A link to Access Ministry's Head, Evonne Paddison's, speech about discipleship.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/55338278/ACCESS-Ministry-s-head-Evonne-Paddison-s-speech-to-Anglican-Evangelical-Fellowship

Scroll down - the controversial parts are highlighted in yellow.

If Evonne Paddison and her ilk were truly honest they would be telling governments that providing these services ( RE and Chaplains) and NOT seeking to convert young people to Christ and their church are incompatible with their core beliefs and that they cannot in all honesty provide a service as laid out in the government guidelines.

The sad thing is they believe it is justifiable to break the laws and their promise to our government in order to push their own agendas and beliefs onto young kids.

Any other group that goes into schools offering young children sweets and enticements would be very suspect.

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to creationists who were here but seem to have disappeared I am still waiting for an answer to my questions :-)

Don;t be frightened

let's hear what you have to say. Perhaps if you pray god will tell you the secret ?

Ummm... thanks for sharing, Saltpetre.

>>Many today say no, there's no God, we don't need a God, we may or may not believe in the "big bang", we are in the here and now and that's all that matters. Fair enough. Some others sit on the fence. Also ok. For my money the hazard in mythical and religious belief today is the divergence from those early constructs for the betterment of mankind and society, and the emergence of "special case" scenarios which threaten to act to the contrary.<<

It is always good to hear other folks' opinion on the existence or otherwise of God.

Trouble is, I couldn't work out from this which side of the fence you are declaring yourself to have landed.

By the way, I agree completely with your summary of how Gods were invented. What puzzled me a little was your question...

>>Would humanity be better or worse off if the existence of God was generally accepted?<<

Do you mean the general acceptance of one single God? In other words, the conversion of the entire planet to a single religion?

That would be a somewhat tough ask, given the pitched battles that have been waged for thousands of years.*

Why not pose the question as: "Would humanity be better or worse off if the non-existence of God was generally accepted?"

I think we would all agree "better off" to that one, if only to rid the world of its constant - and frequently deadly - religious bickering. The only opponents to that concept, I suspect, would be the folk who, literally against the odds, believe theirs to be the only "true" version.

*Just a thought. Were there any religious wars prior to the introduction of Christianity?

Anyone?

Can't really answer you Pericles, though I think a belief in God at least gives some hope. Why? Well, apart from the possibility that people may behave better if they think there may be an eventual reward, or the reverse - depending on how well they conduct their lives - there is also the hope that one may be able to get some support in one's worthwhile endeavours from the "beyond". Wishful thinking? Probably. But, where's the hurt?

The other coin? No God. Well, that's a bit of a desperate situation. No-one to seek help from, no friendly deity smiling down at man's foibles, no chance of any interceding if mankind goes that one step too far in meddling with the biosphere. Leaves us out in the cold, doesn't it? No question about how we came to be, or the universe, or what may lie ahead. We just exist. Alone in the void? Mere chance? Maybe the last is a step too far into a vast emptiness of self. No explicable rationale for our existence, save chance. A lucky stroke, nothing more. But still, a desperate alone-ness.

The point of my last post was really to question the virtue of the divergence of religious thought from the best interests of mankind as a whole into so many trains of "special case" category. The point being that there can be no real certainty, and it can only be destructive, or at best self-serving, for any group to lay claim to some special place in some divinical plan.

I'm not going to get into the holy war thing, there's just too much of that all round. One God, serving all faiths, that's my preference and my belief. Where things go badly wrong is when anyone or any group lays claim to special privilege. Humanity needs to learn to get along better - this is too small a world to harbour hatreds. A brighter future is what we need, with goodwill towards all men, and a wondrous renaissance of cultural sharing, exchange and tolerance.

Dug,
For someone who claims to be dyslexic, you are more coherent than most here. 

Though I didn't answer all your questions, neither did you acknowledge the partial answers that I did give. 

Fair enough. If your question is sincere, I'll try and answer it. Yet I still don't claim the answer to be definitive, as I wasn't there at the time.

As bottom-dwellers, trilobites would have been one of the first creatures to be buried in the flood, possibly by the action of turbidity currents given the calamitous seismic events taking place, which explains why they are found so low in the fossil record. Indeed, the Flood could have been responsible for their extinction. 

Though they're low in the fossil record, there is nothing primitive about them—indeed, their eyes look like they were designed by a master physicist.

A question for you:  by your reckoning, if trilobites were so suited to their marine environment, why didn't they survive, or where are their decendents now?

Dan S de Merengue,

I have to hand it to you, your disquisition on the fate of the trilobite is absolutely hilarious!
Why didn't they hop on board the Ark?