and god said let there by light and there was light


big bang theory the universe explodes from a single point and 100,000 years after that there was nothing but light.


god created the earth, then he created to lights the greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night


science says that the earth formed along side the sun. the moon was split from the earth in the first 100,000 of the formation of the solar system.

but it takes light i believe 1 million years to reach the surface of the sun from the core where it is produced.

thus from an earth point of view the earth would have been formed and then when the sun finally lite up. there would be a greater and a lesser light.

so you're saying that as a part of the great flood, god not only removed all material evidence of this advanced society (and if they have our level of tech, they'd produce a LOT of garbage), and then put a bunch of fossils in the ground to make it look like previous but extinct forms of life had been on earth for millions of years, and that he left all of that out of the bible?



i didn't mean that the entire ship was made of metal, only the cages for the animals; but if they were very young, as Cobra has postulated, it wouldn't be an issue.



the Coso artifact was x-rayed after being cut open by the people who discovered it; but no, indians never worshipped it. since you're talking about another artifact, i'm asking you to find something about it so we can proceed in this discussion with a common basis of facts instead of your vaguely remembered PBS special. google's a powerful tool; you could probably find what you're looking for (if you're remembering correctly) faster than you can reply to this post.



wow! you win the award for the most creative interpretation of scientific theories i've ever seen.



the photon era occured long before our sun was formed, and it doesn't mean "there was nothing but lgiht." i means that most of the universes energy was in the form of photons; there were proton and neutrons, though. and just because most energy was in light doesn't mean all space was filled with pure white light.



see, here you're being really selective about what parts of what scientific theories you're drawing from. the photon travel time is estimated anywhere from 50 million years to just 17,000. that the moon split off is but one of 4 major theories about the formation of the moon, and a less favorable one. the most favored is that the moon is the result of the proto-earth colliding with another planet-sized object, and the resulting explosion left enough debris in orbit to form the moon by means of accretion. finally, IIRC the pre-solar mass would have been emitting some light before maturing into a fully formed star, so the earth would have been lit dimly, then not at all, then brightly.

just because there are some similarities to the genesis story and scientific theory doesn't mean the story is accurate, and according to these theories, this all happened more than 4 billion years ago, not 6,000 as the bible suggests. and even if it seemed like the sun and moon were created in a day from the earth's point of view, life most certainly was not created in the next 5 days.

if you're going to take such a liberal interpretation of the bible in light of scinetific theory, can i ask why that pattern doesn't extend to the theory of evolution? i've met plenty of people who think evolution is the means by which god creates life. i'm genuinely curious about your beleifs.

the earth would have been glowing under its own power at this time due all of the collusions it was experiencing

Is it just me, or does every single God thread end up being a bible/creationism thread?

unless you count the liquid core

Allow me to give an analogy to answer the OP. It will be a horribly poor and inadequate analogy, as relgious analogies always are. But hey, you've got to start somewhere.

Let's suppose I write a computer program. In this computer program I allow the notion of entities that act on a virtual environment. Maybe I also put in some fuzzy goals for the environment, give each entity a limited time to accomplish those goals, whatever. I design a simple AI framework to control the action of these entities, but I don't hard-code the full nature of that AI. The full nature of each particular AI is determined through randomness, ability to self-modify, or whatever. New entities are created over time and old entities are removed. I put in some mechanism to allow entities to "learn" from the abilities of previous entities; such that the successes of previous AIs are not lost, but integrated as the simulation proceeds.

So now the thing runs. And it runs for a long time. And because I'm very talented as a programmer (heh), the AIs that develop get quite good at understanding and manipulating their environment. I have not coded any limitations into them. They are "free" to get arbitrarily advanced in their ability to meet their goals (I realize that I am substituting pseudo-randomness for free will here -- cut me some slack, kay? ).

But! But the entities will never be equal to me. They can be arbitrarily advanced at doing what they do -- even as advanced as I could be were I in their situtation. But I'm not in their situation. I'm free to hack into my virtual environment and change it in any way I choose; ways that would violate the rules that I originally created. More importantly, I'm not limited to the virtual environment. I can smash my computer with a baseball bat if I want. I can get up from the computer, grab a coke, and watch TV for a bit. There is a level of existance that is completely outside the scope of my virtual AIs, and will always be. So no, my AIs can never become human programmers.

In the same way, I believe a human cannot become God.

I know, I know -- this sidesteps the issue of heaven and becoming one with God on death / after judgement / whatever -- my analogy breaks down here. But I think the OP was talking about becoming Gods of our own devices, before death, so I'm only talking about that idea.

then why would he bother to mention 7 days at all? an immortal wouldn't keep track of time, but an omniscient would know that humans will, and being belevolent wouldn't want to deceive them, and therefore give them an accurate description of the events in human time.



modern hang gliders were modelled by da Vinci; doesn't mean he had a working hang glider. doesn't mean any of them had a working plane. teh basic principals of aircraft design can be deduced by observing birds. can you explain why the models don't have engines or propellers?



perhaps because it was in fact the Coso artifcat after all, and your memory unintentionally embelleshed the indian worship for you.



it's not that everything in any religious teaching is only just coincidence when it agrees with scientific theory. i remember when i was learning about social-scientific theories of the mind - specifically the notion that consciousness is composed of multiple reality-scenarios competing for dominance - i thought myself, "that's exactly like shunyata!" (the Buddhist belief that the self or soul is an illusion).

but i don't think they're the same, not anymore. on the surface they might be similar, but the conceptual entities required to arrive at that conclusion by the different means are totally different. i'll explain.

when two branches of different scientific theory arrive at the same conclusion, scientists consider it a sign of accuracy. but that's only because the natural sciences have the same ground concepts. the scientific theory of mind that i mentioned is grounded on those same naturalistic theories; it was built up from empirical, neuro-psychological evidence. those grounding assumptions and types of acceptable evidence with open and close certain extensions of this theory in a unique way.
you can say that shunyata is a thoery arrived at by means of observational induction. it's said that the buddha was born a prince, into a life of pure pleasure. however on a peregination, he was explosed to sick, ugly and dying people, and this made him question the nature of suffering. after that he left home on a spiritual search to discover the nature and means of esacping suffering. growing up in India, he was quite entrenched in the notion of karma; so much so he considered it a given. karma kept you in the cycle of rebirth, says the buddha, even good karma. this cycle will always return to suffering at some point. therefore, to escape suffering, we must stop accumulating karma. but, people would counter, if you accumulate enough good karma, you'll go to heaven, you might even become a god! but, the buddha reasoned, even the gods, however long-lived they are, are still trapped in the cycle. the only way out is to obliterate your Self. see, karma is the result of volition or will, says he. that will creates a connection to that world. our karma gives us a sense of continuity in our own existence, but that sense is purely a perception. we in fact have no souls, only the illusion of souls caused by persistent desire and hatred. the only way out, says the buddha, is to cease all attachment.

the scientists aren't interested in telling you what you shouldn't feel. most of them are only interested in further research. some are indeed interested in ending suffering, such as sickle cell anemia and cancer. but i don't think they're trying to attack your sense of self.

so while two ideas might seem superficially similar, it's not enough to look at the ways their conclusive statements overlap. you also need to analyze for ultimate presupositions, means of logical progression, and implications (of course implications to the exact same words vary by group and context - the theoretical physicist is interested in more theory; the engineer, in building tools; the salesperson, in selling them).

at the same time, any ideas that last 2,000 must have an element of truth to them. but the thing is, i don't think those truths take the form of hisorties or cosmologies. i believe it's the ethics and values, the proscriptions for living your life, that have value. to be sure, we make mistakes all the time. of course, we can pick and choose, and see how some of these truths were only acceptable for their time and place. people have been perfecting the art of how to kill and not kill each other for millions of years -- war, the former; spirituality, the latter; both taken together and mediated by/through symbols (especially language): that's my personal definition of human culture. to put it in bio-evolutionary terms, culture is our adaptive peak (technology being as much a part of culture as anything else). we wouldn't have survived this long if we hadn't got a least a few things right in our earliest cultural evolutes, so to speak.

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

just to prove my point, i could say that this quote from the bible gives all scientific knowledge precidence. i can pull a part totally out of context to justify what i'm doing, and it's a wonderfully literary way to make a solid argument more aesthetically appealing, especially if you're honest about it. but as you may know, I Corinthians 13 is about gifts of the spirit (of which scientific rationality isn't mentioned, IIRC), and the dominant theme of the chapter was love (IMH-atheist-O).

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.


now tell me how long was the first day. where in this does it say it was 1000 years long.

i think at this moment in time(not that there is such a thing as time to god) god set a goal to accomplish and when that goal was meet. he declared that a day and went on to the next day.

yes, i did. did you not see when i asked why none of the models have engines or propellers?



i can draw a helicopter too, but that doesn't mean i can build or fly one. again, da Vinci had a helicopter drawing too, but never got a working model to function. this is because he, as was most likely the case with the other societies mentioned in that link, lacked a working concept of lift. the wright brothers arrived at that concept as a result of inheriting the culture of science, and they made the first flying machine that could support a human (at least, the first for which we have any substantial evidence whatsoever).

moreover, the Aztecs had wheels, they just never used them for anything buy toys. they had a working model that did roll across the ground with relatively good effiency for its size, but they never scaled it up to be a useful tool (even if they lacked pack animals, wheel barrows are a very useful invention, not to mention pullies and the like). just because you make a toy out of something doesn't mean that the toy is modelled on a working machine.



have you ever read anything about Plato's original account of Atlantis? it was generally seen as fiction even then, and all the great high technology Atlantis is said to have held (flight, lasers, heck i've even heard they were spacefaring) is a modern embellishment.

i personally favor the Santorini hypothesis because events fit. wikipedia has a fairly balanced article on Atlantis. the article mentions two possible mistranslations (verbally from Egyptian to Greek) in terms of Atlantis' land size and chronology. i've also heard of another possible mistranslation in terms of its size. the text says it was bigger than libya and syria combined. i remember a discovery channel special saying that could have been mistranslated from the Egyptian, "between Lybia and Syria" (i.e., in the eastern med. sea), and that the pillers of hercules (rock of gibraltar) was actually the fingers of hercules, the three micro-peninsulas in the south of Macedonia known in ancient times as Akte, Sithonia and Pallene (map.

the documentary i think i'm remembering is mentioned in this article, though to be fair it doesn't go into the details i mention above. you might still find it a very interesting thing to read, given the technological achievments the ancient Therans and Cretians did achieve (plumbing, city planning, seismographic buttressing...).

how was that whining? also, does the bible mention the severity of the storm? AFAIK, most flood-level storms produce very turbulent waters; do the simulations you mention include that?



indeed. believers don't need facts and details. their beleif should be enough. yet there's no shortage of believers engaged in trying to prove the massive amount of evidence for scientific theories and archaeology findings are wrong. this suggests to me their faith is on less stable ground than they claim. but maybe i'm just being paranoid.

personally, i don't discount that flood mythology is common because floods were common at the end of the last ice age. see this. but AFAIK there isn't enough water on the planet to entirely cover all its land, or even the mountain ranges Noah would have been around. i can't find a hard fact, so please feel free to prove me wrong. as you suggest, Noah might not have been trying to navigate anything. but when flood waters receed, they receed into the ocean and seas, and they bring their debris with them. Noah's ark would have drifted away from the Ararat mtns. but if you beleive in direct divine intervention, god could have certainly seen to it that he landed there (not to mention created the waters needed to submerge the whole planet, then remove the water to return seas to their normal level).

Now we got the ball rollin!

Cmon people let's take bets how many replies this thread will top off at!   
I'll start: I bet this thread will top off around 300 replies....maybe 350. But not 400.

Interesting thread of discussion. Normally, I'm not sure of the utility of posting on a thread like this, but this time I'd like to add my 'two cents'.

1st - I'm not sure I track w/the logic that the best way to contradict an athiest's views are with points that are strictly Christian "faith". It's fair to explain one's faith, just not using articles of that faith as points of fact for debate. I think a few posters were alluding to that potential problem.

However, some of the obviously pro-christian posters do make some very good points about the nature of what we can observe of any potential God --- at least given humanities limited skills of analysis and observation available as we are today.

2nd - To my knowledge, Mormons (or Church of Christ LDS) are the only "sort of" Christianish large religious movement to believe in self Dietism (okay so that may be a made up word). Most(if not all) major Christian denominations denounce the LDS church as non-christianfor one the most basic & fundamental rules set forth in the Christian religion - the 1st commandment states "You shall have no other Gods". That includes yourself. Deep understanding of mormonism reveals that at the root of Mormon belief, is that you are "spiritually" bound to your spouse throughout all of eternity (better get it right the 1st time!) in preperation for when the male leader of the family will ascend to godhood and have his own planet, with which he and his family will provide spiritual leadership and send their children down to populate. Again a VERYnon christian philosophy. Christian's believe there is only one God and will only ever be one God.

3rd - The idea of the trinity - According to the heads of the Christian Church in both the US and Europe. the Trinity concept (represented fairly well in some the posts above -- citing certain passages) is simply that Jesus is one facet of Gods existence (the others being 'God the father' and 'the Holy Spirit'). Its stated that in the bible man is unable to exist in the presence of God (hence, burning bushes, booming voices, doves from heaven, angel messengers etc), the only exception to this rule is the time period in which man was sinless in the garden "..and walked with God." - Genesis

Man is unable to return to the state of grace once held in which he could truly know God. Therefore, ..."God became man"... Christian's believe that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old testament prophecy of God returning in physical form to the world to help his people from their enemies and enslavement (in Christian philosophy, satan and sin respectively). And this is where Christianity really defines itself from other world religions. In every other major world religion, salvation/perfection/heaven is based upon on how hard one works, or how good one thinks or acts relative to that religions concept of what is good. Christianity teaches that its impossible for man to be good enough to earn that salvation on his own or with sacrifices (as in old testament times), and so God built the bridge using his form on earth, Jesus. Jesus's life was an example; his death, the ultimate sacrifice of atonement for the existence of all the sins mankind have/will commit. His death too, was an example, the fact that God would willingly choose to exist as a human, experiencing the entire range of our existence, then carry all the weight and pain of several billion lifetimes of suffering and sin...

Christian belief (like many religions) is complex and too hard to explain succintly. But Christian's unique belief that its God's love, not their own earthly striving towards what their religious leaders dictate is perfection, that leads to salvation. The only thing required of a Christian is something that I personally believe is the hardest thing for a person to do - accept that we aren't the center of the universe and that we can't ever truly live up to the idea of perfection.

The Jewish faith sees Jesus as a great prophet but not as a form of God himself. The same is true of Islam, and many other religions. Though Jews don't often practice animal (or other forms) of sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, the root of their faith (and some might argue culture) is waiting for the return of the messiah who will lead them in triumph over their enemies to another heavenly promised land. In Judaism Law is incredibly important, and the following of the Law leads to salvation. Islam shares many of these beliefs.

4- The original questions - As to whether or not we will ascend to Godhood? Many forms of world religions say yes, many people surely like that sound of it. Christianity says no. There are statements that lead people to believe we will be .."godlike"... or ..."with God"..., but nothing in Christianity that says we will become Gods (sorry Mormons).

Is ultimate knowledge really all that's required to become a God? Who knows. Many theologians have debated the nature of heaven and theorize that 'Heaven' is a state of existence where we will know and comprehend the truth (something no human can do now, even about the simplest of things), and share that true understanding of all creation with its creator (hence the "be with God"). Most Christian theologians say nothing about having and powers making us capable of acting on a large scale to that knowledge. Other theologians believe we simply won't care about those kinds of questions anymore... our joy at simply being reunited with our creator will overshadow any other experience possible. Personally, I'd love to know things, and be able to delve into every facet of creation... but who knows, either possibility is currently unproveable.

I don't agree that our knowledge is destined to be ever-increasing. Though I do believe its possible, I don't see any gaurantee's that we're capable of limitless potential growth in intellect or wisdom. I think its a flawed assumption that we as a species will (and have) always stepped up the ladder of knowledge, and perhaps more importantly, understanding. When I was younger I believed that based on our technological superiority, we as a species must have evolved so that I was by default smarter than my Great, great, great x 50 grandfather. Now I don't believe that's a given. It's just possible that our societies size and interconnectedness has allowed us to not loose, or at least build upon, other ideas... intellect hasn't necessarily greatly increased, only opportunity.

5- To Millertime who said ..."The truth should come out from yourself, once you have thought deeply on whatever matters you are concerned with."... I have to respectfully disagree. If everyone followed their own personal truths (which unfortunetaly too often happens)... well, I'll let you think about that a little longer, I'm not really sure it deserves to much attention.

If you've made it to the end of this thread... Kudo's. I had no idea my rant would be this long. Sorry if I didn't write any ideas clearly enough to make my intent easily understood. But that's another line of interesting debate. As hard as it is to write a clear and concise Post on a Website, perhaps there is an inspirational source (think holy spirit) behind the writing of the Bible that has allowed it to speak to so many people across so many years... so much more clearly.

(if you are looking for further research on many of the world religions, I'd suggest reading the source document (BIBLE) and if you're really ambitious, have a concordance with you to give you perspective. Good luck to everyone in your search for God and truth!)