Raf

Thinking about what you guys said Earl Burton taught: The universe is a bubble with water on the other side of it... Assuming that bubble burst, any water coming down to earth from it (as opposed to just floating off into the whatever, just making a beeline for earth) would take billions of years to get here. So the flood would not have happened yet. I think the problem is reading modern scientific understanding about cosmology into the [let's be honest] ignorant cosmology of Genesis. Read the story on its own terms -- it says nothing about the "universe" being "inside a bubble" surrounded by water. Rather, it was the Earth that was surrounded by a firmament. This is difficult for us to comprehend because we have some degree of scientific literacy. The writers of Genesis did not! For them, the earth was a flat disk surrounded above by a solid dome holding back a wall of water. When the "windows of heaven" were opened, it rained. The sun, moon and stars were INSIDE that dome. That's why the Bible can talk about stars falling from heaven. It was what they knew and understood. When you think of the "waters above" being right up there on the other side of the dome, the notion of that dome opening up and all the water behind it crashing down on us and flooding the earth becomes much easier to understand. Trying to rescue Genesis from the ignorance of its writers is something I no longer try to do (as I implied in another thread). Here's an interesting, non-atheist article on the subject of the firmament. Of course, anyone is free to accept Earl Burton's teaching that the "firmament" really does exist and is billions of light years from earth, but be honest: do you think that's what the authors of Genesis were trying to convey? Which view makes more sense? That they were actually describing the universe as it is, or that they were describing the world around them as they saw it?

" At one time most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed it fell silent for all of them."

One of the better known moments in this film is a speech that few in the American audience even understood, as it was delivered in a foreign language. Translated, the speech reads: "How did I find myself here? They say my famous lover held down my husband and I cut his head off. But it's not true. I am innocent. I don't know why Uncle Sam says I did it. I tried to explain at the police station but they didn't understand."

Pretty in Pink

The 13th Warrior

A Christmas Carol "Exsqueeze me? Baking powder?"

There's something I need to clarify, and I will do so gladly. I acknowledge that I was not forthcoming in previous instances when I was asked point blank whether I was now an atheist. If you look carefully at my responses, I never quite denied it, except by omission (I declined to correct those who asserted that I was a Christian). There were reasons for this. First, I wasn't quite ready to tell everyone in my life, and I wasn't going to tell this board before I told those who are personally in my life. But as importantly, and as I alluded to in my opening post, I wanted my thoughts and observations to be challenged on their merits. It should go without saying that someone who is atheist will reject SIT. But for me, it was the other way around -- someone who rejected SIT later became an atheist. In a sense, I presented you with a step in my journey years after I had taken that step myself. Likewise, in questioning whether the Bible lived up to PFAL's criteria of God-breathed, I did not challenge the notion of whether anything could be God-breathed. Rather, I took PFAL's criteria of God-breathed, applied them to the Bible, and demonstrated that the Bible does not meet the criteria. Is it possible to be a Christian without believing that the Bible is inerrant? Most of the world's Christians will answer with a resounding YES! The Bible has actual errors. Big, fat glaring errors that cannot be dodged, evaded, distracted, ignored... they have to be admitted, acknowledged, and dealt with. But you need not abandon Christianity just because this collection of books is not the "inerrant" masterpiece our mutual religious experience claimed it to be. Naturally, if you look backwards, it's easy to see how an atheist will take the positions I have taken. But that's not how it happened for me. I took those positions because that's where the evidence led me. Only much later did I become an atheist. So I apologize if you feel I misled you. My intention was not to mislead. My priority was to discuss issues, not the big picture. Each issue stands or falls on its own. If you want to discuss SIT, you need not reject Christianity to reach the same conclusion I did (I reached my conclusion LONG before I rejected Christianity). If you want to discuss the inerrancy of the Bible, you need not reject Christianity to find that it does have errors and contradictions (again, I reached that conclusion long before I rejected Christianity). I admit, I coasted on my former reputation in order to get you to consider ideas you might not otherwise have considered, and I did nothing to correct anyone on the status of my faith. The balance has tipped, however, and I will no longer bring up items for discussion without having you know where I stand now. I apologize for not doing this sooner. Thanks.

Didn't think it would. Not you, waysider. :)

Oh come on, this is not difficult at all.

That's it. You're up.

A woman who discovers that her parents are really Snow White and Prince Charming decides to team up with HG Wells for an adventure in the past and future.

Thanks, Excy.

A View to a Kill Bill: Volume One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

License to Kill Bill: Volume One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Sounds familiar...

I've got two of them, but I'm stumped on the third. Is the full title just two movies, with the third tucked in?

Close enough. "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days of Thunder." You're up.

Starring Kate Hudson and Tom Cruise

I thought it became obvious after a while, but still needed to be acknowledged in the open.

The Lost Boys Born to Hand Jive

:)

Risky Business Curtis Armstrong Revenge of the Nerds

Over the last couple of years, you've probably noticed that the tenor of my posts has changed. Clearly, I no longer believe many of the things I had been previously taught -- as a Jehovah's Witness, as a follower of The Way, and during my time in a "regular" evangelical Christian church. I have been very careful in what I have said and what I have not said. It was important to me that my comments and observations be taken at face value, accepted because the evidence supported me, or rejected because the evidence refuted me. It is a logical fallacy to reject what someone says because of the source of the information. The ability to discern between what is said and who is saying it is a crucial talent, one that is not always easy to maintain. My goal has been to argue my points on the merits of those points, not to get caught up in who is making those points or even where those points may lead. I attempted to demonstrate, for example, that one can reject SIT as we were taught in TWI without rejecting Christianity. I think I managed that successfully. I attempted to demonstrate in the Doctrinal section that one can reject the notion of the Bible as "God-breathed" according to TWI's definition without rejecting Christianity. Surprisingly, I met with very little argument when I made this observation. Most folks had either beaten me to it by years or presented very weak arguments against it. In any event, I struggled as I discussed these things because I wanted to argue those points in isolation, on the merits, as I said. There are countless others I did not bring up, and I mention them now only in passing. I came to the conclusion years ago that the Book of Job is either fiction or evidence that God is not good. If it is a story with a moral, that's one thing. If it's history, then God allowed innocent people to be slaughtered in order to win a bet he knew he would win in the first place. I came to the conclusion years ago that Noah's flood didn't happen as described in the Bible. Really, no boat would have been big enough, and no regional flood would have covered Ararat. I came to the conclusion years ago that Exodus, as history, made precious little sense. Where in Egyptian history do we learn about the death of everyone's firstborn on a single night? Where do we read of the rather sudden evacuation of roughly 2 million people and all their livestock? Why does Moses claim the Hebrews built the store city of Rameses when that city wasn't built until hundreds of years after the Exodus took place? I came to the conclusion years ago that if God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, the only moral response from Abraham would have been "No!" Certainly not "Okay, let me gather up some firewood." I came to the conclusion years ago that mankind has been on earth longer than 6,000 years. We've had beer longer than that. Approaching the Bible with the preconceived notion that it is "truth" leads you to a conclusion that you would never reach if you treated it as any other book claiming to be holy. Dianetics fails because it is demonstrably nonsensical. The Book of Mormon fails because it makes historical claims that are demonstrably untrue. The Quran fails because it posits a God who is implacably cruel. The Bible, held to the same standard as those "holy" books, fails on precisely the same grounds. Some of you have been willing to hear me out because I am a Christian and I am not saying "Jesus is not Lord." You have treated me as your brother in Christ, and that allowed you to take my statements and observations at face value and evaluate them on the merits. I applaud the end result, but in good conscience, I cannot continue to allow you to take the preconceptions for granted. Jesus is not Lord. I am not your brother in Christ. The Bible says, "The fool says in his heart, there is no God." It also compares Christians who reject the faith to dogs who eat their own vomit. The "good" book is NOT respectful to those who disagree with its (very human) authors. But that's okay with me, because the more I read its pages, the less I can agree with the view that this is a very "good" book at all. I know this will change how a lot of you see me. And that's okay. I'm still me. I still care deeply about you guys as people. Part of me wishes I could take you on the same journey I've been through, so you could see and understand why I've made the choices I've made. By the same token, I know you have all been through a great many things yourselves, and if that hasn't led you to where I am today, then nothing I say will convince you. I don't have to convince you, nor do I really wish to. My journey is my own. I don't have a holy book calling you a fool. You may have one that says that about me. I will not hold that book's words against you, but I will defend myself against that book's words. They have NOT stood the test of time. They are rather obviously a product of their time, offering no indication that they were written by anyone with a knowledge of science, history, geology, geography, meteorology or (most certainly) astronomy. I am nobody's fool. And I say in my heart and in public, There Is No God.

A female writer agrees to write an article about getting a NASCAR driver to date and break up with her in, oh, about a week and a half.

Yes!