I was talking about the age of the universe with a theist friend of mine and he acknowledges the scientific evidence of the Big Bang and accepts the age of the universe to be around 13.7 billion years. We got onto the subjest of how he reconciles this with the Bible indicates that the Earth was created in a few days, whereas science indicates that this is off by billions and billions of years. I was asking him how he can honestly believe that a book with such an ENORMOUS error is literally 100% true. He danced around the question for a long time and I'm sure we've all had similar converstions before. A few days later he informs me that in the original Hebrew, the word "day" can be used differently to mean a long peiod of time. I asked him why the Bible, then doesn't use this instead of the English word "day"? He accused me of not reading the footnotes enough and, admittedly, I couldn't recall looking at footnotes for Genesis 1. So I found an online bible that gives access different versions of the Bible and looked at 18 different versions of Genesis 1. The ONLY version that mentions the meaning of the word "day" in the footnotes is the Contemperary English Version. The footnote in this version says:

I almost posted this in KewK because I wanted a civil discussion. Yet I realize that feelings on this matter run high, so here goes nothing.

Lately I've been waking early, so I thought I'd use Netflix's "Watch Instantly" feature to take in a documentary: Deliver Us from Evil. This is about the sexual abuse the Catholic Church systematically hid (and condoned) right here in Northern California. At the time, I didn't pay much attention to the details (maybe it hit too close to home?), but I was shocked that the abuser, Father O'Grady, spent time in San Andreas, which is a lot like my home town. Like my home town, it sits on Highway 49, which follows the Sierra Nevada foothills. The towns are very much alike. If you've seen one goldrush town, you've seen them all. I'd also like to point out that I've heard folks refer to the foothills as the "bible belt" of California. It is also very, very white and very, very Republican. The valley is less saturated with fundamentalism and rednecks, but it's not exactly a bastion of culture and freethought, either. Most people outside the state base their perceptions of California on San Francisco and Los Angeles, but the truth is California is a huge, diverse place. We have tons of different kinds of ecosystems and many different kinds of towns and cities.

What is this obsession that people (Americans?) have whether people are moral or not.?

Who cares is your bank manager/politican/teacher/tv star is a moral person.

I care do they do their job?, do they obey the law where its relevant to you/their job

If they break the law and its not directly relevant to you , its a police matter

Now whether your friends are a 'nice' person is important but for most other people so what.

The fact is most atheists obey the law, most religious people obey the law (sure their holy books encourage murder/child abuse/rape and every other dispicable crime but most religious people ignore that).

This is something that has always confused me, and maybe a Christian will be able to clear it up.  The basis of your religion is essentially based on sacrafice, and Jesus was the "Perfect Sacrafice."  He paid the "ultimate/greatest price for our sin."  His life (which he got back 3 days later).  But doesn't it seem that the ultimate payment for sin would be for Jesus to suffer in hell eternally?  That seems like more of a sacrafice and that would actually be a true genuine sacrafice.  That would make more sence then him spending about 9 hours of his life being tortured.  I hope that makes sense.  So I was just curious what everyone thought.

I can understand a degree in the history of religion, a history of how the bible developed, a degree in the study of religious literature but how on earth can there be a degree in 'what a supernatural being means'

It makes about as much sense as a degree in 'The construction techniques and project management of the death star, successes and failure'

This is probably more aimed at UK/European members where public money goes to Universities to study this crap

From the Christian Post:

link

Richard Curtis, a successful comedy writer with no particular religion, was interviewed at a fundie leadership summit, and the 100,000 church leaders across the country who witnessed the interview found it disturbing because, as the interviewer said, "I'm interviewing a guy who doesn't even have his faith figured out and he's doing 100 times more work than I am to alleviate the suffering in this world."

For the sake of argument, let's run with faith for a minute.

Faith, i.e. belief in a thing based on strong personal conviction despite logical or scientific evidence to the contrary, is necessary to be a Christian, right? I don't like quoting the bible, so can we just take it as read that Paul did, in fact, mention something about faith from time to time, and that Jesus famous reference to the smallest seed on the planet did have something to do with faith? Did not Jesus reward those who had faith in him? So faith is truly important.

So... belief in god is dependent on faith when big bad atheists like us come out with our science and logic. Right?

Question: Why didn't Jesus just appear in the Twentieth Century? And if Christianity is true, why doesn't God perform more miracles, like maybe in the middle of an atheist meeting, or in public, so that more people will believe in him? Why doesn't he do it? Why doesn't God respond more?

Answer: I think there are many reasons why Jesus doesn't appear in the Twentieth Century, or why there is not even more evidence than we already have. We find that God gives us plenty of evidence to believe, but not enough to force us to believe. In other words, the evidence is there for anyone who wants to check it out, but not enough to make it so obvious that God is virtually twisting arms. He wants those who want or desire to come to him. Still, there are many signs that God is at work today. I can't unpack this in a detailed email discussion, but here are some things I've said before: I think that there are many indications in the world today of supernatural activity, even if we just considered those that have been published in medical journals or in other trustworthy places.

I have recently been thinking about prophecy and freewill and which to ask a question of anyone who understands the beleifs of religous people on this matter,People say that the bible predicts events that have occoured since its writing.If this is true then God did know what choices people would make,this means that accourding to them the universe is determanistic.

Is God willing and able to end all evil?  Then from whence comes evil?

Is God willing, but not able?  Then He is not omnipotent.

Is God able, but not willing?  Then He is malevolent.

Is God neither able nor willing?  Then why call him God?

Please, Christians, give me an answer.