Your town: Los Angeles, CA
Your town: Los Angeles, CA
Freelance journalist
Fire and Brimstone, Hell and Damnation?
http://zannucci.wo rdpress.com/2008/0 5/13/hell-and-damn ation-fire-and-bri mstone/ (Tuesday May 13 | post #1)
'Lost' Christians Greatest Crisis in American Church, says Author
Before I even realized this was posted over here I had commented on it: http://zannucci.wo rdpress.com/2008/0 5/11/pentacost-cha llenges-to-faith-n ot-addressed-by-ch urches/ It is a humbling story, but one which sheds light on a way out. (Sunday May 11 | post #5)
Creation Rediscovered: Evolution & the Importance of the Origin...
I don't want to get further into this. Belief in a literal interpretation of Genesis and Creationism is fine with me. But I want everyone to know that it is okay to believe the other way. We are not required to believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis in order to be Christians. To me, the creation story tells that this is God's universe and world and that He created us and so everything owes itself to God. And that, beyond that, God created us (either instantly or via evolution) in His image, which gives us a knowledge of right and wrong and puts more responsibility upon us. Through the creation and Garden of Eden story, we are told that God is the creator of all, that we are included in that, that we are naturally sinners, and that God expects obedience anyway, or He may punish us. Those same things are told by the story whether you believe that it is literal history or parable, so I don't see the problem. The Bible is chock full of parables. BRJHWH spoke in parables in many of his lessons. If BRJHWH made such an extensive use of parables, why not his Father JHWH? (Sunday May 11 | post #52)
Creation Rediscovered: Evolution & the Importance of the Origin...
Exactly (Friday May 9 | post #31)
Creation Rediscovered: Evolution & the Importance of the Origin...
Just for the record, Wayne, it's not you I'm talking about here. On my site, I wrote a comment to someone else saying that I believed that the Earth was several billion years old and that God created man through evolution. I then had to spend a portion of each day deleting posts from people who felt God had given them the power to condemn me to hell. Not only that, but my personal email is attached to that site so I was receiving emails at home over it. Some were so angry it was almost scary. I want to make perfectly crystal clear the following sentiment: The road to hell is not paved with misconceptions about the book of Genesis. But all these people who hate in the name of Christ? I can only wish for them that there is no God at all. It would be better for them to be devoured by nothingness than to face what is coming. (Friday May 9 | post #30)
Creation Rediscovered: Evolution & the Importance of the Origin...
See, that's what I'm talking about. How does what you just said relate to the message of Christ? Nothing leads to atheism but stupid hatred, and all of Christianity lately is stupid hatred. Who are you to tell God how He created man? Who are you to police other Christian's opinions? Where is the love? Where is the message of God? Where is the love of enemies and the caring for one another? Why must Christians bash other Christians who believe that much of Genesis is a God-inspired parable? Where does Christ tell us to argue amongst ourselves and utter harsh words of condemnation? I can tell you that most of the Christians on message boards appear, certainly, to have no love in their hearts. Only paranoid and angry agendas that look very like the paranoid and angry agendas of the atheists they argue with. If we don't bring the love back to Christianity, which left with the arrival of mondern fundamentalism, then we are lost. (Friday May 9 | post #29)
Creation Rediscovered: Evolution & the Importance of the Origin...
Evolution only "takes God out of the Creator role and places Him on the sidelines as a spectator" if you imagine it does. That's creationist hyperbole. To me, God created us purposefully through evolution, regardless of whether science finds His fingerprints there or not. Whether He did it through a trillion small changes or one big one, it was still His plan and design. My opinion is that creationists, like all Christians, should just ignore evolution and stick to preaching the Word and helping people. Fighting evolution is stupid, plain and simple. (Friday May 9 | post #25)
Creation Rediscovered: Evolution & the Importance of the Origin...
Well, you can see from my example in the second paragraph that the example given in the first paragraph is nonsense. It is my opinion that spreading nonsense as Christian doctrine and/or belief does not help to spread the faith. In fact, by opposing reason we push people who are curious away, which is therefore against the purpose of God. I don't really have anything against the quest for creationism and ID, but we are practically basing the validity of our religion on it, and that is an awful, awful thing. We can have Jesus and Darwinian evolution both. They are not mutually exclusive. We may chase ID if we like, but there are far too many people who paint this as a war between religion and science, which is like saying there's a war between the Bible and addition. The Bible does not dispute any science and science does not dispute any of the Bible. The two work just fine together. But we have a group of dedicated individuals out there who believe that faith is directly challenged by conventional science, and who are determined to fight science with their every breath. And the louder they get, the quieter the true call to God becomes for those who need to hear. (Friday May 9 | post #23)
I Was About To Become a Christian But Zazenmind Changed My Mind
I haven't read any of this thread, but I'd like to point out that zazenmind couldn't convince me to open an umbrella in the rain. (Friday May 9 | post #208)
Creation Rediscovered: Evolution & the Importance of the Origin...
Thanks Kirdy and Wayne. Now I have to buy another book. By the way, under the amazon reviews I found this: "This book explains how the main so-called 'mechanism of evolution', natural selection, can be shown to actually disprove the theory of evolution. For example, a bird's wings (or flying reptile's) have to be perfectly designed for them to function. A prototype wing, that couldn't really bring flight, would have no reason to be 'selected' for further development. In fact, it would make the animal more likely to be encumbered and a prey to other animals." See, that type of idle speculation shouldn't be associated, in my opinion, with Christianity. First of all, there is a general misunderstanding of evolution here. The prototype wing doesn't need to be useful to survive. It just needs to not be a hindrance. Second, we have no way of knowing that it wasn't useful. For instance, the prototype wing could have been spread to make the "flying lizard" as the book calls them look bigger and therefore scare off predators. In that case, the protowings would be beneficial and continuing to grow them bigger would create greater benefit. See, this is all just stupid and serving no purpose for God. (Friday May 9 | post #20)
Creation Rediscovered: Evolution & the Importance of the Origin...
Are you telling me that you come on here and make fun of Christians but buy into this John Edwards crap? Now that's rich. (Friday May 9 | post #19)
Thank you. I'm feeling a little better than I have been. Yes, it's influenza. Perhaps in your country they don't use the term flu? Fortunately, we are engineering much improved methods of growing the viruses. The days when the majority of vaccines are grown in eggs are numbered. Then we can be more accurate and more responsive to strain variations. As of yet, our slight understanding of protein folding has little to nothing to do with the industry. Most of our efforts with protien folding vaccines have to do with non-viral diseases. But, yes, viral and bacterial mutations are beyond our ability to keep up with at this point. (Friday May 9 | post #5)
Thanks. Yeah, I was already pretty miserable from allergies prior to the flu kicking in. (Friday May 9 | post #3)
