To runner
The theory of evolution is not flawed.
I study molecular biology and evolution Fits in with genetics perfectly.
How does the bible explain things that were almost man, but not quite.
According to the Bible, counting the generations since Adam and Eve, the earth is approximately 6000 years old (as opposed to the more accurate 4.54 billion). And besides science is not trying to force its belief on people it just states what is considered correct by the scientific community and asks anyone to improve on it. If you have emperical proof of creation, present it to a scientific journal, and if it is accurate it will be accepted. However, as yet no religion has been able to do this. Instead the religious community seems to think that belief without proof is acceptable and then tries to force it down other peoples' throats.
I can't believe there are still people in this world that actually reject evolution. My mother is a strict catholic (as I once was) and she even believes that evolution occured. She believes that god used evolution as a tool anyway you have a right to your belief.
It does not matter how many times you tell a lie. It will not make it any more true.

thecat

Summary of the age of the earth by prominent scientist.

Who? Age of the earth When was this?
Comte de Buffon 78000 years 1779
Abraham Werner 1 million years 1786
James Hutton Perhaps eternal 1795
Pièrre LaPlace Indefinite, long ages 1796
Jean Lamarck Long ages 1809
Georges Cuvier Untold ages 1812
Charles Lyell Millions of years 1830–1833
Lord Kelvin 20-100 million years 862–1899
Arthur Holmes 1.6 billion years 1913

I could go on but now you give me the absurd 4.5billion as the latest guess by men using totally flawed methods. Please keep me a break from such blind flawed faith.

I quite believe you , Peter, when you cite atheism as being close to Christianity. Perhaps unique to Christianity is the introspection and myth that does not condemn you as a kafir. Thomas Altizer’s death-of-God theology perhaps offers a solution to our modern experience of Godlessness. Altizer’s theology is founded on the conviction that the dialectic theology of the 1920’s was not dialectical enough. It is Altizer’s claim that Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, and the other dialectic theologians were never able to transcend an inherited dualism. It was Nietzsche who originally gave us the prophetic realization on the death of God.

Do not death-of-God Christianity and Zen here unite?

We encounter the radical, abyss-wide oppositions of life and death, beginning and end, innocence and Fall, the light of Spirit and the darkness of flesh, the certainties of primordial Being and the uncertainties of history, the abstract and the concrete,

True cognizance for 'the Christian who bets that God is dead risks both moral chaos and his own damnation. . . . [He] must do so with a full realization that he may very well be embracing a life-destroying nihilism; or, worse yet, he may simply be submitting to the darker currents of our history, passively allowing himself to be the victim of an all too human horror. . . . [There is the] very real possibility that the willing of the death of God is the way to madness, dehumanization, and even to the most totalitarian form of society yet realized in history.' - Altizer

A literal descent into hell becomes a truth, no longer a metaphor.
Ironically, atheism gives us respite.

The world, like Dionysus, is torn to pieces by pure intellect; but the poet is Zeus; he has swallowed the heart of the world; and he can reproduce it as a living body.

If anything, the fullest expressions of the modern imagination are even more apocalyptic in form, movement, imagery, and symbolism than is the New Testament; or so, at least, it would appear to the Christian today who inherits almost two millennia of demythologizing an originally apocalyptic faith.

Relda.
A thoughtful post. Certainly the god of Nietzsche’s madman is dead. This is the Hellenic form of god that displaced the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, ie the god who appears in the history of Israel and is among us as Jesus. But rumours of the death of God are highly exaggerated. God does exist as a history of events. God exists and takes up residence in the human heart and mind when the import of the biblical stories are understood and the sacraments of the church are celebrated. We have claimed too much for God in wrong directions and that has devalued his name. We now need to go about the theological task of retrieval and reconstitution so that this name may again command a place in our lives that is not just religious or instrumental. God is not just a social construct, God has reality apart from us as historical events and the reality of the world exist over and against us

Runner,

<<Out of the millions of fossils found not one backs the theory.>>

We all know about the Piltman Down hoax, but could you point me to some references that state that none of the fossils found backs the theory of evolution?

You can't can you?

<<It is a theory that requires more assumptions ( along with the big bang) than most theories.>>

Could you please list these "assumptions"?

What about the Creationist assumption of a God?

<<Text books have to be continually rewritten as each 'missing link' turns out to be a fraud.>>

Continually? How many times approximately?

<<It is a shame that many more scientist have not got the integrity and courage to say what they really believe when it comes to the evolution myth.>>

And you know what they all believe, do you? Who are you referring to exactly?

<<Evolution has failed the testable theory test in that it can't be validated by true science.>>

Then how do you explain speciation?

<<Many honest scientist who are smarter than you and me will testify to this.>>

Like who?

<<No scientific theory has been able to explain the existence of our planets.>>

Not quite.

Either way, how does that automatically mean that a God must've done it?

<<Common sense points to a designer.>>

That's what they used to say about rainbows and lightning.

Complexity is not synonymous with design. Simplicity is one of the main objectives in design. There are simple things that are designed, and complex things that originate naturally.

So what's this “common sense” that you speak of?

<<Summary of the age of the earth by prominent scientist...>>

Notice all the scientists you mentioned pre-dated the multitude of reliable dating methods we now have; all of which point to the same magnitude of age?

How were the dating methods that they used, better than radiometric dating?

Peter,

I have to admit, I was not sure whether I could understand your article; now I am certain I could not. If “God is not a being, there is nobody out there”, then who (or what) is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (who you claim was displaced by the now dead “ Hellenic form of god”). I am not sure how to understand Him who SPEAKS in the Old Testament if He only “exist as a history of events“. Were Abraham, Isaac and Jacob aware of, and heard the voice of, not a personal God, but only a “history of events”? Do you indeed subscribe to Thomas Altizer’s death-of-God theology as quoted by relda? That is your prerogative, but it is certainly not the only, (perhaps not even “mainstream”) version of what one would call Christian theology. To me it sounds as a rather sad version.

Well, I have to admit, I am even less “theological” than Peacocke and Polkinghorne, but I know that whatever one can say about (the Christian model of) God, one always has to have a balance between the immanent and transcendent aspects (of our attempts to understand Him), though both aspects can be exaggerated by this or that school of theology. Are you (and Altizer, for that matter) not downplaying the transcendent aspect? I am not criticising, I am just trying to understand your version of Christian faith.

<<Christianity is closer to atheism than we might think>>

Could you please explain what you mean by this; closer than what? Christianity can be defined by a set of doctrines (creeds), atheists insist that they do not subscribe to any doctrines, so this closeness cannot be along doctrinal lines. Perhaps along psychological lines, but then the statement is too sweeping, unless by Christianity you mean only the Christianity of Altizer’s death-of-God theology. (ctd)