By the way, I am not responding again because I see this could go on forever and its really boring now. Please, just respect other’s beliefs so others can respect your beliefs

Oh, sure…angels and devils are very scientific. Riiight. Thank you for your feeble attempt at Biblical Apologetics.

Oh, sure…angels and devils are very scientific. Riiight. Thank you for your feeble attempt at Biblical Apologetics.

Let’s go ahead and put the frosting on the cake: How many thousand years old is the earth, Bob?

(The Natural History of Mammals, 1964, page 41) says: “The habit of ‘refection,’ or passing the food twice through the intestine instead of only once, seems to be a common phenomenon in the rabbits and hares. Domestic rabbits usually eat and swallow without chewing their night droppings, which form in the morning as much as half the total contents of the stomach. In the wild rabbit refection takes place twice daily, and the same habit is reported for the European hare.” Mammals of the World by E. P. Walker, 1964, Volume II, page 647 states: “This may be similar to ‘chewing the cud’ in ruminant mammals.”

Cockatrice & Basilisk is the word used in some bible translations but it should have been translated as poisonous snake. it was probably refering to the yellow viper

insects
A Jewish commentary on this: “go upon all four. The phrase used here cannot be taken to mean that the insects were possessed of only four legs. The words probably refer to their method of locomotion, and signify, ‘that move like quadrupeds.’

the flood has been documented in nearly every culture around the world with many similarities to the bible account. the “ice ages” that are mentioned often, may have something to do with the flood but science hasn’t caught up with it yet.

you have to remember that some of the bible uses symbolic language, prophetic language, poetic language and it was written in ancient languages where some of the words or phrases sense to the people it was written to but may take some research to understand in the context of today’s language.

people debate about this issue forever but what it comes down to is if there is no purpose for our existence (Evolution) does it really matter what I believe? in a thousand years none of this will matter anyway and no one will care what you thought. if you die today or in thirty years the same thing happens.
peace!

Oh, come now! Talking snakes (Genesis 3), talking donkeys (Numbers 22), stopping the rotation of the Earth - and restarting it (Joshua 10:12-13), cockatrices and basalisks (Isaiah 11), rabbits chewing their cud (Leviticus 11), four-legged insects (Leviticus 11)…the list goes on. And all of that is trumped by the myriad impossibilities of Noah’s worldwide flood.

Face it, the simple fact is that the bible is NOT supported by science.

writen thousands of years ago it does say in Job 26:7 (talking about God) “He hangs the earth on nothing.”
and, Isaiah 40:22 “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth” the hebrew word for circle also can be translated as sphere

if more scientists in the past read the bible they would be ahead of the game.

Not necessarily unintelligent - just ignorant. If by reading the 300+ comments in this thread you haven’t seen that religion and science are two different things, that intelligent design creationism is religion, not science, then you have chosen to remain ignorant.

Willingly choosing intelligent design creationism over evolution is like choosing geocentrism over heliocentrism, or the demonic-possession theory of disease over the germ theory of disease - you’re choosing superstition over science. You can decide if that’s unintelligent or not.

to quote the first comment:
“I used to think Ben Stein was smart.”

It’s hard to “debate intelligently” when we have to
make “ballpark” guesses as to what precisely is being typed.

See folks: *this* is why those of us who value a secular society need to step up and fight this encroaching theocratic nonsense. It really is time to take sides. The Dominionists want to take over. You can either fight, or let them win.

Curtis said: “you may not buy it, but I have seen some other places where the translation can be a problem, and it is good enough to convince me the Bible is not wrong whether you buy it or not”

So, the Bible is wrong on some things due to translation errors, yet it somehow miraculously is still infallible. Do you not see the inherent problem with the position you have taken? How can you be sure *any* passage in the Bible has been translated correctly?

Pretend to be objective, here: these were primitive people. They made some (many, actually) factual errors while writing their holy book. Why is that so hard to accept?

How can Christians complain about how they are treated in the public forum when they refuse to allow opposing viewpoints in their schools. I guess the Golden Rule (which appeared in pre-Christian religious texts) does not apply to Christians themselves.

We might also go into a history of past scientific and social theories that Christians claimed were not biblical, earth circling the sun, etc…that often cost a scientist his life thanks to christianity.

If you were a minister and used your sermons to provide documentary evidence in an attempt to prove that Jesus never existed, you’d probably lose your job there too.

Leave the theologizing to the theologists and the science to the scientists. Seriously, this is the stupidest debate ever.

Earlier Jay wrote “students have to realize that 2+2=4 is not necessarily a biblical concept. It is derived from natural law. But 2+2 always equals 4 even on the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy.”

Creationism says that 2+2=3 (or 2+2=Jesus). Evolution is also a “natural law” and cannot be taught as co-equal with the fundamentalist Christian interpretation of creationism, unless you also allow the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s version of Creation and the Norse pantheon version of Creation and the Hindu and Hopi and Zulu and Kalahiri Bushmen and everybody else’s version of their Creation myth (without coming to the realization that it’s all mythology, not science).

How many millions of non-Christians are you willing to kill to make that happen?

The majority of Americans like their long lifetimes and their low infant mortality rates and all their technological toys and clean water and safe food. They will fight to preserve your demand to return to the Dark Ages of ignorance.

Evolution is just one part of current biological science. What are YOU talking about? Are you saying it’s impossible to teach biology except in an evolutionary context?

I taught 7th and 8th grade science in a Christian school. I taught the exact same curriculum that the children would get in a public high school. Except of course, these kids are learning at a much higher level.

I also taught evolution so that the students could understand what it was. I made a Power Point presentation on Hominid evolution based on Dr. Robert Gange’s article here:

http://forerunner.com/forerunner/X0740_Origin_of_Man.html

I am not saying that it should be swept under the rug or ignored. It should be examined and critiqued. Creationism should also be examined and critiqued.

I think there will always be evolutionists for as long as I am alive, and I think it should be taught, but I also think that at a certain point if people are allowed to teach alternatives that eventually some type of a belief in “creation.”

Most people living in our country today believe in a Creator God. I think it’s anywhere between 60 to 90 percent depending on how you ask the question. Most reject the concept of total organic evolution even though it’s the only life origin theory that is allowed to be taught inmost pubic school systems.

The reason for this is that total organic evolution defies the existence of individual consciousness. People know intuitively that it cannot be right. They may not be trained scientists, but they have a sense of origins and destiny imprinted in them by their Creator that cannot easily be eradicated even with much indoctrination.

I am more concerned about worlldview and epistemology as a basis for learning rather than “what is taught.”

I was teaching Genesis 1-3 in a British Lit class and we discussed whether it taught how old the earth is. I brought up the idea that until last month, scientists thought the Grand Canyon was 4 million years old, now they say 17 million. I asked: Which one is a scientific fact?

There are no “scientific facts” that aren’t subject to scrutiny. Therefore there is no reason that Genesis can’t be harmonized with modern science.

I think that Genesis should be used as a comparison tool as a context or comparison to evolutionary science and students should be told that there is young earth creationism, old earth creationism, theistic evolutionism and atheistic evolutionism. None are scientific facts. Each one is a powerful worldview whose ideas have consequences

But the worldview of metaphyscial naturalism should be trashed as a faulty presuppositional model. Science simply CANNOT behold all truth any more than the book of Genesis is a sceince text book. Christian students need to understand that not all truth is in the Bible. But to say that something that cannot be proven through natural science does not exist and therefore should be ignored by science is faulty epistemology.

It’s the religion of metaphysical naturalism. It’s faulty for the following reasons.

1. We don’t KNOW for sure what “can’t be studied.”

2. Other methods besides scientific naturalism can be valid ways in discerning what is true and factual.

3. Scientific naturalism ought to be separated from metaphysical naturalism.

Even if they are Christians, students have to realize that 2+2=4 is not necessarily a biblical concept. It is derived from natural law. But 2+2 always equals 4 even on the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy and as far as the natural universe extend. There is one large natural design and order to the universe in which 2+2 always equals 4.

But some scientific “facts” will change.

For instance, astrophysics is an ever changing science. What we believe today will be overthrown in 100 years. But we will still be looking at whether the universe had a beginning and what forces caused “the beginning” to come into being. If we disallow the idea that there could be a supernatural explanation for cosmology and ontology, then we show we are not really looking for acts, but are trying to establish a worldview as “truth” rather than as a way of understanding.

So in short, I think young people need to try on different worldviews.

If they do creationism will win out.