Skipping previous posts, it seems you are making a very misinformed judgement. For one thing, God loves everyone. Everyone's a sinner, and gay/premarital sex and aetheism are *soreyy* sins.
And come on. Genisis is written in metaphorical sense. The seven days of creation could mean seven ice ages, seven billion years; you geddit. Remember, "time" was a unit of measure created by humans based on how celestial bodies move. Time doesn't mean anything to God; he is timeless.
If you have any doubts, try going to bible study. They discuss all these questions in detail. I'm burning to talk to you more, but I'm on the othert side of the planet.
And BTW
"The whole creation thing. Bam the world was created, animals and humans RIGHT OFF THE BAT. No dinosaurs. No evolution. No ancient creatures. No Mesopotamia. Things that are PROVEN to have existed. You say, "It's called faith." I say, "Yeah. But what would you trust more, faith or hard core PROOF?"

THEN WHY DO YOU PLAY DA SIMS???? Seriously, to God, making a planet/person is like playing Spore or the Sims to you. Those games exist without causing black holes.

And why post this topic on a Sims site anyway?

I would almost say that it is you that is misinformed, actually. For instance: What is the reasoning behind your statement that atheism is a sin? I can find no logical, Scriptural basis for such a statement, so I'm curious as to why you would think that. It's true that without belief in God (or, more specifically, in Jesus as God and Savior), one cannot get into heaven, but nowhere is it said or even implied that non-belief is a sin. So, if you're going to say that people are misinformed, you'd be wise not to spread more misinformation yourself, you know?

In general, many Christians (and I am one) are uninformed about their faith and about God and what He really wants/expects from us. This is not, in and of itself, a bad or dangerous thing because becoming informed is not something that happens instantly. It takes a lifetime, really, and is the purpose of one's walk with God. It will only happen, though, if one is truly seeking God, and many people calling themselves Christians are not seeking God at all. In my experience, it is the question-asking people, whether they are believers or not, who are the true seekers. By asking questions, I'm assuming that the OP is seeking, and seeking is always a good thing.



It's not metaphorical. It's allegorical. There's a difference. One is a simple poetic device. The other uses metaphor and other poetic devices to create a symbolic narrative that has a different and usually deeper meaning than the plain words on the page. I agree that Genesis is allegorical in it's earlier chapters.

When read literally (and I'm not a literalist, as I said; I'm just stating their position), the word day ("yom") is clearly meant to mean an ordinary 24-hour day. Think about it: God created plants before he created the sun. Can you think of a plant that can survive for seven billion years -- or even a few weeks -- without sunlight? God exists outside of time, indeed, but plants don't. Of course, to me, it's all allegorical and the "debate" about what "day" means is entirely irrelevant. But for those who do think it's relevant, the assertion that "day" could mean any stretch of time is ludicrous.



Mmmm-hmmmm. And more often than not, they get it entirely wrong because more often than not the people who lead them are just as uninformed and misinformed as the people they are supposedly leading. I've attended many studies. I lead them now, in order to share the knowledge I've acquired from many different sources over the past 25 years or so. They are a source for information, indeed, but the information is not always accurate. The true source of information is God.



You might think so, but I doubt it. The Sims is a fun game with many appealing aspects. Some people like creating and playing the Sims they create. Some people just like to build stuff. Some people only like to create custom content. But it's a game. The "people" we create are collections of pixels, nothing more. A real human being is quite another thing, and quite obviously God doesn't regard us as lifeless collections of digital data, does He?



Because this is The Debate Room. It's what we do in here. We have hopefully intelligent discussions about stuff, with people having all different viewpoints. Religion seems to come up a lot. In fact, it seems to dominate because it's a subject that seems to piss off a lot of people. Myself included, sometimes, for all that I am a dreaded born-again Christian.

I was gone for a few days, so I'm only going to reply to a few posts:
Bobbejaan3: It's a game. This is the Debate Room. Let's get that out of the way.
I don't see how anyone would be ok with saying that things are sins, when people can't help it.
And there is no way on Earth I am going to bible study. Absolutely no way. I'd get kicked out, probably.

Okay that wasn't really a few posts. I felt the need to reply to you the most.

I just feel like mentioning the last time I went to church and how eye opening it was for me because I just didn't get it. It sounded silly to me. Since then I've been doing a little studying on different religions and most don't make sense to me. Buddhism makes a little sense, but mostly I would have to agree with the atheists and take a scientific approach to looking at the world.

Yes, games of things that don't exist can exist. Really, playing Chrono Trigger does not mean I have the ability to travel through time, playing Final Fantasy VI does not mean Magitek armor exists, and playing Banjo Tooie does not mean that bears can use birds as guns.

God is the judge of good and evil. If he declared evil to be good, he himself would be evil. Many people assume God causes terrible things to happen and use that as an excuse to believe in no God at all, or to make up their own version of him.


There is most certainly evil in the world. It is more recognizable when wrong is done to you. For example, say someone raped you. That was an evil thing for him to do. You may forgive him, but you wouldn't want him to do it again, to you, or to anyone else. The person must be brought to justice. It would be perverse and twisted to say that the person did nothing wrong, to say that he did a good thing.


Yes, I do think the gospels are accurate. No, I don't think they are identical. Jesus' life was written about from four different perspectives. They're similar, yet unique. I took your advice and reread the end of each book. Some of his appearances are only recorded in one book, while others overlap. There were probably other appearances that were never written down, just as there were parts of Jesus' life that were not written about. What's important is this: After Jesus died, people saw him walk, speak, and even eat. And people saw him "ascend into heaven."


I'd also like to point out that there were three "days" before the sun was created. So, day cannot literally mean earth's 24-hour rotation relative to the sun.

Welcome to the world of logic. Ramen.

If you read my signature, you will understand that nothing is ever going to be accurate because of perception. In Buddhism, the reason why their gardens are important is to show that from ANY angle there is no way you can see everything even from the top because trees will cover what's underneath. It's the same thing for people who write about the same event, they will all see it from a different angle.

What does buddhism say about science or logical reasoning?

I agree.

Humankind needed to believe in something (since they couldn't believe in themselves) so they came up with religion.
It's a way to control the masses, unfortunatly alot of people die because of religion.
How many wars have been started because of religion!
How many times have we heard someone say "You can't do this, our religion won't allow it!"
Most of the time in life threatening situations.

Jehova Witnesses knock on my door and I've to tell them to stop wasting my time and theirs...I do not believe that when the world comes to an end, that only the chosen ones will be saved.

I call that being brainwashed.

If the bible claims that God is the creator of all things, where did evil come from if He did not create it?

The bible claims that God is in all, the bible claims that God is good, where did evil come from if not from and out of Him? Can't have it both ways, either He created all things or He did not. We don't get to chose what is good and what is evil when ascribing all things as His creation.

"there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking it makes it so"
William Shakespeare

good and evil are something we humans decide, and, just as everything else, it changes whit time, for example, pedophilia was a good thing back in ancient Athens, now is considered a bad thing world wide, same thing applies to slavery also, which by the way, the bible says that slavery is right, but if you eat seashells, wear 2 tunics of different fabric or are Gay/less, you are evil, should be stoned to death, and will go to hell...

morals do not come from god

religion and the bible, is just another form of control, it was used on the government until not too long ago, the bible and Christianity as we know it was created around year 325 AC, and the gospels are not accurate descriptions of the live of Jesus, for a start, none of the 4 writers of the gospels knew a thing about geography....
it seems that there isn't any real evidence on Jesus existence!

yes, I am evil, soulless atheist....

Zuke, well at least you have an answer and you are not that far off base. When you remove everything one was told about the bible and what it say or is saying, the bible begins to make sense. You should also study the history of the bible for a complete understanding. It won’t hurt to study the popes from their inception and conclude how much trust you put in them as the keeper of the bible and with what certainty you can conclude that the book was not corrupted more than it already were.

If the word evil was ever needed it was to describe the popes. That is why the Roman catholic church got so mad to crazy when John Wycliffe made it so the common man could read and understand the bible for himself. What was Wycliffe’s reward? Find out for yourself, it’s worth it!

What does science or logical reasoning say about Religion?

I don't really get what you're trying to say =S

Buddhism wasn't supposed to be a religion in the first place, it was a philosophy of life with bits and pieces taken from Hinduism. Science is also just another philosophy that says experiments will tell you the truth about the world. If you say there is only one truth, it pretty much ignores perception so then you can actually say there are many truths according to what people perceive which would actually be equivalent to saying there are many lies.

Science and religion are just two different methods of acquiring truth or truths and the only reason they don't get along is because they have 'different' perceptions of the world... We only see the differences when there are many similarities.

Thats what I mean. You gave the answer.

To tell you the truth I have no idea what I was trying to say.

There's a wonderful book by the philosopher William James called The Varieties of Religious Experience. It's not a religion book -- it's a very significant philosophy/epistemology book. Epistemology [thank you Firefox for helping me spell that correctly] is that branch of philosophy devoted to figuring out what things we can know and which things we can't. William James fell into the Pragmatism camp of epistemology. Which works as follows:

It looks to me like I'm on a blog right now, typing a post. But am I? Maybe I'm dreaming it. Maybe I'm really on drugs. Maybe I'll wake up and go, wow, that was silly, I was in bed the whole time! I actually have had dreams where I was blogging or web-browsing and not been aware that it was a dream, so why not?

Pragmatism (with a capital P) says, you can't really tell if it's all a hallucination, but you can decide whether to act as if it is or isn't. If it serves you better to believe that it is real, in terms of the results you get, then it's justifiable to act as if you believe it, and perhaps that is the same thing as believing it, with a small smidgeon of doubt. For instance, I think that when I hit the Post Quick Reply button, that this post will go out to the web and that when I come back later (or think I come back later -- remember, it could be a hallucination) that I will read replies that sound like they are coming from people who actually read it. It could all be a wonderful fake, but the results I get by playing along are useful enough that it works better for me than to sit still in one spot and hope I wake up.

Now, science definitely seems to me (and to you, perhaps, but I may just be dreaming that there are actually other people that can read this) to work quite well in getting results that are useful. (Thus the word utilitarianism). And sometimes religion does, too, although not with the consistency of science. However, there is no scientific method that I know of that can give me all the results I need, so I'm reduced to having to rely on assumptions about the world, some of which may be very, very wrong. But I make them because it's useful to act as if they are true, in terms of the results they produce.

Blech... I had to edit from Utilitarianism to Pragmatism. It has been a long time since I studied this stuff, and I have probably butchered it quite a bit. Utilitarianism is about ethics.

Yeah, actually modern science came from empiricism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism

and Popper's Theory of verisimilitude (not really), and other philosophies. So in conclusion science is just another form of religion. (I think I said this already).

Religion: a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

Anyways... I'm very opinionated

Not all Christians are creationists.

I am Catholic. I have no doubt in the existence of God. I believe in the proof of evolution, the survival of the fittest, and certainly that God did not fashion a fleet of clay puppets to play house with.

A priest once explained to me that most of Genesis, is basically a simple peoples explanation for things they could not properly explain i.e. Creation and Adam & Eve.

If adam and eve are just a story to explain things they could not explain, aka not tell the truth, the 'original sin' never happened either.

Boy did you just open up a can of worms. lol. Let me grab my popcorn

More like a can of kick ass truth for those who have an ear to hear!

The original sin thing ticks me off to no end. Doesn't it suck that all of human kind is sentenced to eternal damnation because of the mistake of one weak-minded woman? If God was loving, kind and just wouldn't He have started over instead of putting His beloved children through all this suffering? Yes, He sent His Son to die for our sins so we can have everlasting life if we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour but wouldn't it have been better to destroy the first two than watch their billions of offspring die?

Original sin exists because of choice. If God had simply wiped out Adam and Eve, and created humans exactly the same as He did before, it wouldn't have accomplished anything, because the next set would have been faced with a choice as well, and would have fallen too. Free will means someone is going to get it wrong. Further, wiping out Adam and Eve entirely would have meant God made a mistake. Paradox. God is omnipotent, perfect, without sin. God cannot undo mistakes He made with creation, because God cannot make mistakes. God created humans with free will, with choice, knowing full well we would fall into sin. But, it was OUR choice. Sin is a natural consequence to free will. But, ignoring the paradox for a second, lets say God did start over, this time creating humans without the capacity to sin, completely undoing the fall...that would mean we have no choice but to worship God. God would have to strip humanity of free will, or otherwise risk another fall, causing God to have to start over again...If God were to undo Adam and Eve, the only way to ensure no sinning would be to take away the choice.

I am curious to know, especially from a diehard atheist like Vanito, whether this would have been preferable? Would you prefer to live in a world where you are compelled to worship God? Where you have absolutely no say in the matter? Atheists are atheists by choice, they choose not to believe in a higher power. Those with faith have faith because they choose to believe. How about if you had absolutely no choice though? Are you telling me that would have been better? Somehow I doubt it.

Cuddles, if God started over, and created everyone without the capacity to sin, what you would have is compelled, but meaningless worship. It would be compelled, because we can't sin, we would have no choice to acknowledge God, but at the same time, that compulsion means ultimately, it is meaningless, because nobody chose to do it. We would be mindless automotons. God wants people to worship, not be forced to. Again, it all comes down to choice, to free will.

Christ is there for everyone, but not everyone chooses to accept Christ. How is that God's fault? If you need help, and someone offers you a helping hand, and you refuse to accept it, whose fault is that? The offer exists for everyone, if not everyone takes God up on the offer of Salvation, you can't blame God for it. WE sinned, not God, WE screwed up, not God, WE deserve hell. God gives us a way out, and you think its unfair? You are lucky God is unfair!

Fair would be humanity being condemned without exception, because humanity is sinful, without exception. None of us deserve to escape it. Yet, it is God's mercy, his unfairness at work, that gives us a chance out of what we deserve. Grace is a marvelous, wondrous thing, freely offered, that we flat out don't deserve. We aren't entitled to Grace. God doesn't owe us salvation. God generously offers it though. If you choose not to accept the offer, that is your fault, not God's.

Wait...if you bring up genetic mutations from interbreeding...man should have been screwed a long time ago. If man was perfect at Eve and Adam.....by the time Moses landed on terra firma, genes were no longer perfect.

And if you read the Bible, it's ALL about Jesus......
Jesus is NOT a new story....

http://www.geocities.com/inquisitive79/godmen

If it's a retread, how can it be taken seriously???

davious, the problem with all that is it is all man! Still feeling sorry for himself and his only answer is that he must be punish. Your God is so self hating that He recreated man in His image just so they can carry on His self loathing? I don’t think so!

Your God has no problem doing the same things He tell others not to do, so maybe you need to take another look at this God you are promoting because He is not the God of Jesus. That God is sorrier than the sorriest of men.

BTW Adam and Eve were not the first people!

You being of sinful man can’t tell others about anything but sin, because that is all he/you knows. You need to meet those men that were not born of sin or in sin and find out/learn their story.