Bush: Intelligent Design Should Be Taught

[Wanderer]

Have you been touched by His Noodly Appendage?

http://www.venganza.org/index.htm

[fiddleronvermouth]

Have you been touched by His Noodly Appendage?

http://www.venganza.org/index.htm

I want to convert for the three day weekend.

[jsluder]

Love it!

And FSM is just as valid as ID.

[Walden]

Yes, yes, a parody of Stephen Fosteresque proportions.

[s1m0n]

I guess the conduct of the war in Iraq and the US economy proves once and for all that US policy is random.

[jGilder]

God created evolution.

[NicoMoreno]

God created evolution.

Possibly.

[fiddleronvermouth]

God created evolution.

Possibly.

Orrrrrr... maybe evolution created god?

[NicoMoreno]

So what is God? Is god some part of what we refer to as the universe? Or is he (or she) something external to the universe?

If it's the first, then again, possibly, if it's the second, then no, that would be impossible.

[Congratulations]

God created evolution.

Possibly.

Orrrrrr... maybe evolution created god?

"Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?"

Nietzsche

[Lorenzo]

So what is God? Is god some part of what we refer to as the universe? Or is he (or she) something external to the universe?

If it's the first, then again, possibly, if it's the second, then no, that would be impossible.

Looking back through history, we know that first there were many gods. These were reduced to stories and passed on through the generations. It looks like someone heard these stories, borrowed them, took them to heart and made them out to be literal, and intellectualized them, and finally said, "why does there need to be many gods of different parts of nature? Why can't there be just one God of everything?" They passed this new revised story on. Then script became popular and these stories were put into writing and these writings became sacred and were woven in with other cultures, and replaced many of the existing myths.

That's why I keep saying it looks like that in the beginning Man created God.

[Brian Lee]

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,

That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day

In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.

It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,

And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz

As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,

And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!!

[TerryB]

Looking back through history, we know that first there were many gods. These were reduced to stories and passed on through the generations. It looks like someone heard these stories, borrowed them, took them to heart and made them out to be literal, and intellectualized them, and finally said, "why does there need to be many gods of different parts of nature? Why can't there be just one God of everything?" They passed this new revised story on. Then script became popular and these stories were put into writing and these writings became sacred and were woven in with other cultures, and replaced many of the existing myths.

That's why I keep saying it looks like that in the beginning Man created God.

It strikes me that your reasoning is a bit circular here. Aren't you assuming what you are trying to prove in your (speculative) reconstruction?

At any rate, can we "know" empirically what was the original belief about God/gods? We can certainly find plenty of evidence for polytheism in the ancient world. According to the Bible, however, humans originally recognized one God who is separate from his creation. This view was then widely abandoned for the belief in many (lesser, more controllable) gods who were embedded in the creation.

The acceptance of divine creation (and the creator) is a matter of faith, but can we prove that man created God any more definitively than we can prove that God created man? To accomplish the former one would have to do more than discredit certain human notions of God. One would have to disprove God's existence altogether, and that task is much tougher than deciding not to accept his existence.

Terry

[rodfish]

Looking back through history, we know that first there were many gods. These were reduced to stories and passed on through the generations. It looks like someone heard these stories, borrowed them, took them to heart and made them out to be literal, and intellectualized them, and finally said, "why does there need to be many gods of different parts of nature? Why can't there be just one God of everything?" They passed this new revised story on. Then script became popular and these stories were put into writing and these writings became sacred and were woven in with other cultures, and replaced many of the existing myths.

That's why I keep saying it looks like that in the beginning Man created God.

It strikes me that your reasoning is a bit circular here. Aren't you assuming what you are trying to prove in your (speculative) reconstruction?

At any rate, can we "know" empirically what was the original belief about God/gods? We can certainly find plenty of evidence for polytheism in the ancient world. According to the Bible, however, humans originally recognized one God who is separate from his creation. This view was then widely abandoned for the belief in many (lesser, more controllable) gods who were embedded in the creation.

The acceptance of divine creation (and the creator) is a matter of faith, but can we prove that man created God any more definitively than we can prove that God created man? To accomplish the former one would have to do more than discredit certain human notions of God. One would have to disprove God's existence altogether, and that task is much tougher than deciding not to accept his existence.

Terry

Hear! Hear!

[fiddleronvermouth]

The acceptance of divine creation (and the creator) is a matter of faith, but can we prove that man created God any more definitively than we can prove that God created man? To accomplish the former one would have to do more than discredit certain human notions of God. One would have to disprove God's existence altogether, and that task is much tougher than deciding not to accept his existence.

Terry

While I agree with you, I also think it's possible to disprove *all* human notions of God, which makes his / her / its existence irrelevant to logical human thought, and makes a him / her / it a thing that does not bear any influence at all outside the the human heart.

If you don't believe in God, then there is no God. If you do, there is. It's as simple as that to me.

My dad, in theology school, had a professor who taught a course in comparative religion or something like that. He assigned all his students to arbitrarily choose a deity from any faith except their own and pray like crazy to it every single day until the deity appeared before them in a vision. The end result, (according to my dad), is that nearly everybody got to see their deity of choice eventually, even though they all started out as unbelievers.

That illustrates clearly to me that anyone who thinks they know what or who "the" god is, is incorrect.