If I did not know the span of time separating Kepler and Verne, I would swear their “friend” was the same man.

Who knows. Maybe one of them Watchers, if they exist, subtly providing them with revelations here and there.

Kepler is quite an apart personality too, may-be more subtile than Jules Vernes

the argument OVER darwin…

sorry.

the argument of Darwin is almost comical, but i really find it tragic. He observed something and wondered how it worked. since then he’s been damned and cursed, praised and deified.

his observation led to other peoples observations. along this path many interesting things have been found.

When people argue about Evolution they often bring up their feelings about Darwin. but let me bring up the working definition of evolution: it is a change in allele frequency in a population over time.

huh. what’s that? it’s really a change in the occurance of certain genes in a population. lots of things can bring this about. darwin described some of them. he did not describe all of them. neither did gregor mendel. but they got a glimpse of the truth and shared their little pieces of it with us.

i’ve personally cut and spliced genes and give genes to populations that did not have them before. it’s fundamental for undergraduate molecular biology. i don’t doubt evolution. I count it as one of our blessings.

We know alot more about the world than some people are comfortable with. Personally i find life AMAZING and love learning about it. I don’t necessarily feel threatened by what we learn as we study the world around us and our part in it. I do think truth and knowledge are blessings, but I do think they can be abused and turned to the designs and advantage of less than noble souls. As with many things it’s the people using the tools to keep an eye on, not the tools themselves.

You have there a good understanding of the meaning, or a facet of it. That does not prevent others from interpreting it in the literal sense, thusly by inversion, God looks like a human. Anthropomorphization, like I said.

As for the points you make.

Re Peter 1:20,21:
The problem is merely semantics. The prophets did not receive dictations. They received information and wrapped it in the frame of reference relevant to their contemporaries so the message is understood in that context. That is one of the problems with interpreting stuff outside of the cultural niveau of a prophecy origin–a great deal of ambiguity. For instance, the Revelation of John… you can see clearly how many interpretations the book spawned and some with contradictory conclusions. The context is largely missing at this time; in fact not too many were even aware of the context at the time the book was written.

Re Genesis 1:27:
The problem here is what is meant by “image”. Is it the physical characteristics? If you dive into Sumerian sources (yes, the story of Genesis is described in Sumerian literature and in more elaborate terms, and don’t forget that Abraham came from Sumerian city of Ur, whence he brought the original story from), you’d find out that the Bible contains rather a condensed version of the story. In the Sumerian version, the term image would have a meaning that would be closer to our concept of a soul–imprint of a soul, thusly. The second hint in the Sumerian literature is that the image means information and its rendition (naturally, the post I write and the disk it is stored on aren’t the same, are they?). What kind of information and its rendition we are talking about is documented by the frequent appearance of intertwined snakes on cylindrical seals within scenes that depict the creation of adam (a.da.mu–those that from mud came). Notice I did not say Adam, because that is what the Sumerian story states–creation of a kind, not of a single individual named a.da.mu. BTW, Eve (eb.da ->eba->eva) does not mean “from rib-she”, but “from mud-she”, contextually a “substance, a building material”. The “rib” is simple Hebrew mistranslation or may be a play on words sounding similarly.

Thanks, Gerry. I don’t know either, whether it’s intentional or not, but I’m starting to get used to it, LOL.

You’re always seeing connections and meanings everywhere. I like that about you.

…the Bible is not a Word of God, but a word of men how they see and interpret God. It is an inspired edifice.

Well actually, the Bible claims itself to be the exact opposite of the above statement. 2 Peter 1:20,21: “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

What I said @41 has nothing to do with anthropomorphization. Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Unlike plants or animals, man already has within him the inherent ability to know something (but not everything) about God, who He is, what he is like, what is His nature; in short, no anthropomorphizing needed.

I didn’t say that no Christian could possibly believe in evolution. I was giving one possible answer to JMH’s question of why many Christians view evolution and the existence of God as incompatible.

I may or may not have, as you asserted, a narrow viewpoint, but I don’t think that a rejection of evolution as true is necessarily a proof of one’s narrow-mindedness. See the comments of RWE @18 or maineman @19, for instance.