kleinboet

Emma2 are you on the right PAGE??? We have discussed this and I stated that religion haters always choose the OT for their examples! Show me where there is cruelty after the death of Jesus? Cory, I am conjecturing at this stage, but because the Christians were being oppressed and killed for their beliefs at that time, there was nothing put on paper (papyrus?) at that time. As things eased off, they decided to get it into print! Vagabond, I was always told that those two parables told you: 1: To always be prepared. 2: That people (being people) sometimes lapse and go off the religious path, but instead of the unrelenting gods of that day, God would forgive them if they truly repented. Chesters, I haven't got the time or space to debate what you say, just to say your conclusions a surprising to say the least!

Alan, I have said that the OT shows what the laws and lives were (I think everything was dour in those days!), however everything changed, hence the NT. I, for one, would love to know the truth about what really happened in those years that Jesus was alive. some of the the miracles he did (water into wine e.g.) are open to ridicule (we simply don't know) however the story of the money changers in the temple ring true, Lazarus can be put down to coincidence but there are just too many articles written in the NT to not justify the fact that something of importance happened. As an aside, we don't appear to learn from our mistakes. Look at the Sharia laws in a lot of countries where they still stone adulterers, kill non-virgins ( the still show the nuptial sheet to all in the temple to show the blood stains!), chop off the hand of a thief etc. I don't condone crime, but to try and stop it with sheer brutality is going over the top!

Snakey, I've never heard of the epic of Gilgamesh and I guarantee that most other people have never heard of it either but you have all heard of the Bible, and worms even knows how many Bibles are in his house. Looking at Wiki and others, the book by Mao takes second place, I am afraid! Try Googling the most popular book ever or the best selling book ever.

Take the P guys. When were your books written? Are they still in the bookshops? The Bible has come down 2000 years and is STILL the No1 book in the world!!

Cory, I don't understand? I said that SOMETHING must of happened some 2000 years ago for the scribes to go to all that trouble to record a version of what happened. It must have been important as you have stories like Sampson and Delilah, David and Goliath, Moses etc. - Yet they take a back seat. I am not trying to ram religion down anyones throat, all I am saying is there is too much evidence of the actual existence of named people in the Bible, for people to say that the book is "made up".

Alan, I can't argue with a closed mind. All I will say is SOMETHING happened, and it must have been quite important for them to write it down! Those who poo-poo the Bible are sticking their fingers in their ears and going Lalala. Why else would they (the authors of the Bible) have gone to all that bother to write "facts" (how they interpreted what was said) if it wasn't important!

Snakey, you are playing with words here, most people would not know what the difference in laws are (they would have to go and check the laws for themselves). If you look at sharia law and the laws of the OT, the laws (and punishments!) are virtually identical! I have been told all my working life that as an analytical chemist, I should not believe - IMHO it is the way that you interpret what is written. I don't treat the Bibles NT as the end all and be all - after all, it was written long after the event, by scribes, and very little (if any) was actually written material that they used, and if you tell the story to enough people it comes back totally different to how you told it! There are too many questions unanswered for me not to believe!

Snakey - If you look at the Q'ran you will find the same laws there as you will find in the OT. stoning for adultery etc. but it stops there. most Muslims will tell you that Jesus is mentioned as a major prophet, but not as the Messiah. Jesus came and 'liberated' the believers by giving them a NEW commandment (that they loved one another), stopping all the scourging and stoning etc. It didn't help him much, but as word of what he had done and said got around, people began realising that the oppressive laws were just that, oppressive! Unfortunately those that don't believe have jumped on the OT as "the Bible" quoting all the oppressive bits and ignoring the NT. If it hadn't been for the NT we would be "living" as they do in Muslim countries.

I am a cat lover, I prefer them over dogs as they are not TOTALLY dependent on us. But there is one problem - I keep hearing cat owners say that they cannot control their cats when they kill the the local birds, cr*p on other peoples gardens etc. I had the one cat for 23 years, and in that time he never once brought any animal in my house! He was a fussy eater and I tried him on many different foods until I found one he really liked, which, once I knew that he liked it, there was ALWAYS food in his dish! Why should he climb a tree and kill a bird when he could eat as much as he wanted from his dish? He had the freedom to go out, but would always come back into the house to use the sandbox. I suppose that's why I never had any complaints from the neighbours and the cat I have now is following his example! Cats have a "caste" system where the males go out scent marking (pheeeww!!) to prove who's boss, but if your cat has secured your houses boundaries they will leave you alone (hence people buying lion poo and placing it in the garden - no more visits by cats!) Many cat owners believe that if they leave food down the cat will gorge himself 24/7.....WRONG!!!! IMHO that is why these cats kill birds and mice and voles etc.

Cory, I didn't say that the speed of light can be topped, I said it cannot be proved - "Physics doesn't do proofs", yet anything else is provable. For the others - anyone who says God must be true, the Bible says so - the Bible must be true God said so, is a Pratt!! Where did God say so? There are two halves to the Bible The old testament mostly relates to the Law (Sharia Law) The New testament says forget Sharia Law - live,love and respect everybody - whether they are are a prostitute, tax collector (which were hated) or whatever. And a lot of what is written in the Bible has been proved (sort of) by discovering that a lot of names mentioned really existed!and don't forget it is a book written long after the event, and was written by scholars who were told the stories by others as virtually nothing was written down!

Corey, You've been reading Snopes again. If you read further it said that, although rare cats have caused babies deaths by sleeping on them (it might be rare, but a hellofalot more common than death by pet snakes!). What I can't understand is that coroners then declare the baby died of "infant cot syndrome"!!!!

Cory, while agree that a python is a dangerous beast (I've seen enough of them!!) I think that DOMESTIC cats have killed more people than a snake has. I have seen many reports of "tragic accidents" happening where cats have slept on babies faces and suffocated them! I believe if you saw a Python you would be wary to say the least, but a common moggy? Yet it will kill wildlife with impunity (if not treated right) and are very territorial, so it is not beyond the bounds of impossibilty that the cat jumped up and slept on the baby's face by accident.

Sorry Rob, put A cat instead of THE cat!!

Interesting reading: All outdoor enclosures should have fences well-dug into the ground (many lizards and tortoises are surprisingly strong burrowers) and high enough that they cannot be easily climbed. I googled "keeping a python outdoors as a pet" and this was a passage from one of the sites! The thing is that it would be interesting to see this debated in court. The Python is a dangerous animal - so is the cat, it kills far more wildlife than a python! If the owner has a secure garden, he could argue that the cat should not have been there as the garden is secure! How about taking the snake with him/her to court? They could show that the animal is as much a "pet" as the cat is!

Time dilation remains a theory as it relies heavily on something that has not been proved yet, namely it uses the speed of light as a constant and that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. This has not been proven without a doubt. The argument to support it was that if the speed of light was NOT the absolute, we would have 'time-machines visiting us!

Leon - Survival of the fittest - I see it as the being who is best adapted to circumstance stands the best chance of survival! look at the mammals that have evolved to live in the sea, they breathe air but are perfectly at home in the sea (or river). Look at the herbivores, they go from Elephant to leaf cutting ants - but they are all perfectly adapted! and the meat eaters are there to keep the herds of herbivores fit and healthy, weeding out the sick and lame for food. We ARE evolving, we live longer, have less hair, are generally taller (and larger!) than our forebears. People say it is because of 'medical breakthroughs', okay, but what are these breakthroughes, other than mankind fighting for survival.

Cory, I'll ask you the same old question. Have you got proof of this? According to the experts, we may lose our appendix, tonsils and adenoids, in other words we are evolving. I have always thought that evolution was the survival of the fittest - adapt or die!!

Emma2 - I think you better go back to school and get your money back if my words are a "incoherent jumble of words". Cory that is just what I said - a "day" can be a lot of different times, from Mars to Saturn a "day" differs greatly - so my belief is that the creator's "day" is of unknown length! We may disagree on religion but those who say the statement about creating the world in six days is "imposible" are trying to use the earthly day - which, quite simply, doesn't work. I have let it be known on this forum that I am a chemist and a believer. I believe in evolution, it has been proved, even though many people reject the work done on this as proof. I look at myself and others and wonder - The Bible says that we are made in His image, but I canot see God as looking like us. I believe we are evolving and will one "day" eventually become like him!

Emma2 (or whatever your name is) Why don't you read posts before firing off a snipe and making a right Pratt of yourself!! I said (I'll put it in capitals so you just might understand) " I DID SAY IT WAS AN EXAMPLE ONLY". As to the question of the "day" - Do you believe the earth is flat? The fact that it is a globe had to be proved (just like they had to prove that the earth was no the centre of the earth before they believed it!). Do you believe we are the ONLY intelligent beings in the whole universe (let alone our galaxy)? So why do we have to use OUR timescale for EVERYTHING. including (dare I say it ) something we don't understand. Ask about the origin of the universe (including Professor Steven Hawking) the answer is "we just don't know" We are showing total arrogance in doing so!

Ken - I did say it was an example only! Leon - I agree that is what WE call a day. So it stands to reason that another planet (Mars, Venus etc - and that's only in OUR galaxy) that has a different "day" to Earth, so what do you call them? Remember people used to assume the earth was flat until proven otherwise, so what gives us the right to call their revolutions X amount of DAYS!

Chevin - Ken -

Ken - Yes I agree, everyone who owns a cat indulges the animal, and whan someone complains, they argue that a cat is a wild animal....yeah, right! The only cats that are wild are feral cats and the big cats (lions. tigers etc.) If the owners fed the cats properly and gave them the attention they want, the cats stay at home! I recently lost one cat that I had had for 23 years, and have another one of eight years old (that was born out of a union with a domestic and a feral cat!) and I have never seen them hunt in earnest! They are just too well fed!!

I am going to be a bit deep here. WE (mankind) use the spinning of the earth as a time reference. Yet we are assuming that everything in the universe MUST use that our measurement of time! What I am about to say is for example only! Look at the elements, They have nuclei and atoms spinning around them! We have good old Sol and planets spinning around them. Could it be possible that one of the molecules of our blood system has"evolved" and has beings on one of the atoms of blood, wondering about the universe? Laughable, yes, but just as outlandish as saying there is a god/there is no god!

Cory, the sentence that does it is: "ambushed by the reptile in a neighbouring garden." The owner of his pet (the snake) was in HIS garden - the cat was a "trespasser" Maybe now people will stop this "it's a cat, it does what it wants!" attitude! I am seriously thinking of buying a snake!! P.S. - I do have a cat!!

Just to underline what Cory is saying: I am not alone in being a Christian who believes in evolution. It all depends on your interpretation of what is written. I must underline the story of creation in the Bible - It says God created the world and all in it in 6 days? Man is still evolving, so the statement that we are created in His image could still explain this statement. If one of Gods days is, for example (no-one knows) a million years, then the world (and it's inhabitants) are STILL evolving!!