Would you like to know the benefits of being a Christian?

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Originally Posted by Vasteel

Yeah, if lucifer was down for fixing that shit, and god wasn't feeling it, don't you think Christians might want to reconsider which side they're rooting for?

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Dude, I've been saying this forever.

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Originally Posted by prisoner38911301

I find the engineering/manufacturing and communicating of an intelligent creator with the flawed creation that it loves fairly easy to accept, yes. Atoms are essentially 'nothing'... positive charge plus negative charge cancels out, and that's what the universe is made of.

Evolution claims that completely chance happenings from a heavily disputed amount of time ago occured... Supposedly some sort of pre-existing precursor to the atom collided with itself and a massive, ever expanding explosion occured, and in the heat of that explosion the first atoms formed, then they synthesized into amino acids, which begat proteins, which begat water (?) then 'primodial ooze', then single celled organisms which split into different invertebrates... you get the picture. No why, now 'how come'.

You're right in that this world is far from perfect, but as Romans says, the universe and all that is in it have been in a state of deterioration for quite some time... this seems far more in tune with the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Basically, everything is going from order to disorder, toward entrophy) than Evolution (everything is moving from disorder to order, away from entrophy).

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Evolution is a very misunderstood theory. It is non-progressive. There is no movement from better to worse or disorder to order present in it. There is no
final goal to evolution. As for the laws of thermodynamics, and the atoms, EVERYTHING is the result of the union of dynamic opposites, "higher" things tend to descend, lower things tend to ascend.

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Originally Posted by AstroBlue

I've always wondered, when Jesus turned water into wine, what was its vintage, style, and what aroma/flavours did it have?

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Don't be an asshole.

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Originally Posted by Jesus Christ

Don't be an asshole.

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yeah Astro. You know very well that it was a full bodied yet elegant 2001 penfolds BIN 407 Cabernet Sovignon, showing minty blackcurrent flavours with a complex boquet of rich varietal character.

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Originally Posted by AstroBlue

IBTN.

I've always wondered, when Jesus turned water into wine, what was its vintage, style, and what aroma/flavours did it have?

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Definetly something kickass like Chateau Beaucastel to have so many followers. Meaning Jesus travelled through time to get it.

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Originally Posted by arjue

yeah Astro. You know very well that it was a full bodied yet elegant 2001 penfolds BIN 407 Cabernet Sovignon, showing minty blackcurrent flavours with a complex boquet of rich varietal character.

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You win.

I want to become a wino. It'd be sweet to get smashed off wine and ramble on about its oak intergration and shit to people who don't care.

I had some kick ass chiraz at a friends house today.

Wheee!

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Originally Posted by prisoner38911301

Sethsez: The argument isn't "God Did It" vs. "I don't understand"... There are many things about the Bible/God that I'll readily admit I don't understand. In fact, there are several things that God specifically doesn't tell us. And I'll be honest, I don't know why he does them. The argument is for intelligent design vs. random chance happening. Moreover, when I speak of evolution, I'm speaking about the religion of evolution. Like it or not, evolution in the broad sense (Macroevolution), is a religion. Microevolution is certainly scientifically valid, and a large amount of solid scientific data backs up microevolution. It's macroevolution that has no scientific bearing. Where are the transitional forms? Why doesn't human genetic code go back millions of years? Current scientific data puts it at around 6,500 years, and our genetic material has shown large evidence for coming from one man and one woman. As you said, genetics can be and have been altered for commercial benefit... however, these benefits have not been without consequences, like bigger, tougher strawberries that lose natural sweetness. Moreover, this manipulation is again a show of microevolution... farmers have not yet turned a carrot into an apple... and they've certainly not turned an apple into a mammal. Lastly it's taken a being with intelligence to affect life... if evolution was a natural, unaided process, why has it not simulated itself? Why do we need to simulate macroevolution, if macroevolution needs no simulation?

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Who said that evolution must happen due to intelligent intervention? To use an example, various kinds of apples already existed before we intervened, but the deep red apples you can get at the supermarket came about because of us. We altered them for our own good, and had we not, they would have continued on totally different evolutionary paths.

As for turning a carrot into an apple, guh? Even macroevolution is more than just "carrot one generation, apple the next."

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As for species dying off, the answer is that sin doesn't simply affect humans. Creation itself is decaying and dying off. Romans 20-22 back up the fact that all of creation, meaning the entire universe, is deteriorating. Sin really is universal.

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Plants can sin? Wow, that's pretty amazing.

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True... Love does imbue us as a species with nurturing and defensive attributes. But since when does parental sacrifice such as saving for college and keeping in touch and in communication with offspring have any kind of survival quality? Christmas, birthdays... none of this is necessary for survival. Archival of memories (Pictures, family movies), desire to see children avoid our pitfalls and do better than we did... how's that survival? Since when does a mother bear care if her children get fatter than her? Do flies check up on maggots to see if they getting all their vitamins and minerals? Last time I checked, no. I'd be much easier on us guys just to nail some chick then leave her, and nail as many women as we can, with or without consent... that'd be in keeping with nature wouldn't it? But we don't. We don't call guys who just nail any woman, get her pregnant, then leave 'great producers'... eventually we call them 'deadbeats'. What of abortion? Certainly abortion flies SMACK in the face of survival, now doesn't it?

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Since when is abortion something we champion? Even pro-choice activists think abortion is a bad thing in general.

And you're really asking why one generation trying to make the next generation better can help survival? Parents want the best for their children because they want their children (as the future of the species) to continue to survive, be successful and reproduce. It's a pretty basic thing.

And flies lay many, many eggs. It doesn't matter if a few of them die because, hey, it's no big loss. Proportionally, anyway. However, the fewer babies an animal has, the more likely it is to be protective of said baby. Just try to seperate a puppy from its mother, especially if the mother doesn't know you.

As for Christmas, birthdays, etc... zuh? What does that have to do with anything? They're rituals, celebrated some places and not celebrated in others. What do they have to do with what we're talking about?

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Originally Posted by arjue

I want to become a wino. It'd be sweet to get smashed off wine and ramble on about its oak intergration and shit to people who don't care.

I had some kick ass chiraz at a friends house today.

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I'm told Austrialia produces the best Shiraz... then again... I've only seen Austrailian Shiraz.

I'd never want to become a wino. Red wine hangovers suck, and I don't really like white.

I always thought Wine hangovers were clean...