Picky, picky, picky. Cortex7 simply said, "... a high radiation shower... ." The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs WERE a high radiation shower compared with the way we are hit by cosmic and UV radiation. What are you, some kind of nut?

Both animals and people appear to make choices. But the choices that we all make are based entirely on stimulus of some kind. Often the stimulus is made up of complex stimuli, that nobody could track down and pinpoint - almost in the same way nobody could ever track all the molecules of air that make a leaf blow this way or that in the wind, and the way that they work to make the leaf move. It's all cause and effect, action and reaction. The only way in which it is not cause and effect is in people. It works like this.

Nobody, no person, knows for a fact what will happen, even in the next second. We trust that things will happen in certain ways, based on our experience. Yet, sometimes our trust is misplaced. If it weren't, there wouldn't be any car accidents, or people killed in airliner crashes.

The thing that we trust in, is our down-deep knowledge of God. And God measures our trust in Him and makes tweaks to things in life, so that it appears that we have made choices that are different than simple cause and effect. And they ARE different than simple cause and effect. Yet, they are God's tweaks, based on the way He reads the trust and faith we have in Him.

NOTE: Like it or not, way down deep, you trust in God, and you have a certain amount of faith in Him. If you didn't, you'd be dead. What I can't understand is why people would rather ignore God, thereby committing slow suicide (It takes a long time to quench the faith God put into your heart of every person.), than accept Him and live?

Check out Who the Angel of the Lord is in the O.T.  Many Bible scholars believe that He is Jesus before He was born of Mary. If there is no angel name (like Gabriel), and the text says the rather than an Angel of the Lord, the angel described has the attributes of God, Himself.

The book of Zechariah in the O.T. seems to have the best description of the Angel of the Lord. In it, the Angel is more than the other angels and creatures of God, yet the Angel is less than God Himself. This is similar to what Jesus is outside of the time that He spends as a man walking the earth.

This agrees with 1 Corinthians 15:27,28 where it says, "27 For he 'has put everything under his feet.' Now when it says that 'everything' has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all."

Hebrews explains that the angels are winds and flames of fire, not beings with the attributes of God.

All self replicating molecules come from other self replicating molecules. No self replicating molecules occur spontaneously from non-self replicating molecules. No self replicating molecules survive individually, on their own, without a whole lot of support molecules surrounding them to maintain them in their self replicating capacity.


The only evidence that we have of a high radiation shower that produced mutations are Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No advancement in the mutations has been observed. Only retardation and death has been observed.


So far many of the mutations on earth have lived to breed, while many others have not survived. When mankind mutated from perfection in the Garden of Eden, to imperfection, he cause mutation around the whole earth. The only reason that life on earth survives this mutation long enough to continue breeding is that God has mercy on mankind, and has granted him and the world strength to live and breed.


While this paragraph doesn't make much sense, genetic algorithms are simply patterns of life translated into the language of mathematics. They have nothing to do with evolution. They simply show the ability programmed into the nature of living organisms to survive under many adverse conditions.


Nowhere in nature do we see nature selecting anything. Selection has to do with choice. What we DO see is cause and effect. As far as we scientifically see, even the choices that people make are programmed into them, so that they make the choices the way they do. While the only thing that we can scientifically see is 100% programming, no selection, I can show you how there IS selection available to mankind, but you won't like what I show you.


Actually, it was God who planned and coded this universe. There is no evidence for anything other than this. God did it because He loved mankind, before mankind existed, and even after mankind made his own faulty choices to go against God. Going against God will only cause a person to force himself/herself out of existence. Rather, why not submit to the loving God and be saved?

If the idea of evolution has to do with randomness, then, because of the difficulty involved along with probability, evolution is impossible.

If the idea of evolution has to do with cause and effect, then, because of the difficulty involved, the proof for God has to do with universe/machine > machine Maker = no evolution.

If it has to do with a combination of the two (randomness at times), or with something else entirely, then we don't have a clue, and evolution theory is entirely pointless.

Why would you think that such a large number of stars and planets has anything to do with greater odds that certain improbable conditions exist? Those stars/planets are part of our universe. The same probability exists there as here. In fact, the probability of being able to house life on multitudes of them is far less than here, because the kind of star we have, and the position the earth holds around that star, are very favorable for life. Most of those others don't even have that.

Sorry. Me bad for assuming that you were, in part, talking about infinity when you mentioned a webpage - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem - that has as one of its basic premises the idea of an infinite amount of time. And, in real life, it seems that you almost have to have eternity for an infinite amount of time to exist. Sorry.

Actually, the creation story in the Bible is very vague, at least the part before the creation of people. When you sit down and read this before-part slowly, you will see that:

1. Time and the universe and the electromagnetic spectrum were very different than what they are today;
2. There is or could be an expanse of something that resembles time before the beginning, but isn't time in the way we understand it. The beginning might only be the beginning of the universe as we know it now, and even 6,000 years ago, after it was fully created, (when it was set as it is now) it was different;
3. The separation of the waters is similar to making different groups of materials in space, all of them being separated from the basic mass that was called earth;
4. That "before" the first day was created, following when God created light, that the electromagnetic spectrum and sub-atomic particles were different in nature, so much as to not be able to call "time" before the first day "time;"
5. The sun, moon and stars were made out of the materials that had been previously separate when the waters were separated.

Anyway, you all get the point. Go back and read slowly, and see what is happening.

To me, this passage/parable is very vague for showing that the early believers didn't go to the paradise until the time of or after Christ's incarnation.

I agree, however, that "things" were very different before the suffering/death/resurrection than after.

There is a large following that hold to the idea that the thousand years in the Revelation is figurative, that it is figurative of the whole time from Jesus' death and resurrection on earth until final judgment, that it depicts Satan's death, and that Satan was raised from the dead at the time he was let out of the abyss (which may have already happened). The world changes when there is no Satan around to do the actual tempting. Without Satan, people are only tempted by their own lusts, etc., and by the lusts of other people.

Actually, no person supports the belief of any other person exactly. So, what does this mean? 

Eternity and infinity are gigantic terms. Their in-depth understanding is mostly outside of our understanding.

Nature around us suggests only beginning and ending. Such things as infinity and eternity are not clearly indicated in nature. Everything has a beginning, especially the life of plants and animals, and people. These also have an ending. No infinity and eternity.

While the cosmos is gigantic, both in the macro and the micro, we are uncertain about its continuation in either direction. We are simply too limited in our ability to observe these things at present.

Parallel Universes. Quantum mechanics suggests that for each correct solution to a puzzle (answer to a question), there are an infinite number of incorrect solutions. What's interesting is that the reverse is true in quantum mechanics as well. For each incorrect solution to a puzzle, there are an infinite number of correct answers. This is mind boggling. It also suggests that modern advancements exist simply because we believe that they exist, not because they are scientific facts. Think about it.

Consider pure randomness. Virtually ALL science is based on cause and effect, action and reaction. All scientists are trained to look at what exists, and find out more, based on what they have seen that exists already. Because of this, scientists show that there is really no probability; pure randomness doesn't seem to exist, because everything that they learn is based on cause and effect. Although we use randomness daily throughout our lives, pure randomness is so extremely abstract that we almost can't conceive of it. Only Buddhists and Hindus talk about emptying themselves in meditation. Is this where religion borders on science?

The point is, if we ever get to the point that we can start to "see" everything that exists, we just might find that there IS a beginning and end, to all of it. But what we will probably also find is that the way we fit into the universe produces in us a seeming eternal and infinite existence, at least while we are conscious.

Chuckle.   

Good. Show it to me. I could have missed it. 

LOL

 

Yet, God is not an idol, unless the idol happens to be God, that is.

So, how do we distinguish where the dividing line is? I mean, if I say God is a redhead, and you say that God is a blonde, and that is the only difference we have about God, we probably both are talking about the same God, only we have a difference of understanding, or one or both of us have a misunderstanding. God might have brown hair.

However, if I say God is a lizard, and you say God is a bear, and someone else says God is the sun, and yet another person says that God is simply a spirit, maybe we are talking about different gods here.

Oh, you are so good in this point. 

Yet, the things that the Gospels, the Revelation, Jesus, and St. Paul say indicate that the faithful believers will be with God at and after death. So, was Samuel not a believer? Or does God dwell with His Paradise and passed believers in the Ground? Or might it have been a lying spirit and not Samuel at all?

Perhaps the spirits of the dead separate. After all, even believers are not entirely faithful. Perhaps the unfaithful spiritual part of believers remains in the ground, while the faithful part goes on to live with God in glory forever.

That's right. The conditions occur in nature. The thing we are trying to figure out is how they occur in nature. We don't see the coming-together of the conditions in nature. We only see that they HAVE come together, and that they work. By bringing them together in a test tube, we were able to see that it takes great intelligence to bring the things together, even in simple form. How much greater, therefore, must be the intelligence that brought the things together in nature? That is what God is like. Highly intelligent and capable beyond understanding.


Well, it is fun to say it. But the evidence listed above shows that the reality is exactly the opposite.


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

As in, based in suppositions.

Who was the spirit that came up when King Saul used the witch of Endor to call up the Prophet Samuel just prior to the war with the Philistines where Saul lost his life?

Now, now. Be gentle with Rigon. After all, St. Paul says that we are not supposed to argue. Consider Rigon like I consider him and many others in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=778346.0.