The problem is your insistance that the world is on fire or ship wrecked. It is not. Therefore your analogy fails.
Instead you accuse God of favouritism or negligence.
Richard
The mt DNA claims there are nonsense. The so-called “evolution prediction” is not what is expected evolutionarily at all. There should be many nodes in an evolutionary tree under ordinary circumstances and using an appropriate DNA region (one that has an adequate number of changes to show patterns but not so many changes as to obscure similarity). Evolution expects geographic patterns.
Add a few more sequences to the mtDNA tree, and you have clear support for an evolutionary connection between apes and humans. The video is not honest in its representation of the situation.
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The original autographs are irrelevant. Textual criticism is not involved. A normal reading of language changes from one language to another, and the reading cannot always – indeed rarely – be accurately translated.
Yes, you quot Bible passages, and I repeatedly point out how you add to the text, how YEC adds to the text. Requiring the “days” of Genesis 1 to be taken literally adds to the text; "Flood Geology’ adds to the text; counting the age of the earth adds to the text; elevating the “sanctuary service” above Christ adds to the text; insisting on millions of people in the Exodus adds to the text . . . you do it over and over and it’s the only thing that keeps YEC going.
Academics do not consider “quoting Bible passages” to be scholarship, they examine everything. Quoting Bible passages tells you next to nothing about the culture or the literary type or even the worldview of the writers.
“Quoting Bible passages” is fifth-grade ‘theology’ and scholarship; it is not academic at all unless the Bible passages are the topic. But everything in YEC requires adding to Bible passages while pretending that’s not happening – and that’s neither academic nor scholarship, either.
Stop lying: I have called you on this so many times that in my church you would be up in front of the congregation for public discipline for lying about brothers in Christ not just repeatedly but stubbornly and rebelliously. It has become extremely clear that you have no regard for Exodus 20:16 even after repeated admonitions from multiple others.
If you do not know what the lie is in your above paragraph, I don’t know what to do – the Bible says tell it to the elders, but we don’t have elders here.
And that is your error – you insist on forcing science into the text! I’ll ask again: where in the scriptures is there any statement or even hint that the Holy Spirit meant to teach science?
That’s ALL I accept! You keep trying to drag me away from the literal text, and I am not going to budge. You change the meanings of words, ignore the ordinary use of words, ignore the grammar, ignore the history – you toss the historical-grammatical method in the trash and replace it with . . . the foolishness of imposing a modern scientific worldview on the text.
I don’t care about mitochondrial DNA and a Bible timeline! Why do you make science a judge over scripture?
That’s nonsense. It shows exactly the problem of YEC: you think the Bible teaches science.
And I will not listen to anything from Kurt Wise since he has written that he is not interested in honest science, that evidence is not relevant – though to his credit he honestly admits that if YEC is true then all of science is wrong.
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Again you set yourself above scripture.
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In other words, Wise is doing what he has written that he will do: lie.
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Only your interpretation of it.
Tou could be wrong you know, you are not God.
Richard
Hmm. I know we’re not supposed to give one word replies, but…No.
To take something said to me by one of my Theology Instructors, a Rabbi of Righteous Memory, in a different context.
If a person thought that way…they would be confused.
Now can you understand both…yes. But you cannort have both as a belief system. It just doesn’t work that way.
I am not so sure that they are belief systems, especially Hinduism.
I do think the word “Christian” is best defined by certain beliefs as the one sure way to distinguish Christianity from other religions. But I am not so sure this is the case with Hinduism. And the fact is that Christianity has most often spread by finding resonance in native beliefs as Paul did in Acts 17:23.
Not wishing to insult any Hindu or Christian,
how you incorporate ideas into your personal beliefs will depend on whether you see the elemenntsas contradictory. clealry there are esclusivity clauses in (orthodox) Chrsitianity but, not knowing the finer details of hinduism that may not be a n issue. \the only confusion might be from the outside whereby the onlooker cannot see how the amalgamation works or, more probslby , rejects any possibility of amalgamation at all.
Christian exclusivity is a hard one to overcome or deny.
Richard
Try me.
I certainly have some exclusivity when it comes to the definition of “Christianity” as a word. But that is all. And I already explained why Hinduism doesn’t have a problem with that part.
Why,when you whould no by now that I am one who refutes it.
I said hard not impossible
Richard
I’m not at all convinced of that. Human rebellion broke something about Creation and the only way to fix it was for a human to “un-break” it.
The Incarnation would have happened either way, but the human choice to rebel determined that the Incarnation would result in death, and that very death would repair what was wrong.
It also reveals how deep the connection was in the first place: a light connection would not have required such a heavy-duty repair.
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So God is not almighty. And humanity is so strong that God had no alternative
(That is what you are saying here)
So when God created humanity he made them so powerful that they would dictate His responses to the.
Or alternativelt God intended humanity to fail and the incarnation was just a part of His plans and ordination.
either way, God sucks
(Is what you are saying)
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From a certain perspective, this is a logical conclusion, but it still allows humanity too much power so that they are dictating the course God must take
That is a very human conclusion based on the "(self) importancd of humanity.
As Star Trek The Long Journey HOMe (Spock) pointed out
“Only human vanty would consider that all messages were meant for them”
(Paraphrased)
IOW You have declared that HUmanity is the only (Possibly main) reason God made the Universe. WOW
RIchard
This is definitely NOT my area of expertise, but my understanding is this depend on culture. According to western culture a person cannot be both; according to (some) eastern cultures they can.
either way, God sucks
AFAIK, God is fully capable of drinking through a straw. 
Maybe when He came as Jesus.(Did they have straws then?)
Richard
No – God made Creation in a way that made humans the keystone, thus dictating His own response. The only question was how the Incarnation would end up.
Of course the Incarnation was part of the plan – it wasn’t some stopgap panic response. But that doesn’t mean God intended humanity to fail.
Nonsense – it is a conclusion based on the nature of God and the depth of His love for the beings made in His image.
Hardly – it just takes scripture seriously when it makes humans the centerpiece of the Earth, the focal point of God’s own temple. That’s what being made as the image of God means: all the world is God’s temple and the centerpiece of a temple is the image of the deity.
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I am finding Richard’s attitude to be contradictory and even anti-Christian. It is like responding to “God loves me” with “Oh how incredibly self important that is!” LOL And it seems somewhat bizarre after hearing his insistence that God had to design mankind specifically as we are, leaving nothing to our own choices.
I, of course, do not think God did any such thing. The nature of life is that we make our own choices on how to live and what to become. Of course we cannot choose everything just like we cannot choose whether to exist. We have to start with something in order to make any choices at all and that includes an inheritance of choices, not only made by our ancestors, but also from God as well.
SOOOOO… the point is that it is NOT about mankind per se… not about the trivialities of our appearance anyway. But yes I definitely think it is about a particular kind of relationship, parent to child, i.e. being capable of communication and like God being able create (ultimately without limit even, i.e. no end to what God has to give and no end to what we can receive from Him).
And YES there may be others in the universe who have this relationship with God also. But this doesn’t negate the fact that God created the universe for us any more than a parent having many children negates the fact this parent loves ME!
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Then youare misunderstanding me… I have said no such thing.
Well, that is staright from Scripture.so how do ou justify not accepting it?
What has that to do with how we were created in the first place?
Unless you are claiming that by “designing us” God has somehow inbuilt a specific need for Him? (I seem to remeber you making this sort of claim before about “designing”"
WHat has our appearance Got to do with our actions? Or our beleifss?Or our capacity to make good or bad choices? What has our appearacne got to do with anything other than a confirmation that we were made by God raher than by a cosmic fluke?
You have losr me completely now. WHen have I claimed God is not my Spiritual Father?
And when have I denied this also?
In conclusion you seem to have placed a great deal of weight onto the notion that were wer specifically created, as we are, by God and that somehow makes God manipulative or controlling.
I have always proclaimed that we were givena complete freedom of choice, within the physical limits of creation. The choice includes whether to take notice of (worship) God or not, and that He neither demands it, or punishes for us not doing it, now or eternally.
It would appear that our definition of Christian is not the same as mine…
The only anti Christian doctirine I have is to deny the necessity of either beleiving in God, or the salvation of Christ, or specially both.
The Christian principle is that God forgives our sins., and that I have maintained happens whether He created out specific shape or not. (IOW there is no connection between them)
Richard
PS I strongly bject to being called anti or even non Christian
You reacted to this Christian/Biblical idea that God created everything for us with this typical atheist idea that this is just “self importance.” But nothing could be more natural than a parent preparing a place for his children.
I did not. I said this attitude you were displaying in your response to St. Roymond looked to me to have such a characteristic.
There are no such words in scripture. And claiming so adds more contradictions in what you say. You claim the Garden story is fictional and yet you exaggerate one part of it to claim scripture says we are a product of design.
That is the pattern of how life work in the universe. Substituting pure fiction for this makes no sense at all.
incoherent.
Unless you are claiming that by existing, God has created a hell for the punishment of dogs.
example. Would that make any sense if I said this to you in this conversation?
The only thing I said about this is that design is just for machines and tools only, not for living organisms let alone children.
Nothing. The point is that “mankind” (our racial characteristics) has to do with appearances, while being a child of God does not.
Why should our appearance (trivialities such as race, color, and shape) have anything to do with being made by God? I see far far far far more vanity and self-importance in that than in anything St.Roymond said.
And when have I said you denied this?
The point was, if you are thinking there may be others in the universe with this relationship with God and thus God created the universe for them just as much as He created it for us, then this doesn’t mean God did not create the universe for us. It is the same as when a parent has many children and it doesn’t change the fact that he loves one of them.
And this is a Biblical teaching in Paul’s letter to the Hebrews when he compares us with the angels .
Oh… so you don’t think the belief that God loves us has anything to do with Christianity? That was the only thing I was connecting this to.
Having read your last post it is clear that there are fundamental differences in how we look at things. I am not even going to attempt to address them. To me, they do not define Christianity or Legitimise faith.
Richard