Discussion about Jesus’s death which now encompasses creationism and the second coming. Thread 2

[ZoggyStirdust]

Continues from here if anyone wants to

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5318577-to-not-understand-why-christians-think-jesus-died-for-our-sins?page=40&reply=143772264

We might take the piss or look at them oddly if they said their dog speaks to them in English though. It’s not so much the believing in a god it’s all the quite frankly absurd stories that a grown adult should not, to my mind, be believing (talking donkeys, people disappearing up to heaven en masse without a by your leave). Those stories don’t deserve respect.

How do you know though? So many people the world over are reporting near death experiences and they have a common pattern to them. These can't be attributed to a lack of oxygen or brain chemicals either. Something happens when we die, we just don't fully know what. There is an unseen realm. Whether you want to explain this by quantum mechanics or spirituality or both is up to you, but even science is finding that we can't assume things and base our beliefs in the material world anymore.

Yes, that's my point. We all get that you can, and should if you believe, love god. I am sure one can love god as you love your child.

But you can't argue with where your child came from because we know how babies are created. And therefore you can't argue with where mankind came from in the first place; it required a woman and a man, not god, a rib and a garden.

What has been happening on the second volume of this thread is that creationists have vehemently decryed the facts on the history of earth and mankind. And that's not credible, because there is verifiable evidence that proves how the earth was created, and how it and the life on it has evolved.

edited for typos!

But that contradicts with everything we understand and know about the way the world works… Some would say it’s impossible…

God can do impossible things. If he couldn't, he wouldn't be God.

Where did this first woman and man come from though? Is it really more far fetched to say that God made them than to say that nothing exploded and people came from grown up pond slime?

Why is a talking donkey less likely to exist than God? You don't have to agree with what we believe, but it's very clear that many intelligent adults do believe these things, and we deserve to be respected, as do you.

It would be good to stay civil but when one party says “look at the facts” and the other says “I do not agree with facts” it gets hard to take them seriously. That’s why talking to fundamentalists can be frustrating.

Because the way the day of judgement is being described, it’s impossible. But as a nonbeliever it’s irrelevant to me as it can’t apply

How do you know it's taken thousands of years if it can't be observed or reproduced? Where are all the intermediate stages of evolution? Carvings from ancient Egypt are thousands of years old and cats and scarab beetles don't appear to have evolved in that time.

It would seem he can do impossible things in the eye of some but for someone who isn’t religious, these concepts are very unrealistic.

You really need to have faith to hold such beliefs and that’s fine in general, but when they conflate with reality of the here and now and what we know of the world and how it works, people will understandably query it

Why did all the marsupials head to Australia afterwards? Why did none of them walk as far as say, India, and decide this is far enough? Why are none of them mentioned in the Bible in the first place?

Well lets see. Did life on earth evolve over billions of years, and continue to evolve? Is there geological, archeological and phsycal evidence of how amoeba, invertebrae, insects, birds, animals and mankind have evolved and developed. Why yes, there is.

Or, did they suddenly appear from nowhere 5 billion years after the planet was formed, fully developed. Shortly after that, were they all wiped out a bar a boatful of animals (conveniently in pairs) and life on earth was rebooted becuase god was upset. Any evidence of that... Why no, there isn't...

I haven’t observed it in real time as no one has, but I believe what the scientists say.

EVERYTHING is an intermediate stage of evolution because evolution hasn't stopped. It's a continuous process. And lets take your cats as an example. Look at how many breeds of cat there are now. Look at how different a Maine coon is from a bengal. That's just in a couple of hundred years of targeted breeding. Is it impossible to think that with a little more time that they will differ so much that they will be unable to breed? Take a chihuahua and a St. Bernard. They could not possibly reproduce naturally now. In a sense they are different species now. All evolution needs is time.

You believe he does answer some prayers, don’t you?

So if he is capable of doing so then why does he answer some but not those of thousands of religious children every year who pray to god (who they wholeheartedly believe in) to stop the sexual abuse they are being subjected to?

Why does allowing the free will of the person raping the child take priority over the prayers of the child, if god is omnipotent and does answer some prayers?

It’s a genuine questions as nobody has actually answered this on here I don’t think.

Some species of bacteria have been unequivocally observed to have evolved over a period of a few years, because they have a very short generation time. Creationists say that this doesn't count though 🙄

Ah, so fossils can be used as a fact to support the belief that there was a flood a couple of thousand years ago (even though fossils take around 10,000 years to form and it is impossible for a flood to have covered the whole world and then subsided in 40 days). But can't be used to support evolution... Okay... that stacks up ;)

Analysis shows that an ark that big could house the number of animals required (around 6,000) but does not show that the people of that time had the capability of building such a vessel. It also fails to take into account the 40 days (and nights...) of food and water required for all those animals. Or indeed the waste generated and how just two people would deal with it all. But, why let facts get in the way of a good story

Yet he can’t (won’t?) help a neglected child? 🤨

Or how you keep the animals safe from each other. Or how animals from around the globe got to the ark.

https://apologeticspress.org/the-flood-explains-the-fossil-record-5751/

Creationists don't deny that evolution happens within species, but one species does not evolve into another. None of the bacteria that have been observed to evolve have evolved into different types of organism.

Believers can’t answer it without sounding like a psycho enabler.

Honestly, I can't answer that one. Why did God let my Mum die of cancer when she was only 55? Why am I permanently disabled and in a wheelchair after an accident I barely survived? Why is my child deaf? Bad things happen to Christians too, because we live in a fallen world. This world is temporary though, and I have an eternity of being with God, with my Mum, with me being able to walk and run and jump to look forward to.

Can you explain how that link is supposed to help please? It is not and does not pretend to be scientifcally accurate.