within a week God could have a brand new creation, instead of starting over with a contaminated gene pool that he already knew was corrupt!!!

The idea of a ‘divine flood’ here to flood the entire planet just make no sense. And to believe that it was a ‘divine local flood’ doesn’t save the story because then there would be no need to build an ark.

So it’s an all-or-nothing story. There’s no room to compromise. The ark to save all the animals forces this.

You either believe in a global flood and a seriously drunken God, or it never happened.

That's not true. I think you are thinking of Horus, but it's still not true. The first time that we see a being described as having been born from a virgin, is Jesus. Horus' mother had sex with a wooden dildo to get pregnant and she had been married for some time before that happened. There are some similar stories out there, but most of the "similarities" were actually thought up by acheologists of ill-repute.

As much as it hurts me to say this. All the research I have tried to do on these other "Jesus" stories has turned up very little. I think most of it came from one guy who wrote one book.

Sorry abra....but call an ace an ace....your judging...you so need to practice what you preach.......Their is not much of explanation needed for those words......h e l l o

judging.

So now your judging me to be judgmental.



Whatever.

I really don’t care.

I’ll let God be the “judge” of that one.

This is the problem with Christianity from the get go.

All Christians seem to be able to do is point fingers.

I don’t believe in a judgmental godhead in the first place so it’s all irrelevant to me.

Your religion is all about sin and pointing blame and judgments.

I don’t live my life like that.

I pointed out the fact that someone is lying to you.

I make no moral judgments about that at all.

I do think that it’s extremely ironic that people lie to support their religion!

That was really my only point.

Whether the man deserves to go to hell or not is an entirely different question.

The fact is that he’s purposely deceiving his readers to evade truth.

Whether that makes him a ‘sinner’ or not, I have no comment.

I think that we have to make a "judgement" about information being believable or not. Being manipulative or not, etc..... That is not a moral judgement nor a judgement of the person and or organization or religion, it is a judgement of the information. So you both are right here in my eyes.

Well, that's exactly right.

There's nothing at all wrong with making everyday "judgements" about things. We couldn't even survive if we didn't do that.

When they speak in the Bible about not 'judging' others, they are speaking about MORAL judgements. Passing judgment on their morality.

That's a totally different thing altogether.

I don't judge anyone morally.

For example,...

If I see two men having sex together and I say, "Oh, their Gay".

Was that a moral judgment?

No, not at all. It was simply an observation of what they were DOING.

To pass a moral judgment I would have had to say that they were WRONG. But that's not what I said. I simpy said that they were Gay.

Same thing here. I'm just telling you that this man is lying to you. I pass no moral judgments on that at all.

I didn't say he was bad for lying. I just said that he was lying, and pointed out the fact that this seems ironic for a religious person to do that to defend a religion that says that lying is wrong.

So there you go Debbieferalcatlady.

seems to me you had a few comments...stop while your ahead.....and you can backstep all you want.....but you said it not me...I was just pointing it out...what you clearly think is only a Christian trait is obviously also a panthiest trait.

So?

When did I ever say that Pantheism is better then Christianity?

All I’ve ever said is that the Bible can’t be true.

The atheists probably have us both beat on moral grounds.