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"Okay, so I'm not "SANE" so to speak, but uh... I'm the lovable kind of psycho"
http://solareclipse.net/
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"Okay, so I'm not "SANE" so to speak, but uh... I'm the lovable kind of psycho"
http://solareclipse.net/
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"And though I once prefered a human being's company, they pale before the monolith that towers over me."
--
They Might Be Giants
The reason I posted this is because I'm sick of hearing Christians at church talk about the evils of homosexuality. The Catholic Christians at my school, on the other hand, are quite supportive of homosexuals. I don't know if it's true of all Catholics, but it's true of the ones I know. I wish I have the courage to stand up for homosexuals, but I don't. And I can guess that if I had done it, the moment I say it and storm out of the room, the lot of them'll say I'm misled by Satan and start praying for me.
My second point is less about my stand on Evolution vs. Creation than about what my church says about it. I do believe that God created through Evolution, and that the Creation described in Genesis is a metaphor of it because people back then didn't have enough knowledge to understand. However, my church believes in a literal translation of Creation. My youth pastor even claims that "there is no real evidence of Evolution". I was shocked when I first heard that. My assistant youth pastor claims that he has enough evidence to convince anyone that Creation was the truth. That's all nice and well, except that he didn't bother to explain to the rest of us what they were.
At this point I thought I should mention that I was raised in Taiwan under the assumption that Evolution was scientific truth, and that was it. Only 2% of all Taiwanese are Christian (Buddhists are majority), and my family wasn't religious at all except that my mom had gone to Catholic church when she was younger, and my dad got church food donations for the poor when he was a kid.I was baptized as a Catholic two years after I entered a Catholic elementary school in Los Angeles, and we moved to a non-divisional Christian church (the one I'm at now)two years after that because the Catholic church didn't meet our needs. The reason I mention this is because I had never regarded Creation as anything more serious than a myth, and this is why.
I always thought we had left the belief in Creation behind a century or two ago, that's why I was so shocked. I still don't understand how people deny Evolution.
By the way, about the meaning of "7 days": the definition of a "day" is one rotation of the Earth on its axis. Even Christians have to admit that. If it means anything else on the Bible, maybe translators shouldn't use that word.
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"I have come to the conclusion that one man is called a disgrace, that two are called a law firm, and that three on the law become a congress! And by God I have had this Congress!"
--John Adams, "1776"
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http://frankg.dgne.com/
Megatron: "Waspinator, salvage Inferno."
Waspinator: "Inferno blow up, Waspinator must salvage. Waspinator blow up, nobody salvage. Why universe hate Waspinator?"
On proving Creation, I have seen tons of psuedo-scientific Creationist crap from many sources. And, I could systematically disprove those claims(as I have before with my creationist schoolmates).
There's even an institution for 'proving' creation and 'disproving' evolution. But, I have read much of their literature, and what they use is not science. Science is taking facts, generating a hypothesis based on those facts that might fit with other models, and then finding other models to test the hypothesis.
They do it backwards. They already have the hypothesis, so they just go out and look for the facts to support it. This is wrong, because they can ignore or deny other facts that might contradict their 'hypothesis'. I'd like to see someone try to 'disprove' evolution.
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Jeff Raven - Having more fun than any human being should be allowed to have
Is a debate for and against evolution/creation, I haven't read all of it, but it consists of letters of 500 words or less from 2 people, one for and one against, so its a balanced viewpoint.
Is a Scientific American online article, discussing how nearly half of Americans do not believe in evolution, and why they don't.
As for me, one of the reasons I do not believe in god (technically I supposse I'm agnostic) is that as our understanding of the universe grows, the "realm" of God is quickly shrinking. What do I mean by this? Well, something one doesn't understand can be thought of as an act of God. Genesis was written, for example, when people didn't know how or why they came to be. But as our knowledge of the universe grows, we can now begin to explain it without reference to a supreme being (note I say here "begin", since there will always be that which cannot be explained, one can ascribe this to God, I, on the other hand, believe that it will eventually be explained/discovered later). This explains the "how", but not the "why". For me personally, there is no "why", your life is what you make of it, if you want a purpose, give yourself one. A lot of people may find this a quite unsatisfying explanation, which is fine, it just happens to satisfy me and my view of the world. And so evolution does a good job of explaining how life came to be, and how humanity came to be. For those who believe that there should be a "why", evolution probably seems quite unsatisfying. To me, this difference of view really doesn't justify the petty sniping that goes back and forth on this subject from time to time in debates I have seen elsewhere.
One cannot generalize an entire group based on a minority. One cannot reject Christianity because of of a minority within it who are intolerant no more than one can reject science because of the atomic bomb or reject Germany because of Nazism. There is a lot that is commendable about Christianity, as has been said by others, and I believe this partly since I live in a society which inherited many of its morals or views from Christianity.
To tell someone that they are going to hell if they don't believe in a supreme being reflects back to the days when citizens were ruled through fear (and if the person doesn't believe in hell, the argument doesn't do well anyway). I don't take being ruled by threat or fear well or seriously.
As for homosexuality, the precise cause is still unkown, so perhaps it is possible for some people to change. One of the greatest mysteries yet to be solved is the functioning of the human brain, and this may very well be part of this mystery. If the cause of homosexuality is indeed biochemical within the brain (and not genetic), things like prayer (or meditation) could very well have an effect. It could be genetic AND biochemical, which makes it exceedingly complex and could mean that some people could change and others could not. I have no doubt that this may not be worked out for many years to come.
This concludes my rambling for today
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"Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you."
-Commander Riker, USS Enterprise
[This message was edited by Chimaera on April 13, 1999.]
[This message was edited by Chimaera on April 13, 1999.]
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Wheeelersburg Correctional Facility
Inmate #05301999
Moreso, we have other parts which provide hard-to-define benefits, but can kill us when they are damaged, yet we can suffer their removal with no apparent ill effects (our appendixes).
This is not evidence that we were designed by someone who knew what he/she was doing.
Intelligent Ignition? Maybe. I could accept that, possibly, eons ago, an intelligent being wrote the physical laws which hold sway in the Universe, (thermodynamics, c=186,000mps, and so forth) and set the thing in motion so that it would follow those laws, which MAY have been written to make the evolution of life likely. Then again, maybe the Universe HAD to exist that way, we can't say.
Intelligent Design? (an infallible being designed and created human life in a semi-or-totally Biblical sense?) Ha-ha-ha-ha! No.
Intelligent Interference? ( an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent being is watching our every move and wants to help us?) Surely not. At least, not in MY life experience.
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*I only SEEM Normal*
The problem with someone who works subtely, invisibly, is that you don't know if he's changed anything, or what they used to be like before.
Besides, whose to say this is our final evolution process. God created physical laws for the universe, so presumably he plays by them otherwise what would be the point? Maybe he does have a final design plan for humanity, it's just gonna take a million years to goet there.
And Frank was right. Pretty much the main aim of nearly every species on this planet is to reproduce. Homosexuality IS counterproductive to that, as is sterility. You could argue that both are physical conditions that are not productive to the species as a whole.
Not arguing anything there, just stating something okay?
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'Saying it in a stacato voice doesn't make it any more true'
-Stewart Lee
Really, it's impossible to make a determination of effect by a "Subtle Being" you suppose. True, you could argue that all those things might have happened differently. Conversely, you could argue that had I never been allowed to watch my closest friend die slowly and in great pain, I might have entered the ministry (at the time, it was a distinct possibility), or that if not for my current gf's mother's ferverent religious beliefs, she might not have been sexually abused as a child, and if not for her pastor's strict adherence to church law, something might have been done about it. But "What if's" are worthless.
On the gripping hand, you are supposing a rather reactionary form of God.
Consider.. a subtle being, not wanting its effects to be seen, and yet all-powerful and all-knowing, could have seen to it that Hitler was stillborn.. or never conceived in the first place. Simple manipulation of sperm or egg. Same with Milosevich. If you imagine God as the Subtle Spirit, you have to assume that what HAS happened has happened because it was SUPPOSED to, because it WANTED Hitler, Milo, and the rest.
This is, at best, difficult to come to terms with. It would mean that we somehow NEEDED Hitler, STalin, Torquemada, and the rest, to somehow "better" us. I find that impossible to accept.
I agree that Frank is right. As far as propagating the specied goes, homosexuality is a dead end. That doesn't make it evil, though.
Not offended, just responding.
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*I only SEEM Normal*
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Anyone remember how they felt the day after Rich Mullins died?
I now quote one of my favourite lines it that book:
"The Bible is a book, a great book. But it is not the only book".
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I can resist anything.......
Except Temptation
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*I only SEEM Normal*
There is a Psalm about how God created us perfectly and how He designed us the way He wanted us.
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Anyone remember how they felt the day after Rich Mullins died?
And why is it I always end up arguing with the one guy who HAS had the worst things possible happen to him? No offense, I am sorry for everything thast has happened to you.
You are right. What if's are pointless. The only argument about Hitler I can see is that if he were stillborn, there might have been someone even worse in his place. And partly because of him, we are now attacking Molosovitch, to try and prevent the same problems.
We muddle through, whether by divine intervention, or by dumb luck, but humanity does keep going, and hopefully improving.
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'Saying it in a stacato voice doesn't make it any more true'
-Stewart Lee
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"......"
�������������-The Breen at Internment Camp 371
Yep, this was one of the things I was praying about when I went through all this...If anyone wants my story, they can get to know me a little better.
I don't want to divulge such personal stuff on the threads for just anyone to read, but I'll share if you want to talk over ICQ or email...
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"And though I once prefered a human being's company, they pale before the monolith that towers over me."
--
They Might Be Giants
"Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."
Based on that, I'd be wary of taking the psalms as great indicators. They're poetry.
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*I only SEEM Normal*
Make sense? Good.
You know what I've discovered?
That there is no difference in the outcome of Prayer, Spellcraft, or Visualization.
There are many versions of the Truth out there. That's what we are all looking for, the Truth. One version is Christianity, another version is Judiasm, another is Islam, another is Hinduism, another is Wicca, another is paganism, another is animism, another is LeVay's Satanism, another is atheism, another is quantum mechanics, another is Realivity, and so on and so forth. But Absolute Truth, true Divinty, is grasping all of the versions of Truth.
Everything is emptiness. What we call Reality is merely an exchange of photons and a replusion of electric charges. It's those two things that make our world seem so solid, and yet. . .
. . .And yet, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Do You question God's existance? Or trust in it with Your faith? Do You leave the curtain alone and let Your perceptions go unchalledged? Or do You dare to pull back the curtain and see God for what It really is.
Or do You stand there and know that God is the curtain, and the Wizard, and the machines behind the curtain, and the whole of Emerald City, and Oz, and even You and Your little dog Toto too?
Or perhaps Life, real true Life is beyond us and we are mere machines, constructs of artificial intelligence, the end result of the most advanced nanotechnology. Imagine basic elements, the very ash of stars, engineered in such a way as to combine together to form a programming language that instructs more combinations and replications, until a whole unit is devised! Evolution was just the beginning. Just the research and development. And here we are, like self enabling software wondering if our Users still watch our performance, or even use us after 4.6 billion milliseconds.
What is our Life then? What is our purpose? Experiments? Vehicles? Toys? Anyone who has played Sim Earth has provoked a Atomic War, or changed the sun's output to blanket the earth in ice and destroy all life. Are we too, just a simulation? If so are we to accept our fate? Or become Gods and change the simulations? And if you say we can't do that, can't change the simulation, then you are either accepting the Man Behind the Curtain, or just seeing the Man Behind the Curtain, but you are not perceiving the entirity, the holistic essence that is All, of which the Man Behind the Curtain, and Yourself are equal and indistisguishable parts of the Whole.
Do I believe in God? Yes. The God I have just described to you. But in my case "believe" is to misleading a term. I know there is a God.
And sometimes It's Me.
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IF is the middle word in Life.
--Appocalypse Now
[This message was edited by Cargile on April 17, 1999.]