If You're a Christian who Believes in Evolution..

[jogsxyz]

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tell me where i go wrong in my proof:
God exists without time, without past present and future. God sent Jesus the absolve all sin past present and future. People existed before Jesus, and therefore people lived without christianity. God exists without time, when god sent Jesus he absolved all sin, which must have applied to those before Jesus because they cannot be held accountable for not believing in something that didn't exist. If people exist without time in God's eyes, and God absolved the sin of people born before the bible existed. therefore God must absolve ALL people of of all sin because God exists without time therefore all people who do not, did not, and will not believe in God because god exists without time therefore all nonbelievers exist in the same frame, and therefore are absolved. Thus, God admits all to heaven.

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You assumed that God exists. That's not an acceptable
given.

[pvn]

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Question: Why did God wait some 198,000 years before sending Jesus down to save humanity?

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Who knows? Why did I wait two hours this morning before going downstairs and eating my high-fiber cereal? I was pretty hungry when I woke up.

[chezlaw]

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Question: Why did God wait some 198,000 years before sending Jesus down to save humanity?

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Who knows? Why did I wait two hours this morning before going downstairs and eating my high-fiber cereal? I was pretty hungry when I woke up.

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because you were on the toilet?

[OrigamiSensei]

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Please note that at some point you're going to have to rely on your own logic and quit citing biblical verse. I'm sure these verses ring very true to you. But for those of us who aren't quite as susceptible to being gullible, they are ancient hearsay and hold little to no credibility.

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Lestat, perhaps this is a procedural issue but I believe you should rethink your objection to biblical cites. I fully understand that you don't believe what the Bible says but if a Christian were to rely primarily on his or her own self for information wouldn't that be pretty much equivalent to just making it up on the fly and completely without credibility? Whether you think we have done so rightly or wrongly we believe in the Bible as God's Word and in any discussion about God we should be able to liberally cite it as our authority. Our example is Christ, who used scripture in responding to Satan while being tempted in the opening verses of Chapter 4 in the Gospel of Matthew:

1 ¶ Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

If Christ himself relied on scripture as his authority and source for debate material during this episode with a most brilliant debater and deceiver then it's a pretty good indication that ordinary Christians are well-advised to follow his example in doing the same when involved in discussions and debates. In fact, if you see one of my admittedly rare posts in an SMP discussion about God without a Biblical cite there's a pretty good chance I'm going off track with my arguments and reasoning and you should find my comments far less reliable since I would be relying on my own wisdom rather than God's.

[vhawk01]

The problem is, if we are arguing ABOUT the book, you cant use the book to prove that what is in the book is correct. If we arent arguing about the book, but instead about some other topic, then it is pretty useless as a persuasive or rhetorical tool to use a book that your opponent/audience believe is hogwash.

The only time it is truly useful to use the Bible and quote scripture is if we were arguing about YOUR personal beliefs, and not in how they apply to the rest of us but merely whether you truly believed them or not, or which ones of them you happened to believe. But in that case, the Bible isn't really necessary either because in the end we are going to have to take your word for it no matter what you claim to believe.

[surftheiop]

Well if you think Genesis is mostly metaphorical ( which you do if you believe in evolution) Then you would probaly conclude that the adam and eve story shows us how sin started. That at some point in the evolutionary track humans gained the ability to distinguish right and wrong. (Lets call it you conscience or something, im not trying to be scientific here but i think anyone would agree that humans have some sort off innate sense of right/wrong that isnt as strong as in other animals). Once humans could tell right from wrong then they started sinning when those choose wrong.

As to why God waited so long to send Jesus. I guess we can never know for sure but Im guessing there are several reasons.
I) That sin had persisted long enough that it is obvious to humanity that its not going to fix itself / no matter how hard we try we are still going to mess up. (Basically that he waited so long so it was obvious that Jesus was neccesary and we couldnt just try harder.)

II) Related to I). God gave his Law to Moses and let the jews do their best to keep it. Their failure shows them that there is no way they can live up to God's standard.

III) Also the Old Testament introduces the power of sacrifice, without this concept of sacrifice providing forgiveness then the whole concept of Jesus dieing for sinners would make no sense.

IV) It doesnt particullary matter when Jesus came as he died for the sins of anyone who has ever lived ( I think some people might debate this but most would agree).

[OrigamiSensei]

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The problem is, if we are arguing ABOUT the book, you cant use the book to prove that what is in the book is correct. If we arent arguing about the book, but instead about some other topic, then it is pretty useless as a persuasive or rhetorical tool to use a book that your opponent/audience believe is hogwash.

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To the extent that you are talking about circular reasoning as a logical fallacy that's certainly correct. Using the Bible to prove a controversial assertion when it is itself the source of the assertion won't fly. I may accept it as an authoritative and truthful account of those things but it proves nothing in an absolute sense. However, it can be used as an authoritative cite to say "here is what Christianity is all about", or "here is what I believe, and here's what I see in the Bible that causes me to believe this". Perhaps some think that's not terribly useful in the context of SMP but I do since my primary objective when I jump in here is to share some thoughts from a Christian perspective, have some interesting discussions and encourage some reflection on spiritual issues. I'll leave the whole winning arguments thing to someone else.

[vhawk01]

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The problem is, if we are arguing ABOUT the book, you cant use the book to prove that what is in the book is correct. If we arent arguing about the book, but instead about some other topic, then it is pretty useless as a persuasive or rhetorical tool to use a book that your opponent/audience believe is hogwash.

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To the extent that you are talking about circular reasoning as a logical fallacy that's certainly correct. Using the Bible to prove a controversial assertion when it is itself the source of the assertion won't fly. I may accept it as an authoritative and truthful account of those things but it proves nothing in an absolute sense. However, it can be used as an authoritative cite to say "here is what Christianity is all about", or "here is what I believe, and here's what I see in the Bible that causes me to believe this". Perhaps some think that's not terribly useful in the context of SMP but I do since my primary objective when I jump in here is to share some thoughts from a Christian perspective, have some interesting discussions and encourage some reflection on spiritual issues. I'll leave the whole winning arguments thing to someone else.

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Sure, if we are interested in "what Christianity is all about," similar to if we are interested in "what Oliver Twist is all about," it would be a good idea to read the source material and try to draw our conclusions out of that. But I think what we are REALLY interested in, usually, is very subtly different from that. We dont care so much what Christianity is all about since we dont believe there is a single Christian on Earth who "has it 100% correct" and Christians themselves are the very first to agree with me. So, its sort of irrelevant what Christianity is really about. Even if we could find out, for sure, exactly what the Bible teaches on every conceivable subject it would have almost zero real world application. Instead, we are interested more in what Christians are all about, not Christianitiy. Christians are who act in the world, not Christianity.

And when it comes to finding out what Christians themselves believe, we dont need the Bible, we can just ask them. We ultimately have to take their word for it anyway, the Bible doesnt really help. And if we want to challenge the BASIS for the beliefs that they have, rather than just try and categorize them, again, the Bible is more or less useless.

So we have a situation where the Bible is really only useful to those who already accept the Bible, and pretty much useless to everyone else.

[kurto]

If we only use the Bible to figure out what Christians believe we get into the whole problem of assuming Christians believe one should stone kids who disrespect their parents and that its okay to force your slaves to have sex.

And I'm sure that's not what most Christians believe.

[BarrySanders]

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evolutionarily no, but socially we were closer to chimps than to what we are now

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The gap between an average human and a chimpanzee is LESS between the gap between an average human and Einstein or Plato.