If we could show empirically that there was no specially created Adam or if we found intelligent aliens.
I donāt believe in God as a separate entity, especially I donāt see any reason to believe in any entity which created every thing out of nothing. But I do believe the perception of God is not beholding to that God having been the creator of physical stuff. I can believe in an entity which communes with us and who, in a sense, creates the possibility of our existence. It has never seemed obvious to me why that to which I should owe my form of existence need also be the author of atoms and neurons. I donāt believe the cosmos is a reflection of any beingās plan and neither do I think it depends on any beingās intention.
But somewhere between the mere existence of the cosmos and the surprising way in which we experience consciousness I can believe there are and have been intermediary forms. We are not alone and we did not create ourselves. That which creates us also sustains us as we havenāt the means to do that ourselves. Compared to the Christian account of God my notion of intermediary forms of consciousness will seem like a very paltry thing. But it is more than nothing and it doesnāt leave me in isolation. I am content.
To me, that is the most disturbing thought on the thread. Why do you feel that your faith is based on a particular interpretation of an ancient document? I have really never understood that position.
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Is this a request? Because I donĀ“t advocate any kind a fideism and have no idea where you could possibly get that idea from.
To me this question , in general and not in specifics, gets to a point I was trying to make. I canāt answer for HmanTheChicken, but for me the question has no meaning. Because my faith is truly not based on anything that I can pinpoint. And really, I went trough life as an unbeliever until one day as a 30-something, sitting in a PCA church (there just to make my bride happy) I realized, based on nothing that I could verbalize, that I believed. ā So if I say (as I did) that definitive proof of a parallel universe would shatter my faith, I donāt think that really means the same thing (although very close) as āmy faith is based on there being only one universe.ā There is a nuance there that Iām not clever enough to put into words. It is closer to: āMy world view would take such a big hit that I would find myself without purchase.ā
I probably muddled my point rather than clarifying. Sorry.
ā This has often caused me to quip, to the annoyance of many, that the existence of my faith indicates (to me) that either that my beloved Calvinism is correct, or Iām insane. Because I have no other explanation.
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No! There is no āscientificā method OR statistical to test for the existence of God and no human way to understand Godās nature even if there is a God.
Statistically, the universe seems to be a-moral and not directed.
That actually makes sense, David. I think we all have times when we have doubts, and whether you call it a crisis of faith, or an existential crisis, it can be a painful and difficult experience. I think what you are saying makes sense, but also think we can āpeel the onionā and ultimately as the song says," My hope is built on nothing less than Jesusā blood and righteousness."
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Thanks.The water of ritual purification would have been the safest water you could get in you understand the requirements for it. When it came to that water one could think if early manifestation of OCD with cleanliness, but then they did know quite a bit about hygiene. It could only be taken from the cleanest of wells. They even were aware that you had to use jars carved out of stone, not pottery, as to reduce the risk of spoilage by biofilms that form in the pottery due to itās open pores.
The reason why Jesus chose wine to resemble his blood should be clear from the passover rite where the wine has not a role of representing a value but to remember the passover blood of the lambs to spare the jews from the death by the promise of the Lord.
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you said : " In Western Europe we donĀ“t really have any fundamentalism but it is common belief that Christianity is solely based on faith alone and has no supporting evidence, so they get to the same conclusion."
without hinting at the incoherence of such a belief, however common it might be.
Oh now I get it, but I was hinting on the reason for atheism most commonly offered. The people here are mostly not aware of the historical evidences and philosophical arguments for Christianity which is why it is common belief that religion is based on intuition and faith alone (Of course I donĀ“t agree in any kind with this assumption and think that our faith is built on strong evidence). IĀ“m convinced that the opposition towards Christianity here would get a lot smaller, if people would get aware of it, but I have to blame the silent churches here too, since they donĀ“t act against the notion that religion and particularly Christianity is a relict of the past.
Ignorance is a matter of will, not a matter of intelligence and we all fall for it because of our pride and sinful nature. For what I would describe as populist atheists it is mainly a question of religiophobia, as they fail to engage based on the misconception that belief is a process based on the absence of evidence, a statement preached to the young atheists by their disciples Dawkins and Co. They are at their best when they describe religious beliefs as ābronze age thinkingā and describe the bible authors and the people of their time as āprimitive goat herdersā as an expression of their religiophobia - or bigotry. It is a blessing if you find some that engage in serious debate as it is an enrichment for both parties.
I always have to smile when people laugh about those primitive goat herders and particularly geneticist who claim them to be so stupid that they believed the pattern on the sheep would be transferred by the striped pattern of the rods they were exposed to whilst mating. Jacob was a top breeder and knew exactly what ram he let cover the ewes when they came to the water. To partially debark the rods is a great trick to mark the sheep that lean against them and the sticky zap you exposed them to, thus allowing you to sort them later by the pattern on their chest according to the ram they have been mated with. In modern day farming we catch the ram and put a colour waddle on him to mark the rear of the sheep which they cover because we donāt have the time to observe them by the water hole.
However the brights are just bound to fall over their own pride. They are so easy to be made look like fools for not understanding the text by those āprimitive goat herdersā 
and so are those fundamentalists who insist on the bark causing epigenetic colour changes and the likes. Guess the simplicity of the story is far to obvious once you debarked some of those branches and try to get rid of the sticky zap
I mentioned it because I read an article about water in biblical times in Scientific American. What are open pores in pottery? Pottery is water-tight and safe if fired and glazed correctly.
whilst the first glazed ceramic tiles appeared in Mesopotamia the first fired vessels appear in the first century BC so at the time of Jesus they were still scarce and really came into prominence in the roman empire in the first century. That is why they still used those stone jars at the time.
Being a nomadic society with goats and sheep they would already have experienced cryptosporidium if drinking the unclean water, so they know wer safe water came from - and how scarce and valuable it was.
Pottery that hasnāt been fired is useless-- it is just dried clay.
from History of HISTORY OF POTTERY AND PORCELAIN
|Glazed ceramics: 9th - 1st century BC|
|[
](javascript:openWindow(ātreasureā,ā/images/imagepopup.asp?No5=195&Id5=xabiā))In all the early civilizations, from Mesopotamia and Egypt onwards, pottery is a highly developed craft. An outstanding achievement is the Greek ceramic tradition of the 6th and 5th century BC. But technically all these pots suffer from a major disadvantage. Fired earthenware is tough but it is porous. Liquid will soak into it and eventually leak through it. This has some advantages with water (where evaporation from the surface cools the contents of the jug) but is less appropriate for storing wine or milk.
The solution is the addition of a glaze. This technological breakthrough is made in Mesopotamia in the 9th century BC for decorative tiles. It is not adapted for practical everyday purposes until many centuries later.||btk|
||
|A glaze is a substance, applied to the inner or outer surface of an unfired pot, which vitrifies in the kiln - meaning that it forms a glassy skin, which fuses with the earthenware and makes it impermeable to liquids.
But glazes, which can be of any colour, also have a highly decorative quality. It is for this purpose that they are first developed, as a facing for ceramic tiles, in Mesopotamia from the 9th century BC. The most famous examples are from the 6th century palace of Nebuchadnezzarin Babylon.||btm|
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|Glazed pots make their appearance in the Middle East in about the 1st century BC, possibly being developed first in Egypt. The characteristic colour is green, from copper in the glaze. Pottery of this kind is common in imperial Rome a century later.
By this time glazed pottery is also being manufactured in Han dynastyChina. It may be that the development occurs independently in the Middle East and in China, but by now there could also be a direct influence in either direction. Rome and China are already linked by the Silk Road, and glazed ceramics are attractive commodities.|
Read more:History of
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As for stone jarsāeven if they were safer, it would be kind of hard to use them to draw or carry water.
without question but they were not afraid of the challenges.as it kept them safe. I was so amazed to see what hygiene rules were already implemented in the OT.
Coming back to the original question, why should we loose faith over reality being understood better. It can only get us closer to understanding God. We still have to unlearn a lot of our materialistic thinking before we get there so but in principle itās easy.
Then considering how much hygiene, i.e. bathing, was lost in the middle ages, you might wonder if this was a failure to be guided by the Bible. Surprisingly enough, a considerable amount of the prohibitions against bathing came from the medieval church. Public bath houses were prohibited as immoral then any kind of bathing without clothing was also prohibited. But some of it also came from the prejudices of the barbarians who conquered Europe, who thought that water carried diseases ā not that they were entirely wrong about that. And medieval doctors would also advise against bathing.
Stone buckets (and full of water) would have been much too heavy.
They didnāt know enough to boil their drinking water. No Germ Theory.
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Eyes wide open. I always appreciate it when people donāt gloss over points which temper their position.
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