I'm going to do my best not to generalize.

Why is it that so many people feel that the two can't mix?

6/28/2007 12:27:58 AM

6/28/2007 12:30:48 AM

IBTL

6/28/2007 12:31:12 AM

What I'm saying is that I'm really tired of people thinking that just because you are a Christian that you can't accept modern science. I mean, not even Christians will make you feel bad because of this, many non christians who feel that they are "enlightened" feel that Christians are too ignorant to accept science.

6/28/2007 12:33:46 AM

Quote :

"Science was invented by the Devil, so you'd question the Holy Bible"

[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 12:35 AM. Reason : ]

6/28/2007 12:34:21 AM

whats wrong with islam yo

6/28/2007 12:34:35 AM

What I'm saying is that I'm really tired of people thinking that just because you are aren't a Christian that you can't accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I mean, not even non-Christians will make you feel bad because of this, many Christians who feel that they are "saved" feel that non-Christians are too ignorant to accept the Word of God.

6/28/2007 12:45:14 AM

I'm not going to make anyone feel bad about being a Christian or not. I mean it's a choice you can make on your own. Yes many Christians are raised to look down on those who aren't Christians.


But to me it almost feels like Religion and Science are turning into the same thing that political parties are turning into.
Each side picks a platform on what they are "supposed" to follow but neither side really takes a step back to maybe realize that there is a lot more in common than what was originally thought.

6/28/2007 1:00:42 AM

well if you interpret both the bible and science books literally, there are certainly plenty of inconsistencies

6/28/2007 1:04:53 AM

^^ A question for you.

Do you believe that God created the Earth in 7 days, or do you believe that the big bang started the Universe?

If you believe in the big bang theory, then do you think the Bible is lying? If so, does this mean that the entire Bible, what you base your "faith" around, is a lie?

If you believe that God created the Earth in 7 days, then how can you believe in the foundations of modern science and evolutionary theory?

[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 1:05 AM. Reason : ]

6/28/2007 1:05:48 AM

i don't get involved in SB threads too often anymore, but i'll just say

i was a physics/math major before i switched to csc and still consider myself a science nerd

i also believe there's a God, i believe Jesus died for my sins and i believe the bible is the best source of wisdom available

there's people who take from both, it's just the 2 extremes are the ones yelling all the time and are seen most

6/28/2007 1:08:35 AM

I think that every person who reads the bible should be able to be their own interpreter. I mean yes, getting advice from people who have studied the topics is a great idea, however believing something is true only because it's what your religion or denomination is supposed to believe is stupid.

Just like people who vote for parties and not people.

^^I feel that God is so great that he can do whatever he wants. If he wanted to start the universe with a big bang he would, and frankly I'm pretty sure God would.
I think that reading the creation story in the bible literally isn't the smartest move, because you must also read more of just the first few chapters to get the whole story.

I really enjoy biology and zoology, I also enjoy my faith. I also feel that there are no major contraditions between the bible and science.

My faith tells me who, science tells me how.

[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 1:13 AM. Reason : ]

6/28/2007 1:08:48 AM

The problem isn't so much Christianity it is the leadership who fear a loss of power. Fundamentalists want their audience to believe that the Earth was created in 6 earth days. Any detraction from that would mean that the bible isn't to be taken literally so what else might the sheep question? And that questioning would undermine the authority of the church. Now once they get over their own insecurities and find a way to appeal to both faith and reason their message will be more convincing to the general populous. The control also stems from a healthy dose of Puritanical fear from hellfire and damnation. My beef with the Christian followers around me was the general hypocrisy and disregard for the environment.

6/28/2007 1:30:02 AM

i grew up in the Southern Baptist religion. my mom was a sunday school teacher. i did church camps, vacation bible school, youth groups, church softball, etc, etc. i went to church three times a week, until i learned to hate it, and exercised enough force of will to quit going around 10th grade.

but long before i learned to ridicule my religion, when i was a little kid and still believed in the basics (6 to 8 years old), i resolved this science-religion issue very easily:

i figured at that time, in my little 7- or 8-year-old ways, that the Bible "must be" essentially true on the important things ... but was written by/for people 2000 years ago, so much of it metaphorical and framed in language/ideas so they could understand it at that time. Yes, the bible had errors but they were essentially minor, and not fundamental to the larger message about God and Jesus and the Holy Spook.

I figured most reasonable adults understood this as well, and when i came into contact with the loony fundamentalists who made outrageous claims about science being flawed and the bible correct on some petty issue .... i knew there was something "wrong" with that person, and found it just best to avoid them.

then once i got older, i found there are a lot more loony fundamentalists than i ever realized







[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 1:41 AM. Reason : ]

6/28/2007 1:31:53 AM

Quote :

"the Holy Spook."

That made me lawlz.

6/28/2007 1:37:33 AM

^ don't you laugh, damn you. you'll go to hell if you think that's funny

Quote :

" "Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. "And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the {age} to come. - Matthew 12 31-32 "Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"-- -- Mark 3 28-29 "And everyone who will speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him. -- Luke 12 10 "

6/28/2007 1:46:38 AM

Good thing I am not Christian anymore then, eh?

6/28/2007 1:57:27 AM

i'll see you in hell, my friend

6/28/2007 2:04:34 AM

Quote :

"i figured at that time, in my little 7- or 8-year-old ways, that the Bible "must be" essentially true on the important things ... but was written by/for people 2000 years ago, so much of it metaphorical and framed in language/ideas so they could understand it at that time. "

Agreed. Also, let's not forget the fact that the Bible has been translated from other languages into English. Even if the Bible is the exact word of God, man still has to figure out how to interpret it. Trying to follow the Bible literally word for word ignores the social and cultural contexts in which it was written. When you bicker too much about translated the word of God it often does a disservice to the overall message.

At some point Christians have to admit we have a very limited ability to understand God even with the bible as a reference...

6/28/2007 12:23:49 PM

Quote :

"Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding. - Martin Luther"

Pretty heady words from the father of the protestant revolution.

The issue with science comes up because there are too many inconsistencies between the Bible and scientific observation. I don't say "scientific fact" for a reason, because scientific "fact" is always changing when we learn more, but the same can't be said of the Bible. Good science involves always questioning your assumptions based on new observations, religion relies on questioning your observations when they conflict with your faith-based assumptions.

And this crap about the overall message . . . going by the Bible, what is with the inconsistencies between the OT and NT God? One slays first-born sons for the benefit of a relatively small ethnic group, while the other stands by and watches as the "leadership" of said ethnic group kills His only Son. What?

Also, If we are the center of his creation then why is the Earth not at the center of all existance? Why is it orbiting two planets away from a relatively insignificant star no where near the center of the overall galaxy, much less the universe?

These seem like rather pithy questions, but if you frame it in the larger context of theological debate, some rather interesting mental gymnastics are required to square the Bible, meaning it fails the test of Occam's Razor.

Religion and science only co-exist when religion gives into what we observe through the scientific method. This does not mean that science is a religion unto itself, but it asks you to believe what you can verify through use of your (God given?) senses, while the other asks you to ignore them.

[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 12:40 PM. Reason : .]

6/28/2007 12:37:50 PM

when was the bible written?

what do you think, was the average intellectual ability of people at that time?

do you think a caveman could comprehend a cell phone or it's function?

6/28/2007 1:45:23 PM

^ I'm not sure what you're driving at, but I'm assuming that you're defending the Bible based on the fact that it still holds relevance despite its age. But I wasn't arguing that it was too old, I was arguing that it was inconsistent within itself and that religions based upon it being the unchangable Word of God will necessarialy come into conflict with a scientific method which questions constantly.

The Bible wasn't "written" as one tract anyway, it was compiled about 400 AD at the Synod of Hippo.

6/28/2007 1:58:26 PM

Considering there are parts of the New Testament where Jesus tells the Apostles something, they say huh we don't understand, and then Jesus explains reiterates and explains it, and different denominations still argue about what it means, I'm not surprised that there are disagreements about how literally some things should be taken.

6/28/2007 2:14:27 PM

^^I agree with you on the lost in translation stuff.

That is one of the big things that bug me about people who are obsessed with saying the KJV is the only Bible that is right. First off, it didn't have the dead sea scrolls which is the oldest known copy of the new testament.

The KJV is a very beautiful and poetic version of the Bible, but it is no longer american english.

However, although we are getting farther and farther away from the actual time in which both the testaments were written, we are getting more and more information to help translate.

Anyway, as far as taking things in the Bible literally...Jesus taught in parables, he was very rarely ever just straight up with anyone. When God would talk to anyone, it would be hard for them to understand what was going on. God is too complex for us to understand, and we probably will never understand even if we do get to Heaven.

6/28/2007 2:22:55 PM

Here is a question for the intellectually honest, both believers and non-believers: If you knew nothing about Jesus, or God, if you hadn't spent every Sunday for the first 15 years of your life having it drummed into you, and the Bible came out today, would you believe it?

I mean knowing what we now know, and given the inconsistencies, rather barbaric behavior in the OT, perceived schizophrenia of God, and questionable creation story, would you think, "Man this is really good, I should spend my life living this way" or would it be relegated to the discount table at Barnes & Noble?

No reason for anyone to answer, just something to think about.

6/28/2007 2:25:28 PM

If the Bible was brand new there would be no way I would believe it.

I believe these things because of faith, which has to grow and can't be just aquired in one day.

6/28/2007 2:48:19 PM

Quote :

"First off, it didn't have the dead sea scrolls which is the oldest known copy of the new testament. "

not quite.

the DSS predates the New Testament. The scrolls found at Qumran contains some of the oldest copies of the Old Testament and Intertestamental Literature, as well as sectarian writings.

you might be thinking that the NT in the KJV, like the "Textus Receptus", is taken from the oldest available bible text at that time: Codex Vaticanus. since the KJV was published, two older complete manuscripts have been found, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus, with some significant differences.

theres also so-called Gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi, but thats a whole 'nother can of worms.




[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 2:57 PM. Reason : ]

6/28/2007 2:52:12 PM

joe i think you're showing way too much knowledge about religion to be taken seriously by your atheist liberal friends

6/28/2007 2:53:50 PM

nah, i dont think when they where being written / created (oral tradition before that?) that they could comprend the idea of billions of years, stars, other planets, location of the earth, previous earth history, evolution, physics, biology, etc.

thus we get 7 days... why, convenient way to chop up a year in to segments, (plus the number 7 has importance)

Quote :

" then once i got older, i found there are a lot more loony fundamentalists than i ever realized"

agree

[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 2:56 PM. Reason : yes]

6/28/2007 2:55:19 PM

But if you believe on faith, couldn't God have revealed evolution and expected men to believe on "faith"? The Bible isn't based on evidence it's based on trusting that it is God's word. Besides, the world was hardly composed of "cavemen" by the time the Bible was compiled.

6/28/2007 2:59:58 PM

what is easier for someone in 400 BC to understand and resulting have faith in. the world was created in 6 days? (7th rest) or that a long complicated process known later to us as evolution involving the complex interactions of genes and environment to eventually result in the plethora of species we see to day, and this mechanism is also responsible for depositing many bones of long long long dead plants and animals under the earth, some of which also got "turned into" coal and oil?



[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 3:06 PM. Reason : u]

6/28/2007 3:06:21 PM

I think jesus was a real person and i support the lifestyle that he tried to promote. I think the morals the bible instills on people is a positive on society. I do not think however that jesus was some deity. I also have a loathing for fundamentalist christians who try to preach hell and brimstone to people who do not follow same orthodox "christian" lifestyle. If you want to refrain from drinking, premarital sex, drugs, gambling, and other vices then by all means go ahead. Just do not tell me i am going to hell bc i want to partake in those activities. I also do not like how they blindly reject a lot of scientific research just b.c the bible does not explicitly state something. For example evolution, people take at face value information written in the book of genesis 2000 years ago instead of information that has been researched through modern scientific analysis. Using the same logic why do we do not use the same medical techniques that Jesus used 2000 years ago since he cured the blind and the disabled. Even a lot of the top clergy in the Catholic church acknowledge that a lot of material in the bible is metaphorical and not meant to be taken literally.

6/28/2007 3:13:07 PM

^^First off, 400 AD, not 400 BC if you're going by when the Bible was assembled. Either way, even around 400 BC, some of the great Greek philosophers had begun pondering the world in far greater depth than Genesis.

But that’s irrelevant if you go by the genesis of Genesis which is generally accepted to be in the range of 1000 BC. (I'm not going for exact dates here). Either way, how is "God created everything out of nothing in 7 days" any more believable than a tale about how God created each animal from another animal? I mean if you can make the mental leap that involves God breathing into clay and creating life, why didn't he just start small and go bigger?

^Few doubt the existence of Jesus, myself included, but it isn't that hard to imagine a cult of personality developing and growing around the man disproportionate to his actual deeds. It happened with Buddha, Confucius, and Mohammed.

[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 3:23 PM. Reason : ..]

6/28/2007 3:20:27 PM

I have come to terms with the fact that I am going to hell by the standards of most religions. Nothing I can do about it. The end.

6/28/2007 3:25:54 PM

Quote :

"ither way, how is "God created everything out of nothing in 7 days" any more believable than a tale about how God created each animal from another animal?"

I guess whatever we do not understand is actually the result of magic, unicorns, and rainbows. I do not see how it is so difficult to fathom that after 4 billions years that small changes added up to great diversification of species. Although that is a very primitive way to view evolution

6/28/2007 3:26:29 PM

Hooray!

I'd say the two can't mix for one easy reason: Christianity necessitates believing in things that negate scientific fact.

- People don't die and resurrect.
- People aren't born from virgins.
- The earth wasn't created in 7 days.
- There is no firmament over the earth.
- There was never a global flood.
- Man wasn't made from the soil.

Need I continue?

Quote :

"I think the morals the bible instills on people is a positive on society."

I still question how anyone can make such a statement. Have you READ the bible? It has some good morals, and it has some awful morals. I think that, in general, people have evolved to be moral (on the whole) because if they weren't, they wouldn't have made it in the wild. They project their own morals and their own beliefs on holy books and other ideas, political, etc, and they just don't pay attention to the parts of those books that they disagree with.

For instance, I doubt many christians nowadays think that a woman is impure and should be avoided when she's on her period... except for purely sanity-related reasons However, they do believe "thou shalt not kill." So, they ignore the former and exclaim the latter and say that their morals come from the bible, never noticing the hypocrisy there.

We do the same with political leaders and the like. We honor MLK, even though he wasn't a particularly savory guy, because of the morals he claimed to represent. We honor Thomas Jefferson and our other founding fathers even though they were misogynistic, slave-owning cretins, because they did some great things, and we don't talk about the awful things they did.

Quote :

"Even a lot of the top clergy in the Catholic church acknowledge that a lot of material in the bible is metaphorical and not meant to be taken literally."

Of course they do. They have to. If the catholic church insisted that there IS a firmament, that the universe is earth-centric, etc, almost no one would pay them any attention. Religions HAVE to update themselves as much as possible, but what they do when that happens is decide that something they used to kill people for believing is now fact that can't be ignored. This has happened multiple times, and the only reason that it hasn't happened to the entire religion is that Jesus' or god's existence can't be conclusively proven false and therefore can be continuously believed. The same will happen with evolution as well (I hope) one day, and then we'll all wonder how in the world any christian could have believed in such a silly notion as creationism and a young earth.

[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 3:38 PM. Reason : .]

6/28/2007 3:30:15 PM

Quote :

"Even a lot of the top clergy in the Catholic church acknowledge that a lot of material in the bible is metaphorical and not meant to be taken literally."

Quote :

"It happened with Buddha, Confucius, and Mohammed. "

I could be wrong but none of the above are regarded as a deity or son of god in the same way Jesus is by christians. Mohammed from my understanding was just the holiest of prophets(jesus being a prophet from god also) who founded islam.

[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 3:37 PM. Reason : l]

[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 3:37 PM. Reason : l]

6/28/2007 3:31:04 PM

Quote :

"First off, 400 AD, not 400 BC"

i think hes talking about the Creation Narrative, not the New Testament. and theres actually two separate and distinct accounts of Creation spliced together in Genesis.

the older part (Gen 2:4 thru Gen 3) was written around 900-950 BCE, from the "Jahwist" source or Book of J. The part about the 7-day creation (Gen 1:1 - 2:3) is the newer part, from the "Priestly" source, written sometime after the fall of northern Israel to the Assyrians 722 BCE, and probably between 650-700 BCE.

the Torah (Gen, Ex, Lev, Num, Deu) was firmly canonized by the time the Persian king Cyrus conquered the Babylonians allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem from Exile c.538 BCE





[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 4:00 PM. Reason : fix dates]

6/28/2007 3:46:39 PM

[quote]I think jesus was a real person and i support the lifestyle that he tried to promote. I think the morals the bible instills on people is a positive on society. I do not think however that jesus was some deity.[quote]

When comes down to Jesus, you can't say "he was a good guy, but not fully God/fully human." If he wasn't who he said he was/is, then Jesus is a hypocrite and a liar. You either believe or you don't. That is like saying I don't believe in gravity, but I respect the idea of gravity.

The whole genesis debate, even within the Christian church there is debate about whether it is 7 earth days, a prophets view (aka God showed the author the story of creation one day at a time), or if 7 days means something different for God (aka this currently the 7th day). Genesis is a poetic account of creation.

[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 3:55 PM. Reason : ..]

6/28/2007 3:48:30 PM

^^^ You are correct. I wasn't using them as examples of divinity, but of a cult developing around them. I don't mean cult in the perjorative way either, but thats the best word to describe their early following.

^^ Thanks. This is all stuff whose larger concepts I recall, but time has fogged the details. Either way, these weren't completely primative societies.

[Edited on June 28, 2007 at 3:54 PM. Reason : .]

6/28/2007 3:52:17 PM

i'm atheist and i don't believe any religion can mix with science

however, that doesn't mean i think science rules out the existence of a god

in fact if there is a god, as has been said many times before i'm sure on here, he very well could have created the rules of existence we call science

6/28/2007 4:48:57 PM

Something I've come to accept with Christians. The ones that will call you out the fastest on your sins and tell you you're going to hell are the ones that will commit the sins the fastest.

I really feel awful for people who have been scared away from Christianity because the people they met that were so called Christians, were not.

The easiest thing in the world is to become a Christian, the hardest thing in the world is to live like one.

6/28/2007 5:00:34 PM

Something I've come to accept with Christian girls. The ones that talk about their faith the most turn out to be the biggest sluts.

6/28/2007 5:10:22 PM

Quote :

" People don't die and resurrect. - People aren't born from virgins. - The earth wasn't created in 7 days. - There is no firmament over the earth. - There was never a global flood. - Man wasn't made from the soil. "

i think weathering on rock formations suggest otherwise

6/28/2007 5:11:59 PM

localized flooding yeah, not global. certainly not at any time in human existance.

every culture has a flood narrative.

6/28/2007 5:14:16 PM

well i dont mean kevin costner waterworld flooding, but every time the earth has come out of an ice age theres been sea level rises which are essentially global flooding

we might think of "global flooding" as all land being covered...but when sea levels were a lot lower, people still lived near the ocean...it just mightve been a couple hundred feet lower elevation-wise than the current coastlines...same concept though

6/28/2007 5:22:04 PM

seriously bitch

I want my rib back

6/28/2007 6:16:32 PM

^^ no, it's not the "same concept"
the concept in Genesis is that a large enough flood came upon the earth (in only 40 days, no less) that all land animals has to be paired and put on a fucking boat to survive, the implication being that all earth was covered in water, hence a "global flood", which would require at least 30,000ft of water (of which the volume required would grow exponentially as the waters rose). Furthermore, the notion that all this water originated in a crystal layer in the atmosphere or came from underground or whatever is equally ridiculous.

that's not even in the same ballpark as an ice-age flood of a few hundred feet.

6/28/2007 6:30:11 PM

I will say this, people are fooling themselves if they think a world without religion would be any better than a world with. Religion became a tool of human nature just as science is. Religion gave us the inquisition, science gave us the atomic bomb. In the end, really, we're all guilty of the original sin of being born human, be that a religious or a natural sin.

6/28/2007 6:44:24 PM

Quote :

"Religion gave us the inquisition, science gave us the atomic bomb"

the atomic bomb isn't a bad thing, how it's used determines that

the inquisition was just simply a bad thing

6/28/2007 6:53:04 PM