Did we evolve from apes, or are we made from dirt and ribs?

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for all we know, that is indeed what god did.

Apes and Humans have a proto-primate ancestor about 6 million years back. Every living thing on this planet is descended from primordial slime from about 3.7 billion years ago. Humans and apples are distant cousins.

If that's what you choose, yes. If you choose to assume the universe might be created, you infer the existence of a creator and become a seeker. Everything else follows from that.

I seek knowledge. You invent it.

Here we go again. I guess we should also believe that dinosaurs and humans once co-existed, that a whale once not only swallowed a human being whole but the guy survived it, and that being afraid to die is wrong because we shouldn't be if we're going to heaven.

Care to share what you've learned about the creation of the universe?



As I said in a previous thread this literalism is a relatively recent mostly American phenomenon, perhaps a reaction to increasing attacks on religion in general and the conservative lifestyle. It's also partly fueled by atheists reading the Bible literally and spewing slime liberally upon it. "You don't believe in Adam and Eve? so how are you a Christian?" There is actually a growing section of the Christian population (what's left of it) who believe it's all or nothing when it comes to the Bible, which is ret*d considering the history of the western Christian nations, where reason and Christianity walked hand in hand, and bestowed on us the cultural inheritance we are busy flushing down the drain today.



Also parable.

Maybe nothing. Doesn't mean you are correct.

How do you decide which parts of the Bible are literal and which are parables?

I don't know either, which is the point. There is a choice to be made, do we wade in the emptiness of agnosticism, embrace the cold material world of atheism or the warmth and hope of theism? Do we want an ordered, purposeful universe where there is eternal justice and hope for an afterlife, or a disordered chaos of chance where there is no justice and the dead are dead? Without any knowledge the only way this decision is made springs from the desire of the individual.



That is the big question, Myself, I'd say it's almost entirely parable, poetry and polemic of variable usefulness and relevance. They are important stories, true or not, not only because they literally shaped our ancestors' minds and the nations they created, but they also have much wisdom to impart, comparable to that of Shakespeare. Ancient old fashioned wisdom, much needed today because as far as science has taken us, the underlying human animal has not changed in the centuries since. The more of these old rules we ditch, the progressively worse our societies become.

What few grains of historical truth there must be is half remembered oral tradition buried under legions of creative writing. I suppose the only thing that need be taken as literal historical fact if you wish to be a believer is the resurrection story that supposedly inspired the apostles to teach others what had happened and build the religion. Without that, the apostles were madmen who just happened to create the religion that was for the next two millennia the most stable, civilising and in my opinion, (relatively speaking) moral force on the planet. While I haven't crossed the Rubicon and accepted the resurrection on faith, I have at least made my choice on the kind of universe I desire this one to be.

So you embrace fake knowledge because you don't care about what's true. You only care about having hope. I don't see why there is any hope in your worldview if you think the Bible isn't literally true. I guess that parable stuff doesn't apply to heaven?

Jesus' disciples weren't necessarily any more mad than you, just mistaken. The relative stability of Europe was more due to natural resources and weather than anything else. But I guess you are glossing over all the religious wars and persecution of witchcraft.

I'm a Catholic yet believe in evolution. I guess that makes me a heathen and guilty of heresy.

I don't know either, which is the point. There is a choice to be made, do we wade in the freedom of agnosticism, embrace the scientifically wondrous world of atheism or the cruelty and condemnation of theism? Do we want an restricted, tyrannical universe where there is eternal injustice and risk of an afterlife consisting of never-ending suffering, or a marvellous complexity of opportunity where there is no discrimination the living are are truly alive? Without any knowledge the only way this decision is made springs from the desire of the individual.

Also nonsense. The truth has nothing to do with what we want to be true. Science is a way of finding things out that avoids such personal bias.

Then I take it the fundies need to take out of the story that, god just took some dirt and blew air into it to create the first man, made the first women from his rib and some more dirt.....and that a talking serpent actually tempted eve to eat a forbidden fruit...which she than convinced adam to eat and then they got henceforth banished from paradise forever. Also the implication a womans period is 'punishment' against all women because because of eve eating the fruit women are less trustworthy I have heard that thrown around a couple times.

I think that is more plausible...than the whole god made adam and eve thing.

Do you think Christianity has never given any hope whatsoever except unto those few living in America right now who think it's literally true? The Bible was constructed not to be taken literally, you don't include 4 different versions of the Gospel if you are making a literal manual of everything you'll ever need.



Not glossing over, I accept these things happen, though religion is blamed a bit too often in my opinion, the reasons are sometimes more complex than "they believe in the wrong God", or sometimes even more simple. Humans are a tribal species, and we must live with all the nastiness that entails. Tribal wars will continue even if you wipe out all the main religions, the grounds for war will just be different.



Your train ticket to the Soviet Union comes with a free abortion coupon didn't you know. After you pass the ruins of the churches, be sure to enjoy the view of the gulags where entire classes of people were sent to be worked to death on your journey to the capital. An absolute moral code that forbids things like murder and the acknowledgement of an authority higher than humans, while not guaranteeing compliance is a huge restraint on the baser will of a person or group. However unfair or nasty religious societies can be, and the nasty things they've done, we've barely touched the depths a godless society can sink to I am afraid.



East Germany was so egalitarian, they had to build minefields to stop people leaving this paradise on Earth.

Well than...what created God?