Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian

[sharkman]

The prophecies are continually recycled with each generation. Every age has had people proclaiming the end was near. But many New Testament writers believed that Jesus would return soon, before the last of them had died:

Matthew: 16:28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Matthew: 23:36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.

Mark: 9:1 And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

Romans: 13:11 And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

And the Revelation was also written for the people living in the !st Century, not today! They could not openly condemn the Roman Empire or the Emperor, so the Revelation uses symbolic allegories such as Babylon = Rome, and the Beast = Caesar Nero. This is the traditional interpretation generally accepted by the Catholic Church:

The seven heads of the beast are seven emperors. Five of them the Seer says are fallen. They are Augustus Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. The year of Nero's death is A.D. 68. The Seer goes on to say "One is", namely Vespasian, A.D. 70-79. He is the sixth emperor. The seventh, we are told by the Seer, "is not yet come. But when he comes his reign will be short". Titus is meant, who reigned but two years (79-81). The eighth emperor is Domitian (81-96). Of him the Seer has something very peculiar to say. He is identified with the beast. He is described as the one that "was and is not and shall come up out of the bottomless pit" (17:8).

Thus the contemporaries of the Seer believed Nero to be alive and expected his return. The Seer either shared their belief or utilized it for his own purpose.

The ten horns are commonly explained as the vassal rulers under the supremacy of Rome. They are described as kings (basileis), here to be taken in a wider sense, that they are not real kings, but received power to rule with the beast. Their power, moreover, is but for one hour, signifying its short duration and instability (17:17). The Seer has marked the beast with the number 666. His purpose was that by this number people may know it. He that has understanding, let him count the number of the beast. For it is the number of a man: and his number is six hundred and sixty-six. A human number, i.e. intelligible by the common rules of investigation. We have here an instance of Jewish gematria. Its object is to conceal a name by substituting for it a cipher of equal numerical value to the letters composing it. For a long time interpreters tried to decipher the number 666 by means of the Greek alphabet, e.g. Irenæus, "Adv. Haer.", V, 33. Their efforts have yielded no satisfactory result. Better success has been obtained by using the Hebrew alphabet. Many scholars have come to the conclusion that Nero is meant. For when the name "Nero Caesar" is spelled with Hebrew letters, it yields the cipher 666.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01594b.htm

Yes it is true that some in Jesus's day thought he would come back and set up his kingdom in their time. But what did Jesus mean? The verses in Matthew and Mark speak of when Jesus appears after death when he's been reunited with God. He appears on earth in several places, including to the eleven in Mark 16:14. People didn't understand what Jesus had been saying when he talked about his kingdom, they wanted him to revive the Jewish nation and throw off the Roman empire. But Jesus never had that in mind, he was referring to a spiritual realm, the kingdom of Heaven.

So, those verses you mentioned which say,"...till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.", and "...they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.", refer to them seeing Jesus again after the resurrection, and having the Holy Spirit come at Pentecost.(Edited to add this paragraph)

As to the mystery that is Revelations, I will only say that searching out hidden numbers and names is an endless game that could make you millions with books and movies (Davinci Code) but leave you no closer to the truth.

Jesus never tried to convince men by logically proving that the Kingdom of Heaven existed, or that God was real. I dare say he doesn't want his followers to either.

Edited April 29, 2008 by sharkman

[sharkman]

This discussion of Revelation reminded me of why the book couldn't have been meant for those times. There are indicators in the book which show it was not intended for the first century. One such occurs in Revelation 9:14-16. There is a description of an army there which did not exist until more recent times and would have been thought impossible to people of that day. An army of 200,000,000. This was far beyond what any empire of the day could muster. Until more recent times, no army could even come close.

Edited April 29, 2008 by sharkman

[WIP]

I can't address all the issues because there's too much but l'll pick over them.

Here's one thing l know for sure...belief is generic. You believe period...that

this isn't it. That there's intelligence beyond what we see with our natural eyes.

I see through creation that God is. It's the most basic of all evidence. I think many people believe this but what they have a hard time with is that God is a personal God...and we are created in his image.

I used to believe that, but over time I started thinking that it is more likely that men create gods in their own image. In ancient times, tribes that wanted their neighbour's lands created warrior gods to justify waging war against others to get their land and valuables. Gods express all of the human emotions of their followers; and the God of the Bible probably expresses the negative emotions of jealousy, anger, and hatred more than positive emotions of love and mercy! The great science fiction writer Robert Heinlein put it best in one of the Lazarus Long novels: "Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."

WIP said:

This is correct WIP.. And generally it doesn't come through a contrived man made religious practice. God opens our eyes and ears..... and he closes them. scary..

As far as prophecy and the end being near...Israel is the key end-times sign. There are many other things but this is the most evident.

I'm not afraid to talk about the Amalekites WIP...And it was God that told Saul through Samuel. Why? Who were they and what were they doing? And remember when answering that "this isn't it". Do you think little children are in hell? Or do you think God took them away from their ugly parents and back to himself?

The excuse given to justify the genocide called for by God in exterminating the Amalekites, is that they were a violent, depraved, and warring people. But if you read the accounts of divinely sanctioned battles from Exodus through Deuteronomy, Kings, Chronicles etc., how exactly were the Israelites any better?

In the modern age, we worry about soldiers coming back from battlefields with post-traumatic stress disorder and possibly committing violence if they're having trouble re-adjusting to civilian life; if the Amalekites were really in need of extermination, why didn't the all-mighty sovereign of the universe kill them himself instead of making his worshippers do the dirty work of having to kill men, women and children of all ages? If this genocide really happened, is it plausible that it had no negative effects on the Israelite soldiers who were ordered to murder indiscriminately?

And what about the days of Noah...and Sodom..what were people doing? Nobody fears God..They tempt him.

When I was a devout Christian I didn't ask questions like: how could there honestly be no one worth saving in the Antediluvian world or in Sodom? But now when I look at the morality of Bible stories as an impartial observer, I question why I would want to worship such a God!

It would be one thing to say that every man and woman rejected God and deserved death, but to kill entire populations means that children who had not reached an age of awareness of the situation were also massacred!

[WIP]

This discussion of Revelation reminded me of why the book couldn't have been meant for those times. There are indicators in the book which show it was not intended for the first century. One such occurs in Revelation 9:14-16. There is a description of an army there which did not exist until more recent times and would have been thought impossible to people of that day. An army of 200,000,000. This was far beyond what any empire of the day could muster. Until more recent times, no army could even come close.

But it doesn't just say a 200 million-man army, they are supposed to be a cavalry: Revelation:9:16 And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

So, if this is to be taken literally, where are we going to come up with a 200 million man cavalry? Especially in an age of mechanized warfare. But then the next verse adds: Revelation: 9:17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

"breastplates of fire," horses with lions' heads breathing smoke and fire! All of this symbolic imagery is a playground for guys like Hal Lindsey. But what can't you read into books like Revelation or Daniel? They're almost like a Rorschach inkblot test.

Many of the early Church fathers believed that Revelation was an apocryphal book. Justin Martyr gets credited as a key influence for having it in the canon. During the Reformation, Martin Luther and John Calvin, both expressed doubts about its authenticity.

[WIP]

Yes it is true that some in Jesus's day thought he would come back and set up his kingdom in their time. But what did Jesus mean? The verses in Matthew and Mark speak of when Jesus appears after death when he's been reunited with God. He appears on earth in several places, including to the eleven in Mark 16:14. People didn't understand what Jesus had been saying when he talked about his kingdom, they wanted him to revive the Jewish nation and throw off the Roman empire. But Jesus never had that in mind, he was referring to a spiritual realm, the kingdom of Heaven.

The problem with the Gospel of Mark is that everything after verse eight isn't in the original manuscripts. Verses 9-20 that describe the disciples' encounters with the risen Jesus and the snake-handling, speaking-in-tongues, casting out demons etc., are not in the 4th Century manuscripts. Modern biblical scholars believe verses 9-20 were added by a different writer because language and stylistic differences. Some later manuscripts had a shorter ending after verse 8.

So, those verses you mentioned which say,"...till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.", and "...they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.", refer to them seeing Jesus again after the resurrection, and having the Holy Spirit come at Pentecost.(Edited to add this paragraph)

There are many different interpretations of these prophecies, and you have highlighted one way of interpreting prophecies that seem clearly referring to 1st Century Christians. Believe it or not, when my family had spent a little time in the Jehovah's Witnesses many years ago, they interpreted those verses referring to the final generation that would see the 2nd Coming as being the generation that saw WWI. Now I hear that, since they are almost all gone and Armageddon hasn't happened yet, the JW's have changed the chronology again.

Anyway, Matthew: 16:28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom., does not sound to me like it's referring to Pentecost! But then again, "kingdom" is given many different interpretations in itself.

It seems likely that 1st Century Christians were awaiting the return of the Messiah, since some later writings like 2Peter:3:4 says: Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

As to the mystery that is Revelations, I will only say that searching out hidden numbers and names is an endless game that could make you millions with books and movies (Davinci Code) but leave you no closer to the truth.

Jesus never tried to convince men by logically proving that the Kingdom of Heaven existed, or that God was real. I dare say he doesn't want his followers to either.

Even after I gave up on traditional religion and started exploring Buddhism, I still believed that knowledge could be gained through subjective, mystical experience through meditation. In my later years, I've thought about how easily we fool ourselves and misinterpret experiences like sleep paralysis, turning them into out-of-body and alien abduction experiences. The brain can create illusions from subjective experience every bit as easily as it can from trying to interpret the external world. So, I am left with the conclusion that the only path to accurate knowledge is by examining empirical evidence and using logic to decide which conclusions are the most likely to be true.

If what you're saying is true, that the "Kingdom of Heaven" or the supernatural in general, cannot and should not be proven logically, then that leaves each individual the opportunity to decide these questions for themselves. I have no real objection to that approach, but it does rule out establishing orthodoxy or any kind of uniformity of doctrines.

[WIP]

Yeah so called christians are a hypocritical bunch. They worship things that do not exist like sheep. very sick and mentally ill if you ask me. If their so called god was real, why does it not show up now and then and say Hi?

Yet they believe on the misguided belief of blind faith alone. They are nothing more than a cult that is stuck in some delusional dark age. Very sad people are brainwashed like this.

You do realize that you are lumping over a billion and a half people into the same bunch! There are a lot of dangerous, harmful forms of Christian beliefs and practises. But you shouldn't include Christians who don't want to completely abandon their religion and want to practise their religion in a way that makes sense in today's world.

[michele]

no1important says:

"If their so called god was real, why does it not show up now and then and say Hi?

He does say Hi and you are important. He doesn't make mistakes. He wants you to "search for him with your whole heart" and then you'll find him. "He's a rewarder of those who deligently seek him".

I just post this picture for fun but nature declares God's glory. http://www.butterflyalphabet.com/images/BA2.jpg

You'll have to follow the link because this forum won't let me post a picture.

Edited April 30, 2008 by michele

[michele]

Wip says:

I used to believe that, but over time I started thinking that it is more likely that men create gods in their own image.

They do WIP...Everytime they try to interprete the Bible without the help of the Holy Spirit they create God in their own image.

WIP says:

The excuse given to justify the genocide called for by God in exterminating the Amalekites, is that they were a violent, depraved, and warring people. But if you read the accounts of divinely sanctioned battles from Exodus through Deuteronomy, Kings, Chronicles etc., how exactly were the Israelites any better?

They were WIP....In fact God even calls them worse than the heathen! God has always used man's enemies to come against him as a form of chastisment and judgement. He also says when a man's ways please him that he will even cause his enemies to be at peace in the land with him.

WIP ... It's hard to let God be God. He can do with his creation as he sees fit. We live the consequences of our own actions.

Edited April 30, 2008 by michele

[michele]

WIP..You talk about war and murder but you know as well as l that war has been with man since Cain killed Abel..It's never ever left us. It's the curse my friend. The Bible says "They cry peace peace...but there is no peace".. And you know why. Because we're waiting for the prince of peace to come to come as king of kings and Lord of all. To put war under his foot once and for all. Only then will there be peace. God allows things to happen.

[sharkman]

WIP, you've certainly done a lot of reading in your time and I am not trying to convince you of anything besides the fact that your non-christian theories regarding the bible are not uncontested, which you probably already know. I don't know about you, but I've spent many hours in the past trying to convince people with logic or superior reason, regarding many things, not just religious. I find that this is a waste of time, however, nothing gets resolved or agreed upon by forcing people with logic or reasoning. Your approach, a none faith approach, would probably have more results among those whose approach to Christianity is not faith based.

[WIP]

Wip says:

They do WIP...Everytime they try to interprete the Bible without the help of the Holy Spirit they create God in their own image.

I'm still stuck on the starting line since I don't believe a Holy Spirit or other supernatural forces exist. Since it is claimed that the supernatural influences the natural world, such as prayer, faith-healing, exorcism, or in the case of intelligent design - some kind of supernatural force that guides evolution. Where the supernatural interacts with our world, there should be something tangible that can be proven that an outside force is present. I'm still awaiting the evidence!

WIP says:

They were WIP....In fact God even calls them worse than the heathen! God has always used man's enemies to come against him as a form of chastisment and judgement. He also says when a man's ways please him that he will even cause his enemies to be at peace in the land with him.

WIP ... It's hard to let God be God. He can do with his creation as he sees fit. We live the consequences of our own actions.

What you are saying is that everything God does is moral, even if it appears to violate the moral rules that we've been taught. If there is no morality outside of God, then there is no means to question things like drowning worlds or telling followers to massacre villages; but if there are moral principles that exist independent of God, then an impartial observer can question whether or not the Bible describes a moral God!

[WIP]

WIP, you've certainly done a lot of reading in your time and I am not trying to convince you of anything besides the fact that your non-christian theories regarding the bible are not uncontested, which you probably already know. I don't know about you, but I've spent many hours in the past trying to convince people with logic or superior reason, regarding many things, not just religious. I find that this is a waste of time, however, nothing gets resolved or agreed upon by forcing people with logic or reasoning. Your approach, a none faith approach, would probably have more results among those whose approach to Christianity is not faith based.

Well, like I said, I have no problem with a personal approach to religious faith; I think the problems start where faith leaders try to enforce uniformity of doctrine and where religion is pushed into the public square and used as the set of rules for others to follow, even if they have different beliefs.

[michele]

WIP says:

I'm still stuck on the starting line since I don't believe a Holy Spirit or other supernatural forces exist. Since it is claimed that the supernatural influences the natural world, such as prayer, faith-healing, exorcism, or in the case of intelligent design - some kind of supernatural force that guides evolution. Where the supernatural interacts with our world, there should be something tangible that can be proven that an outside force is present. I'm still awaiting the evidence!

I want to comment on this and the the interesting question you posed about the mind of God in relation to the Privileged Planet...I just don't have time today..later. Thanks for the conversation.

[AngusThermopyle]

WIP..You talk about war and murder but you know as well as l that war has been with man since Cain killed Abel

Actually war has been with us since the first Hominid ancestor of man picked up a rock or tree branch and beat his enemy, Billy Hominid, to death with it. Not much to do with Cain and Abel I'm afraid, other than the fact that the legend says they did something similar much much later.

[jbg]

WIP says:

I want to comment on this and the the interesting question you posed about the mind of God in relation to the Privileged Planet...I just don't have time today..later. Thanks for the conversation.

I just got finished reading a book called Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade. He suggests that warlike tendencies were far worse in man's primitive state and have declined since the days of Cain and Abel.

[WIP]

I just got finished reading a book called Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade. He suggests that warlike tendencies were far worse in man's primitive state and have declined since the days of Cain and Abel.

They were! Most modern anthropologists are coming to terms with the violence they observed in most primitive hunter/gatherer tribes that were still able to live in the wild until about 1960:

Violence is the major cause of death among the precontact Ache (55% of all deaths) and very important among the Hiwi (30% of all deaths), but notably less important in the two African societies and the Agta (3–7% of all deaths).

Most of the adult killings were due to either competition over women, reprisals by jealous husbands (on both their wives and their wives' lovers), or reprisals for past killings. The criollo-caused killings were motivated by territorial conquest. Moreover, infanticide (especially on females) constituted the highest mortality rate component of all Hiwi conspecific violence.

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/life_h...iwi_mortality.w

For years there was a default assumption that man was peaceful and living something akin to the Garden of Eden until agriculture and civilization ruined us! I think it started with the French philosopher - Jean Jacques Rousseau, but this idyllic view of primitive innocence was promulgated by famous anthropologists like Ashley Montagu and Richard Leakey, who actually claimed in his book "Origins" that he could find no evidence that our Homo Habilis ancestors committed any acts of violence against each other! Most of his colleagues found plenty of evidence of skulls broken with stone weapons and even evidence of massacres of entire family groups.

So, with all of the modern horrors of world wars and genocides, we are actually far less violent than our ancestors. I can't find the article at the moment, but I read recently that the death rate from conflict in paleolithic times was estimated to be about 20% of the total population. A staggering figure considering the other perils of disease, starvation and animal attacks!

[michele]

Only thing is...there's no written preadamic account. And even if there was a preadamic race like some people think the Bible teaches in Genesis...it isn't the point. The real point and l know we all agree, is that men have been killing each other ever since it was written down.

WIP said:

I'm still stuck on the starting line since I don't believe a Holy Spirit or other supernatural forces exist. Since it is claimed that the supernatural influences the natural world, such as prayer, faith-healing, exorcism, or in the case of intelligent design - some kind of supernatural force that guides evolution. Where the supernatural interacts with our world, there should be something tangible that can be proven that an outside force is present. I'm still awaiting the evidence!

Fullfilled written prophecy. You're a learned man...just do a little reasearch. You can find this evidence in few hours on line. I can look too. I just don't know if I'll have time. It's interesting though..I'll see what l can find but it might not be right away.

And WIP...if you think about the logic behind the trinity it's kind of exciting. I know you're logical because of an insightful statement you made about the Privileged Planet.

Here you said:

And, the designer in Privileged Planet is an incredibly wasteful engineer if he made a universe with billions of galaxies, each containing more than a billion star systems, only to populate a select few with intelligent creatures! A human designer would not design a factory so that it would only occasionally, if ever, produce a car, or a computer, or whatever the purpose is. It would be optimized to produce the largest possible amount of products possible.

I agree...but just because we don't know what the reason is doesn't mean it doesn't exist. God said "My Fathers house has many mansions...I go to prepare a place for you". That could mean a lot of things. Have you ever thought that heaven might not actually be "up" but dimensional? Or perhaps both? (Which to me makes more sense ..but l don't know l'm just speculating).

Edited May 3, 2008 by michele

[WIP]

Only thing is...there's no written preadamic account. And even if there was a preadamic race like some people think the Bible teaches in Genesis...it isn't the point. The real point and l know we all agree, is that men have been killing each other ever since it was written down.

I can't disagree with that! But, overall, the human race is less violent today than it was during those primitive paleolithic and neolithic times!

WIP said:

Fullfilled written prophecy. You're a learned man...just do a little reasearch. You can find this evidence in few hours on line. I can look too. I just don't know if I'll have time. It's interesting though..I'll see what l can find but it might not be right away.

I've been looking at it for many years! Among the many changes of religion my family went through in my childhood was a three year fling with Jehovah's Witnesses. My father was convinced they had the truth......for about three years, and since we got tangled up with them during my teen years, I was determined to bring them down because I didn't want to be a social outcast in high school! One of the features JW's are big on, is Bible prophecy. At first, I was just looking to contradict their interpretations. But as I read more books on the subject, I discovered that the New Testament prophecies were clearly written for the first Century, not today! Every year, someone has a book out about the end times being imminent! But, it's hard to re-interpret all of these scriptural references that the end would come before all of the apostles had tasted death:

"And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power." --Mark 9:1 (KJV)

"Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." --Matthew 16:28 (KJV)

"What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away." --1 Corinthians 7:29-31 (NIV)

"According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, we who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep." --1 Thessalonians 4:15 (NIV)

"For in just a very little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay." --Hebrews 10:37 (NIV)

"You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near. Don't grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!" --James 5:8-9 (NIV)

"But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer." --1 Peter 4:7 (KJV)

"Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time." --1 John 2:18 (KJV)

And ofcourse this verse was written because of the grumbling among early Christians who were getting impatient, wondering why they were still waiting:

"Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.... But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." --2 Peter 3:3-8 (KJV)

And WIP...if you think about the logic behind the trinity it's kind of exciting. I know you're logical because of an insightful statement you made about the Privileged Planet.

Here you said:

I agree...but just because we don't know what the reason is doesn't mean it doesn't exist. God said "My Fathers house has many mansions...I go to prepare a place for you". That could mean a lot of things. Have you ever thought that heaven might not actually be "up" but dimensional? Or perhaps both? (Which to me makes more sense ..but l don't know l'm just speculating).

In the Old Testament, heaven is a vaulted ceiling that separated the abode of God and the angels from us mere mortals on Earth:

.

Gen 7:10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

Gen 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

Gen 7:12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

And the Flood did not completely empty all of the waters in heaven, as some Young Earth Creationists contend: a water vapour "canopy" that rained down for 40 days and covered the earth.

Psa 148:4 Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that [be] above the heavens.

[the janitor]

There is a reason the universe is the size it is. (It was covered during a science course I took at McMaster.) If the universe was any smaller, only the gaseous elements would exist, if it was any larger only the heavy metallic elements would exist. For life to even exist in one place the universe has to be the size it is.

I don't think any one of us, given the state of the environment and the number of wasted human lives lost every day to poverty, is going to accuse God of being wasteful.

Edited May 7, 2008 by the janitor

[sharkman]

WIP, the JW church is a cult, your instincts as a teenager were right. However, to cast all of Christianity out because of your experiences with the Jehovah's Witnesses is to throw out the proverbial baby with the bath water.

To properly understand the meaning of those scriptures you've included, never mind for the moment whether they have come or will come true, you need to be fluent in the language they were originally written in, for starters. You haven't mentioned whether you know Hebrew or Arabic or some of the other languages. You need to be a student of these languages and the time they were written to understand such simple sounding teachings such as, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven."

As you may have guessed, am not familiar with the languages nor the time. That leaves us to choose among those who are and have written about their thoughts on different books of the bible. So my question is, how do you choose among differing opinions that conflict to decide who is right or who is wrong? Does one simply discount all those who believe the bible is the Word of God, and then choose among the authors that sound best or that have an alternate consensus?

Edited May 7, 2008 by sharkman

[DogOnPorch]

There is a reason the universe is the size it is. (It was covered during a science course I took at McMaster.) If the universe was any smaller, only the gaseous elements would exist, if it was any larger only the heavy metallic elements would exist. For life to even exist in one place the universe has to be the size it is.

I don't think any one of us, given the state of the environment and the number of wasted human lives lost every day to poverty, is going to accuse God of being wasteful.

You do realize the Universe is expanding? By the time you finish reading this the Universe will be that much larger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_shift

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe

--------------------------------------------

The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons.

---Edwin Hubble

[WIP]

There is a reason the universe is the size it is. (It was covered during a science course I took at McMaster.) If the universe was any smaller, only the gaseous elements would exist, if it was any larger only the heavy metallic elements would exist. For life to even exist in one place the universe has to be the size it is.

I don't think any one of us, given the state of the environment and the number of wasted human lives lost every day to poverty, is going to accuse God of being wasteful.

It seems you are referring to the nucleosynthesis process that created particles and then the light elements such as hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang. That process is not determined by the size of the Universe, but instead by the critical energy density of the universe that is referred to as "flatness, or uncurved spacetime. If spacetime was positively curved, the universe would have ended in a big crunch before we came along; alternatively, if it was negatively curved, it would have reached heat death before it had a chance to form any elements, or stars and planets. A theory called the Inflation Model, proposed by Alan Guth, that the early universe was thrown into a period of rapid expansion by the brief existence of an antigravity force particle that caused the dense, hot universe to fly apart. Inflation could also explain the homogenized background radiation found throughout the Universe, since this force would have had the opposite effect of gravity - which causes mass to clump together.

If correct, Inflation could provide a simple explanation for some features that look to be intentionally designed. Remember, our brains' are set up to deliberately look for patterns and interpret them by the principle of cause and effect. Because of our setup for facial recognition in the visual cortex, we see faces in clouds, on the moon, on Mars and on random objects declared to be holy relics! Primitive people's who have no understanding of the forces in their world, believe that lightning bolts are thrown down from heaven, and either the same or different gods cause wind, rain, the sun to rise and fall, and every other event is viewed as something with a planned purpose. I don't think that good answers have been provided to explain fine tuning, but I would rather leave it in the unsolved category, then to just give it a divine explanation that would not offer a means for further inquiry; just as with the "God did it" explanation of creationism and intelligent design, these kind of explanations are really non-answers in what they give us as information.

As previously pointed out, the Universe is expanding, and the most troubling feature from an aesthetic point of view is that the rate of expansion is increasing, making it impossible for the elements of our universe to be drawn back together in either a Big Crunch or an Oscillating Universe that goes through endless cycles of expansion and contraction. Actually, that last one, which is a fundamental part of Hindu interpretation of cosmology, was pretty much blown out of the water by physicists who determined years ago that entropy would take away too much energy to allow the same universe to rebound in another Big Bang. But even if it ends in a crunch and cannot be eternal, as many primitive cosmologies contended, the crunch could still be interpreted as the point of singularity, where physicist Frank Tipler contends an "Omega Point" where an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God would resurrect everyone to live forever in an abode which would essentially be the Christian version of heaven............all in the black hole that our collapsed universe would create! My brother gave me Tipler's book:"The Physics of Immortality ten years ago, and I just could not see at as a likely scenario for the distant future, although I couldn't really take apart the argument which is based on advanced mathematics that's completely over my head.

In recent interviews, Tipler still won't give up on the idea, and still holds out hope that the expansion will somehow slow down and re-contract. I don't think there is any plausible way for Tipler and other intelligent design believers to deny the implications that an expanding universe is best understood as one of many, and not a lone, individually created, isolated universe. One popular model, the Cyclic Universe, proposes a continuum of many universes that are seeded from the collisions of the three dimensional membranes of ageing universes and continue their expansion by borrowing from the false vacuum energy in between the 3D branes of the 11 dimensional multiverse: http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/steinhardt.html and for further information: http://www.physics.princeton.edu/~steinh/dm2004.pdf

The main competing theory to explain our universe's origin is called Eternal Inflation, and it was developed by the Inflation guy - Alan Guth. In this revision of the Inflation Model, he incorporated the effects of quantum fluctuations in the spacetime of that tiny, dense universe at the Big Bang. He realized that once the first Big Bang started, the effects of these fluctuations would cause a cascade of an infinite number of universes to be created. And because of the rapid expansion of spacetime in an inflating universe, the following universes would be permanently cut off from each other and exist as isolated "islands" forever separated by the spacetime constant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaotic_inflation_theory

So which model might be the key to understanding the origins of the Universe? I have no idea! I have to read the simplified versions of these models that are devoid of mathematical formulas. Just like everything else in physics and cosmology, I'm depending on the knowledge and ability of their peers to work through the complex math to determine their likelihood. But whichever path leads to real understanding, there is no escaping that both the theories based on String Theory like the Cyclic Model, or the Loop Quantum Gravity model to create a quantum theory of gravity that is used by Alan Guth, Andrei Linde and Alexander Vilenkin to look back before the Big Bang and find "Eternal Inflation" - all point towards our universe being one of an infinite number, and not a one-off event. This allows for explaining fine tuning by using ideas such as natural selection for example! The Cosmological Natural Selection model proposed by Lee Smolin, contends that the universes that have the biggest stars and subsequently produce the most black holes - in turn, create the greatest number of universes. Black Holes are the remnants left behind from Supernova explosions, which create the most heavy elements, like the ones for making carbon-based life. With this idea, Smolin proposes a natural process that would lead to more universes that are also more likely to create life. This would be evolution on the largest scale! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin

Even if universes are intelligently designed, that does not necessarily mean that they are made by supernatural forces! Arthur C. Clarke pointed out many years ago that sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial lifeforms would appear to be gods from our perspective, much like the cargo cults in the South Pacific turned British mariners and later, American airplanes into gods and built religions around them. There are intelligently designed universe models that propose advanced, intelligent lifeforms are seeding new universes and are capable of tweaking the physical constants of the new universe to make it more likely to have life. http://www.biocosm.org/

[WIP]

WIP, the JW church is a cult, your instincts as a teenager were right. However, to cast all of Christianity out because of your experiences with the Jehovah's Witnesses is to throw out the proverbial baby with the bath water.

During my youth, we went from Presbyterian to United Church to Seventh Day Adventist to Jehovah's Witnesses - where I jumped off the merry-go-round. I spent some of my adulthood exploring other "true relgions," and no doubt, my cynicism about the value of organized religion grew out of those experiences. The only real positive feature I can come up with is that many, or at least some churches provide an effective social network for members. Some sociologists believe that the growth of new non-denominational mega-churches, especially in the U.S., is a product of the lack of a sense of community in the new, growing suburbs. The church organizes members into small, intimate groups so they can develop close friendships with people they would otherwise not interract with, and the church provides many services from daycare to youth activities that are lacking. If it wasn't for the ludicruous metaphysical claims of the new religions, they would be perfect!

And on that prophecy thing: I was looking for books debunking JW theology, but since many of them were written by mainline Protestant ministers and theologians, they debunked Pre-millenialism as well. Their case was that the prophecies had already been fulfilled in Nero Caesar, the Roman government, etc., and some were radical enough to propose that even 1st century apostles misinterpreted Jesus's meaning of the "Kingdom," since many of the verses indicate the writers believed in a literal 2nd coming before their time on earth came to an end.

[michele]

WIP,

You're parents were just 2 lost people seeking...It's hard to personally disconnect though isn't it..

[Drea]

God said "My Fathers house has many mansions...I go to prepare a place for you". That could mean a lot of things. Have you ever thought that heaven might not actually be "up" but dimensional? Or perhaps both? (Which to me makes more sense ..but l don't know l'm just speculating).

This could also mean that god is an alien and as a space traveller, would be aware of many other "earths"...

We can disect this one sentence:

My father (a creator, not necessarily an invisible entity -- could be a technologically advanced extraterrestrial.)

my father's house (the universe)

has many mansions (there are many habitable planets)

It's all in the interpretation. And saying that JW's interpret it "wrong" is wrong itself as no one knows anything for sure about the beginning (middle or end) of everything.

I lean toward evolution, but do not rule out the idea that we were created by aliens.