DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Christians4LessGvt on December 25, 2011, 09:46:48 AM
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(http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/gallup-logo.JPG)
Christianity Remains Dominant Religion in the United States
Majority still says religion is very important in their lives
by Frank Newport
December 23, 2011
PRINCETON, NJ -- This Christmas season, 78% of American adults identify with some form of Christian religion. Less than 2% are Jewish, less than 1% are Muslim, and 15% do not have a religious identity. This means that 95% of all Americans who have a religious identity are Christians.
These results are based on a compilation of 327,244 interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking from January-November 2011. The detailed breakdown shows that about a third of American Christians are Catholics, while two-thirds identify as Protestants or some other non-Catholic Christian religion. All in all, 82.5% of Americans have some form of religious identity.
Gallup's methods of measuring religious identity have changed over the decades, but one major trend that is clear from Gallup's and other organizations' surveys is the increase in the percentage of Americans who do not have a formal religious identity. Some 60 years ago, in 1951, for example, just 1% of Americans in Gallup surveys said they didn't have a religious identity. At that time, Gallup classified 68% of Americans as identifying with a non-Catholic Christian faith, and 24% who were Catholic.
Separate Gallup questioning earlier this year shows that 92% of Americans say they believe in God. This suggests that the lack of a religious identity is not in and of itself a sign of the total absence of religiosity.
Additionally, in two separate surveys conducted in May and in late November/early December of this year, an average of 55% of Americans said religion is very important in their lives, another 26% said it is fairly important, and 19% said it is not very important.
Americans' self-reported importance of religion has remained broadly stable over the past three or four decades, with a slight increase in the percentage saying religion is not very important, and a slight decrease in the percentage saying it is fairly important. Surveys conducted in the 1950s and 1960s showed a higher percentage saying religion was very important.
Bottom Line
The United States remains a predominantly Christian nation, with 78% of all adults identifying with a Christian faith, and more than 9 in 10 of those who have a religious identity identifying as Christians. Fifteen percent of Americans do not have a formal religious identity, a continuation of a dramatic change from 50 and 60 years ago, when almost all Americans identified with a particular religion. The precise implications of the increase in the "no religious identity" segment are not clear, given that more than 9 in 10 Americans say they believe in God, and that 8 in 10 say religion is a very or fairly important part of their lives.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of the Gallup Daily tracking survey Jan. 2-Nov. 30, 2011, with a random sample of 327,244 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is 1 percentage point.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 400 cell phone respondents and 600 landline respondents per 1,000 national adults, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents by region. Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cell phone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.
Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, and phone status (cell phone only/landline only/both, cell phone mostly, and having an unlisted landline number). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2010 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/151760/Christianity-Remains-Dominant-Religion-United-States.aspx (http://www.gallup.com/poll/151760/Christianity-Remains-Dominant-Religion-United-States.aspx)
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We couldn't learn that by looking at the non cable channels on sunday? I call it the pass the donation plate show.
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So what?
How many think the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost favor less government?
An interesting point about those Trinity Broadcasting preachers: many of them are so deeply weird (Benny Hinn as a prime example) that it would be impossible to do a parody of them. They are already more strange than any possible parody.
Hinn arranges a group of the faithful in a circle, with a helper standing behind each one. Then he taps each one in sequence, and each of them collapses and is stretched out in circle around Hinn. Each collapses in exactly the same way.
It is choreographed, like a Bollywood movie.
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I just look at incredibly good looking people. You'd be hard press to convince me that looks was not on the hiring process.
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Channel 51 here in Miami has a popular Latino variety show called Sabado Gigante, and I have been in the studio audience a couple of times. You make a reservation and tell people your age. Then they send you a ticket, which means you get to wait for hours before the up to two hours before the recording. They seat the older people in the top seats, which are never seen on the show. They have people who have never heard of their Argentine, Venezuelan and Chilean sponsors cheer and applaud for bathroom cleansers, toy store chains and department stores that they have never heard of and even sing ad jingles from huge cards they hold up.
They record about 2½ hours at a time, and then they cut and paste different recordings, so segments of the show the viewers see on TV eventually are composed of three or four recording sessions. If anyone sneezes or gets up and runs to the bathroom, it is edited out. On occasion they do a complete retake of a segment.
Before the start of the show, they give everyone a ham and cheese sandwich and a soft drink and at the end, after Don Francisco and the cameramen have all cleared out, they give out four $50 bills and have a drawing for a large flatscreen TV.
It is all pretty tacky: the show, the silly games they play, the interviews of disaster victims, and so on, but it is amazing that no one really complains about the hard seats, the long waits, and the fact that only five people out of maybe 200 get paid anything at all. As I said, older people are shuttled to the upper back rows, and their faces are not distinguishable on the completed shows in which they participated. There is some very clever planning involved in this.
I am sure that the religious shows you mention are planned in the same way.
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"Christianity Remains Dominant Religion in the United States"
Big deal. Even bigger is that the First Amendmant to the US Constitution is still in effect.
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I am sure that the religious shows you mention are planned in the same way.
*All* shows with a live audience are done this way. My wife and I went to a taping of Craig Ferguson, and it was very similar to what you describe. They almost put my wife in "lesbian row" but she didn't want to be separated from me.
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*All* shows with a live audience are done this way.
I have not experienced all shows, of course, but I strongly suspect that this is true. No doubt there is a trade manual, followed by everyone or most people in the business that details how to deal with studio audiences. Miami Channel 23 is not a high budget enterprise, there is a major air of tackiness about the entire operation.
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This means that 95% of all Americans who have a religious identity are Christians.
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Being as I was raised as a Methodist and my grandfather was a Methodist minister, I would say that I have a religious identity as a Christian. I dislike evangelists who have never actually read the Bible talking to me as though I was unaware of its existence in their usual patronizing tone. I have read both testaments twice with the aid of concordances written by the devout and Isaac Azimov, and can say that it does not seem like the word of God or divinely inspired to me. I do not believe in the rather silly Book of Revelation, which seems to me to be the delusions of a rather obsessive madman (for lack of a more clinical term). It seems really foolish to me to take the NT and apply it to contemporary US politics, as in the name "Christians for less government". The contemporary US to me seems to have more in common with Star Trek: TNG than with the world of the backwater part of the Roman Empire that is described in the NT.
I would say that regular church attendance is probably a better index of the actual influence of Christianity on the people of this country. Christianity seems to have more influence on this country than any other religion, and I do not see this likely to change in my lifetime, or even that of the following generation.
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Some interesting poll results of self identifying christians and their levels of church attendance.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_rate.htm (http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_rate.htm)
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I dislike evangelists who have never actually read the Bible
interest you said this. when i was in w,virginia I met alot of very religious people and wasw shocked they never heard of the tower of babylon and thought it was a made up story. I found out later alot of people in the south don`t read the bible and only get thier info exclusively from the preacher.
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The USA should remain Christian for everyone who loves the USA.
But Christianity is felt in its members one by one ,there is no extra strength for my Christianity in your Christianity nor in the Christianity of thousands.
The better strength of my Christianity is to have more Christ in it.
That Christ is good for the USA is not to say that Christ needs the sanction of the USA, rather the other way around .
Reguardless each one Christian must be a volenteer to Christ , then after that a member of one or another group of believers.
If offered a choice of betrayals , would I first betray my faith to my savior , or my oath to our constitution?
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I dislike evangelists who have never actually read the Bible
interest you said this. when i was in w,virginia I met alot of very religious people and wasw shocked they never heard of the tower of babylon and thought it was a made up story. I found out later alot of people in the south don`t read the bible and only get thier info exclusively from the preacher.
Why should this be a slander on the South?
Where isn't it so?
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didn`t know I was slandering the south. I was just stating stuff I witness and was told. the only southern state i`ve been to was w,virgina and was told by a more treligious friend about why the people i met didn`t not know about the tower of babylon.
that same friend was very scared about me going there . she kept thinking I`d get killed going to the south.
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Plane "That Christ is good for the USA is not to say that Christ needs the sanction of the USA, rather the other way around."
How, and why, would Christ sanction the USA?
BSB
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Kimba,
You never visited the New South. We even have tongs in Atlanta. You would blend in in Atlanta just as well as you would in SF.
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Plane "That Christ is good for the USA is not to say that Christ needs the sanction of the USA, rather the other way around."
How, and why, would Christ sanction the USA?
BSB
He might not. It is something to be worried about.
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
-Thomas Jefferson
Gods sanction should be sought in obedience to him, not in asking God for retroactice approval on stuff he would not normally have approved.
http://jpetrie.myweb.uga.edu/TJ.html (http://jpetrie.myweb.uga.edu/TJ.html)
Of course Thomas Jefferson is pretty terriffic for quotes.
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-Thomas Jefferson
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I don't see a how or why in there Plane. How would Christ sanction the United States, and why would he? Is it Christ's job to sanction nation states? And if so, exactly how would he do it? Would he make them more prosperous? Would he reduce the number of natural disasters? Would he make their warriors fiercer? Would he send their leader a congratulatory email? Would he make their churches grander?
BSB
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I have lived in West Virginia, Virginia, Missouri and Maryland as well as Florida.
West Virginia is not exactly Southern. It seems to be a colony of Pennsylvania economically, and rather backward in comparison with the rest of the country. The Black population is smaller than in any Southern or border state, and has little impact on the local culture.
My observation after 30 years of church attendance is that sermons are derived from a very small portion of the Bible, mostly the New Testament, Genesis and the various "prophesies" of the Old Testament that allegedly predict the Messiah. I recall at least some mention of the Tower of Babel in a Methodist Church, but Methodists seem to tend to be more intellectual than evangelicals, and spend a lot less time yammering about Revelation and the End Times.
You won't run across a lot of mention of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Numbers or Ecclesiastes in sermons.
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I don't see a how or why in there Plane. How would Christ sanction the United States, and why would he? Is it Christ's job to sanction nation states? And if so, exactly how would he do it? Would he make them more prosperous? Would he reduce the number of natural disasters? Would he make their warriors fiercer? Would he send their leader a congratulatory email? Would he make their churches grander?
BSB
Yes of course, any of those or all.
Though Isreal is first , the rewards are for obedience, and the punishments are for disobiedence.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+28&version=NIV (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+28&version=NIV)
Deuteronomy 28:12
The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none.
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Since the idea is that God awarded Israel to the Hebrews, the prosperity of the country is also a blessing from God to the entire population, rather than to individuals. Collective punishment and reward was seen as the norm in ancient times, and sucking up to deities was commonplace, as we see in the statues to Athena, Zeus, Hermes and so on in Greece and throughout the Mediterranean.
In our modern times, we do not see collective punishment as valid. Punishing Alabama for the Gulf oil spill or West Virginia for despoiling the mountains and rivers is something we would never tolerate in this country.
When Robertson claimed that Haitians were being punished for their ancestors taking an oath to Satan, or 9-11 was a punishment for gay marriages, most Americans saw this as major nuttiness.
There are those that point out that the OT prophets claimed that God was so annoyed by the many sins of the Hebrews that he would rain destruction down on them and they would be evicted from the Promised Land forever. And then of course, the Babylonians and then the Persians conquered them. But the generations that were fingered for being so sinful were dead and gone when these invasions occurred. So it was like the US today being punished for the Civil War atrocities. A poor sense of history makes prophesies seem relevant.
Mass punishment was very popular in the Bible. It seemed to make sense to the people of those times. But then when the Jews were punished for Hitler for the loss of WWI and the dethronement of the Kaiser, that was seen as a totally bad thing.
I am not saying that the Jews actually were any more responsible for the loss of WWI, but the idea that any people should be punished en masse was seem as simply wrong, for whatever reason.
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"Yes of course, any of those or all. ................., the rewards are for obedience, and punishments are for disobedience."
Plane, you're funning me. You don't really believe that do you?
BSB
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"Yes of course, any of those or all. ................., the rewards are for obedience, and punishments are for disobedience."
Plane, you're funning me. You don't really believe that do you?
BSB
What should I beleive and qualify as a Christian?
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Collective punishment and reward was seen as the norm in ancient times,...............................In our modern times, we do not see collective punishment as valid.
Has a superbowl ring ever been awarded individually?
Are the "Greeks " good members of the "EU"?
Does the USA have a "AAA" credit rating?
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The Superbowl ring is not a punishment. They award a ring to each player as an individual.
The Greek people and the American people have individual credit ratings. It is the GOVERNMENTS, not the people that have the credit ratings you mention.
Collective punishments are not seen as just in modern times as they were in the Old Testament.
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The Superbowl ring is not a punishment. They award a ring to each player as an individual.
The Greek people and the American people have individual credit ratings. It is the GOVERNMENTS, not the people that have the credit ratings you mention.
Collective punishments are not seen as just in modern times as they were in the Old Testament.
You can individually earn a super bowl ring?
Governments are individual entitys?
So you understand Mitt Romneys point that Companys are people?
I feel for the individuals of Enron these days.
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"What should I believe and qualify as a Christian?"
I asked you a direct unambiguous question plane. It would polite to answer it.
BSB
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Companies are NOT people. Companies are fictitious people according to a stupid verdict of the Supreme Court.
Governments are also not people. They are public entities. In the Old Testament, collective punishment was seen as a normal thing. To the medieval Church, Adam and Eve took extremely poor culinary advice from a talking snake and they and all their descendents were thrown out of a perfect and harmonious environment. Later, all but Noah and his family were judged to be defective and sinful and condemned to death by drowning.
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What does one need to be a Christian?
Generally, most churches would say that the Apostles' Creed is the basis. The Anglican Church has two versions of this:
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In the Church of England there are currently two authorized forms of the creed: that of the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and that of Common Worship (2000).
Book of Common Prayer [19][20][21]
I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead, and buried:
He descended into hell;
The third day he rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost;
The holy Catholick Church;
The Communion of Saints;
The Forgiveness of sins;
The Resurrection of the body,
And the Life everlasting.
Amen.
Common Worship[22]
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.
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can corporations vote ?
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can corporations vote ?
No
But they can contribute to political campaigns.
Money is speech apparently.
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What happens to a company happens to all of its people.
When a ship sinks , the whole crew is wetted.
When Atlanta drinks half the river The Citys downstream in Alabama and Florida have to make do with half size rivers.
When the Raiders loose the the Steelers , or vice versa there may be a MVP but the MVP is not an individual that wins or looses the game by himself.
When the nation makes some behavior taboo, or the government makes some actions illeagal, it is seldom effective on few , it is effective on that class of persons that crave to transgress the more.
If someone says he doesn't like collective punishments , rewards, what can they do about it?
Some things are appropriate for individuals and some things are appropriate to groups, including some good fortunes and some punishments.
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None of these things you describe is the result of a judicial process, which we have come to see as necessarily fair and just.
Nature is neither fair nor just, that is pretty clear.
The idea of an afterlife is one way that humans have devised to bring fairness into the world. If you are evil in this world and go unpunished, God will get you in the next. Recently I have seen cartoons depicting Kim Jong Il, Qaddaffi and Assad all contemplating their new assignment in the underworld. Saddam in Hell was a recurring theme in South Park.
As Maud was wont to say "God will get you for that, Arthur!"
If someone does not like the punishment meted out by a court, there is a possibility of an appeal. If one does not like the punishment of Nature, bad luck or How the Cookie Crumbles, there is always a possibility of God setting it right in the afterlife. If one disagrees with God, then one is stuck with the verdict. God is the celestial equivalent of the Supreme Court.
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I used to work with a satanist(really cool guy,has the best house parties) and we both used to deal with this holier than thou co-worker who even had a preacher husband.
I couldn`t help it and said to my friend , if thier is a heaven and hell. I know 100% you will be in charge of her in the after-life.
he always say" you`re the sickest baptist i ever knew".
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Nature, just doing her thing, can be cruel to all manner of species. The environment is far from being a consistently hospitable place. We all in fact live on the edge of a rocky cliff. But to think that this lack of hospitality is purposely engineered, and metered out, as a form of judgement is a very sad interpretation of reality. In fact it is so far off the mark I wouldn't whish a mind that lived with that interpretation on my worst enemy.
BSB
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Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life
End over end neither left nor to right
Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights
Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life.
Make me, oh make me, Lord more than I am
Make me a piece in your master game plan
Free from the earthly tempestion below
I’ve got the will, Lord if you’ve got the toe.
Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life
End over end neither left nor to right
Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights
Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life.
Take all the brothers who’ve gone on before
And all of the sisters who’ve knocked on your door
All the departed dear loved ones of mine
Stick’em up front in the offensive line.
Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life
End over end neither left nor to right
Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights
Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life.
Yeah, Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life
End over end neither left nor to right
Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights
Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life.
Sung by Bobby Bare, words and music by Paul Craft
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"Drop kick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life"
Heh, heh. That is a great and truly American metaphor.
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God is the celestial equivalent of the Supreme Court.
Good point!
Take note that no scripture in the Bible points to communal punishment in the afterlife.
Evolution is team play, and God is ,in part, all of nature .
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The truth is that the Old Testament says almost nothing of the afterlife. It was not a major topic for Jesus, either.
It was, however, a major theme of the Gospels and all of the stuff that followed.
God did, according to the prophets, communally punish pretty much every group mentioned at least once, including the entire 'human race in the case of Adam& Eve and everyone but Noah & Co. And He didn't hide behind nature to do it, either.
Evolution is mentioned nowhere in the Scriptures, as I am sure you are aware.
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The truth is that the Old Testament says almost nothing of the afterlife. It was not a major topic for Jesus, either.
Havent read it eh?
That is not the truth.
I don't need to draw a distinction between Nature and God .
God Runs Nature.
"Evolution" the word is not used but earlyer than 1800 who would have used it in this context?, When Jacob was paid in cattle, all of the calves emerged in the selected color, was this a miricle or Jacob's understanding of selective breeding? How is the reader supposed to understand that all of a heard producing calves of a selected color is unusual?
The Scripture states that esch creature brings forth after its own kind, an understanding of nature equaled in science in about the year 1735.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnaean_taxonomy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnaean_taxonomy)
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Where does the OT address the afterlife, other than suggesting that Moses was sucked straight up into Heaven?
I do not deny that the OT gets into sheep breeding, but that is not any theory of evolution.
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Air has hydrogen and oxygen,that's not in the bible. But genesis state animals came before man.
People got no reason to get upset about evolution.
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And yet some do, because only God can change His creations, according to some. The world is not old enough for evolution to have taken place, according to some.
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For the past ten years i recall several instance religious folks getting involved with scientific research.
Ex. Stem cells, cloning. The worry was the ethics of such things. Ever notice nobody talks about bioweapons?
I just can't believe in he church as the source of ethics on this topic.
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Bio wepons are not contriversial.
Nobody favors them, Richard Nixon nixed them.
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I always thought a good bio=weapons was the hornets nest. it would stop most troops in the desert and it`ll simply die off on it`s own. very few tanks are air tight enoughj to stop them.
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There is record of hornets being used as booby traps in the Boer War.
But all modern tanks can be made air tight so that the crew is breathing filtered air.