KeithHarwood

Easi-peasy. Don't equate intelligence or conciousness with `having a soul'. I don't think there is any doubt that the so-called lower forms of life have intelligence and conciousness to varying degrees. In fact, don't equate `having a soul' with any observable phenomenom. That way, you knowwho has a soul, who doesn't and who does but has sold it to Satan, and you can never be refuted.

Doubting Didymus

Thats the one.
Doesn't it have sort of stegosaurus plates on its back now, too?

By the way, Barney is clearly an allosaurus, somthing I find quite disturbing.

wildernesse

In response to the topic, I'll say that the moment I heard what evolution really was--the actual theory and the basics of how it worked--I accepted it. Of course, this didn't happen until my freshman year in Intro to Anthropology. I believe in theistic evolution I guess. I think that God had a hand in it, but I don't know where.

I had absolutely no problem seeing that it made sense, even though I was raised to believe in a literal Genesis. Also, in high school biology, I can remember thinking how glad I was that we didn't have to learn about ape-men in biology or anything about evolution--because I didn't believe in that. It's funny how much your views change in such a short amount of time--I'm nearly a 180 from most of what I believed when I was a teenager.

--tiba

[ July 23, 2002: Message edited by: wildernesse ]</p>

Stephen T-B

If you believe that human beings have a spiritual dimension and that the Judeo / Christian god stands at the heart of that dimension, your belief is unassailable. It is pure faith, requiring no evidence, no proofs. It is an internal thing which will bring you many rewards.
Once that belief becomes tangled up with what goes on in the world of 1+2=4 reality, however, complications set in: you’ve to explain the inexplicable; reconcile the irreconcilable and make sense of non-sense. You are immediately vulnerable because science, driven by our curiosity, will push you into an ever-tighter corner.
That is why the Creationist / Fundamentalist faction is always on the back foot - and has been since well before Darwin – struggling to defend the status of a fiction which is dwarfed by the truth, and consequently doomed to inventing and propagating ever-more specious and dishonest arguments.

MOJO-JOJO

What really kills me, is that when I was trying to have an intelligent argument with a creationist/believer from my church ("Tony"), he kept referring to this incident as one of many proofs of the bible's truth;

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ark-hoax/sun.html" target="_blank">Ark Hoax </a>

He is throwing this around as "factual proof" of the truth of the bible and god's existence. I tried to tell Tony that this story has been thoroughly examined and dismantled....but he wouldn't hear of it. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

It just made me realize then and there that when grown adults get a notion in their heads about something, and they want to believe it so bad, that there is absolutely NOTHING one can do to persuade them otherwise.

The human imagination is the most incredible and amazing thing we have, and it is used daily to dupe us into believing ANYthing we want to believe, no matter how ridiculous it is, and no matter if the story-teller himself later admits that his story was a complete hoax .....unbelievable.

This is exactly why I want to write a Creationist Book, sell a million copies, retire, and let everyone know that it was a joke. As long as you're telling people something that supports what they want to believe....they'll believe it!

MOJO-JOJO

Btw....Wow, nicely put. That deserves to be on a plaque and mounted somewhere for all to see.