NEO... I fully appreciate your position on the document I cited. Perhaps u might find a thorough study of both the 'critical' approach and the conservative approach to the evidence (which is the letter itself) rewarding from an academic point of view.
Here is one link which I've not gone thru any more than enuf to observe that it is highly academic (a dissertation) and shows some of the textual issues. I'd say this one is more on the liberal side of the spectrum.
http://bible.ovc.edu/terry/dissertation/1_3-textbas.htm
Then, on the conservative side is:
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/ffbruce/ntdocrli/ntdocont.htm

Now, regarding the 'eye witness accounts of Mohammeds ascension'...
umm can u provide source ? The only thing I can find are references to his dream about it. Absolutely zero about any 'eye witness' accounts. Your a worry :)

Luigi, perhaps Aslan is responding in kind to the likes of Kenny ? who can be most irritating at times (sorry kenny :) There is always the temptation for our human nature to want to 'win an argument' we are competitive. But deep down, the one we wish to glorify is Christ.
If we fail to bring glory to Him, then its sad, and underlines our need of daily grace. The Christian life is a moment by moment relationship, sometimes we are not walking as we should, and need either the still small voice of the Holy Spirit or the harshly shouted rebuke from 'the world' to remind us.
No matter how 'we' come across, pls never use that as a reason not to seek after "Him". I've seen the most hopeless presentations of the gospel bring the most amazing results. Mahatma Ghandi rightly observed that if Christians just lived as Jesus taught, All India would be Christian. Clearly, he understood about Jesus.

John,

The Macquarie definition is obviously not what creationists and evolutionists mean when discussing this so you are being disingenuous.

Morgan,

Yes it is a question of semantics. The Hebrew word "ratsah" means "murder". The Hebrew word "harag" is the normal word for "kill". Murder is always wrong. Abortion and euthenasia are intentional premeditated acts of killing and therefore constitute murder. Killing, however, is justified in specific circumstances listed in Scripture eg. capital punnishment, war, self-defence etc.
ie. Christianity does employ moral relativism. (thats not to deny that some Christians occasionally adopy moral relativism, but when they do they are being disobedient).

Science is concerned with empirical observation and measurement. It is by definition incapable of discovering or describing value, meaning, or morality.

BTW, the "dark ages" were anything but dark and the "enlightenment" would be better named the "endarkenment".

Luigi,

I do not believe I have been "aggressive" or used much derission at all, unless you think that anyone who disagrees with you (and for good reason) is automatically guilty of such. However, I have certainly been on the receiving end of such derission and aggression on numerous occasions especially from Kenny, Mollydukes, and Ringtail.

Oops!

I meant to say Christianity does NOT employ moral relativism. (thats not to deny that some Christians occasionally adopy moral relativism, but when they do they are being disobedient).

Thanks Aslan, but I think it's now evident from your own words that Christianity itself is riddled with 'moral relativism', if that's the best you can do to argue against it. You're wriggling: firstly you translated 'ratsah' as "intentional, violent murder", while other forms of premeditated and violent killing - such as in capital punishment and in warfare - were OK with your god. Now you tell us that it is the premeditated and intentional nature of abortion and euthanasia that would make them 'murder', or presumably 'ratsah'. I'm intrigued by a number of aspects of this argument:

(a) did the anthology of transcribed myths and legends handed down from the tribes of neolithic goat-herders say anything at all specifically about abortion?

(b) if so where do these texts assert that humanity begins at conception?

(c) where in your texts is the 'murderous' quality of 'ratsah' unambiguously conferred upon euthanasia, or mercy killing? Why isn't mercy killing "harag" when execution presumably is, except under the moral agendas of contemporary hard-right Christians?

You see, I think you godbotherers are intellectually dishonest when you attempt to rationalise your efforts to impose your religious standards on everybody else. Worse, you are intellectually dishonest with yourselves if you think you can rely on debatable translations of transcribed oral histories and legends to base your current political agendas on fine semantic differences in the ancient Hebrew in which these myths were originally written.

Face it - killing people by capital punishment and warfare is acceptable to you only because you support the political agendas of the states that legitimise such killing. There have been - and still are - many Christians who oppose those acts because they don't accept your biased translation of that fine semantic difference.

(End part 1)

(Part 2)

In the cases of abortion and euthanasia, it seems to me a case of the godbotherer tail trying to wag the legislative dog: these are currently areas of medical practice where some degree of ambiguity exists concerning whether or not the subjects are actually, legally and/or morally 'people'. What we see in the current frenetic political lobbying by godbotherer groups around these issues is an effort to impose 'fundamentalist' (however dodgy) values and interpretations upon all the rest of us, whether we share those values and beliefs or not.

Finally, and this is directed equally to Boaz: you guys haven't provided any absolute 'truths' to these forums, simply because you can't. Admonitions to love God and your neighbour aren't 'truths' - they are instructions. And any 'truths' contained in Aslan's convoluted reasoning are at best relative, rather than absolute.

That is why Christians employ 'moral relativism' as much as anybody else. No amount of semantic gymnastics can alter that.

The square peg of superstition just won't fit the round hole of reason, no matter how repetitively the godbotherers bang away at it, nor how big a hammer they use.

Morgan

While it might be true that science and technology have made significant advances in recent decades, much is still not known about the world we live in.

The more science discovers, the more it is discovered about how little is known, and perhaps this ratio has not changed much over the centuries.

Scientific investigation has limitations of available resources including time, finance, personnel etc, and there are many things that can never be fully investigated because of these limitations. The New Scientist magazine contains an article titled “13 things that do not make sense “ at http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600.

Maybe these things will never be fully understood, because in the case of such things as “Tetraneutrons” or the “Kuiper Ciff”, it becomes too expensive or too time consuming to find out much more.

So eventually science can only know so much, and then faith becomes necessary. It would also not be correct to rely totally on science to provide a reason for living either.