Source: Page 75 of White Noise Keywords: "measured," "church," "basement"

From: John Ings Subject: Re: John Ings - Somebody's at your Door. Date: 15 Mar 2005 Newsgroups: alt.religion.apologetics

On 15 Mar 2005 13:06:27 - 0800, "thumper" <r...@operamail.com> wrote: >Their theological differences are irrelevant to this debate. It's >their similarities that are pertinent. The same Bible-can't-possibly- >be-wrong mindset. >Irrelevant? Irrelevant. The problem is biblical literalism and inerrantism. Whatever other theological differences there may be are not the cause of Creationism and its refusal to face reality. > Perhaps the post was too wordy for you to absorb. I only >pointed to doctrinal differences in the remote hope that you would >grasp the pragmatic applications of those differences. Once again, if >the Catholic Church at that time would have comprehended and believed >the teachings of Christ, there is no possible way they could have >desired to kill Galileo, or anyone else perceived as being a >"heretic." Comprehended and believed as YOU think you comprehend and believe. But that's a non-starter. It doesn't work and never has worked. Christians just don't draw a common exegesis from their Bible. They don't comprehend alike, and never have. >The New Covenant nowhere, and at no time ever mandated >the killing of anyone for their beliefs. According to you. But generations of Christians have had no trouble believing it did, and theological arguments to the contrary are of little comfort to the victims, of whom there are many thousands. >That is Old Testament >Levitical teaching. And when did I say, as you put it, that I >"hate" Catholics? Where did I put it? > I have only attempted to show that the brutality >they demonstrated towards scientists and other beliefs was not >Biblical. You can't do that thumper. You cannot show that this or that is not biblical, only that it is not biblical IN YOUR OPINION. >Defending inerrancy does not mean eliminating "heretics." The only difference between true Christian and heretic is who you're asking which is which. >>You throw everything branded "Christian" into the same pot. >No, that's just what I don't do. Those Catholics you so despise >learned from their experience with Galileo. They do not confront >reality with Bible-based science these days thumper. Only >fundamentalist Protestants do that. >I think you're missing something quite dramatic; Evangelicals are not >physically persecuting, hunting down, or executing evolutionist's. But you are trying to get your theology taught to our kids. >But then you love that card-stacking grandstanding bull so you can look >o-so-smart! Your flailing at charges I didn't make while ignoring the charges I did make. Let me repeat-- fundamentalist Christians who are biblical literalist-inerrantists are making the same damn stupid mistake that the Catholic prelates made in Galileo's time. When faced with a choice between reality and the Bible, they chose the Bible. So do you! Now never mind all the red herrings about doctrinal differences and whether Evangelicals are persecuting anyone. Address the issue. Is Creationism science? Should it be taught as science? >>>You stated that the Roman Church, and The Born-Again Christians at the >>>time of Galileo were "the same." >>In their assertion that the Bible is inerrant. Pay attention thumper. >>Don't make leaps from specifics to generalities. >Once again, believing is doing. You cannot persecute someone you are >commanded to love. The issue isn't persecution thumper. The issue is the assertion that the Bible is inerrant. >>> If the Roman Church truly believed in the >>>inerrancy of Scripture, they never would have sought to burn Galileo. >>Yes they would. Belief in the inerrancy of scripture doesn't guarantee >>a common exegesis. >Let's put aside all the puffy critical analysis. Try something more >simplified like "to know is to do." Doesn't work. Never has. >Heresy is just the theology that lost, true faith the heresy that won. >Like Paul's. There really is no 'true faith', only winning and loosing >fictions. >Waxing philosophical is only for those needy of diversion. Translation: you have no rebuttal to the assertion. >The devout have no difficulty reading anything they want into biblical >passages thumper. Never have... >Simplicity of truth slams John to the mat every time. I challenge you >to find one instance where Jesus advocated violence towards the >"brood of vipers" that sought to defile His Words, and to take His >life. Irrelevant. Check you history books on the long trail of bloodshed Christianity has left behind it down through the centuries. Don't try and tell me those Christians weren't sincere in their beliefs, that they didn't really believe they were doing the Lord's work. They did! They just read their Bibles differently than you do, but there's nothing new in that. Christians always read their Bibles differently and then call each other heretic and apostate. > By way of review I suggest you take any single point of >discussion; ie flood evidence, earth-age, man-from-soup, etc. and let >'er rip. I'll run around your preposterous flagellations like a >caffeinated pterosaur. Oh will you now? Well lets start with this: Granite is a common rock, found the world over and generally of the same composition, but never precisely the same composition. The exact proportion of the various components varies. Now just north of where I used to live there are some low hills which westerners like myself sneer at. Those hills, which are called the Laurentians, were once quite respectable mountains however, as high and rugged as the Rockies we westerners consider real mountains. The granite of which the Laurentians were composed now lies under much of southern Ontario in layers of sandstone and shale hundreds of feet thick. We know the Laurentians are where the sand in that sandstone came from because of the proportions of its constituents. Ditto the mud from which the shale is formed. Now never mind how long it took that mud to become shale and the sand to become sandstone. Consider how long it took for that Laurentian granite to weather away to sand and mud. Go search in an old graveyard and look for the oldest granite tombstones you can find. Notice how little of the granite has weathered away? Only wind and rain and alternate freezing and warming can weather granite, and it takes a very long time. No flood can do it, only rushing water carrying abrasive particles patiently at work over millions of years, and water alternately thawing and freezing in tiny cracks. Continental Drift Almost a century ago a man named Wegener proposed a theory that the earth's continents were moving with respect to each other. He based his theory, which wasn't given much credence at the time, on the shape and geology of the continents. For instance if you look at a map of the world, it's easy to see that South America would fit like a piece of a jig saw puzzle under the west side of Africa. If you investigate the deep rock strata at the edges of those two continents you'll find they match exactly. Same rock with the same thickness and the same fossil content. Higher layers however, match less closely the higher you go, until they don't match at all, and the fossils in them have evolved into different forms. It looks as if the two continents were once attached and then broke and slowly drifted apart over millions of years. Proof of Wegener's theory came after WW2 when a ship called the Glowmar Challenger (see http://www-odp.tamu.edu/glomar.html) drilled rock cores out of the Atlantic Ocean floor. Analysis showed that the rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean floor was brand new, only a few thousand years old, but the rock on either side was older, and got increasingly older as you moved closer to the continents. The magnetic patterns in the rock matched too, in equal with bands on either side. With the advent of satellite technology, movement of the continents could actually be measured real time. South America is still moving away from Africa at the rate of about an inch a year, and guess what? If you divide that yearly drift into the width of the Atlantic, it comes out to the radiometrically measured age of the continental basement sedimentary rock in years! For more detail see http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1991/6/91.06.05.x.html ## CONTINUARE- FAC UT GUADEAM - Clintius Eastvoodicus

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