merry

if it wasn't the tooth fairy, then who was it?

At school I learned:

"In the beginning the Tooth Fairy created the heaven and the earth
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of the Tooth Fairy moved upon the face of the waters.
And the Tooth Fairy said, Let there be light; and there was light.
And the Tooth Fairy saw the light, that it was good: and the Tooth Fairy divided the light from the darkness.

Then seeing that there were no teeth, he begat Adam and Eve and gave them teeth and gave teeth to all who needed them and that was good: and lo he begat dentists and amalgam, toothbrushes and high speed drills and that was good too"

Firstly.. a warm welcome to all the various newbys here.

FOYLE.. down to business :) I noted your comment about confidence in the origins being due to a roll of the cosmic dice kind of thing..but it ain't as simple as that mate.

I've seen similar expressions of probability 'such as to be zero' referring to evolution as a viable explanation of the origins of life.
In fact at first I thought I was reading just that statement until I looked more closely.

To me... there is no real difficulty with the first verse of the Bible and science.

1: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"

2: "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

Hmmm.. how long was the earth 'formless and emtpy' ? perhaps it was 'forming' during this time ? How long between verse 1 and verse 2 ?
Perhaps the 2nd verse is referring to the period after the initial creation.... but it was not all brought together as "God said 'let there be light'...and there was light"

The text is really quite broad. It's not a scientific treatise. Verse 1 is the main point. "God created"

If one considers the mighty things done by God in history, the miracles and His dealings with the Israelites etc.. over such a long period of time, and ultimately in the Resurrection of Christ.... then I feel jubilantly confident that the simple statement "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" to be very easy to accept.

Gawd spare us. Boazy's preaching again.

(Half) serious question Boazy: Have you ever considered getting a proper education? It's never too late, you know.

You seem to have an active and impressionable mind, and I hear that universities will accept just about anybody these days :)

Q&A asks Christians to try and stay on thread. Brian’s article is (as usual) such a long winded ramble that it would be hard to mention anything vaguely to do with religion that wasn’t on his topic.

Though we are looking at it from other sides of the fence, the whole article is well summed up by Plerdsus, who suggests that Christians too have a right to vote in a democracy. In fact, the point is so obvious, you have to wonder why Brian bothered to tap out his meanderings.

Brian aims his pot shots largely at the pentecostals and creationists.

I wonder why he and the others on this thread are so concerned by these mobs. It’s not exactly the tall poppy syndrome, as these groups and their ideas have not yet entered the mainstream of public thought.

At the mention of the word ‘creationism’, out come these verbose attempts at defining science, which angle themselves carefully at defining creationism out of the contest. In fairness to these attempts, concisely defining science is not such an easy task. What satisfies me is the number of highly qualified scientists (both past and present, with numbers increasing) who unashamedly (despite threats and vilification) are happy to describe themselves as creationist. I don’t think they could have got their PhDs without having a fairly good idea of what science is and how it works.

If it is not the tall poppy syndrome, maybe we could call it a simple phobia, or a fear of the unknown. Please, take the advice of Commuter, who I would interpret as suggesting that we could try learning a little of what these guys are really saying before taking the usual pot shots.

Desipis, who is obviously no fool, asks "How has 'secular humanism' failed society?"

In a recent talk Archbiship Chaput (Denver?) made the following observations. I place them here as I think secular society can go to certain heights and then will implode if it sticks (and is true) to its manifesto.

"This society is advanced in the sciences and the arts. It has a complex economy and a strong military. It includes many different religions, although religion tends to be a private affair or a matter of civic ceremony.

This particular society also has big problems. Among them is that fertility rates remain below replacement levels. There aren't enough children being born to replenish the current adult population and to do the work needed to keep society going. The government offers incentives to encourage people to have more babies. But nothing seems to work.

Promiscuity is common and accepted. So are bisexuality and homosexuality. So is prostitution. Birth control and abortion are legal, widely practiced, and justified by society's leading intellectuals.

Every now and then, a lawmaker introduces a measure to promote marriage, arguing that the health and future of society depend on stable families. These measures typically go nowhere.

I've just outlined the conditions of the Mediterranean world at the time of Christ. We tend to idealize the ancients, to look back at Greece and Rome as an age of extraordinary achievements. And of course, it was. But it had another side as well.

We don't usually think of Plato and Aristotle endorsing abortion or infanticide as state policy. But they did. Hippocrates, the great medical pioneer, also famously created an abortion kit... we rarely connect that with his Hippocratic Oath."

So was Christianity a positive, or would we have got to this point without it? Was this because it 'ruled' society or despite it? Would Kevin Andrews have succeeded in the Roman Senate and would the indigenous be better off under Roman rule?

Reality Check,

Good comment!

I’m interested that you mentioned Hippocrates, as medical students in many western countries are still required to take the ‘Hippocratic Oath’. However, my understanding was that the original Hippocratic oath originally condemned abortion, though they’ve conveniently, or tragically for many little ones, dropped that bit in Australia.

This is what I thought it said, ‘I will neither give a deadly drink to anybody if asked for it, not will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give a woman an abortive remedy.’

Desipis, you ask,

“What fundamental underlying reason is there for people to believe in your religion over all the others in the world, not why your religion is 'better' but why your religion is 'true'?"

I’ll try and give your question a whirl.

The answer probably has to do with the authority in Jesus’ words, as he spoke not just as one sent by God, but as God himself. His final mark of authority was when Jesus rose from the grave (as he said he would). He showed himself to many witnesses as the conqueror of death, someone who has power over life and death.

Many believe that the resurrection of JC demonstrates his deity. Others would rather deny that the resurrection happened than attempt to say that it is not confirmatory of the truth of his words.

The truth of the Christian faith is demonstrated in many ways, but I would say none more clearly than in Christ’s resurrection. You could choose to accept it or believe it, or not. And like any other assertion of history, it is impossible to prove one way or the other. But this is the testimony of Christians.