Continuation of Christianity debate.

[heavycola]

It is far more logical to believe in a creator who exists outside of time than it is to believe that something came out of nothing and then to take on faith the enormous impossibility of evolution by accident without a plan or guider.

This argument demonstrates a lack of understanding about how natural selection works. There is NO EVIDENCE for creationism aside from the bible... and declaring that every culture shares the same myths as xianity is equally wrong.

[nunz]

It is far more logical to believe in a creator who exists outside of time than it is to believe that something came out of nothing and then to take on faith the enormous impossibility of evolution by accident without a plan or guider.

This argument demonstrates a lack of understanding about how natural selection works. .. and declaring that every culture shares the same myths as xianity is equally wrong.

Firstly - Heavy cola I like your hat

I know how natural selection works. I can probably preach how natural selection works quite convincingly. What I do not believe in is the mutation of one type of creature or species into another. There is more evidence to say evolution doesn't or cant work than there is it does.

In fact the disturbing lack of fossil evidence of slow change from one type of species to another is explained away by by the gap / jump / sudden change theory of evolution. However that then brings up huge issues as any mutation with such a massive difference between it and what it mutated from would normally be sterile, unable to cross breed and fundamentally unable to reproduce itself. Even closely linked animals such as donkeys and horses breed infertile offspring (the mule). There have been cases of cross breeding even in the same family (lions and leopards, tigers and lions etc) and the off spring is also infertile.

The normal way to explain that away is that two animals mutate at the same time... yeah right!!!!!! And you think I'm crazy to believe in a God!!! Hah!!! Then not only am I meant to swallow that load of cods wallop but I am also meant to believe this happened over and over and over again. I don't even buy lotto tickets and that is a scazillion times more likely for me to win than evolution by mutation. Puhlease .. I might be a Christian but I am not thick!!

natural selection - survival of the fittest. It states that the animal or organism with the best Phenotype or morphotype (a trait or characteristic which makes it distinct from others of its species) to survive the environment it finds itself in is most likely to have a higher chance of successfully breeding and passing its traits on to its offspring ensuring a slow change or adaptation of the species.

However natural selection may account for differences within a species (e.g. fat Eskimos, versus skinny Indonesian rain forest dwellers ...) but it never ever ever accounts for a change or mutation from one species into another. That is why there is no archaeological evidence of a slow change between species but only distinctively different but similar species (such as the horse and the donkey) which people postulate were related without having any evidence of the slow change from one species to another to back up their claims.

People have tried to force mutation. One famous study used fruit flies because they have a very short life cycle so many generations can be watched in a relatively short span of time. (14-21 day breeding cycle from egg to hatching and reproducing).

They bombarded them with radiation, introduced pollutants, placed them in weird environments, forced them to endure extremes of conditions, hit them with UV, Chemicals, Ultraviolet, pesticides, toxic compounds ... and bred them generation after generation after generation. The best result was a change in the wing size, colouration etc of some populations but they were still fruit flies. if scientists putting as many possible chances between hundreds of generations of fruit flies cant get a single change then how can you even begin to believe in it happening naturally.

Now as a Christian I would be prepared to believe that evolution is a tool God could have used in creation to achieve what ever goals he wanted. I am quite happy to be shown and believe the world / universe is a million billion years old. I could believe many things about the age of the world, how stuff came to be etc and none of it would shake my faith in God as it is not a part of my Christian faith that matters. It is of no theological significance to me if it is creation or evolution that God used. I can still believe in a creator even if I was a creative evolutionist like some other Christians.

However as I can see no serious evidence to support evolution and can see evidence that shows the world may not be any older than 10 000 years and can see evidence that the gap theory of evolution is filled with holes and can see scientists moving away from traditional Darwinian evolutionary theory (it is mostly only schools and universities that seriously teach some of that stuff now - many serious scientists have moved on away from the 'gap' theory) and can see evidence that may back up a more literal approach to the flood and other parts of genesis I am not going to believe in traditional Darwinian evolution.

To believe in evolution takes more faith than I have. I like my faith to be based on some pretty solid possibilities and quite frankly tradition Darwinism is a bigger stretch than I can make.

If the world is so old then why are there only a few inches of dust on the moon?

there is NO EVIDENCE for creationism aside from the bible

See my previous posts ... Babylonians, Mesopotamians, chinese, Indians, Aboriginals, NZ Maori, Pacific Islanders, Koreans, Melonisians, Bhutan s, South American tribal folk .... all have stories supporting creation.
In the law where there is an over whelming weight of evidence and testimony then something is deemed to be true. You cannot write off all the variations of the creations story from the huge majority of cultures as not being proof. or at least a suspicion of proof.
If we all didn't have some ancestral memory of the same event where an all powerful God created us and then we fell away from that relationship then how do you explain the striking similarities in the stories, fables, myths, doctrines and religious texts of so many diverse tribes, cultures, languages and racial types?

[heavycola]

See my previous posts ... Babylonians, Mesopotamians, chinese, Indians, Aboriginals, NZ Maori, Pacific Islanders, Koreans, Melonisians, Bhutan s, South American tribal folk .... all have stories supporting creation.
In the law where there is an over whelming weight of evidence and testimony then something is deemed to be true. You cannot write off all the variations of the creations story from the huge majority of cultures as not being proof. or at least a suspicion of proof.

of course every culture has a creation myth! That's where religion came from - an attempt to answer the big questions.It would also make sense for humans to use a creator and a pair of humans in theor creation stories, because that is what humans are and what humans do. You can;t seriously tell me that the dreamtime myths of the australian aborigines are evidence that genesis is the literal truth, surely?

As for your arguments about evolution - i have heard so much of this on these boards and i am not going to bother explaining why you are wrong here But your statement, and i paraphrase, that there is as much/more evidence for biblical creation than for evolution by natural selection is a big one, and i woudl like to hear this evidence...

[unriggable]

1 - Creation is not limited to Genesis - as one of the other posts point out the Babylonians believed in creation and had a creation story. In fact if you go back far enough in any religion there is a creation story involving a single creator spirit (God), an initially created human pair (Adam and Eve) and a fall from Grace (cast out of Eden). That is not my opinion but a wee fact proven by a bunch of atheistic in the early 1900s or late 1800s who set out to prove that monotheism is the current pinnacle of the evolution in spiritual thinking. They interviewed many tribal people and other religious peoples about their beliefs to show that pantheists, poly theists and 'pagans' had no monotheistic belief structure yet and it was just the Arabs, Jews, westerners etc who had evolved far enough in the complexity of their thinking about spiritual things to believe in a one God.
Unfortunately for them what the research turned up was that the poly, pan and pagan theists all had a base core at the root of their beliefs, and a story about, a single creative spirit who humans had fallen away from and become alienated from.

Therefore there is more evidence for creation than evolution.

Also, in the same way that evidence for light travelling in straight lines can be refuted by proofs that light travels in waves, so much material proving one thing can also be interpreted differently to show another thing.

The "steady layering of dirt over time " allowing time scales to be established by non-theist archaeologists can just as validly be interpreted ( if you believe in a flood) to show that a different time scale. 10 feet of dirt over 10 thousand years or 7 feet of dirt over 40 days followed by three feet of dirt over four thousand years? Who is to say?

BTW - The flood story also appears in most religions and social groups if you dig down far enough. Even the chinese and indians have the flood story in their culture.

1. We know how old something is by carbon dating. We know it works because we tested it on some paintings and they showed up corect.
2. People's belief's evolve, their ability to believe does not. By your logic, the fewer gods you believe, the more advanced you are, right? Well then I guess atheists are at the top of the food chain.
3. No, there isn't more evidence. You are pretty much saying that anything that is not explained by evolution MUST prove creation.

I wish I could say more, but I've got the SATs.

[Skittles!]

Jesus will never come again because The Bible says that everyone must make a choice to believe in God or not.
New-born babies cannot make that choice because they have no knowledge of supernatural beings.
Toddlers cannot have that choice unless their parents are part of Islam or Christianity.

Therefore, Jesus will never come again.

Errr .... what the? The Bible does not say that everyone must make a choice to believe in God or not.

I also disagree with your claim that only Moslem's and Christians kids get a choice to believe in God for many reasons but two simple ones are:
1 - You missed the Jews in your list of Religions who worship the 'One True God'. (this is not a troll to start another argument so wont be responding to any comments on the one true bit...)

2 - Who needs to be a Christian, Jew or Moslem to know and worship God? Anyone can worship God without being a ''Christian''. I know one Hindu girl with a faith in God big enough to get her welcomed into the kingdom (and no I am not a universalistic Christian ... Hinduism does not lead to salvation, quite the opposite in my belief - salvation is only through Christ).

Paul in Romans claims we are judged by the law or by our faith in christ and that we are all judged in different ways according to the light we have. There is much evidence in the bible too of non-christians making it to the kingdom. Abraham, Elijiah and Moses would be three notable names to start with.

As to your contention about babies haveing no knowledge of supernatural beings.. you are arguing against not just Christians but also just about every other religion and spiritual belief. Just coz babies are not sentient (capable of knowledge) like adults are, doesn't stop them seeing or communicating spiritually. This is similar to the way that their lungs work to provide them with oxygen yet they are not sentient of that fact. Spiritual life is not a sentient or knowledge thing.

Lastly .. and again I am not going trolling for bites here ... there has been a lot of theology over the years that babies are born sinful so would be damned if they died before they could be consecrated, baptised, christened or grow into adults. While I don't believe this, it is still a popular argument to refute your post.

1. Oh my goodness. One of the biggest thing in the Bible is that God gave us choice. A choice to either Believe in Him, or not. So therefore, we have to make a choice, and if we don't, we're automatically put in with the non-believers, whom as the Bible says, will die by Jesus in his second coming after all the believers have been restored.

2. And I didn't mention the 'One True God', because I wasn't talking about the 'one true god'. I was talking about Jesus's second coming. And why you put the Jews there, who did not believe Jesus was Yahweh's Son, is just stupid. I only mentioned Jesus, not God, or the 'Holy' Spirit.

3. The Hindu religion does have one God, but has many faces of that one god. And, because God, or Allah, or Yahweh, or whatever you wana call the Abrahamic God, is the one we are talking about, not the other religions of the world.

4. Why are you only talking about Paul? And not the rest of the New or Old Testament? Sure, Paul was a really big believer, after 'seeing' God and stopped killing Christians and changed his name from Saul, and had lots of adventures, but he's decades after Jesus's death. ALSO, Moses, Elijah, and Abraham got into 'Heaven' because their Faith was unquestionable. They would of done anything for Yahweh, as he was then, E.G. Abraham almost killing his son because God told him so. Another one, Moses sending 10 plagues to the Egyptian Pharaoh to 'free' the Hebrew slaves and send them to the land of Israel, but actually sent them to the desert for 40 days. Great fun.
And yes, I'm arguing about every Religious belief.

5. And I agree with you about the baby being sinful thing. I don't see how a baby would be sinful, unless they call babies sinful from being born from their mothers, or taking on the sins of their mother and father.

[vtmarik]

1. Oh my goodness. One of the biggest thing in the Bible is that God gave us choice. A choice to either Believe in Him, or not. So therefore, we have to make a choice, and if we don't, we're automatically put in with the non-believers, whom as the Bible says, will die by Jesus in his second coming after all the believers have been restored.

A quite imperfect solution if I've ever heard one. The neutral must be destroyed alongside the darker souls?

3. The Hindu religion does have one God, but has many faces of that one god. And, because God, or Allah, or Yahweh, or whatever you wana call the Abrahamic God, is the one we are talking about, not the other religions of the world.

Thank you, few understand that Hinduism is a henotheistic religion. There is one god (Brahman) and all the other "gods" of Hinduism are in reality all different manifestations of Brahman. Christianity has a henotheistic aspect to it, given that some believe in a Triune god (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost).

[Balsiefen]

I know how natural selection works. I can probably preach how natural selection works quite convincingly. What I do not believe in is the mutation of one type of creature or species into another. There is more evidence to say evolution doesn't or cant work than there is it does.

In fact the disturbing lack of fossil evidence of slow change from one type of species to another is explained away by by the gap / jump / sudden change theory of evolution. However that then brings up huge issues as any mutation with such a massive difference between it and what it mutated from would normally be sterile, unable to cross breed and fundamentally unable to reproduce itself. Even closely linked animals such as donkeys and horses breed infertile offspring (the mule). There have been cases of cross breeding even in the same family (lions and leopards, tigers and lions etc) and the off spring is also infertile.

The normal way to explain that away is that two animals mutate at the same time... yeah right!!!!!! And you think I'm crazy to believe in a God!!! Hah!!! Then not only am I meant to swallow that load of cods wallop but I am also meant to believe this happened over and over and over again. I don't even buy lotto tickets and that is a scazillion times more likely for me to win than evolution by mutation. Puhlease .. I might be a Christian but I am not thick!!

natural selection - survival of the fittest. It states that the animal or organism with the best Phenotype or morphotype (a trait or characteristic which makes it distinct from others of its species) to survive the environment it finds itself in is most likely to have a higher chance of successfully breeding and passing its traits on to its offspring ensuring a slow change or adaptation of the species.

However natural selection may account for differences within a species (e.g. fat Eskimos, versus skinny Indonesian rain forest dwellers ...) but it never ever ever accounts for a change or mutation from one species into another. That is why there is no archaeological evidence of a slow change between species but only distinctively different but similar species (such as the horse and the donkey) which people postulate were related without having any evidence of the slow change from one species to another to back up their claims.

People have tried to force mutation. One famous study used fruit flies because they have a very short life cycle so many generations can be watched in a relatively short span of time. (14-21 day breeding cycle from egg to hatching and reproducing).

They bombarded them with radiation, introduced pollutants, placed them in weird environments, forced them to endure extremes of conditions, hit them with UV, Chemicals, Ultraviolet, pesticides, toxic compounds ... and bred them generation after generation after generation. The best result was a change in the wing size, colouration etc of some populations but they were still fruit flies. if scientists putting as many possible chances between hundreds of generations of fruit flies cant get a single change then how can you even begin to believe in it happening naturally.

Now as a Christian I would be prepared to believe that evolution is a tool God could have used in creation to achieve what ever goals he wanted. I am quite happy to be shown and believe the world / universe is a million billion years old. I could believe many things about the age of the world, how stuff came to be etc and none of it would shake my faith in God as it is not a part of my Christian faith that matters. It is of no theological significance to me if it is creation or evolution that God used. I can still believe in a creator even if I was a creative evolutionist like some other Christians.

However as I can see no serious evidence to support evolution and can see evidence that shows the world may not be any older than 10 000 years and can see evidence that the gap theory of evolution is filled with holes and can see scientists moving away from traditional Darwinian evolutionary theory (it is mostly only schools and universities that seriously teach some of that stuff now - many serious scientists have moved on away from the 'gap' theory) and can see evidence that may back up a more literal approach to the flood and other parts of genesis I am not going to believe in traditional Darwinian evolution.

To believe in evolution takes more faith than I have. I like my faith to be based on some pretty solid possibilities and quite frankly tradition Darwinism is a bigger stretch than I can make.

If the world is so old then why are there only a few inches of dust on the moon?

there is NO EVIDENCE for creationism aside from the bible

See my previous posts ... Babylonians, Mesopotamians, chinese, Indians, Aboriginals, NZ Maori, Pacific Islanders, Koreans, Melonisians, Bhutan s, South American tribal folk .... all have stories supporting creation.
In the law where there is an over whelming weight of evidence and testimony then something is deemed to be true. You cannot write off all the variations of the creations story from the huge majority of cultures as not being proof. or at least a suspicion of proof.
If we all didn't have some ancestral memory of the same event where an all powerful God created us and then we fell away from that relationship then how do you explain the striking similarities in the stories, fables, myths, doctrines and religious texts of so many diverse tribes, cultures, languages and racial types?

ok there seems to be a good few misunderstandings here

1>we have Loads of fossil evedence showing slow changes beween species, in humans for a start

2>evolution doesn't suddenly happento jump staight from horse->donkey it is a slow process, you just might have a horse with slightly longer legs which, being more successful from running away from preditors would survive to pass on its charictoristics this means that they wont be infertile so you only need one to mutate it doesnt make its offsping infertile, its simple getetics

3 natrul selection doesn't cause evoution it just means that the most effective breed survives

4> evolution takes millions of years, even with fruit flies and man has already forcefully created breedsthrough selective breeding all are current cattle, pigs, sheep, dogs, cats and all are serials and vegtables are man made. carrots were origionally purple and grew in afganistan for example and the highland cow was bred in the 15th century to be tougther and survive the scottish weather

5> there is huge amounts of fossil, radiocarbon and physical evedence that supports the age of the earth wheras the evedence for its age being less toan 10000 years is nil

6> this is going really basic now, there is only a few inches of dust on the moon because soil is decomposing plants, thats why it forms in layers like compost the moon has no life

7>there are simularities between creation stories are because they believe in gods and they believe gods created them, it is a simple pattern, further than that the stories range from a gient egg that split to people being made out of clay to the aftermath of a fight between two gods to people repopulating the earth after it was destroyed by a panter.

I also beleve ther is a god but to me evolution seems logical
i dont know who taught you about evolutionary theories but they sure made a good hash of it

[Skittles!]

1. Oh my goodness. One of the biggest thing in the Bible is that God gave us choice. A choice to either Believe in Him, or not. So therefore, we have to make a choice, and if we don't, we're automatically put in with the non-believers, whom as the Bible says, will die by Jesus in his second coming after all the believers have been restored.

A quite imperfect solution if I've ever heard one. The neutral must be destroyed alongside the darker souls?

3. The Hindu religion does have one God, but has many faces of that one god. And, because God, or Allah, or Yahweh, or whatever you wana call the Abrahamic God, is the one we are talking about, not the other religions of the world.

Thank you, few understand that Hinduism is a henotheistic religion. There is one god (Brahman) and all the other "gods" of Hinduism are in reality all different manifestations of Brahman. Christianity has a henotheistic aspect to it, given that some believe in a Triune god (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost).

1. Yes, the neutral must be destroyed with the 'darker' souls, as they have not put faith into God, and cannot live in the new earth that God will design.

2. You're welcome. I like to tell people that they are incorrect about the Hindu religion. So blahh.

[nunz]

See my previous posts ... Babylonians, Mesopotamians, chinese, Indians, Aboriginals, NZ Maori, Pacific Islanders, Koreans, Melonisians, Bhutan s, South American tribal folk .... all have stories supporting creation.
In the law where there is an over whelming weight of evidence and testimony then something is deemed to be true. You cannot write off all the variations of the creations story from the huge majority of cultures as not being proof. or at least a suspicion of proof.

of course every culture has a creation myth! That's where religion came from - an attempt to answer the big questions.It would also make sense for humans to use a creator and a pair of humans in theor creation stories, because that is what humans are and what humans do. You can;t seriously tell me that the dreamtime myths of the australian aborigines are evidence that genesis is the literal truth, surely?

My argument about drame time creation mythos of the abos and creation stories from other cultures is that if enough diverse (in time, space nad culture) peoples give testamony to the same event then surely it must open the possibility of the events being true.

Furthermore most cultures also have a flood myth or story at their base beliefs too. Again, how can so many widely diverse cultures have the same beliefs unless there is a cultural memory of that event.

It is also not just about the one god who created us and the single pair of people but the stories of separation from god, an adversary etc are also equally wide spread and compelling in their similarities.

[nunz]

As for your arguments about evolution - i have heard so much of this on these boards and i am not going to bother explaining why you are wrong here But your statement, and i paraphrase, that there is as much/more evidence for biblical creation than for evolution by natural selection is a big one, and i woudl like to hear this evidence...

Is this worth sticking on another thread of conversation? The conversation on this thread is getting so convoluted.

I would look forward to discussing pros and cons of evolution vs creation - it is always good to hear what others think and believe .. who knows .. maybe even this christian might learn something from it

[nunz]

1. We know how old something is by carbon dating. We know it works because we tested it on some paintings and they showed up corect.
2. People's belief's evolve, their ability to believe does not. By your logic, the fewer gods you believe, the more advanced you are, right? Well then I guess atheists are at the top of the food chain.
3. No, there isn't more evidence. You are pretty much saying that anything that is not explained by evolution MUST prove creation.

I wish I could say more, but I've got the SATs.

1 - Carbon dating is not always accurate. Peolpe have carbon dated fresh meat as being really old. The shorud of turin has had all sorts of carbon dating results if memory serves me correctly. Carbon dating relies on the constant decay of carbon in a constant environment without cross contamination, disturbance or thoer factors coming into it.

Here is the major fallacy of carbon dating .... theoretically we know fossils are millions of years old coz we carbon dated them to show they are millions of years old. However the carbon timeline we rely on has no external veracity to it. We cant prove the carbon dating is accurate, we have to take that part on faith and there are a number of factors which can upset the dating process.

2 - By my logic the less gods we believe in the more complex we are? No .. I never said that. I said that some atheists scientists said that and that theory got disproved. There is no evolution of faith, only old ideas recycled in new façades.

3- No I am not saying that anything not proved by evolution must be creationism. I am saying that traditional darwinian evolutionary theory is just that .. a theory with lots of holes in it. However it is a theory pushed at us by zealots who use it to ward off god or for thoer political reasons.

THink about this for a second ....
If we really came from Apes / monkey - then why do pigs have closer biological markers to us than apes? The only reason we choose apes as our ancestors is because they look like us - however at most other levels, other than looks, pigs have more in common with us than apes. We can even transplant their cells and organs without too many problems.

If you are going to quote evolution at me as my ancestry then please at least be consistent and say we are descended from pigs rather than from apes whose shape(a shallow test of gentic relatedness at best) is similar to ours.

Why dont we get told we are descended from pigs? Coz it is not any where nearly as sexy as being descended from apes.

[nunz]

Jesus will never come again because The Bible says that everyone must make a choice to believe in God or not.
New-born babies cannot make that choice because they have no knowledge of supernatural beings.
Toddlers cannot have that choice unless their parents are part of Islam or Christianity.

Therefore, Jesus will never come again.

Errr .... what the? The Bible does not say that everyone must make a choice to believe in God or not.

I

1. Oh my goodness. One of the biggest thing in the Bible is that God gave us choice. A choice to either Believe in Him, or not. So therefore, we have to make a choice, and if we don't, we're automatically put in with the non-believers, whom as the Bible says, will die by Jesus in his second coming after all the believers have been restored.
/quote]

1 - The original quote was that JC cant comeback coz not everybody can choose to follow God or not. All I was point out was your fallacy in saying Jesus return is predicated (something that must happen first) on everyone hearing the gospel - it is not predicated on that at all. Therefore in the context of refuting your argument I said that the bible does not say eveyone must make a choice about God or not. In fact many die without being able to make that choice.

Besides which, if you read some of Pauls arguments in Romans about choice then you might find we don't have any choicein the matter at all. This is an old and classic argument which has been labled the Calvinist doctrine of predestination verses Arminianism doctine of free will

[nunz]

[

3. The Hindu religion does have one God, but has many faces of that one god. And, because God, or Allah, or Yahweh, or whatever you wana call the Abrahamic God, is the one we are talking about, not the other religions of the world.

Thank you, few understand that Hinduism is a henotheistic religion. There is one god (Brahman) and all the other "gods" of Hinduism are in reality all different manifestations of Brahman. Christianity has a henotheistic aspect to it, given that some believe in a Triune god (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost).

Err - Sorry but you are incorrect - both in termsof your deefinition of neotheistic and your all inclusive lumping of hinduism into that category.

Henotheism (Greek εἷς θεός heis theos "one god") is a term coined by Max Müller, to mean devotion to a single "God" while accepting the existence of other gods. Müller stated that henotheism means "monotheism in principle and a polytheism in fact."

Also ...

It is difficult clearly to characterise Hinduism, which can take the form of pantheistic monism, as in Vedanta, or monotheism, as in Smarta Hinduism. In popular form it appears sometimes as polytheism, or as inclusive monotheism admitting emanating deities. However, the Rig Veda (undeveloped early Hinduism), was the basis for Max Müller's beliefs about henotheism. In the four Vedas, Müller believed that a striving towards One was being aimed at by the worship of different cosmic principles, such as Agni (fire), Vayu (wind), Indra (rain, thunder, the sky), etc. each of which was variously, by clearly different writers, hailed as supreme in different sections of the books. Indeed, however, what was confusing was an early idea of Rita, or supreme order, that bound all the gods. Other phrases such as Ekam Sat, Vipraha Bahudha Vadanti (Truth is One, though the sages know it as many) led to understandings that the Vedic people admitted to fundamental oneness. From this mix of monism, monotheism and naturalist polytheism Max Müller decided to name the early Vedic religion henotheistic.

However, unprecedented and hitherto unduplicated ideas of pure monism are to be found even in the early Rig Veda Samhita, notwithstanding clearly monist and monotheist movements of Hinduism that developed with the advent of the Upanishads. One such example of early Vedic monism is the Nasadiya hymn of the Rig Veda: "That One breathed by itself without breath, other than it there has been nothing." To collectively term the Vedas henotheistic, and thus further leaning towards polytheism, rather than monotheism, may play down the clearly monist bent of the Vedas that were thoroughly developed as early as 1000 BCE in the first Aranyakas and Upanishads. However, to deny that a form of polytheism is also present may equally be to ignore aspects of the early Vedic texts. Whether the concept of "henotheism" adequately addresses these complexities or simply fudges them is a matter of debate.

As for classical Hinduism, it evolved within the Vedic line but truly came into being with the ascendancy of aspects of God like Shiva and Vishnu in the Puranic and post-Puranic developments. Many sects of monotheistic bhakti (loving devotion) worshippers came into vogue who, while admitting other deities, saw them as clearly emanating from one principal source. Extreme monists within the Advaita Vedanta movement, Yoga philosophy and certain non-dual Tantra schools of Hinduism preclude a broad categorization of Hinduism as henotheistic, what with the conception of Brahman, a formless non-being-being that is posited to be pure consciousness, beyond attributes, the Divine Ground from which all else that is limited and temporal sprang. The fundamental Hindu trinity, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are seen as many as being creation, preservation and destruction subsumed in one cycle of being that is ultimately transcended with the attainment of moksha. Nevertheless, different devotional traditions have disputed the primacy of Shiva over Vishnu and vice versa. Again "henotheism" is a loose term covering complex traditions and disputes. The period of Hinduism that most closely corresponded to henotheism as Müller understood it was the early Vedic period (before 1000 BCE within the four preliminary Vedas) and even that is disputed by some scholars, most notably the great Hindu mystic Aurobindo Ghosh.

Hindus worship many gods, their ancestors and other entities. To lump them together as one Brahma is to bleieve in a being-non being all oneness which makes us all god - that is also not monthesitic in its belief.

[nunz]

1>we have Loads of fossil evedence showing slow changes beween species, in humans for a start

Where? Certainly not from Dr Leaky.

2>evolution doesn't suddenly happento jump staight from horse->donkey it is a slow process, you just might have a horse with slightly longer legs which, being more successful from running away from preditors would survive to pass on its charictoristics this means that they wont be infertile so you only need one to mutate it doesnt make its offsping infertile, its simple getetics

You have just described natural selection again - not evolution. Therefore your argument is incorrect. I defended natural selection in my previous post but at the same time bagged darwinian evolution.

3 natrul selection doesn't cause evoution it just means that the most effective breed survives

Yep but natural slection is responsible for some minor differences in fossil evidence but the gaps between species are huge with no inter fossil evidience of slow change. You are just helping re-state my argument. Interspecies change is rapid and therefore no cross breeding is possible. You have just stated natural selection doesn't cause evolution. Therefore what does? Mutation? And again, mutants don't breed well with other members of its species if the mutation is big enough to cause a new species to appear.

4> evolution takes millions of years, even with fruit flies and man has already forcefully created breedsthrough selective breeding all are current cattle, pigs, sheep, dogs, cats and all are serials and vegtables are man made. carrots were origionally purple and grew in afganistan for example and the highland cow was bred in the 15th century to be tougther and survive the scottish weather

Again you re-inforce my previous arguments about natural sleection (eg eskimo vs rain forest indo) but shoot yourself in the foot as an evolutionist. If change is slow over millions of years there would be huge repositores of fossil evidnce of that slow change but there are none!!

5> there is huge amounts of fossil, radiocarbon and physical evedence that supports the age of the earth wheras the evedence for its age being less toan 10000 years is nil

6> this is going really basic now, there is only a few inches of dust on the moon because soil is decomposing plants, thats why it forms in layers like compost the moon has no life

Soil is decomposing plants - dust isn't. You have a double bad on your argument here. If no plants = no dust - then why does the moon have dust? Plants do not make dust!! Erosion, collisions, geothermic and geological action, freezing nad heat .. there all make dust.

One of the big worries of the first space walk was that when apoloo landed they might sink into the moons dust and die as there were no plants to bind th emillions of years of dust into soil. However the amount of dust found would be aobut right for approximately 6-10k years of dust colection on the moon - There is one piece of evidence for a shorter time span than millions of years.

7>there are simularities between creation stories are because they believe in gods and they believe gods created them, it is a simple pattern, further than that the stories range from a gient egg that split to people being made out of clay to the aftermath of a fight between two gods to people repopulating the earth after it was destroyed by a panter.

Equally or more vlaid is that all the societys and cultures have a memory of the same event. Furthermore why so many flood and fall from grace stories as well?

[unriggable]

1. We know how old something is by carbon dating. We know it works because we tested it on some paintings and they showed up corect.
2. People's belief's evolve, their ability to believe does not. By your logic, the fewer gods you believe, the more advanced you are, right? Well then I guess atheists are at the top of the food chain.
3. No, there isn't more evidence. You are pretty much saying that anything that is not explained by evolution MUST prove creation.

I wish I could say more, but I've got the SATs.

1 - Carbon dating is not always accurate. Peolpe have carbon dated fresh meat as being really old. The shorud of turin has had all sorts of carbon dating results if memory serves me correctly. Carbon dating relies on the constant decay of carbon in a constant environment without cross contamination, disturbance or thoer factors coming into it.

Here is the major fallacy of carbon dating .... theoretically we know fossils are millions of years old coz we carbon dated them to show they are millions of years old. However the carbon timeline we rely on has no external veracity to it. We cant prove the carbon dating is accurate, we have to take that part on faith and there are a number of factors which can upset the dating process.

2 - By my logic the less gods we believe in the more complex we are? No .. I never said that. I said that some atheists scientists said that and that theory got disproved. There is no evolution of faith, only old ideas recycled in new façades.

3- No I am not saying that anything not proved by evolution must be creationism. I am saying that traditional darwinian evolutionary theory is just that .. a theory with lots of holes in it. However it is a theory pushed at us by zealots who use it to ward off god or for thoer political reasons.

THink about this for a second ....
If we really came from Apes / monkey - then why do pigs have closer biological markers to us than apes? The only reason we choose apes as our ancestors is because they look like us - however at most other levels, other than looks, pigs have more in common with us than apes. We can even transplant their cells and organs without too many problems.

If you are going to quote evolution at me as my ancestry then please at least be consistent and say we are descended from pigs rather than from apes whose shape(a shallow test of gentic relatedness at best) is similar to ours.

Why dont we get told we are descended from pigs? Coz it is not any where nearly as sexy as being descended from apes.

1. Because that is much farther away in the chain of evolution. Apes are 99% similiar to us. Pigs are less (but still very, very close) - we are similiar, but apes are more similar.
2. When you say that our religion is not chaning then you agree that the abrahamic god is the same across the three mideast religions.
3. The reasson you think pigs are more similar to us is because of the fact that we use their organs? We use them because they do not carry diseases ew are unfamiliar with - apes on the other hand carry all kinds of things, like AIDS, sickle cell, and others we havent heard of.
4. Carbon dating is almost always accurate (talking 99%). When it isnt its something nuts, like fifteen minutes ago instead of the estimated 4.5 million years ago. Common sense makes up for that.
5. Excuse me if we have to 'take up faith' in carbon dating, you 'take up faith' in everything you say, for most of it is without proof.
6. Evolution is pretty much proven. The only real proof for creation is 'Oh yeah, well how did THIS happen? Too complicated for evolution! Haha MUST have been created!' We would find human fossils in the ground. We don't. That can prove one of two things: Either we evolved from existing species or we 'appeared' at a later time.

[unriggable]

THink about this for a second ....
If we really came from Apes / monkey - then why do pigs have closer biological markers to us than apes? The only reason we choose apes as our ancestors is because they look like us - however at most other levels, other than looks, pigs have more in common with us than apes. We can even transplant their cells and organs without too many problems.

If you are going to quote evolution at me as my ancestry then please at least be consistent and say we are descended from pigs rather than from apes whose shape(a shallow test of gentic relatedness at best) is similar to ours.

Why dont we get told we are descended from pigs? Coz it is not any where nearly as sexy as being descended from apes.

Sorry for a double post, I know this is untrue because we dont know the genome of a pig.

[Bertros Bertros]

[

3. The Hindu religion does have one God, but has many faces of that one god. And, because God, or Allah, or Yahweh, or whatever you wana call the Abrahamic God, is the one we are talking about, not the other religions of the world.

Thank you, few understand that Hinduism is a henotheistic religion. There is one god (Brahman) and all the other "gods" of Hinduism are in reality all different manifestations of Brahman. Christianity has a henotheistic aspect to it, given that some believe in a Triune god (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost).

Err - Sorry but you are incorrect - both in termsof your deefinition of neotheistic and your all inclusive lumping of hinduism into that category.

Henotheism (Greek εἷς θεός heis theos "one god") is a term coined by Max Müller, to mean devotion to a single "God" while accepting the existence of other gods. Müller stated that henotheism means "monotheism in principle and a polytheism in fact."

Also ...

It is difficult clearly to characterise Hinduism, which can take the form of pantheistic monism, as in Vedanta, or monotheism, as in Smarta Hinduism. In popular form it appears sometimes as polytheism, or as inclusive monotheism admitting emanating deities. However, the Rig Veda ...

[Edited for brevity]

... Again "henotheism" is a loose term covering complex traditions and disputes. The period of Hinduism that most closely corresponded to henotheism as Müller understood it was the early Vedic period (before 1000 BCE within the four preliminary Vedas) and even that is disputed by some scholars, most notably the great Hindu mystic Aurobindo Ghosh.

Hindus worship many gods, their ancestors and other entities. To lump them together as one Brahma is to believe in a being-non being all oneness which makes us all god - that is also not monthesitic in its belief.

Wouldn't it just have been easier to put a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism in your post rather than discrediting yourself by selectively plagiarising the internet's best known knowledge resource...

[Skittles!]

[

3. The Hindu religion does have one God, but has many faces of that one god. And, because God, or Allah, or Yahweh, or whatever you wana call the Abrahamic God, is the one we are talking about, not the other religions of the world.

Thank you, few understand that Hinduism is a henotheistic religion. There is one god (Brahman) and all the other "gods" of Hinduism are in reality all different manifestations of Brahman. Christianity has a henotheistic aspect to it, given that some believe in a Triune god (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost).

Err - Sorry but you are incorrect - both in termsof your deefinition of neotheistic and your all inclusive lumping of hinduism into that category.

Henotheism (Greek εἷς θεός heis theos "one god") is a term coined by Max Müller, to mean devotion to a single "God" while accepting the existence of other gods. Müller stated that henotheism means "monotheism in principle and a polytheism in fact."

Also ...

It is difficult clearly to characterise Hinduism, which can take the form of pantheistic monism, as in Vedanta, or monotheism, as in Smarta Hinduism. In popular form it appears sometimes as polytheism, or as inclusive monotheism admitting emanating deities. However, the Rig Veda (undeveloped early Hinduism), was the basis for Max Müller's beliefs about henotheism. In the four Vedas, Müller believed that a striving towards One was being aimed at by the worship of different cosmic principles, such as Agni (fire), Vayu (wind), Indra (rain, thunder, the sky), etc. each of which was variously, by clearly different writers, hailed as supreme in different sections of the books. Indeed, however, what was confusing was an early idea of Rita, or supreme order, that bound all the gods. Other phrases such as Ekam Sat, Vipraha Bahudha Vadanti (Truth is One, though the sages know it as many) led to understandings that the Vedic people admitted to fundamental oneness. From this mix of monism, monotheism and naturalist polytheism Max Müller decided to name the early Vedic religion henotheistic.

However, unprecedented and hitherto unduplicated ideas of pure monism are to be found even in the early Rig Veda Samhita, notwithstanding clearly monist and monotheist movements of Hinduism that developed with the advent of the Upanishads. One such example of early Vedic monism is the Nasadiya hymn of the Rig Veda: "That One breathed by itself without breath, other than it there has been nothing." To collectively term the Vedas henotheistic, and thus further leaning towards polytheism, rather than monotheism, may play down the clearly monist bent of the Vedas that were thoroughly developed as early as 1000 BCE in the first Aranyakas and Upanishads. However, to deny that a form of polytheism is also present may equally be to ignore aspects of the early Vedic texts. Whether the concept of "henotheism" adequately addresses these complexities or simply fudges them is a matter of debate.

As for classical Hinduism, it evolved within the Vedic line but truly came into being with the ascendancy of aspects of God like Shiva and Vishnu in the Puranic and post-Puranic developments. Many sects of monotheistic bhakti (loving devotion) worshippers came into vogue who, while admitting other deities, saw them as clearly emanating from one principal source. Extreme monists within the Advaita Vedanta movement, Yoga philosophy and certain non-dual Tantra schools of Hinduism preclude a broad categorization of Hinduism as henotheistic, what with the conception of Brahman, a formless non-being-being that is posited to be pure consciousness, beyond attributes, the Divine Ground from which all else that is limited and temporal sprang. The fundamental Hindu trinity, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are seen as many as being creation, preservation and destruction subsumed in one cycle of being that is ultimately transcended with the attainment of moksha. Nevertheless, different devotional traditions have disputed the primacy of Shiva over Vishnu and vice versa. Again "henotheism" is a loose term covering complex traditions and disputes. The period of Hinduism that most closely corresponded to henotheism as Müller understood it was the early Vedic period (before 1000 BCE within the four preliminary Vedas) and even that is disputed by some scholars, most notably the great Hindu mystic Aurobindo Ghosh.

Hindus worship many gods, their ancestors and other entities. To lump them together as one Brahma is to bleieve in a being-non being all oneness which makes us all god - that is also not monthesitic in its belief.

I'm really not bothered to read all that. But if you insist. I never thought I could change your beliefs, I just find it fun enough to make you argue with so much stuff and continue.

[vtmarik]

Nunz, as a response I post this:

The Vedas depict Brahman as the Ultimate Reality, the Absolute or Universal Soul (Paramātman). It is the ultimate principle who is without a beginning, without an end, who is hidden in all and who is the cause, source, material and effect of all creation known, unknown and yet to happen in the entire universe. Brahman (not to be confused with the deity Brahmā) is seen as the unique panentheistic Cosmic Spirit. Brahman may be viewed as bereft of personal attributes — Nirguna Brahman (except the qualities of infinite truth, infinite consciousness and infinite bliss), or with auspicious manifestable attributes — Saguna Brahman.

Perhaps the best word in Hinduism to represent the concept of God is Ishvara (literally, the Supreme Lord). In Advaita Vedanta philosophy, Īshvara is simply the form of Brahman manifested upon the human mind. According to Smārta views, the Supreme Being can be with attributes, Saguna Brahman, and also be viewed with whatever attributes (e.g., a goddess) a devotee conceives. For the Hindus, Īshvara, who is one and only one, is full of innumerable auspicious qualities; He is omniscient, omnipotent, perfect, just, merciful, glorious, mysterious, and yet full of love. He is the Creator, the Ruler and the Destroyer of this universe. Some believe Him to be infinite and incorporeal. In Vaishnavism and Shaivism, Saguna Brahman is viewed solely as Vishnu or Shiva. He is also called Bhagavān both in Sanskrit and in modern Hindi.

The many deities (Parts and Parcels of God)

The Hindu religion also believes in many celestial entities, called Devas. The word Devas may variously be translated into English as gods, demigods, deities, celestial spirits or angels, none of which is an exact translation. The feminine of deva is devī. It is the worship of the devas that gives the impression that Hinduism is polytheistic. However, the terms Īshvara and devas must not be confused. Devas could be said to be as numerous as 330 million. Hinduism is incorrect said to have 330 million Gods, which are more correctly devas, or celestial beings. The number is also not 330 million (or 33 crores) but the word 'koti' in sanskrit means crore as well as categories, representing 33 devas. Hinduism is ultimately monistic, which considers the One Reality, the Universal and non-dual Brahman, behind all forms.

* According to the philosophy of Mīmāmsā, all the devas and devīs are the sovereign rulers of the forces of nature, and there is no one Supreme Īshvara as their Lord. To do a desired action, humans must please each or several of these devas by worshiping them with proper rituals. This view could be regarded as purely polytheistic. Although the later Mīmāmsakās retracted this view and accepted Īshvara, many Hindus today still hold it.

* According to the philosophy of Advaita Vedānta, all the devas are simply mundane manifestations of the Supreme Lord (Īshvara) in the human mind and hence, ultimately, different manifestations of the One Brahman that the human mind conceives. Advaita philosophy holds that in order to worship the formless Īshvara, the devotee conceives a physical form of God in his mind for the sake of worshiping Him with love (bhakti).

* According to the philosophies of Nyāya, Vaisheshika, and Yoga, the Vaishnavite schools, and certain schools of Shaivite thought, the devas are those celestial beings who are subservient to the Supreme Lord Īshvara but are above human beings. Thus they preside over the forces of nature and act as a link between God and the mortal world. They all derive their power from God, under whose control they always work.


Whatever their wider relation may be, the devas (also called devatās) are an integral part of the colorful Hindu culture. The 33 early Vedic devas included Indra, Agni, Soma, Varuna, Mitra, Savithur, Rudra, Prajāpati, Vishnu, Aryaman and the Ashvins; important devīs were Sarasvatī, Ūmā and Prithvī. Indra is traditionally called the king of the demigods. The Purānas laud Brahma, Vishu and Shiva (sometimes called the Trimūrti), signifying respectively the creative, ruling and destroying aspects of the same One God. Brahmā, Viṣnu and Shiva are not regarded as ordinary devas but as Mahādevas. The Puranas also laud other devas, such as Ganesha and Hanumān, and avatāras such as Rāma and Krishna. Devīs, worshiped as the mother, include Lakshmī, Sarasvatī and Parvatī, and Durgā and her forms such as Kālī.

Emphasis is my own. The numerous Gods cited by some as evidence of polytheism in Hinduism aren't Gods but merely celestial entities that appear as gods. There are also multiple schools of thought within Hinduism, so one cannot rely on a single interpretation to cover the entire span of the religion itself.

The term may be incorrectly applied, but this doesn't change the fact that some schools of Hinduism see the devas as manifestations of the one supreme god. And that these manifestations are the ones perceived by us limited humans as we attempt at worshiping a supreme god.

More info here:
http://www.hinduwiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

[heavycola]

See my previous posts ... Babylonians, Mesopotamians, chinese, Indians, Aboriginals, NZ Maori, Pacific Islanders, Koreans, Melonisians, Bhutan s, South American tribal folk .... all have stories supporting creation.
In the law where there is an over whelming weight of evidence and testimony then something is deemed to be true. You cannot write off all the variations of the creations story from the huge majority of cultures as not being proof. or at least a suspicion of proof.

of course every culture has a creation myth! That's where religion came from - an attempt to answer the big questions.It would also make sense for humans to use a creator and a pair of humans in theor creation stories, because that is what humans are and what humans do. You can;t seriously tell me that the dreamtime myths of the australian aborigines are evidence that genesis is the literal truth, surely?

My argument about drame time creation mythos of the abos and creation stories from other cultures is that if enough diverse (in time, space nad culture) peoples give testamony to the same event then surely it must open the possibility of the events being true.

Furthermore most cultures also have a flood myth or story at their base beliefs too. Again, how can so many widely diverse cultures have the same beliefs unless there is a cultural memory of that event.

It is also not just about the one god who created us and the single pair of people but the stories of separation from god, an adversary etc are also equally wide spread and compelling in their similarities.

Even if this were the case - if there was a giant flood - so what? Al teh shared stories prove is that a lot of people experienced it. And if they DID, than the biblical version is wrong, because no one excpet noah and his family survived it!

[unriggable]

Kind of sad how much people misinterpret what the bible was originally written for. It was written for morals, not to memorize psalms and to stick up for stories. A lot of christians forget that, when they start to kill, and vandalize, and rob from the poor, and become arrogant and force the world to remain in check under their watchful little fucking noses.

[Blueoctober]

this thread is kinda stupid since you have to beleive without proof not find proof then beleive

[Backglass]

this thread is kinda stupid since you have to beleive without proof not find proof then beleive

Kinda like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, huh.

[MR. Nate]

Carbon dating is almost always accurate (talking 99%). When it isnt its something nuts, like fifteen minutes ago instead of the estimated 4.5 million years ago. Common sense makes up for that.

From http://bcal.shef.ac.uk/info/index.html#Bibliography - a site that does radiocarbon dating. Emphasis mine.

because BCal uses Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to obtain the results you request, no two runs of the code will produce the same answers (unless you fix the seed for the random number generator). However, provided that the methodology is working well you should find that multiple runs with different random seeds produce results which are very similar and certainly within the tolerance of the other errors inherent in radiocarbon dating. You MUST check this for each project you work on. It's easy to do, just resubmit the project for calibration a few times and check that the results are sufficiently similar given your knowledge of the variability of your data and your prior information. We have done everything we can to assure that this will happen for most sites you are likely to analyse. However, BCal is very flexible and you may well be trying to do something that no one has done before.

[unriggable]

Carbon dating is almost always accurate (talking 99%). When it isnt its something nuts, like fifteen minutes ago instead of the estimated 4.5 million years ago. Common sense makes up for that.

From http://bcal.shef.ac.uk/info/index.html#Bibliography - a site that does radiocarbon dating. Emphasis mine.

because BCal uses Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to obtain the results you request, no two runs of the code will produce the same answers (unless you fix the seed for the random number generator). However, provided that the methodology is working well you should find that multiple runs with different random seeds produce results which are very similar and certainly within the tolerance of the other errors inherent in radiocarbon dating. You MUST check this for each project you work on. It's easy to do, just resubmit the project for calibration a few times and check that the results are sufficiently similar given your knowledge of the variability of your data and your prior information. We have done everything we can to assure that this will happen for most sites you are likely to analyse. However, BCal is very flexible and you may well be trying to do something that no one has done before.

Well, you always hear "45 million years ago..." not "44,735,063 years ago" because they got different answers. But it says, even in your emphasis, that it should produce very similiar answers.