Quote :

"As for the "cannot take death out of evolution" point, what are you talking about?"

not sure, but i think by trying to discredit evolution, he's actually supporting it.

He is absolutely correct that evolution hinges upon death and struggle. Survival of the Fittest implies that the fittest survive and flourish, and the rest die.
Now how all this death is somehow related to Original Sin or whatever..... haha

6/29/2007 5:24:56 PM

yea, and i know he's posing that question to christians, so i understand what he's tryin to do, i'm just not following his point on it

6/29/2007 5:25:57 PM

^ yeah me neither. Of course death and evolution go hand in hand.

Quote :

"At some point prehumanity became human, but was there just one Adam ? How could this be? How could there be just one human who sinned and as a result the rest of mankind was doomed, modulo Christ's action ? "

I think he might be trying to discredit evolution, but in fact supporting it. Again christians do tend to say "this happened, then this happened right away". For example at "some point prehumanity became human". But how does that quote support his claim?

Quote :

"No it seems to me more natural that in the evolutionary scenario there should have been a whole community of humans, did they all choose together to sin? What do the Genesis stories and geneologies mean in this context ? I have no idea myself, in fact this is one of my most serious objections to evolutionary history. I'm curious are there any Christians who take the Bible seriously and have an answer for how you can believe in evolution and simultaneously not bankrupt the whole doctrine of original sin ?"

Still confused.

6/29/2007 5:37:11 PM

threads like this further instill my agnosticism

6/29/2007 5:37:55 PM

"you people"

6/29/2007 5:39:06 PM

Quote :

"neodata686^really? That's only because they haven't read all the books and understand who wrote it. If someone believes the bible is 100% literal then they must still believe in slaves, pologomy, women having no rights, rape, murder, and a ton of other things the bible says is okay. They only teach the nice rated stuff in sunday school. If you take an in-depth look at the bible it's full of violence, sex, and horrible things people today would consider very wrong."

yes, just because something is in the Bible that does not make it moral/correct/a wise choice of action etc... Many of the examples you posted in the post after this one are pointing out the consequences of sin. Christians do not take the Bible "literally" even the fundies who say they do at times, what they really mean is that they take each verse in the Bible to be truthful within its proper context. Sometimes context is not obvious from our modern perspective. For example, when Jesus talks to women you probably don't think much of it, however in view of the society
at that time it was rather unusual. Hopefully pastors and teacher are responsible enough to provide the passage proper context as opposed to the easy just make the verse say what it sounds like route.

Lets be honest, your main idea is to find the most shocking controversial interpretation possible, rest of the Scriptures be damned.

Besides that all you've done is provide evidence that unrestrained feminism is against God's ideal role for women. I would agree with that point, but prefer not to start a full discussion here. We could get into similar arguments about the horror of the Bible indicating that abortion or homosexuality is immoral. If you find that the modern church is not living up to the standards that scripture sets forth then you'd likely be correct. I think this is why the church will be relegated to a position of irrelevance unless we change our ways. The world should behave like the world, but when the church does the same then that is much worse.

What I'm trying to get at in my posts here is: Does there exists a reasonable interpretation of Genesis which allows for evolutionary biology?

I know of ways to understand other alleged contradictions of science to young earth creationism, but the problem of evolution seems insurmountable to me. Hence, I believe evolution to be false, at least as the method for the creation of life. I don't dispute genetics or natural selection. But I see many hints that the evolutionary history offered by mainstream science is in error. I dispute life from nonlife and the magic of having species in the fossil record. If it is this gradual change over zillions of years then how are we able to classify ? But, I'll gladly admit that I take these counterevidences seriously because I choose to trust God rather than man. If you'd rather trust the wisdom of man I can't stop you. Most of you here believe so strongly in evolution there is virtually no argument or counterexample I could contrive to release you from your faith. That said, I have met atheists who do not find evolution a convincing explaination for life. There do exist pure sceptics devoid of my religious motivations.

So again getting back to my point, are there any Christians who can reconcile the doctrine of original sin with evolution ? I'm waiting.

[Edited on June 30, 2007 at 12:13 AM. Reason : . oh and science is also full of contradictions if you interpret stupidly.]

6/30/2007 12:10:20 AM

Quote :

"Most of you here believe so strongly in evolution there is virtually no argument or counterexample I could contrive to release you from your faith."

that's a false argument. No one here has "faith" in evolution. The very definition of "faith" precludes the existence of evidence, of which we have no small amount for the existence of evolution. Many of us choose to trust the scientific community and the current theory of evolution. We also realize that by the very nature of science, this theory, and nearly everything else in science, is fluid and is able to change and adapt when new information presents itself. Quite contrary to your statement that "virtually no argument or counterexample" could sway us of the opinion, if the argument is evidence based and is more compelling than the existing arguments, then I think you'd find a surprising number of converts.

That's the beauty of science - when new information is found, we can always go back to our previous conclusions and update them accordingly. With religion and dogma, this is impossible. Genesis will always say the earth and universe was created in 6 days, and people will continue to believe that without a shred of evidence, and any and all evidence to the contrary is simply ignored.

Quote :

"oh and science is also full of contradictions if you interpret stupidly."

no doubt - but, once again, that's exactly why we have science - to figure out where the holes are and fill them through discovery and experimentation.
You could even say that the two greatest theories (or two of the greatest theories) in all of science right now are in direct conflict with each other, yet you wouldn't find a credible scientist in the whole world who says either of them are necessarily wrong: Quantum Theory, the set of equations describing very small particles and "things", and The Theory of Relativity, the description of large objects, including space in general and time, simply do not work with each other. That is, you cannot take the Theory of Relativity and apply its equations to the interactions of an electron and a proton, and likewise, you can't take Quantum Theory and apply its equations to the interactions of two galaxies. Yet in their own context, each theory has been experimentally proven to be accurate all the way to the very limits of our existing experimental methodologies. Despite this, all physicists are fully aware that one day, hopefully within decades, both of these magnificent theories - the best that modern science has to offer - will be scrapped and completely rewritten into a single Grand Unified Theory, or The Theory of Quantum Gravity. When this Theory is discovered, textbooks will have to be rewritten and maybe almost everything physicist know will have to be relearned. But this is the goal! Not to discourage discovery and experimentation because somebody's pet-idea will be proven wrong, but to continue looking until the full truth is known. Until then, we basically have to make-do with what we have - which is what science is all about. Making-do with what we know now, until we can discover a better way to explain something.

[Edited on June 30, 2007 at 1:35 AM. Reason : .]

6/30/2007 1:31:46 AM

Quote :

"moron Geology and astrophysics are not subjective to the point that the Earth can be 6000 years old. If you hold even a skeptics view, you'd have to reject a literalist interpretation of Genesis. "

Actually, there are two models I know of which attempt to reconcile the 6000 or so years which can be gleaned from the geneologies ( with some work ) and astrophysics. Neither rejects a literalist interpretation of Genesis. Both of these proposals showed some promise earlier but have now been generally abandonded by the creationist cosmologists. I point to these as examples of possible kinds of thought, they show that there may be other ways of interpreting time and the apparent history indicated by the starlight. Let me give a short description of both for the uniformed,

1.) so-called C-decay: The idea is that the speed of light has exponentially decayed from the
beginning. This means that we can see light from much further away as the light was travelling very fast in the past. This model took the universe to be more or less static after the creation event. As preliminary evidence that Setterfield, the inventor of C-decay, noticed what he thought to be significant trends in the observed speed of light. After a few years other creationists questioned the statistics of these trends and basically the community of creationists came to the conclusion that the data was not conclusively in support of this theory. There are more nuances, but that's basically it. Other creationists questioned how you could change the speed of light without mangling physics and consequently biology beyond repair. However, the idea of the
"constants" in physics changing over the history of the universe is not unique to Setterfield, in fact if you keep an eye on arXiv you'll spot a paper every so often, some very famous physicists have played with the idea of changing constants. I suppose with the advent of String Theory giving a dynamical origin to mass it would not be to surprising to see the "constants" change in some String Model. But, that's not really saying much.

In summary, the creationist movement took a look at C-decay and decided to move on and look for better proposals.

2.) "Starlight and Time" by Humphries: This is a more recent story, not all creationists have realized
this model is flawed at a basic level. Humphries' idea is that the universe is a whitehole. A whitehole is a time-reversed blackhole, it has a naked singularity so its not the sort of thing you hear about in ordinary physics. The nice idea in his model was that different frames of reference can experience different times under the same series of events. He claimed to have one frame elapse 6 days while another elapsed billions of years. So God could take billions of years to create the universe and yet from another perspective it was only 6 days. This attempt paid at least some attention to both General Relativity and Genesis. I think it is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, Humpries has some very bad mistakes in his GR interpretation so basically the book doesn't really even make sense. A very good account of the history of this model and probably its future can be found at
http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/unraveling.shtml

OK, so what in the world is my point? How do I rationalize skeptism on the basis of failed theories ?
Myself and most other serious creationists who know a little about science have never taken these
theories as Gospel. They simply point out possible lines of thought which are consistent with Scripture and nature. Neither of the above examples worked out, I view them as prototypes for future attempts. I do think Humphries idea about time has merit, his implementation was just way off due to a lack of GR expertise. God has hinted that time is different for Him in many Scriptures it would not be surprising if time was not simple universal Euclidean time as is implicitly assumed in most arguments.

Quote :

"moron And these things are largely uncontroversial, except among a mostly uneducated, but loud, right-wing fringe that reject science on the basis of the bible, not on skepticism."

No, the controversial part is the historical part. It always has been. Remember it wasn't long ago that science at large bought into the steady state view of the universe. Then they gave that up for the Big Bang , then they made a radical modification called inflation (circa 1980), next it may well be M-theory cosmology since that is one of the few arenas with sufficient energy to see new physics. My point here is really pretty simple, the subject of origins is quite dynamic. There are thousands of theories to try to explain the beginning. I don't reject empirical science, I reject historical science which only operates with the service of assumptions which cannot be checked.
It may well be there are other possible models which also explain the nature we observe, I am confident in time scientists will be driven to the Genesis account. There is no timeline on that though, I do find it amusing that inflationary cosmology essentially says that the universe was created instantaneously. Put that in your pipe and smoke it 19th century naturalists, oh well they're dead I can't really gloat.

So I reject speculative history which masquerades as science, not science.

Now, I will grant you that I am uneducated, but we all are.

6/30/2007 1:55:59 AM

^^ very well then, what would it take for you to reject evolution? What experiment gone wrong?
The interpretation of Genesis is much the same, it will change when there is reason for changing it, but the truth was there all along. Just like nature, it doesn't change. Rather our picture of nature becomes more refined. If you don't think this same process goes on in Theology then perhaps you have to simple a view of Theology. Just because we accept the existence of unchanging truths does not mean there are no unanswered questions, or even that those truths have new meanings as time goes on.

Quote :

"no doubt - but, once again, that's exactly why we have science - to figure out where the holes are and fill them through discovery and experimentation. You could even say that the two greatest theories (or two of the greatest theories) in all of science right now are in direct conflict with each other, yet you wouldn't find a credible scientist in the whole world who says either of them are necessarily wrong: Quantum Theory, the set of equations describing very small particles and "things", and The Theory of Relativity, the description of large objects, including space in general and time, simply do not work with each other. That is, you cannot take the Theory of Relativity and apply its equations to the interactions of an electron and a proton, and likewise, you can't take Quantum Theory and apply its equations to the interactions of two galaxies. Yet in their own context, each theory has been experimentally proven to be accurate all the way to the very limits of our existing experimental methodologies. Despite this, all physicists are fully aware that one day, hopefully within decades, both of these magnificent theories - the best that modern science has to offer - will be scrapped and completely rewritten into a single Grand Unified Theory, or The Theory of Quantum Gravity. When this Theory is discovered, textbooks will have to be rewritten and maybe almost everything physicist know will have to be relearned. But this is the goal! Not to discourage discovery and experimentation because somebody's pet-idea will be proven wrong, but to continue looking until the full truth is known. Until then, we basically have to make-do with what we have - which is what science is all about. Making-do with what we know now, until we can discover a better way to explain something"

The story you've just told is precisely the one I had in mind with my comment. In fact, that is THE question which I desire to understand most in science, I don't hope to solve it but I'd like to understand the details when they do. I would draw your attention to the two failed theories in creationism, they illustrate something that is seldom appreciated about creationism. Creationism also changes and responds to criticism. Not all creationists are snakeoil salesman or cranks, some of us take science very seriously. You disagree that we should take the Scriptures into account, fine, but that doesn't automatically make us
"unscientific". Of course you can define us to be unscientific, but that misses the point. Both camps search for truth, we value critical thought and cynicism just like you guys, difference is we don't reject the possibility that God interacts with the world as we know it.

[DISCLAIMER: there are a myriad of folks who call themselves "creationists", I am of course speaking from the perspective of a Christian creationist, if I have trampled on your idea of creationism, like say inteligent design, sorry, this is what I believe I'm not going to sugar coat it]

I forgot to mention in my previous post that Wiki seems to have a pretty good discussion of the C-decay and "Starlight and Time",
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlight_problem

[Edited on June 30, 2007 at 2:26 AM. Reason : forgot link.]

6/30/2007 2:21:38 AM

Quote :

"OK, so what in the world is my point? How do I rationalize skeptism on the basis of failed theories ? Myself and most other serious creationists who know a little about science have never taken these theories as Gospel. They simply point out possible lines of thought which are consistent with Scripture and nature. Neither of the above examples worked out, I view them as prototypes for future attempts. I do think Humphries idea about time has merit, his implementation was just way off due to a lack of GR expertise. God has hinted that time is different for Him in many Scriptures it would not be surprising if time was not simple universal Euclidean time as is implicitly assumed in most arguments."

Your position seems to be that "current science is wrong, but one day when it agrees with Genesis, it will be right" which strikes be as an extremely blinded view of things. It's the representation of the epitome of the problems caused by religion.

It's EXTREMELY unlikely, practically impossible, that science will ever reach the conclusion that the Earth even is 6000 years old, let alone the universe.

Plus, there are other philosophical issues with trying to shoe-horn the Christian God in to a whitehole theory (this is the worse of the 2 actually) or C-decay. Particularly, the Bible doesn't have a consistent enough portrait of God for the psuedo-scientific Creationist to find a theory that both fits with science and fits with the Bible.

Quote :

"Quote : "moron And these things are largely uncontroversial, except among a mostly uneducated, but loud, right-wing fringe that reject science on the basis of the bible, not on skepticism." No, the controversial part is the historical part. It always has been. Remember it wasn't long ago that science at large bought into the steady state view of the universe. Then they gave that up for the Big Bang , then they made a radical modification called inflation (circa 1980), next it may well be M-theory cosmology since that is one of the few arenas with sufficient energy to see new physics. My point here is really pretty simple, the subject of origins is quite dynamic. There are thousands of theories to try to explain the beginning. I don't reject empirical science, I reject historical science which only operates with the service of assumptions which cannot be checked. It may well be there are other possible models which also explain the nature we observe, I am confident in time scientists will be driven to the Genesis account. There is no timeline on that though, I do find it amusing that inflationary cosmology essentially says that the universe was created instantaneously. Put that in your pipe and smoke it 19th century naturalists, oh well they're dead I can't really gloat. So I reject speculative history which masquerades as science, not science. "

All the theories you just mentioned are based on the same source data, they are just different beginning explanations. Functionally, they are the same, in that the universe is expanding, and started out to be smaller in a cataclysmic event and has been expanding since then (over the course of billions of years). You'll not find any physics research anywhere that comes within a parsec of suggesting the universe OR the Earth is anywhere near 6000 years old. The 2 theories you mentioned above weren't arrived at deductively, they started with a conclusion, and created bizarre unsupported, and barely feasible models that fit their conclusion. The theories that now relate to a billion year old universe were the opposite. Scientist had no clue how old the Earth might have been, and started looking, and deductively concluded things were billions of years old.

6/30/2007 3:32:55 AM

Quote :

"so-called C-decay: The idea is that the speed of light has exponentially decayed from the beginning."

omf, change your name now. you dont deserve to use the word "math"

6/30/2007 8:07:28 AM

Quote :

"The 2 theories you mentioned above weren't arrived at deductively, they started with a conclusion, and created bizarre unsupported, and barely feasible models that fit their conclusion."

yeah, that's the main point I was going to make out of all of this. Creationists already have a conclusion that can not be shaken (except the the limits of the interpretation of Genesis, i guess, like you said), and they will simply try to find a model of the universe that they can plug in that will support the initial conclusion. This is simply unacceptable in science. You have to be willing, at any point, to completely scrap your initial biases and foretold conclusions and just trust wherever the data takes you. And all the objective studies of the universe so far would not lead to the C-Delay or Startlight or whatever theories without first having a conclusion to fit the data into.

6/30/2007 8:47:32 AM

...didn't read the thread.

I'm sure it's a fairly typical Soap Box religion mudfest.

I'd just like to point out that Christians are overwhelmingly good people, who just want to belong to something bigger than themselves. Christianity gives that to them.

However, Christianity is really just a shape-shifting cult, but that's ok. That doesn't make Christians bad.

Every time modern [scientific] knowledge contradicts the position Christian leaders or scholars had been holding for hundreds of years, the Christians just neutralize the contradiction by embracing it, ignoring the fact that they enslaved and killed people over their previous position.

Nearly every time a scientific revelation has occurred, Christians were on the wrong side....
.....and, they are horribly unoriginal.
99% of their culture is "stolen" from other cultures they destroyed through assimilation.

This thread, this constant effort by Christians to demonstrate compatibility amongst science and Christianity, is just more of the same old shape-shifting bullshit. They can't ever be wrong!

CHRISTIANITY WILL ALWAYS BE COMPATIBLE WITH SCIENCE BECAUSE THEY SAY SO!

Logic cannot defeat their arguments because their arguments are not based on logic.

(I honestly wonder why so many of you waste your time arguing with these nuts......you must enjoy it....)

6/30/2007 11:50:46 AM

Quote :

"threads like this further instill my agnosticism"

I can't believe it, a TreeTwista quote in the Soap Box that I agree with 100%!

6/30/2007 2:19:45 PM

^^If you had read the thread, it became a little more than that.

^^^^^^You have very strong opinions, and you seem firm in your beliefs and i respect you for that. But it all just seems very rediculous and again is just a big fairytale.

Quote :

"One possible explanation for seeing galaxies that are billions of light-years away is that God created the light "in-transit", so that people can enjoy seeing and discovering the distant wonders of the universe at the present time."

-wikipedia on starlight problem

I mean Christians are just going to continue coming up with slightly, well not even slightly scientific points that sort of back what they believe. You make your point better than i could, and I wish you were on the other side, but the fact still remains as everyone has been pointing out, no matter how many people like you in the world there's still going to be thousands of more scientists with degrees in physics and biology who actually study this stuff and who have a belief in evidence based science.

Like ^^ said. Chrisitans will never win because they never actually argue. It's all faith based, and not logic based, and aside from your well thought-out argument most Christians couldn't come up with a single "scientific" argument for thier point. Whereas most of us, even without being educated in that field, could site sources, and provide scientific evidence that backs our belief. Just look at that alone. The only argument Christians EVER have that is even slightly backed by evidence is stuff that probably 1% or less come up with to "hang on" to christianity. Whereas anyone who believes in, the evoluntionary thoery for example, 99% of them can probably site some source or provide the basics for thier belief.

In conclusion my wording is no where near as well thought out as yours. I applaud you for that, but you still make up a very small population of the total Christains and it just seems like a feable attemp to hang on to a dying fairy tale. If you look at the numbers alone, you're vastly outnumbered by scientists and logical thinkers who believe in something because it's backed by evidence collected by vast amounts of resources and studies.

[Edited on June 30, 2007 at 4:52 PM. Reason : .]

6/30/2007 4:43:56 PM

a bit out of order but I meant to respond to this as well, here it goes

Quote :

"agentlion that's a false argument. No one here has "faith" in evolution. The very definition of "faith" precludes the existence of evidence, of which we have no small amount for the existence of evolution. Many of us choose to trust the scientific community and the current theory of evolution. We also realize that by the very nature of science, this theory, and nearly everything else in science, is fluid and is able to change and adapt when new information presents itself. Quite contrary to your statement that "virtually no argument or counterexample" could sway us of the opinion, if the argument is evidence based and is more compelling than the existing arguments, then I think you'd find a surprising number of converts. That's the beauty of science - when new information is found, we can always go back to our previous conclusions and update them accordingly. With religion and dogma, this is impossible. Genesis will always say the earth and universe was created in 6 days, and people will continue to believe that without a shred of evidence, and any and all evidence to the contrary is simply ignored. "

There are plenty of reasons that the Christian faith is reasonable. Our faith is not one devoid of
reason, if it were then it would be odd that we were commanded to give a defense for those things
we believe. We believe our understanding of scripture to be correct, and more basically that the Bible that we have is basically free of serious errors. If it were shown that part of scripture
had been corrupted then we would strike that from our collection of basic truths. However, it seems to me that the church fathers who collected "scripture" long ago had it pretty much correct. Archeology has debunked more than a few alleged shortcomings of scripture, Herod did exist for example. Without getting too sidetracked here my point is that Christians will also change our views if they are shown to be incorrect.

How many Christians do you know who think the earth is globally flat? Would Christianity alone have discovered that the earth was not flat ? Probably not, but that is not as far as I know one of the goals of the church. The error of the church was speculating beyond the reach of the scripture. That is always a danger, but that is a danger in almost every field of study. That is there is a danger of extending known results beyond their verifiable boundaries while simultaneously declaring them to be just as certain as those things which are verifiable.

Anyway, there is a shred of evidence that the earth was created in 6 days, its called Genesis. You can ignore or dimiss that, its your perogative. However, I would draw your attention to the fact that science always tries to fit its own preconceptions. Science is not blind and w/o bias. We know certain models and ideas work and we try our hardest to make things make sense in that
context. We have experimental data we have to fit, this is implicitly a preconceived notion in and of itself. You cannot even understand the data without a theory to frame it. Now, I'm not saying this is wrong, its a fact of life that science is not pure logic. Science as you would likely frame it assumes that science can explain the data within purely natural terms. Moreover, you implicitly assume that science is unique, but is science unique? Could there be other models which also fit all the same data ?

Furthmore, creationists do not just ignore the supposed evidences for evolution. We just have other ideas about where DNA and fossils came from. Creationists give alternative explainations for the data. And these explainations are flexible and open to modification just like those in evolutionary history. That's the beauty of both fields.

There is not just one theory of creation or evolution. Both are changing and dynamic. Both are
trying to explain the history of humanity. The brand of creationism I'm invested in simply adds one more piece of data, Genesis. I don't think it is nearly as dogmatic as you think, the interpretation of Genesis is a subtle beast when you try to match it to current scientific langauge.

You say you have no faith, rather you just "trust" scientists. Fine, I have no faith either I just trust God.

7/1/2007 1:48:04 AM

Quote :

"If you agree that, in the absence of god, you would commit robbery, rape and murder; you reveal yourself as an immoral person, and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you. If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine suveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that god is necessary for us to be good."

7/1/2007 4:55:09 AM

Quote :

"You say you have no faith, rather you just "trust" scientists. Fine, I have no faith either I just trust God."

you don't know the definitions of "trust" and "faith"

7/1/2007 8:29:02 PM

not to mention the fact that science exists and god doesn't

7/2/2007 6:05:17 AM

Quote :

"However, I would draw your attention to the fact that science always tries to fit its own preconceptions. Science is not blind and w/o bias. We know certain models and ideas work and we try our hardest to make things make sense in that context. We have experimental data we have to fit, this is implicitly a preconceived notion in and of itself."

Except that science is aggressively peer reviewed, the experiments have to be repeatable, and people make names for themselves by smashing orthodoxy, not merely affirming it.

Religion, on the other hand, has no peer review. Sure, religious texts are examined, but examined with the intent of interpreting the words already put down, not actually challenging them. This is based on the presupposition that what is has already been revealed and it is up to us to interpret it as opposed to the presupposition that we can learn what is by observation.

If theologists of all religions sat down and critiqued each other's faiths and challenged the core concepts of each, I'd be more inclined to believe that which passed through that gauntlet of inquisition.

[Edited on July 2, 2007 at 4:14 PM. Reason : ists]

7/2/2007 4:13:23 PM

Why would Christianity interfere with science? The brothers grim fairy tales, harry potter, star wars, and lord of the rings all are very popular stories, and science hasn't been hurt by them. In fact science has made it easier to create the media they are distributed in. Fictional stories, like everything else people create, benefits from science.

7/3/2007 1:06:57 PM

Quote :

"Why would Christianity interfere with science?"

Um, because science poses a challenge to Christian dogma and provides an alternate explanation for natural phenomina other than just, "God did it." This in turn reduces the power of the clergy and undermines the value systems of those who place their faith in a supernatural power guiding the worlds movement through space and time.

You know, just a shot in the dark there.

[Edited on July 3, 2007 at 1:25 PM. Reason : .]

7/3/2007 1:25:11 PM

sawahash, watch this and get back to me:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8RV46fsmx6E

7/3/2007 1:29:18 PM

^those guys are hilarious and always get really credible sources.

7/3/2007 1:40:44 PM

We had a discussion like this at church some weeks ago

7/3/2007 2:17:02 PM

and.....

7/3/2007 2:26:07 PM