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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (19708)	1/17/2012 9:04:12 PM
From: Greg or e	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 69300

"Well we certainly have moved back back our origins and in no small way in inconceivable geologic distances of time , agreed ?" Not really: The time frames are based on models which are based on uniformitarian assumptions and then extrapolated to the enth degree. Lots of room for error all along the way. Garbage in garbage out. "No prophet of old could have a clue" I don't know: you seem to be the expert on not having a clue. At least when it comes to understanding what Christians and Jews believe about Divine Revelation. "One can embrace the idea of those biblical times when men often made it their speciality to speculate (prophesy) of the "greatness" of the world/cosmos but for all that they hardly had a real clue , agreed ?" Absolutely NOT. See the previous point. "No, we don't know "the beginning" in fact , we have gotten close & prolly will understand it in time just as we understood that continents drift , we will prolly make that discovery too ." We do know the beginning, both because we have both been told, (Revelation) and also because we can use our God given rational abilities to trace cause and effect back to the beginning of the physical universe. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Gen 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (19708)	1/18/2012 1:02:05 AM
From: Greg or e	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

One of These Gods Is Not Like the Others Atheists will frequently place all concepts of gods into the same category, saying things like, “I just believe in one less god than you do,” or, “As we learn more and more about nature from science, the need for a god will retreat to the point where there’s no longer a place for one.” These statements can only come from a misunderstanding of the radical differences between the ancient pagan gods and the Christian God. Not all concepts of gods are equally likely (or unlikely), nor are they equally necessary. Is a rain god necessary to explain rainfall on any particular day? No. But is a creator God who, in a universe that had a beginning, brought everything (including the predictable laws of nature) into existence out of nothing necessary? Now that is a completely different question. In Saving Leonardo, Nancy Pearcey discusses how belief in a very specific God gave rise to science: Nature was thought to be full of gods or spirits ready to inflict disaster…unless they were placated by the correct performance of the correct rituals…. It did not seem at all orderly or predictable. By contrast, the Bible rejects any religious status for nature. In the opening lines of Genesis, the sun, moon, and stars are not gods. Nor are they emanations of a divine essence. They are created objects. As a result, they do not have ultimate power over humans. The biblical teaching of a transcendent God liberated people from fear of spiritual forces within nature…. In the biblical worldview, theologian Thomas Derr says, “man did not face a world full of ambiguous and capricious gods who were alive in the objects of the natural world.” Instead there was “one supreme creator God whose will was steadfast.” Thus “nature exhibited regularity, dependability, and orderliness. It was intelligible and could be [scientifically] studied.” In short, the idea of an intelligible order in nature was not derived from scientific observation. It was derived from biblical theology prior to observation. And it was what made the scientific enterprise possible in the first place. Looking at the two kinds of gods, you can see how in the first case, each nature-god would be debunked, become obsolete, and disappear as knowledge about the laws of nature increased. However, in the second case, God is not in nature in the sense that His changing moods determine the day’s events, depending on whether or not we have correctly manipulated Him. Rather, it’s God Himself Who establishes the laws of nature, rendering them orderly and predictable, according to His Nature. This God is not manipulated by human beings. He’s not capricious, or vindictive, or chaotic. In short, He isn’t a mirror image of us and our ever-changing moods, as were the other gods of old. Because of this, as Pearcey points out, the very idea of “laws” in nature developed for the first time in the Christian West. And as more and more is discovered about the workings of nature, this true God will not in any sense be pushed out. Rather, He will be further glorified by this complex, creative expression of His beautiful, consistent, and orderly Nature. str.typepad.com

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (19708)	1/18/2012 9:06:21 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 69300

The Mormons believe in multiple heavens/universes. Maybe Mitt will lead America to the promised land - I'm not sure what the book of Mormon promises but it does talk about multiple heavens. Multiple Heavens In LDS doctrine there are three heavens: the Celestial Kingdom, Terrestrial Kingdom, and Telestial Kingdom. The Celestial is the highest, where God and the ones who followed his law reside. The Terrestrial is the middle, where people who followed the Law of Moses reside. The Telestial is the lowest, where the ones who followed carnal law reside.