A thread for those questions you wouldn't dare ask in real life/normally!

suck. I was answering your post of 9.53am

I agree suck. The bible sure isnt the easiest book to understand.

i think that was maybe just europe though.

i dont think we (the whole world) is necessarily related as if you think how long humans have existed and also that there were other types of upright 'man' (not sure if they are referred to as man though) before humans.

Thanks InsanelyBrainDeprived that's been bugging me for a bit.

About the bilingual dreaming- DP has been away from his home country for 30 years and if anything is more articulate in English. However, he often speaks in his sleep and it is always in his mother tongue . DC are bilingual from birth and speak both languages in their sleep.

Kim in an episode of QI stephen fry named the person/people (cant remember if more than 1) who genetic lines could all be traced back to. i wish i could remember what he said.

umm.
That is a slightly more difficult question to answer amigababy.
Yes, there should be thousands of people who are distant counsins to Jesus's brothers and sisters[sorry, cant quite remember if he had sisters, I think he did]. Though this assumes that that branch of the family did not die out at some point.

As regards distant cousins to Jesus himself.
Mary "was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit".
So we can assume that Jesus was not technically the child of Joseph. Was he technically the child of Mary, or was she just the womb for Jesus? I am not sure.

"The only conclusion is that God made some more people after Adam and Eve that are not mentioned in the bible."

from adam? that seems like it might have been important to put in the bible to save all this confusion about whether cain and abel got busy with their mum.

LittleMiss, yes.
Though more strictly speaking Noah.
Noah was in the ark with his wife, 3 sons and their wives. They wre the only ones who survived the worldwide flood.
Afterwards they then populated the earth.

suck. The only conclusion is that God made some more people after Adam and Eve that are not mentioned in the bible.

and if Mary and Joseph went on to have more children are there now thousands of people who are distant cousins of Jesus?

I can answer one.

Notanotherpackedlunch lip readers can identify strong regional dialects - well I can for example bath and Barth form different mouth shapes

ILikeTheBreeze

but where did cain's wife come from if there was only adam, eve, cain and abel?

i dont get how people can think there is a 'higher power' and especially to such an extent where some are willing to kill for it.

Letitsnow9, there was Adam and Eve. Who had Cain and Abel.
A few verses further on it says "Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch".

I don't really get archeology. I mean, I understand how objects can get buried under the earth, but when archeologists say that they have discovered a medieval church several feet below the ground for example, I don't really get it. What is it that they have discovered? Is the the church's foundations? But then they sometimes say that they have discovered a wall. Has the entire building sunk?? I just don't get it when there are other medieval buildings still at our current ground level.

What happens to the crust from bread in hospitals, I have eaten tons of hospital sandwiches and toast yet never had the crust of the bread, do they throw away 2 slices from every loaf? Bake super long loaves?

I've seen quite a few homophobic (mostly American) people justify it by saying 'it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve'. If they believe Adam and Eve in the bible as being literal then they had 2 sons, the 4 of them populated, why is this seem as fine but 2 men being in love is not

Why do people think posting the colour of their bra, where they like to keep their handbag and names of fruit as helping breast cancer?

In a male female relationship sex is normally classed as intercourse, in a lesbian relationship what is classed as sex and what's more of a fumble.

Balloon, try Ben Goldacre, Bad Science, for an analysis of studies about praying-

I think they did some studies in recent years that showed that prayer did seem to work. IIRC a group of people suffering from an illness were prayed for (not sure whether they knew it or not) and their recovery rates were better than the non prayed-for group.

I'll confess to being irritated by trivial prayer requests "Please pray for me as I have a busy week" sort of thing, as I worry that a really important prayer might get overlooked. I acknowledge that is a ridiculously simplistic way of looking at it.

brilliant balloon

Actually my answer is a bit short.
Prayers can also be praise, thanks, general chat.

But in the context of what you asked,
You make a request to God.
He can basically answer yes, no or wait.
God can change his mind. So yes, the dog may have died otherwise.
Also likes to be informed. imo, He knows exactly what is happening to Christians, but not what is happening exactly to non-Christinas [I could be wrong on that particular bit, not sure].

@ balloon!

Prayers, in Christianity are requests to God.
Nothing more, nothing less.

I don't understand the concept of praying.

If you are praying, are you actually trying to appeal to God's better nature? "Please God, don't let my dog die." If you didn't ask, would he just let the dog die? If you did ask, and the dog dies, does this mean he heard you, but chose to ignore you? If the dog lived - was this God deciding to be kind?

There was a woman after that recent tornado who's dog was found alive, when it crawled out of the rubble as she was being interviewed. (It was very moving btw :) ) and she said "God answered my prayer!" and I thought - what about the parents of those children that died - did God not answer their prayers? But he listened about your dog?

If the answer to all this is along the lines of "God has a plan" - what is the use in praying? If he does as he pleases anyway?

This is something I don't feel I can ask in real life, in case I cause offence. I am an atheist, so really what I am intrigued about is how believers view this. There are lots of very sane and clever people that pray - I am totally confused by this.

I think the reason men got the upper hand is exactly because women were always pg/breastfeeding infants - it's quite common for women to become anxious and fearful and PFB at those times, and quite easy for Mr Caveman to say "Tell you what, Ugga, you stay here and keep PFB safe and I'll go and hunt the wooly mammoth for tea," and then later heard to remark "for Ugg's sake, Ugga, I've been out all day hunting and you haven't even tidied the ugging cave!"

Eventually the other cavewomen advise Ugga to LTB.