i think some of you may enjoy this article, it makes a change from hearing about yet another species on the extinct list and shows why we need to conserve our natural heritage.
http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleno/38639/title/new-species-abound/.
in october, the world wildlife fund (wwf) published a list of 441 new species that have been discovered in the amazon in the last four years: 258 plants, 84 fish, 58 amphibians, 22 reptiles, 18 birds, and one mammal.
In some cases, the best-adapted members are eliminated from the gene pool, simply due to their random bad luck (eg the fastest antelope is caught off-guard by the weakest lion who carries less-fit genes, due to it's random bad luck, and the lion's good luck).
I've never really heard this before. Could you elaborate?
or should she abdicate for lack of action / leadership?.
I think katewild is an atheist waiting to happen, the only thing stopping her is that she's afraid she won't be able to argue with cofty anymore ;)
Kate, if dawkins annoys you, try reading "god is not great" by christopher hitchens or watch one of his many debates - he says it like it is and is damn entertaining whilst doing so.
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
I would not credit business talents to god in any way - just as not crediting the tsunami to god. You are a good business man/woman probably due to education, hard work, self aquired knowledge, and maybe even some trial and error. Give yourself more credit.
I think Richard Branson is an atheist.
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
Dear tsunami victims, God cannot help you, otherwise people suffering from an ingrown toenail might accuse him of being unfair. Don't bother praying for help - just praise him for the heavenly reward he is offering you after you die.
Surely this is position #15 with an added element of ridiculously extreme universal fairness.
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
If God interveines in a disaster of said magnitude, then he would be expected to act in a disaster of a smaller magnitude; then also in a little disaster; then again on personal disasters; then again in triffle situations of everyday life. Soon God would be expected to cure ingrown fingernails. If God would interveine to save the people in the asian tsunami, then others would ask fairly: What about ME? What about the people on that other volcano/flood/earthquake/ or whatever disaster ?
Eden, there's a point where it is morally responsible for god or anyone to intervene - god isn't an idiot, he can find that point and ignore the 'trifle' situations in favor of the more serious and urgent cases of extreme suffering. But you're saying he is having a completely hands off approach and letting the chips fall where they may (or jesus is).
So the only thing you have then to be thankful for is that he will intervene in your life later (perhaps when you have died) to give you everlasting life. You can't pray to ask him for anything now - ANYTHING. Even if you are in incredible danger (I hope you never are) you would be wasting your breath praying to god in help you.
Is that really your position?
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
Sorry, I'm not clear on your particular beliefs, whether you take a literal view of the bible or not - but if so, the bible seems to undicate he sees everything:
"the very hairs on our heads", "his understanding knows no limits", "For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens" etc etc.
The point I'm making is, if he was aware of some of the extreme suffering that is going on then I wouldn't call him intervening a "personal concierge service" - I'd call it empathy, kindness, compassion.
Just as if any normal moral person who was asked by someone random to solve his maths problems for him has no moral obligation to do so, yet if someone walks past a house and can hear a young girl screaming for help from the basement - they have a moral responsibility to help in the best way they can.
Edited to add some more verses:
By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
Take elizabeth Fritzl for example, who was kept in a dungeon, and raped etc for 24 years. Would you say that during that 24 year period god was aware of the situation?
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
Oh... no I don't deny they are present in nature, was just applying those characteristics to god (as well).
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
An empathetic god if he had the power to would interevene to stop the excessive suffering that many endure - for example, there are many young girls that have been kidnapped, kept in homemade dungeons, raped brutally every night, birthed a number of chidren and finally escaped or died perhaps thirty years later. (I can site examples if you want, but I'm sure you've read at least some of these cases.)
Imagine the pleas of help that a girl in that position directed to heaven for thirty years. Yet no answer.
If god is capable of intervening (he is all powerful isn;t he?) then I see absolutely no empathy, compassion or selfless interest. Which means he is either not able to help, not willing to help, or non existent.
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
But the thing is Edenone...
we, humans, can show empathy, compassion, selfless interest in others, something we hardly see in nature god.
Humans seem much more moral than god.
