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Is denial of geology any way to spread Christianity?

SouthernDemocrat said:
Even if you assume that the 2 creation stories in Genesis are entirely allegorical, the story of Noah's Ark can't possibly be true, the Fall of Man cannot possibly be true, and the Tower of Babel cannot possibly be true. The only way to reasonably look at Genesis is to see it as entirely a collection of oral traditions and tribal myths passed down generation after generation until it was finally recorded by Jewish scribes.
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Why? Also couldn't those stories be allegorical also? (Mind you I personally believe the bible to not be written by god but by power hungry people)

SouthernDemocrat said:
There is a theological problem with seeing it all is simply allegorical in the light of modern science, and that is that in the Gospels, Jesus refers to the accounts in Genesis as though they were literal history. See Mark 10:6, Matthew 24. Not to mention, early historians such as Josephus were clear in their writings that early Christians and Jews believed Genesis to be literal, and the earth to be but a few thousand years old.
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Just because they believed it to be literal does not mean that it actually was. Parts of things that should have been put in the bible were not put in the bible due to them not having any understanding. For instance it is believed that Jesus came to the Americas (it wasn't called the "americas" of course) after his "resurrection" and had told some of his followers that he was going to do so. Those followers however didn't believe that the Americas existed and as such discarded what Jesus told them in this regard. It was their own pride that allowed this to happen. So just because something is in the bible does not mean that the bible is entirely accurate as it was written by men that were ignorant and made lots of assumptions in its making.
 
Kal'Stang said:
So you can prove without a doubt that animals were on this earth before plants as your post implies? Great! Where's the proof?
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Plants and animals evolved together.

Figs need to be fertilised by fruit flies. The female fruit fly enters the half formed fruit and in doing so transfers some pollen to the fruit. The fly then lays eggs in the fruit which will only ripen if this takes place then when the eggs have hatched the flies leave, or at least the females, after the males have fertilised those they can reach with their long penises.

No fruit flies no figs. No new fig trees.
 
Kal'Stang said:
Why? Also couldn't those stories be allegorical also? (Mind you I personally believe the bible to not be written by god but by power hungry people)
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It could be allegorical, although a lot of is poor allegory if that is the case. It could also simply be tribal stories and myth. The later being much more likely.

Just because they believed it to be literal does not mean that it actually was.
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Of course not. In every religion there are various implausible myths that adherents believe to be literal events.

Parts of things that should have been put in the bible were not put in the bible due to them not having any understanding. For instance it is believed that Jesus came to the Americas (it wasn't called the "americas" of course) after his "resurrection" and had told some of his followers that he was going to do so. Those followers however didn't believe that the Americas existed and as such discarded what Jesus told them in this regard. It was their own pride that allowed this to happen. So just because something is in the bible does not mean that the bible is entirely accurate as it was written by men that were ignorant and made lots of assumptions in its making.
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That is only believed by Mormons.
 
Tim the plumber said:

Plants and animals evolved together.

Figs need to be fertilised by fruit flies. The female fruit fly enters the half formed fruit and in doing so transfers some pollen to the fruit. The fly then lays eggs in the fruit which will only ripen if this takes place then when the eggs have hatched the flies leave, or at least the females, after the males have fertilised those they can reach with their long penises.

No fruit flies no figs. No new fig trees.
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Land plants actually arrived before land animals. However, the first complex cellular life were animals, and fish evolved before the first land plants.
 
Tim the plumber said:
If the 6 days of creation were 6 x 24 hours then the world is young. It's billions of years old. Geology is plain. If you think that the world is only a few thousand of years old you are wrong. Every sedimentary rock tells it's story that it's many millions or billions of years old.
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The young earth folks are wrong. :shrug:

Tim the plumber said:
If you want to try to say that Genesis is talking of periods of time in which a day may be many billions of years then the flowering plants need to have insects and other animals to fertilise them. You cannot have it both ways.
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You are of course assuming that the Genesis is accurate in its time table. Of course it being written by man I would imagine that it would be inaccurate.
 
Aunt Spiker said:
To spread?

I was raised under that belief - the concept of eons of geological history was new to me when I learned it in school. Most people raised religiously are introduced to religious beliefs first - geological concepts second. My mother firmly clings to the 'young earth' concept, my father (who is a minister) is mum on the subject so I think he believes in geological (logical) processes but stays quiet out of respect for my mother. I found I couldn't equate my upbringing with my new view of how things really work and let go of my religious views.

I wouldn't call it 'a means of spreading a religion' - the religion is spread and that happens to go (or it doesn't) along with it.

Just as 'geological forces' isn't used as a 'means of spreading science' - it is a part of science and it just happens to go along with it.
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You should give your father this link

The Clergy Project - Home Page

Remind me of a joke
Rick Santorum was walking back from church one day when he came upon a young girl selling some cute kittens. Intrigued, he stopped to ask about the breed of kittens.
The little girl informs him they are christian kittens. Impressed with her answer, he blesses her kittens.
The next week Mr Santorum is walking back with Sarah Palin talking about 2016, and they come across the same girl with the kittens. Remembering her fantastic answer from the previous week, he tells Gov. Palin: "You have to ask this little girl about her kittens, she has the cutest answer!"
So Gov. Palin asks the little girl about her kittens. The little girl proudly states they are atheist kittens.

Dumbstruck Mr Santorum says: "Last week you said these kittens were christian kittens!!!!"
The little girl says: "That was last week. Since then they have opened their eyes!"
 
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Tim the plumber said:

The quest that is science is the quest to understand the universe.

To say that there is some stuff which will be forever inexplicable is to abandon that quest.
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How was all the matter in the Universe created?
 
Tim the plumber said:

I disagree again. There are people working on that problem as we speak.

We know a lot about the early universe without the need to break the laws of causality.
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And through it all they only have assumptions. And that is all that they can have unless they can time travel. For the simple fact that we can only observe the past by looking at the visible light from other Galaxies....light which took million...billions...of years just to get this far. Which is like looking back in time. Without that light we have nothing. Indeed we wouldn't even know about the Big Bang if it hadn't been for that light. The only other way to possibly get evidence is to travel to the area where the big bang actually happened. Which will never happen for the simple fact that humans will never live long enough to travel that far. Even IF we could travel faster than light by a factor of 10 (an impossibility as per Einstein) it would still take billions of years to get to that point in space. And all to find....what? All that was there was shot outwards and what ever might be there might not even be the cause of the big bang as we have no idea what the exact complete composition of the Big Bang was....nor what would cause it to go "boom". IE what is there might be the original make up of what was there just before the big bang or it might be a part of what caused the big bang. Maybe even a mixture of the two but we would never know it.

In the end we simply will never know unless we can time travel to that point.
 
American said:
How was all the matter in the Universe created?
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Hydrogen atoms were created from the energy released by the Big Bang and through gravity they coalesced to form stars which created all the other elements of matter through nuclear Fusion. There is really no mystery about it.
 
iguanaman said:
Hydrogen atoms were created from the energy released by the Big Bang and through gravity they coalesced to form stars which created all the other elements of matter through nuclear Fusion. There is really no mystery about it.
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And prior to the Big Bang there was?
 
Tim the plumber said:

Plants and animals evolved together.

Figs need to be fertilised by fruit flies. The female fruit fly enters the half formed fruit and in doing so transfers some pollen to the fruit. The fly then lays eggs in the fruit which will only ripen if this takes place then when the eggs have hatched the flies leave, or at least the females, after the males have fertilised those they can reach with their long penises.

No fruit flies no figs. No new fig trees.
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1st you are assuming that plants can only be male or female. That is actually incorrect. There are plants which can fertilize themselves so to speak. IE: all that it needs to spread its seeds is the wind. They do not need animals to transfer pollen from one female plant to a male plant or visa versa. They just need the wind to blow the seeds around. Genesis says that the plants were created. It doesn't state how those plants at the time needed to reproduce.

2nd you assume that plants need animals to fertilize the dirt. In that too you are wrong. It just need organic material to make fertile dirt. Science has found lots of nebula that are made up of organic molecules (most of them actually). There are even nebula's which if you filtered the toxic chemicals out you could drink beer from them nebulas. One particular nebula they have found would allow everyone on this planet to drink from it for the life of our sun. Thats how much organic material is in that cloud alone. Which means that when the Earth was being formed from the nebula that was here before our sun became a sun also contained organic molecules. Which could have helped fertilize the early soil after things had calmed down.
 
American said:
And prior to the Big Bang there was?
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No one knows for sure. What we do know is nothing that has happened since required divine intervention and can be explained by the laws of physics. So if there was a God that caused the big bang, he hasn't been seen again for at least 13 BILLION years. That's quite a long vacation...
 
iguanaman said:
No one knows for sure. What we do know is nothing that has happened since required divine intervention and can be explained by the laws of physics. So if there was a God that caused the big bang, he hasn't been seen again for at least 13 BILLION years. That's quite a long vacation...
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Who created the laws of physics?
 
American said:
Who created the laws of physics?
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Why did they need "creation"? It is an evolutionary instinctual belief common to humanity that everything needs a creator. That is a limit in our usual perception / reasoning, not some immutable law of the universe.
 
Kal'Stang said:
1st you are assuming that plants can only be male or female. That is actually incorrect. There are plants which can fertilize themselves so to speak. IE: all that it needs to spread its seeds is the wind. They do not need animals to transfer pollen from one female plant to a male plant or visa versa. They just need the wind to blow the seeds around. Genesis says that the plants were created. It doesn't state how those plants at the time needed to reproduce.

2nd you assume that plants need animals to fertilize the dirt. In that too you are wrong. It just need organic material to make fertile dirt. Science has found lots of nebula that are made up of organic molecules (most of them actually). There are even nebula's which if you filtered the toxic chemicals out you could drink beer from them nebulas. One particular nebula they have found would allow everyone on this planet to drink from it for the life of our sun. Thats how much organic material is in that cloud alone. Which means that when the Earth was being formed from the nebula that was here before our sun became a sun also contained organic molecules. Which could have helped fertilize the early soil after things had calmed down.
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Plants make" food from sunlight through photosynthesis. Animals cannot make food and so could not exist without plants so we know that plants were the 1st life form on Earth. The term "Organic compounds" simply means they contain carbon it has nothing to do with life whatsoever.
 
Kal'Stang said:
1st you are assuming that plants can only be male or female. That is actually incorrect. There are plants which can fertilize themselves so to speak. IE: all that it needs to spread its seeds is the wind. They do not need animals to transfer pollen from one female plant to a male plant or visa versa. They just need the wind to blow the seeds around. Genesis says that the plants were created. It doesn't state how those plants at the time needed to reproduce.

2nd you assume that plants need animals to fertilize the dirt. In that too you are wrong. It just need organic material to make fertile dirt. Science has found lots of nebula that are made up of organic molecules (most of them actually). There are even nebula's which if you filtered the toxic chemicals out you could drink beer from them nebulas. One particular nebula they have found would allow everyone on this planet to drink from it for the life of our sun. Thats how much organic material is in that cloud alone. Which means that when the Earth was being formed from the nebula that was here before our sun became a sun also contained organic molecules. Which could have helped fertilize the early soil after things had calmed down.
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Please try to be clever!

Fertilise is this case is being used in it's meaning of sexual fertilisation.

That some plants can self fertilise is obvious. As is the fact that some cannot.

If you had a habit of keeping up with science then you would also be aware that the first photosynthesizing creatures were simple bacteria.
 
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