Foxy,

You're the only Christian on these boards whose opinion I respect, so I am dismayed to see you misrepresenting the materialist/scientific view of life in your post of Sunday, 18 May 2008 7:34:43 PM. Because I wasn't used to you posting such anti-science, anti-truth and obviously dishonest material, I suspected you'd cut and pasted it from some kind of Christian website. So I gooogled and found the source here: http://www.allaboutcreation.org/does-god-exist.htm

To be honest, I don't care what the rest of them think, but I think you are smarter than that post would indicate. The ideas you're regurgitating are ugly. They're ugly because they're lies, and they're ugly because they exploit people without scientific education and knowledge in order to harvest souls.

You're free to believe what you like, but I don't believe you should justify your beliefs by misrepresenting the scientific view. I really encourage you to read a good evolutionary primer, and make up your own mind about the veracity of its theories, rather than borrow them from a website that simply exploits the stupidity of others.

Richard Dawkins's book The Ancestor's Tale might be a good starting point. Mind you, I've been trying to read it for about a year, but it's as good a place as any.

Obviously there is no intelligence or design in the way the cat interprets the text of the Hebrew Scriptures. Understanding the background and context is beyond the capacity of a scrambled mind. We have to conclude that unintelligent grey matter has no design or reason. It just happens!

Vanilla: << Foxy,

You're the only Christian on these boards whose opinion I respect, so I am dismayed to see you misrepresenting the materialist/scientific view of life... >>

I'm afraid I have to concur with Vanilla here. Because of my respect for Foxy, I too let it pass, but it has been bothering me.

While of course she's entitled to take on the ID stuff if that helps to reconcile her religion with reality, if this nonsense is indeed what she truly believes then I'll have to reappraise my assessment of her objectivity on certain topics.

There are plenty of Christians who can accommodate science into their worldview without having to resort to the ID delusion.

But I still think Foxy's great :)

Hey, please lighten-up on Foxy, albeit the URL should been acknowledged, especially for such a long quote. Tut.tut. Anyway, that's not the point here.

The idea of olo is argument & counter-argument, so we all learn.: e.g.,

- Causation: Quantum mechanics provides determancy/infinite indeterminancy, as an alternative to cause and effect.

- Order: Forces provide logical organisation based on mathematical models.

And as certain King of Siam would say; etc., etc., etc.

I especially respect George and Philo, who think, before they hit the keyboard. They support teir beliefs with reasoning; I hope I do to. Atheist, Agnostic or Thesist, we a are on a quest of discovery, folks.

Argument, analysis, discussion...

Chide is over. You all take care, friends

CJ says...

<<if this nonsense is indeed what she truly believes then I'll have to reappraise my assessment of her objectivity on certain topics.>>

Says he who rarely actually looks at issues :) and prefers to throw verbal grenades from a safe distance of 'no research/no interest'

and ... Vanilla said

<<Richard Dawkins's book The Ancestor's Tale might be a good starting point.>>

at which point, I totalled out my keyboard with diet coke... ruined my monitor with the gushhhhh spray splurt of the stuff.....
and almost needed intensive care for the trauma of falling off my chair :)

Dear V..with friends like 'Dawkins'.... who needs enemies?

Yes..I conFESS.. "I'm mocking" :) sorry.. I can't resist that one.

But I lub ya's all.
God bless.

Philo
Perhaps no intelligence, but certainly design. My interpretation reeks with my motives.
No Christians will say that a part of the bible is metaphorical until it is conclusively disproved. I don’t think that you can argue that the context has any bearing on the meaning of text. The bible is known as the “word of the lord”. Are you saying that the lord changes his stance on issues to suit the times or the social climate of those times? When someone points out that the bible was written long after the facts, Christians will argue that it was inspired by the divine and hence accurate. If it is accurate and inspired by an all-knowing being then the background and context is irreverent because god is supposed to be omniscient.
If the bible says it, it must be so.
This poses many problems, as many of the things that are acceptable in the bible are considered abhorrent by modern standards. So it comes down to whether our morals and ethics on things such as slavery are misguided or is god a little odd?
In the end is it the word of the lord, or is it a text written by misguided individuals with weird ideas?
I don’t mean to offend (though I am sure that I have and will), remember that this is just my opinion.