The Creation Museum, I'm not kidding folks.

witch

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will they have a display of the Geico Cavemen.....they are real, right????

I would kind of like to visit but I have a strong feeling once inside they wouldn’t let me leave alive.....
 

B_HappyHammer1977

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In response to Freddie, I understand what you're getting at, however the very book you are talking about was written thousands of years ago; to suggest that people had the complexity of thought that you do back then is somewhat hopeful!
 

B_big dirigible

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Three: The Bible can be interpreted to say that "days" are not 24 hour periods of time.
But the text seems to tie that period explicitly to the rotation of the earth. After the first day, the clock was set, and the duration of "day" was fixed. it can't really be tied to anything else; "night" is a planetary phenomenon, a shadow which the planets carry around with them. In the rest of space it's always High Noon.

There is some evidence that days now are a bit longer than they were when trilobites were the most sophisticated creatures in the Garden; but only by a few hours.
 

dong20

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Evolution, Creationism, Intelligent Design

check out the Gallop survey, it shows 46% of Americans surveyed (based on 1000 people polled) believe

God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so

Humans are so conceited.

Conceit aside. What's causing close to (a statistical) 140 million people to believe this?

MZ suggested economic factors, but did the 1929 market crash and the ensuing depression send everyone running for their bibles in droves? Is it the increase in violence in our societies, a covert brainwashing programme, Global Warming, too many food additives, daytime TV...what?
 

rawbone8

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Conceit aside. What's causing close to (a statistical) 140 million people to believe this?

MZ suggested economic factors, but did the 1929 market crash and the ensuing depression send everyone running for their bibles in droves? Is it the increase in violence in our societies, a covert brainwashing programme, Global Warming, too many food additives, daytime TV...what?

blind faith. is there any other kind?
 

Freddie53

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Thank you Freddie.

I agree regarding a literalist interpretation and for me, that reduces it to irrelevance.
I disagree in that the Bible covers such a long time period and shows how the Judeo-Christian and to a large extent the Islamic faith have had a relationship with the God that they believe in and also man's relationship with each other. Even if it were proven to be a myth, the influence this book has had on western culture is such that no real learned person could be totally ignorant about the book and truly be educated.

I understand how you feel in terms of using it to dictate your personal moral code that it is irrelevant. But in terms of understanding history, it is the most important book still around and widely read from ancient times that is time before 500 AD.

In other words, as many people who say that this book is their source for living life is such that it makes it relevant to our times. I'm not Muslim, but to dismiss the Koran as irrevelent also foolish in my book. With a billion followers, it does have a major impact on the the world we live in. But for me personally, the Koran is irrelevant in terms of being a source book for me to live by.
 

Freddie53

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But the text seems to tie that period explicitly to the rotation of the earth. After the first day, the clock was set, and the duration of "day" was fixed. it can't really be tied to anything else; "night" is a planetary phenomenon, a shadow which the planets carry around with them. In the rest of space it's always High Noon.

There is some evidence that days now are a bit longer than they were when trilobites were the most sophisticated creatures in the Garden; but only by a few hours.
You may have a point there. However, to those of us who don't take the story literally, that point is moot.


Hammer:
In response to Freddie, I understand what you're getting at, however the very book you are talking about was written thousands of years ago; to suggest that people had the complexity of thought that you do back then is somewhat hopeful!

[/quote]I believe that the story tellers who told the story were quite bright and had great complexity of thought. And I believe that the story was told for the purposes that I have stated. Sure there were those that believed the story literally, then. There are people that read every fiction book literally as well today and they know it is fiction.

We have to remember that these stories from Genesis were told around the campfire for hundreds of years before they were ever written down.
 

Lordpendragon

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Oh Balls I lost my post. :confused:

That isn't what I meant Freddie - I meant that it only becomes irrelevant for me personally if I were to be forced to read it in a solely literalist manner - in this respect I would react similarly to Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, Iliad, Koran etc etc

Starngely I saved this site Internet Sacred Text Archive Home to my favourites this morning to lose some time over in the future.
 

B_big dirigible

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check out the Gallop survey, it shows 46% of Americans surveyed (based on 1000 people polled) believe

God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so

Humans are so conceited.
This sounds like one of those survey-type questions which doesn't mean all that much. What is it? A question of chronology, or one of causality? How many respondents interpreted it one way, and how many interpreted it the other? At heart it's almost a tautological statement. At some point in time, humans in pretty much their present form appeared. Otherwise they wouldn't be humans at all. The rest is detail. There's little point in asking the man in the street about detail, or in declaring him an ignoramus simply because he doesn't know the dates of, say, the cave paintings at Altamira or Lascaux.

The real question is, when did God create Gallup? And why?
 

B_big dirigible

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You may have a point there. However, to those of us who don't take the story literally, that point is moot.
You are taking it literally; you are trying to redefine the word "day" so that it can be taken literally. But the text simply can't be beaten into some form which allows day to mean any arbitrary unit of time. The text is actually quite specific; a "day" can't be read to mean, say, "a billion years". The only interpretation of scripture which allows that flexibility would be to regard it all as purely allegorical.
 

Blocko

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A deliberate and conscious act of social and moral destruction is what is driving people back to church. It's called marketing and or public relations.

There is a concerted attempt to destroy people's resistance to suggestion. From commerce to a larger extent and the government to a smaller extent. People who are resistant to suggestion, particularly ones that require a leap of faith, are much less willing to buy things they don't need, or support governments doing morally questionable things.

The easiest way to avoid this is to break down their morals and critical thought such that they'll be more willing to believe you. This of course makes them very open to a well marketed faith. Not only that, you now have multiple well perfected mass media delivery systems honed to inject information into people's brains.

It also creates a vacuum, the moral coda formed of independent and critical thought destroyed to make way for suggestions. A set of easy to follow rules (particularly literal ones) is easy to slot into place once critical thought has been destroyed.

This is not an indictment of faith but more of a view on how modern PR makes faith more readily acceptable to individuals.

Conceit aside. What's causing close to (a statistical) 140 million people to believe this?

MZ suggested economic factors, but did the 1929 market crash and the ensuing depression send everyone running for their bibles in droves? Is it the increase in violence in our societies, a covert brainwashing programme, Global Warming, too many food additives, daytime TV...what?
 

Lordpendragon

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There's little point in asking the man in the street about detail, or in declaring him an ignoramus simply because he doesn't know the dates of, say, the cave paintings at Altamira or Lascaux.

The real question is, when did God create Gallup? And why?

That reminds me Big D - where did that issue go regarding the SW French flint spear and arrow heads pre-dating clovis? Was it the Solutreans - I can't remember.

Gallup - easy, God needs politicians to know what to think.
 

madame_zora

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My survey will have to wait for another day as it turns out. I am sharing an apartment now with my daughter and her boyfriend, and it seems Memorial Day is a bit of a tough time for a soldier. He just found out a couple guys he knows have been killed, and this is just not the right day for him to be doing anything- we're staying home today. This is a person I'm coming to know fairly well, and it certainly has had an impact on how I view the war.

Spiker, I wasn't very clear in my earlier posts but economics is just a trigger. Some of the fallout from the loss of jobs in Ohio and Michigan is that we have a disproportionate amount of young people who can't find work who are enlisting, feeling they have no better options. The recruiting methods in these areas are completely shameful and disgusting- they just outright lie to these poor young people, promising them everything under the sun. We've had newsmen with hidden cameras expose their clearly illegal methods, but nobody makes them stop.

Families swell with pride as their youth join an honourable cause and join the ranks of their fathers and grandfathers, cheerful sendoffs usher them out. Then reality sets in. This ISN'T an honourable cause. They aren't getting much accomplished. Young people are finding out quickly that what they believed about Iraq when they were at home is not quite what they find when they get there. Mothers gets sad calls that their children are not coming home instead of stories of bravery in war- they weren't expecting that.

Money's tight, your kids are dead, they died for not much of anything really- and YOU sent them off. How long do you think it will be before we start seeing a rash of suicides?
Turn on the news, and the safe city where you raised your family now reads the LIST of murders and shootings that happened in your city today on the nightly news. You didn't move, you didn't do anything wrong, things just got horrible around you while you were sitting there living your life.

You turn to your church for comfort, a church that has led you through many years of life's trials and tribulations. You know most of the people there, they are your friends. You don't go there to challenge the current scientific thoughts or to push forward political agendas, you go there for comfort. You want peace and love. You get propaganda in no small measure along with the small sliver of love you're led to believe you can have if ONLY you can jump high enough. So you jump. Your preacher may not even be a dick, he may be getting his ideas from sources that just really don't have HIS best interest in mind either. Nomatter how you look at it, these ideas are not coming from a loving God or creator. You just can't take one more thing being wrong, you can't handle not being able to trust the one thing in your life that's always been there for you. If your church isn't "right", then nothing else is either. That's not a possibility that a whole culture of basically depressed people can contemplate. They'd rather stab you in the eye than contemplate it.

That's my whole opinion, it's far from just economic.




edit- what Blocko said. Ditto.
 

madame_zora

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You are taking it literally; you are trying to redefine the word "day" so that it can be taken literally. But the text simply can't be beaten into some form which allows day to mean any arbitrary unit of time. The text is actually quite specific; a "day" can't be read to mean, say, "a billion years". The only interpretation of scripture which allows that flexibility would be to regard it all as purely allegorical.

But Freddie DOES view it as purely allegorical, that's why you two aren't understanding each other.
 

rawbone8

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This sounds like one of those survey-type questions which doesn't mean all that much. What is it? A question of chronology, or one of causality? How many respondents interpreted it one way, and how many interpreted it the other? At heart it's almost a tautological statement. At some point in time, humans in pretty much their present form appeared. Otherwise they wouldn't be humans at all. The rest is detail. There's little point in asking the man in the street about detail, or in declaring him an ignoramus simply because he doesn't know the dates of, say, the cave paintings at Altamira or Lascaux.

The real question is, when did God create Gallup? And why?

LOL

Whether you dismiss Gallup and it's methodology or not, wouldn't you agree the result paints a rather disturbing picture if it is anywhere near representative of the opinions of your countrymen? The people who were polled stated their opinions in response to the question posed, which was multiple choice.

Opinions often determine how people vote and how they want their elected officials to legislate.

Thankfully (13% + 43%) 49% of Americans have some sense of reality.

What's your opinion about these people possibly wanting public schools to teach bullshit science? Or getting around that by having religious based seperate schools getting hefty tax write-offs and grants to teach it?

Are these parents going to sue because their children will get rejected by university science degree programmes with this faith based idiocy?

Or will they have their own alternative science universities like Robertson's law university?

I don't assume these people are all ignoramuses, either. I'm certain they have IQs on par with the range of the general population. The indoctrination by religion is just more powerful.