Continuing with the Bible as a trusted source, several things are clear:
The early chapters in the Bible are little more than war stories and accounts of nomads. In fact, the Bible is predominantly based on war and barbarism. This is further enhanced by looking at how man has used the Bible and to a larger degree, has used religion as a whole to control other groups of people and to kill others with divine certitude. This is perhaps my strongest point, that early peoples all the way through to modern man use religion for their own political purposes. Knowing this to be an absolute fact, can you trust a work such as the Bible knowing how man has consistently used and abused religion for his own ends? NO WAY!
It is important to take the Bible for what it is: a collection of stories to teach people. You may be going on the grounds that people were educated several thousand years ago. In fact, most people could only speak and not read nor write. They thought that the earth was flat, woman were property much like cattle, simple, common natural phenomena (a total eclipse, comets, volcanoes) had huge consequences on daily life, etc. The Bible is really a collection of war stories to show why our side won, and to justify it, and a collection of stories to instruct “virtual children” how to behave in society.
I want to take a brief break from explaining why the Bible cannot, and should not be trusted as an absolute when it comes to the origins of everything. If you even want to continue this discussion, assuming you don’t think that I am a total jerk, you should probably at least read everything at the following link:
http://books.nap.edu/html/creationism I would prefer that everyone who wants to argue evolution vs. creationism at least take collegiate level biology, genetics and molecular biochemistry classes so that the theory of evolution can be intelligently debated. This brings me to another point. I have never heard of evolution described as a fact, but ONLY as a theory, just the same as gravity is only a theory. Do Christians not fall down? Something like Carbon 14 dating, however, is a fact and can be demonstrated as a fact to anyone. In contrast, creationism should not even be considered a theory. It is a story, well two stories really, that encompass maybe 1,000 words.
I also want to explain how science works. Science works on the basis of looking at an unknown and then trying to describe it using the known. On a deeper level, science is, although not absolutely, free of corruption. Rarely do scientists ever seek to control or harm others with the use of science. Instead, government fills that position first with religion close behind. If you can come up with an instance where a scientist on his own initiation and volition used science for the control or degradation of a population, please let me know. The instances where government and religion have done this are too numerous to even begin listing them. If we had a list, it would probably be 1000 to 1, government and religion to scientist misuses of science.
Science itself, evolves unknowns into theories, into discarded theories and more theories, into facts. Someday, science may disprove the theory of evolution, but for now it seems to work well. The amount of time and analysis that has gone into Evolution is far from trivial, whereas the stories in the Bible are trivial in length and scope. The Bible is static, and not only is it static, but it is absolute. It is absolute apostasy for any new interpretations of what is in the Bible. While science can repostulate theories based on new evidence, the Bible is the Bible and that’s that.
There is so much more I want to say, but I really ought to wind down. The Intelligent Designer theory sounds rather cruel and certainly does not jive with God as the all-loving God we are supposed to think of (neither does the Bible for that matter, but that’s a whole different controversy). Would a God so intelligent create a system with such terrible consequences for its inhabitants? I mean, if you have the intelligence to create a human, why are there so many terrible things in the world, and on a completely different level, why are things in general not all living in harmony, which seems like a much better way to go if you are going to the trouble of creating it all, unless God is cruel. No, I don’t believe in the Intelligent Designer theory because there is little intelligence in what was designed.
One final problem with the Bible as an absolutely trusted source is the notion of its own and singular Christian God. If one God created everything from Adam on down to Noah, then washed it all away and left Noah and his children, how did other Gods come about? I mean, these people had personal relationships with God, the one God. If this is all they knew, how did new gods come about? There would have been no need. In fact, early believers in Yahweh were polytheistic. You just can’t trust these people.
Kellee, it is very important for you to understand where I am coming from with this narrative. You see, I actually think that Creationism falls within the same bounds as Nazism. Nazism was in part based on the scientific theory of Eugenics. It was used by Hitler, however, as justification for killing “subordinate races” moving on to ruling the world. Eugenics had no scientific fact to back it up, it was only a theory. I see Creationism as the same thing: a Christian theory (story) that will be used in public schools that will pull people into the Christian way of thinking. It is irrelevant whether this way of thinking is right or wrong. I don’t think that religion, ANY religion, has the right to use government to espouse its moral and political objectives and I see great harm in teaching young children a philosophy espoused by such a religion, one that has very strong political and moral objectives. This is in contrast to Buddhism, say. There are NO political or moral objectives taught in Evolution. It ONLY seeks to explain one way that all living things have come about. Furthermore, I care about you. While I think that your belief in God is great, I am envious in fact, and I would NEVER want to do anything that would dissuade you from your faith, I think that anyone who believes in creationism might as well believe that the earth is flat. Much like at some point in history the sacrificing of animals to God (defined by God in Numbers and Deuteronomy as one of the most important things to him) was stopped and seen as a barbaric ritual, I believe that Christians need to understand where reality starts and the Bible ends. Religion and a strong belief in God is important, but so is knowing when to take the stories in the Bible as teachings and when to take them as absolute fact.
I will stop here for now.
Love
Shaun