Jbarrax

LMAO Good one George. JerryB

Oh I almost forgot! There's an interesting aspect of the "Labors of the Sun" motto for Pope John Paul II. The website indicates that he was born on May 18, 1920, during a solar eclipse. His funeral, last Friday, also took place on the date of a solar eclipse. Hmmmmm. Verrrrry interesting. But spooky. Pax JerryB

Me too Outadafog. I don't know if TWI taught this, but they certainly encouraged the idea. Ya gotta admit it makes some sense. If the devil doesn't know when his time is up, he's gotta have some guy ready to step in and take over. The papacy is a great holding-pattern institution for that, methinks. So if you can get a really rotten guy in there-and there have been some really rotten Popes--you may have yourself an antiChrist-in-waiting. Time will tell. As silly as it sounds, and as implausible as it is, I hope he does turn out the AntiChrist cause then Jesus will come back soon and save us from the madness that is our world. Yay! As farfetched as it is, that's worth hoping for. Pax JerryB

Well, as long as we're discussing Catholic history and the new Pope, I'd like to throw out this interesting tidbit. There is an old Catholic prophecy that predicts how many Popes there will be and assigns a motto to each papacy. To summarize: Back in 1143 an Irishman named Malachy composed mottoes, in Latin, for all the popes until the end of the world. There has been some controversy about how appropriately these mottoes have been applied to some Popes in history. And, because of the fame of the prophiecies, some Popes and papal candidates have deliberately fabricated information about themselves, or done things they thought would fit the mottoes. The motto for the last Pople is "Petrus Romanus", meaning Peter of Rome. The kicker? Including Petrus Romanus, there are only two left. The motto for the newly installed Pope Benedict XVI is "Gloria Olivae" or the glory of the olive. IF--I say--IF the prophecy is actually valid, this might be a reference to the close of this age, spoken of in Romans 11:11-25, in which Israel and the Gentiles are referred to as the natural olive tree and the wild olive tree. We wild olives were graffed in to the natural olive tree and, when the fulness of the Gentiles --wild olives--is come, God will bring the natrual olives back. This would of course deal with God gathering Israael again and fulfilling all of the remaining prophecies in Daniel, Revelation, etc. The motto for Pope John Paul II was "De Labore Solis" meaning Labors of the Sun. If one is apocalypse minded, one can interpret this in light of John 9:4 This interpretation (a bit of a stretch I know) would project the papacy of J2P2 as the last one before the world's descent into the darkness of the Great Tribulation. So if ole St Malachy was "tuned in" Pope Benedict will preside over the advent of the Great Tribulation. And who better to usher in an age of unprecedented darkness than a former Nazi?? Isn't this fun? :-) Fore more information on the Prophecies of St Malachy, CLICK HERE Peace JerryB P.S. My wife thinks this is all nonsense. She rolls her eyes whenever I mention it. She's probably right.

Hi Lindy. Your statement about "the whole Peleg thing" is somewhat similar to LG's questions about light. We don't really know much about Peleg. Other than the fact that he was the son of Eber and the father of Reu, the entire volume of Biblical information about this man and his times is contained in just 14 words. We exWayfers think we understand those 14 words, but do we really? We've all been taught that our seven continents used to be one land mass, dubbed Pangea. The Way's "scientifically precise" Bible approach demands that we corroborate accepted Geology with Theology, so they point to these 14 words about Peleg and declare that this is the Biblical documentation of the breakup of Pangea. Maybe that's correct, but it's not much to go on. Imho, it's the flip-side of the paleontologist trying to recontstruct an entire skeleton of an extinct creature based on a jawbone and a claw. Peace JerryB

lol

Thanks Def. Ain't the Cafe a groovy place? :-) JerryB

Oh, one more thing. Garth's statement that the conversion of the famous atheist, Antony Flew, keeps sticking in the back of my mind. So I went and found some information about that. It appears that his "conversion to Christianity" was announced in 2001 and was refuted by Mr. Flew. But since then, he has indeed decided that scientific evidence now convinces him that life is too complex to have evolved on its own without divine intervention. So the truyh of the matter is, a former atheist--defined as one who believes there is no God--now says he believes there must be one. You can read all about it here http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=369 Or here ...And here

Have you actually read Behe's book or are you just rejecting the argument because it flys in the face of what you've been indoctrinated--uh..taught? The presentation is based on the detailed operation of biochemistry and the book includes countless observations from other scientists including brilliant mathematicians, who are coming the conclusion that the more we know about how life works, the more implausible Darwinian evolution becomes. Dismiss it if you like, but you are doing yourself a disservice. I would quote more of the specific in the book, but I don't have the time, I doubt it would make any difference to you and Lindy, and that too would be a disservice to you and the author. So on that note, I'll let you guys go on without me. This seems to be going in circles with no end in sight. Have fun. And just in case you didn't catch it earlier, the name of the book is "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution" by Micheal Behe. Peace JerryB

He also could have created the entire universe 5 minutes ago and given us pseudo-memories, pseudo-evidence, etc. If he did, then he's a deceiver. If he created the universe several thousand years ago and made it look like he did it billions of years ago, then he's a deceiver. What's the difference? Either way, he's a deceiver. Not necessarily. We've been TAUGHT that the earth is billions of years old. Who taught us that? Geologists and paleontologists looking at the world through Darwin's prism. It's been proven time and again that carbon-14 dating is a seriously flawed system, but that is the basis for what is now passed off as fact. I see a world and a universe that is awesome in both scope and detail; that, from the interaction of the smallest instects to the glory of the most far flung nebulae indicates a powerful and wise Creator. I don't see anything in it that insists that it's billions of years old. That assumption has been ingrained in us by SCIENCE (let us have a moment of reverence for SCIENCE...) So your asertion that God is a deceiver is without foundation...and a bit arrogant. But such is the minset of SCIENCE. As we've been indoctrianted to believe that "all the evidence indicates" See above Good question. He didn't. And in the absence of a detailed divine explanation, we have to figure it out. We can learn a great deal about our world by observation and a disciplined application of the scientific method. But there are a lot of things the scientific method cannot reveal. When the universe began is, imho, just one of these. SCIENCE has overreached and attempted to state as fact things which are not only speculation, but utterly unknowable....in my humble opinion. Since when does one justify the other? Would you advocate that every Christian in the world take up arms and murder every Muslim he can find because there are Muslims who kill Christians? I think not. So why should you turn a blind eye to arrogance and over-reaching by scientist because there are arrogant preachers, popes, and presbyters? Utter nonsense. You are rebutting a claim I have not made. I have not said that "Science is..anti-Christian". I have said that many prominent scientists have an anti-Biblical mindset and these people affect the objectivity of science and retard its progress. Again, you prove my point. You assume that you have a perfect knowledge of light and the substance and nature of the cosmos. Just because what Genesis chapter one records does not fit with our current understanding of the universe doesn't mean it's wrong or necessarily figurative. God said "let there be light". What, LG, is light? Is it particles--photons? Or is it pure wave energy? As far as I know SCIENCE doesn't know yet. So if we, as technologically advanced as we are don't even know what light IS, how can you claim that you know what God was doing when he created it? Hmmmm. I think that's a pretty good example of that arrogance thing. I'm not saying you're evil or anything, but you've bought into the myth that modern man has figured out the very nature of the cosmos. Again, your trust in SCIENCE has lead you to make easy assumptions that the Bible is wrong. The word "firmament" in the Bible sometimes refers to what we would call space and sometimes refers to the atmosphere. The heavens, biblically speaking, includes what we would simply call the sky. Hebrews 11:7 says that "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet,..". What was Noah warned of? Rain. No one had ever seen rain before because in Eden, God watered the plants with a mist from the ground. (Dew perhaps?) No rain fell on the earth until that which helped flood the planet in Noah's time. So where did that water come from? It had to come from somewhere above the firmament or sky. But that never before seen water fell from the firmament in pretty large amounts. (How much water would you have if you had non stop rainfall for 40 days?) How far above was it? Where above the firmament was it? I don't know. Was it stored in an ice asteroid belt or a layer of ice that used to orbit the earth? I don't know. And the point is my friend, neither do you. But here's the point you are ignoring. Wherever it came from, it's not there anymore because it fell to earth and wiped everybody out, save those that were with Noah. Perhaps it was stored in God's global water recycling system, which we now refer to as cloud cover. Hence the first rainbow that appeared after the flood. Based on the information that the Bible does give us, we can assume that the waters above the heavens aren't where they originally were. So we can't honestly use our current knowledge of the solar system to judge what God originally created. As you say, "I could go on", but I trust I've made my point. When you buy into the multiple assumptions of modern science, you make the mistake of confusing what we know and what we think we know. And once again, I'm not proposing that we look to the Bible for scientific truths. I am merely pointing out the sad truth that the advancement of scientific truth is corrupted because truths that might agree with the Bible are resisted, ridiculed, or repressed. Objectivity is being threatened in the battle between the Creationists and the Evolutionists, and science as a whole is suffering for it. It would be nice if someone could say this without having one's arguments distorted beyond recognition. But such is the way of modern rhetoric. Peace JerryB

Now you're gettin into DaVinci code stuff. But you raise an interesting question. One wonders why there's no mention of the Pharisees ridiculing Jesus for not having married. John the Baptist was an acetic, so it's understandable for him to be a bachelor hermit. But, compared to John, Jesus was a liberal hippie type (Behold a winebibber and a glutton!). So if he wasn't married by the age of 30 it seems the Pharisees would have criticized him for it. And if he was married and left his wife and family to carryout the Lord's ministry, it seems logical to expect at least one of the Gospel writers to have mentioned it. But all of this is based on fairly weak speculation about a long lost culture, as Oakspear has already pointed out. We don't know enough about hte details and mores of life in Judaea to say what would have been considered a scandalous lifestyle for a man of that era. Peace JerryB

Irreducible Complexity By the way Lindy, I think you're wrong to dismiss Behe's point about irreducible complexity. The theory of evolution says that animals evolved to the point that they are now, over eons. Some animals have extremely complex mating rituals, some are dependent on other animals in their ecosystems to survive. In order for an animal to evolve into a complex pattern we see today, the animal must first have 1)survived long enough without said trait to develop it over time 2)must have had all the essential ingredients already dormant within itself for the current trait to function Behe shows how complex the biochemical reactions are for something as simple as vision to work. There are exact relationships of proteins and enzymes required for an eye to work. The same is true of respiration, blood clotting, etc. If Darwin is right, all of this had to develop slowly. But if it did,then there must have been eons of time during which eyes didn't work, cells didn't respirate, and blood couldn't clot properly. The simple question is, how does an organism that can't heal form a simple wound, can't see, and/or can't respirate on a cellular level survive long enough to evolve? Peace JerryB

.... and your successful rebuttal is .....? Oh, by the way, about all those [Carl Sagan mode] billions and billions [/Carl Sagan mode] of light years, ... the fact that they are indeed billions, ..... ... now, I'm no mathematical genius (and neither was Einstein, by the way), but I find it rather difficult to cram, even with my handy-dandy Ronco Super Family Sized Cramer (order now for $6.95, and we'll throw in a dicer autographed by Dr. Hovind himself absolutely *free*), 15 billion years into 6,000 years. ... Sideways, even. --> Please explain! Now THAT'S a good question! There's an explanation for it in AIG's Answers book, but it's not a very satisfactory one. Although I have been told by an aquaintance who works in a research lab and monitors the fringes of science and technology that one researcher recently reported observing quantaa moving at excess of light speed. He was summarily ridiculed of course. The speed of light is still held to be the maximum velocity of anything and everything in the known universe (despite what we've seen for years on Star Trek), so it's a radical idea to say the least. But...if it's true then God could have done the Big Bang at more than light speed and spread out the universe in a magestic explosion of creative energy and then allowed everything to slow down. "Just a thot" JerryB

Yeah JerryB, I've been known for that type of thing or thinking. :o--> Throwing in something that seems to be outside the subject at hand. I think it was def 59 that tagged it "streams of consciousness". My buds at work call it "Steve's World" :D--> and then they strike the pose a rocker on stage and sing "Does anybody remember laughter?". My Blushing Bride tells me, "Steven you're saying things only you understand. Can you be a little more specific?" So,I threw in "felix culpa" ~~~ the idea that the Fall of man was fortunate because it brought us good (in some views, knowledge; in others, redemption through Christ), so that our end was better than our beginning In Christian theology the fall is the notion that the original sin of Adam and Eves disobedience of God in the Garden of Eden brought about various changes in the perfectly created world, including illness, strife and death. It is a widely interpreted concept with many implications for other elements of theology. Although the "Fall" is not mentioned by name in the Old Testament, the doctrine is taught in Genesis 3, and foundational to Paul's teaching of the Gospel in Romans 5:12–19 and 1 Corinthians 21–22. Felix Culpa (the fortunate fall)One interpretation of the doctrine of the fall is that it is necessary in order human's might benefit from God's grace. It includes the notion that, had mankind not been given the capacity for evil, our choice through free will to either serve God or not would not have been as meaningful. There is, however, a second interpretation of 'felix culpa.' If Eve had not given the fruit to Adam to eat, none of us would be here to enjoy this wonderful world. ~~~ (Fall (religion) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.) Or if one wishes a kewl view of this subject ~~~Langland, Milton, and the felix culpa. Soohhh, I thought "felix culpa" was a nice throw in re the topic, "The Way's views on life/death before Adam". Now on a "side bar", and since the weekend has, well ended, I'll have a Bud Light and ask if any one is familiar (why is "liar' in familiar?) with what was discovered as a static noise that is evident through all the universe and it was not pigeons. Dig it JB & Peace bacatcha Steven there is more to this universe than seems to be. all i can do is see what is evident to me and also to others. but there are so many others viewing. the line is so long we die before we know what we attempt to understand. author unknown Woorrd.. :-D Thanks for the explanation Song. I've heard some thing about the cosmic noise, but never got the specifics.

Are there cute babes in it? I agree wholeheartedly. It should be completely objective. One thing that bugs me though. And this is somethin of a nitpick I will admit. Why is it that whenever I watch a nature show, as I did just this weekend, that right along with the statements about how the animal evolved and made itself in such a way as to avoid predation, there are numerous statments about how the local (insert pagan tribe here)worship this animal and believe that it speaks to their ancestors? My point is, the same people that will howl at the top of their lungs about teaching Christian-friendly theories in schools will readily spout all kinds of pagan doctrine. If you have kids in public schools, you know what I'm talking about. So as I see it, it's not even an "anti-religious" bias. It's specifically excludes and shuns Judao-Christian views and readily lauds just about everything else. That would be nice, but no. I had to edit the quote because the passage covered two pages. The full quote from the astronomer made specific reference to God and his relationship to the earth. So it was the Big Bang theory's apparent support of traditioinal Christian thought that disgusted the scientist. Peace JerryB

Garth You seem to be missing the point. 1) Whether or not Einstein's witholding of his observations hurt the rest of the scientific community is conjecture. The point is, Einstein fudged because of the prevalent attitude already entrenched in the scientific community. If someone at the top of the field was so swayed by that pressure of that mindset, how many younger scientists might have done the same thing for the same reason? Of course that is conjecture too and unknowable. But if you are a young researcher and you uniformly hear comments from the giants in your field that expess disgust for any theory that supports a Christian worldview, how likely are you going to be to put forth such a theory? Group-think exists not only in Churches, but in Academia as well, and it is not any more beneficial for Academia as it is for Churches. 2) I wasn't talking specifically about the theory of evolution, but about the broader attitudes of scientist about theories that appear to support Biblical doctrines. Peace JerryB

What I'm saying Lindy, is that science would be farther along by now if it didn't have an entrenched mindset that resists Christian thinking. ANY entrenched mindset is contrary to the scientific method. If scientists did what we expedt them to do an simply observe the data honestly, I suspect that Darwin would have already been cast aside. Certainly not 100 years ago, because natural selection is an observed phenomenon. But in the past five to ten years, as scientists have learned more about the minute complexity of nature, both in medical, zoological, and phsyics, there has been a mounting field of evidence that supports intelligent design. Withouth the entrenched bias against Christian thinking, this evidence would have been evaluated more honestly, more objectively. Of course, as Garth will point out, if it were not for the heavy handed history of the Church and its attempt to control all aspects of life and society, there might not be so much antagonism against it in the scientific and acadamic communities. Although I do believe there is a spiritual aspect to this "anti-Bible" bias, there is a logical reactionary root to it as well. Peace JerryB

Song, I just dont' "get" your posts. I wonder if we're on the same wavelength. :-) Peace JerryB

Read it again LG. Einstein didn't "make a mistake". His own calcualtions told him something he didn't want to believe, so he changed them. He fudged the data because he didn't like the outcome. And Hubble's evidence was resisted for the same reason. The point I'm making is, most people don't expect scientists to behave this way. Especially those who ridicule Creationists and imply that they ignore scientific evidence that refutes their beliefs. I'm simply stating that there is bias on both sides of this debate and it colors scientific observation and theory just as it colors religious presentations of the natural world. The venus info is from a documentary I saw a few months ago. I'll have to do some digging to get the names and specifics. :-) Peace JerryB

And, since there is a current thread about Evolution vs Creation, I'd like to recommend "Darwin's Black Box" by Micheal J Behe. It's subtitled "The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution" and that's essentially what it is. Peace JerryB

Yo Jerry, 'Bulldozed' by Darwin's error huh? So you know as a *matter of proveable fact* that they didn't think things through or utilize any critical thinking skills when/if they accepted Darwin's theory? They were just _bulldozed_ (ie., swamped, coerced, intimidated, ((ahem)) *brainwashed* into accepting or believing evolution to be true? As if scientists are led into evolution, borg-style? With no dissent from the 'drones'? If that is indeed the case, then please explain to me, sir, why lively discussions, heated debates, difference of opinions, and new and different theories regarding evolution or the parts thereof continue to this day in the scientific community? All of these behaviors which just do not indicate a supposed lock-step of singularity of opinion that would be indicated by the 'bulldozed' comment. What they do indicate is a freedom to question, analyze, criticise, and so forth that genuine science is all about. And the 'one' example that you seem to believe is the only indicator of dissent in science just doesn't cover the whole field. Sorry , but no it doesn't. :D--> I love reading all the rather desperate attempts to portray science as supposedly practicing the same kind of mindless religious faith that the religious counterparts are accused of doing, thus supposedly making science no different. ... Why, it almost has a conspiratorial ring to it. (insert shifty eyes icon and James Bond music here) Garth. I say "bulldozed" because the presentation of any scientific information in the public arena is done in a Darwinian framework. You watch a documentary about human sexuality and they preface everything with some comment about how our ancestors used this behaviour. You watch a nature channel show about snakes and they preface everything by saying, how old snakes are and how they evolved into this behavior or that configuration. All of this is of course conjecture, but it's never presented that way. This is a kind of brainwashing. And having said that, let me crank up the rhetoric one more notch. The Nazi's are credited with proving that you can make people believe any lie if you tell it often enough. The theory of Darwinian evolution is presented ubiquitously day in and day out, not only in schools, but in any information presented to the public. People that are schooled in the sciences get even more of suuch treatment because there is an entrenched mindset in the scientific community that resists any information that might lend credence to the Bible or even theories that might support the Bible. And yes Garth this mindset is documented. None other than Albert Einstein, the founder of modern astrophysics, changed his data to avoid lending credence to the Bible. Consider this passage from Darwin's Black Box Nonetheless, despite its religious implications, the Big Bang was a scientific theory that flowed naturally from observational data, not from holy writings or trancendental visions. Most physicists adopted the Big Bang theory and set their research programs accordingly. A few, like Eintstein before them didn't like the extra-scientific implications of the theory and labored to develop alternatives. I could go on, but I trust you get the point. There is an entrenched anti-Biblical philosophy in the Scientific community that retards advancement by resisting observations that lend credence to the Bible and by continuing to resist the acceptance of hypotheses based on such observations. This is still a problem. If you study the exploration of Venus you will find that there is an enormous controversy about origgin of Venusian craters. The dominant theory was that Venus' craters were made by meteor strikes. One astronomer proved that this was not the case and that they were the result of cyclic volcanic activity. There was almost universal resistance to the theory and some prominent astronomers still reject it despite the overwhelming evidence. Why? Because of the young-earth controversy. In my opinion, the entrenched resistance to the idea that Venus' craters are the result of volcanic activity means that if it could happen on Venus, it could happen on earth and a planet's volcanic activity could give it the apperance being much older than it really is. So here we have yet another example of entrenched anti-Christian worldviews retarding the advancement of Science. This certainly isn't the way science is supposed to operate. But we don't live in a perfect world. We all have our agendas and biases. We're all resistant to data that weakens the base of our personal biases and so we challenge and resist it. Scientists, beig people too, are no different. We need to understand that in order to understand how scientists in many fields can be "bulldozed" into accepting theories that dont' fit the facts. Peace JerryB

I agree with DMiller's answer--well, most of it anyway. I think he is correct in stating that Jesus, as the second man born from God and not another man, had the choice to obey, where Adam chose not to. That makes him the second Adam. But the Way's teaching that God cannot communicate with a natural man is not biblical. God communicated with Adam and Eve right *after* they sinned and supposedly lost the spirit. He also had several conversations with Cain before and after he killed Abel. Now we have a doctrinal trainwreck of sorts because TWI teaches that Cain was the first man born of the seed of the serpent. But when God sent Cain into exile, Cain grieved most for the fact that he would lose his relationship with God (Genesis 4:14). And when you consider all the people to whom God communicated by dreams, it becomes clear the VP's assertion that God can't talk to a "five senses man" is invalid. (And there is not one word in Genesis that indicates that Adam and Eve had spirit upon them. It's a theological construct designed to explain the fact that God told Adam he would die the day he ate of the tree of the KOGAE and then Adam did so and lived over 900 years. If you want to try to clear that up and have a perfect Bible, you have to add something to Adam and Eve that died when they sinned. ) But the whole battle of the senses rap that VP laid down when teaching Genesis is utter nonsense. God formed, made, and created man, so if the Almighty wants to tell you something He will do so, no matter who you are. So God certainly could have communicated a great deal to his Son Jesus even before he put spirit upon him. The major difference in the pre-baptismal Jesus and the post-baptismal Jesus is not what he could learn, but what he could do. Biblically speaking, there's no indication that Jesus had any supernatural power before he was baptized in holy spirit. No healings, no miracles. But he could have been well prepared for that phase of his life by what he had learned, both from the Scriptures and from his Father. Peace JerryB

Wow. This thread has taken off at light speed. Can't begin to keep up with it, so I'll offer a brief response to Lindyhopper's comment about science. You said that one woman's discovery is a credit to science. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that the fact that one scientis among thousands didn't buy the "junk DNA" assumption and looked deeper to make an important discovery means we should feel good about the direction science is going in. So one scientist out of 1,000 wasn't bulldozed by Darwin's error. Hooray for SCIENCE! I think that's backwards. If science is doing what it's supposed to, if the Scientific method is really being employed faithfully and objectively, those numbers should be reversed. Peace JerryB

Well said HCW. JerryB

To say that something has "no known function" is not to "arrogantly declare that it is useless." Perhaps I'm responding to things I've been taught. I remember that in high school cellular biology, I was taught that golgi bodies didn't have any function. The textbook didn't say, "golgi bodies have no known function", it said they don't do anything. That's arrogance, in my opinion. How many of us had their tonsils yanked when we were growing up because doctors told us they were useless? My point-poorly made it seems--was that scientists have a habit of doing this. Peace JerryB