I didn't think it would be all that surprising, Dan.

<<I'm surprised you've made the statement 'I'm not sure', while in the middle of giving God advice.>>

I have, after all, shown myself to be smarter than your god. At least with regards to how not to reveal oneself when the revelation of oneself would have such monumental consequences.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and copies of copies of translations of copies of texts written by anonymous authors, with no originals, is not evidence of anything much at all, let alone extraordinary evidence.

<<But getting back to God 'walking among us', you would prefer he made his appearance to everyone and not just his selected chosen.>>

Probably. Again though, it’s not important. Finding problems with an off-the-cuff suggestion of mine will not detract from my point.

<<But what if people were facing the wrong way, or didn't want to look?>>

I’m sure a god capable of creating a universe could figure something out. Like I said before, Dan:

I don’t know what it would take to convince me that a god exists. But what I do know is that if a god does exist, then it would know what it would take to convince me of its existence. Which means either one of two things:

1. this god isn’t interested in revealing itself to me in any way that could be considered rationally justifiable, or;
2. it doesn’t exist.

Just how would a God reveal him/Her/It to us?

Maybe we'll look up one day & instead of the Sun we'll see a great big Eye looking through a Microscope into a Petri Dish at us. That's how I see it.

Yap! yap! nip, yap! ;-)

Dear A J,

Knowledge does not equate with intelligence. My computer has stored in it much more knowledge than I can ever have. However, it has no intelligence.

Hi Rhian,
There's no mention of evolution in the Bible. Ideas fitting that kind of description for life's origins appear to be absent, you agree. Yet it is not true that the writers of the Bible were unaware of the issues and were unconcerned with discussing them.

Moses was very concerned with the world's origins, enough to give it a detailed account in Genesis as a precursor before detailing the beginnings of his nation's history. And Jesus himself referred to these writings, appearing to accept them as historical. He saw no issue of contradiction between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, but was happy to quote from them both.

I don't think it is true that the ancients were unaware of evolution. While a Darwinian form of evolution may not have been popular, similar ideas were present in ancient times

For example, the early Greeks from around the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. held cosmogonic ideas about the cosmic egg from which all things were produced at the beginning. From those times all the way through to the days of Louis Pasteur in the late Nineteenth century, it was often generally accepted that some forms of life spontaneously arose from inanimate matter.

Various concepts of evolution (compatible with other more mystical religions) in history abound. Genesis was written with the purpose of contrasting these and other erroneous ideas to the specific plans and purpose of the Creator.

Well may you point to websites that discount the practicalities of a global flood. Yet there are many arguments (and many web pages) supporting the idea also. My question to you was put as someone I thought might have a higher view of the Christian Scriptures.

Hi Dan

You assume that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, and that is a traditional view. But it is not consistent with modern bible study, which concludes that it was written and rewritten by many authors and editors, themselves using a variety of written and oral sources.

To return to the flood example, a historical flood of the magnitude described in Genesis is not supported by modern archaeology, geology, biology, climatology, basic physics or common sense. You can try to “supernatural” away problems like:

• what did the animals eat?
• Why didn’t they eat each other?
• what happened to all the waste?
• how did Noah get access to the creatures who live at the north pole or in deep caves underground?
• how did the dinosaurs fit?
• how did animals and people repopulate the earth from such a limited gene pool?
• why didn’t the boat break up?
• where did the water come from?
• where did it recede to?
• how long would it have taken for even the most torrential rain imaginable to submerge Mount Everest by 15 cubits?

But we have to assume not only that God somehow contrived to resolve all of these problems, but also that He then concealed the evidence. Nothing in geology points to such an event.

If you read such a story in any other medium than the Bible, including similar stories in the scriptures of other cultures, I doubt you would take them as literal accounts, whatever their level of detail (Gigamesh is no less detailed than Genesis).

http://www.rosemike.net/quotes/misc/epic_gil.pdf

I have deep respect for Christian scriptures. I take them seriously, but that is not the same as taking their stories literally. Indeed, taking them literally can debase them and present a distorted and unbiblical theology, which presupposes that we should believe in God and Jesus because the Bible says they can transgress the laws of nature. It’s a bit like saying that Aesop is worth reading because he recorded an actual race between a hare and a tortoise.

DSdM: Genesis was written with the purpose of contrasting these and other erroneous ideas to the specific plans and purpose of the Creator.

Do you know that for sure or are you just assuming.

I don't remember a forward explaining that point. I do remember that in the Preface of the King James Bible, written by the Compilers for King James saying, "What is contained with-in may not be the whole truth, but the truth is contained with-in." That's after a number of pages extoling what a Jolly Good Fellow James was. Remember King James 1, Pedophile, Queer, Masochist, murdered of his best friend for fun, murderer of Witches & a lot of other strange things. (King James, by Antonia Fraser. Book Club Associates of London, Printed by C. Tinling & Co Ltd. London & Prescot.)

Rian: It’s a bit like saying that Aesop is worth reading because he recorded an actual race between a hare and a tortoise.

Naughty boy. Aesop is not Politically Correct nowadays, in fact it's banned in Schools. Noddy was banned once too for sleeping in the same bed as Big Ears but it's back in Vogue because of the GLTB.