Dare To Ask Talk And News About Our Differences
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Why doesn’t the Bible mention dinosaurs? I have been told, “Well, they didn’t know about them back then.” Isn’t the Bible supposed to be the word of God? If it is indeed the words of the Judeo/Christian God, then dinosaurs should be mentioned. Doesn’t this prove that the Bible is a book of parables written by men, who said it was the word of their god to make people follow it? Also, if the human race was wiped out by the flood, except for Noah and his family, where do we get all the different races and the facial characteristics of the black and Asian races? I don’t understand how a religion that contradicts itself so much, and has so many glaring mistakes could become so popular.
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Name : Nicky, Gender : F, Religion : Pagan, Age : 46, City : Ft Worth, State : TX, Country : United States,I have wondered the same thing about the Bible and Christianity, and have never gotten a satisfactory answer. It seems that sometimes we are supposed to take the Bible literally – when it suits the purpose – and other times are to take it figuratively – like when it contradicts itself. So I guess that is where the concept of faith comes in. I don’t believe in Christianity, but I have no problem with those who do, as long as they respect other people’s right to worship as they choose.
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Name : Lucy-H22672, Gender : F, Race : Hispanic/Latino (may be any race), Religion : Pagan, Age : 25, City : San Jose, State : CA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I’d say there are no dinosaurs in the Bible probably because there are no archaeologists in the Bible. Dinosaurs were long gone by the time the Bible was supposedly written. If no one was there to dig them up, then no one could write a parable about them. And if glaring mistakes and self-contradiction were truly an impediment to popularity, we would never even get through our presidential elections, much less anything else.
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Name : Anna23832, Gender : F, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Catholic, Age : 28, City : Austin, State : TX, Country : United States, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,The Bible does not mention every animal that God created by name. However, in Genesis 1:24, it states that ‘God made the beast of the earth after his kind.’ The Bible also states in Genesis 2:20 that Adam named all cattle, birds and beasts. The word ‘beast’ includes several types of large animals. Because of man’s sin, God confounded the languages and scattered the people throughout the earth, hence the different races. It sounds as if you have been listening to and believing all sorts of stories about the Bible from people who obviously don’t know what they’re talking about. I’ve heard many people say there are contradictions in the Bible, but none of them can name or show me one. Just so you know, there are none, and this is from someone who has read God’s Word through several times ,from Genesis to Revelations (beginning to end).
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Name : Redeemed-One30108, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : Black/African American, Religion : Baptist, Age : 51, City : Newport News, State : VA, Country : United States, Occupation : Administrative Coordinator, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,The central part of Christianity is Jesus’s resurrection. In Matthew 28:2-8, the Marys encounter an angel, ‘For the angel of the Lord’ at sepulchre. Same event in Mark 16, they encounter a ‘young man’ inside the tomb. Luke 24, again same event, they ‘behold two men.’ John describes Mary seeing ‘two angels.’ So what was it? Two or one? Was it angels or men? This certainly is a minor thing, but definitely a contradiction.
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Name : Steve27618, Gender : M, Age : 40, City : Houston, State : TX, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : Over 4 Years of College,The Bible is a book of faith, not a book of science. It is intended to be a spiritual guide. Fundamentalists believe the Bible is literal, but many other Christians look for the message behind the stories. There probably was not a flood that wiped out all of existence. However, perhaps the message of the story is that some people are saved, while others are not. Also, there is no reason God should have included the existence of dinosaurs in a book about how to live life well. That would be like adding a chapter on geology to a book about the French Revolution. It is just not relevant.
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Name : Laura-J, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Catholic, Age : 20, City : Colorado Springs, State : CO, Country : United States, Occupation : Student, Education level : 2 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I agree with the point you’re making. I think the Christian religion has been used as a tool of social control for centuries. I was brought up as a Christian but rejected it at a young age.
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Name : Priscilla30283, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Bisexual, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Humanist, Age : 23, City : Sydney, State : NA, Country : Australia, Occupation : Accountant, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,There is an interesting book called ‘Genesis and the Big Bang’ written by a scientist named Gerald Schoeder that provides full reconciliation between scientific discovery in both archeology and cosmology to the Old Testament. An important point to consider is that many scientists are religious. Since it is unlikely that they live in a state of total denial, there are evidently other ways of assessing that archeologic evidence.
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Name : Steve, Gender : M, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 37, City : New York, State : NY, Country : United States, Occupation : Executive, Education level : Over 4 Years of College,The Bible does not specifically mention dinosaurs but does mention various aspects of creation. If God had every step of creation written down for us, I imagine the volumes would be infinite. The fact that specifics are not included about which particular animals were created and when, does not prove that the Bible is just parables. Nor does it prove that there are glaring mistakes. While it’s true that the Bible is not a book of science, several things that modern science has revealed as fact (and not a bunch of incongruent theories) support references in the Bible. (In Isaiah 40:22 the earth is referred to as a circle. How long did it take us to figure out that the earth wasn’t flat?) What should or should not be mentioned in the Bible was really God’s decision and not ours. There are obviously things that different people find interesting yet God decided what was important to have recorded.
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Name : Stacey, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jehovahs Witness, Age : 28, City : Boston, State : MA, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I’d like to ask another question: Supposedly, Noah took two of every animal onto the ark. How much time did he have to gather up all these animals? The gender of some animals is almost impossible to tell, so how did he do this, and what did he feed the carnivores if he had only two of each species? I sure wouldn’t want to be with all of those different carnivores for 40 days without anything to feed them. (This alone proves that someone didn’t think their stories through before sending them to the editor.)
Also, as Bill Cosby points out, who got to clean up the bottom of the boat? That’s a lot of poop! I’ve also noticed that no one has answered my question about the facial characteristics of the different races.
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Name : Nicky, Gender : F, Religion : Pagan, Age : 46, City : Ft Worth, State : TX, Country : United States,In response I would like to call your attention to the book of Job in the Old Testament. In chapter 40 verse 15 through the end of chapter 41 there are several animals described that are just like dinosaurs. Since the term ‘dinosaurs’ was created in the last several hundred years the Bible does not use it nor does it use any commonly know names for the differing breads. Instead the Hebrew words are translated as ‘Behemoth’ and Leviathan.’ The latter also being the name of a famous philosophical treatise. So we find that God does mention His creations in the Bible; we today call them DINOSAURS.
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Name : D. Risko, Gender : M, Age : 23, City : Chattanooga, State : TN, Country : United States, Occupation : Banker, Education level : Over 4 Years of College,Ok as for the seven day creation the days are great symbols of different aspects of the world. As humans were the last in the creation we only knew what we saw.We didn’t see the dinasours because they were already gone. Science proves this. At that time they did not eat meat. Noah Built a boat at God’s command. In forty days a man can travel 600.To and back give them 300 miles away from the boat.Noah had a wife three sons and their wives.If they worked inpairs and finished the boat at the same time as fetching the animals They cover 90 miles. In perspective noahs world was not as big as ours it only goes as far as he can walk. So he would only have to get land animals in his area.and air animals but not water animals. Telling the sex’s animals is difficult if you have god telling you.As for ‘poop’ the same as columbus. over the side it goes. As for the carnivors. Humans are mammals and eat meat now. Even though the cats eat meat know you don’t know what they ate then. A mammal can get all there nutrisional values nearly the same as cow and that goes for the cats too. There is physical proop of noahs’ flood somewhere But I forgot what it was. As for the peoples faces at the time of the tower of babel the people were forced to speek in foreign tounges so they moved off. Since so much time has passed since then humans have addapted to the particular climate they wandered to. I knnow story has afew gaps so maybe you should try to answer your own questions. Do you even believe in god? If you don’t then you should stop trying to convince yourself the bible is to contradictive to be true.Somebody might believe your not so sure of your position on god and the bible.
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Name : Victor C., Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 17, City : Utica, State : NY, Country : United States, Occupation : Highschool Student, Social class : Middle class,The great American pragmatist philosopher, I forget his name, defined truth as an idea or belief, that, which when you act on it, produces the consequences you expect. Something can be true and not accurate. For instance, the Chinese have a belief that drinking cold beverages is bad luck. The water qualitiy in ancient and medieval China as in most civilizations, left a lot to be desired. So drinking cold beverages might make you sick just not for the reasons you think. Most kinds of googly-eyed mystical explanatios are just mental shorthand for observations about subtle phenomena. Monotheistic mysticism is no different. Science and Religion have very different goals, ie they are trying to produce very different consequences. Religion is meant to guide decision-making on a social and personal level. Science is designed to generate accurate predictions on the part of disconnected observers or (omnipotent) experimenters. Science is more accurate but usually much less useful than religion. Science generates more questions than answers. Religious answers may be cloaked in googly-eyed mysticism, but that doesn’t mean they’re false or random. Social science does a fair enough job at predicting the behavior of large, homgenous groups of poeple that, on a policy level, scientific predictions and prescriptions should be taken into account but on any smaller level, religion is a much better guide.
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Name : E. Evans, Gender : M, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 24, City : Troy, State : NY, Country : United States, Occupation : Database Developer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,The language of certain parts of Genesis is very poetic, broad and open to interpretation. For instance, in the creation account, the Hebrew word ‘day’ can also be translated as ‘phase.’ Bible scholars have never really come to a consensus about the early times of the earth. As for the account of Noah, you asked how different races can come from a homogenous group of people. Back in the early days of humanity, according to anthropology, everyone was African. Humanity originated in the area between north central Africa and the ‘Fertile Crescent’ (Mesopotamia) and subsequently spread out. Any (paleo)anthropologist will tell you that the races didn’t evolve seperately from different groups of apes. Race is simply an outer adaptation to the environment.
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Name : Dan31651, Gender : M, Race : Hispanic/Latino (may be any race), Religion : Pentecostal Christian, Age : 21, City : Los Angeles area, State : CA, Country : United States, Occupation : student, Social class : Lower middle class,Why is Christianity so popular? It induces fear of the afterlife and then feeds on this fear, growing ever and ever stronger. How can one possibly deny the possibility of God or the afterlife? You can’t. The whole concept is much too abstract to refute. As far as proving contradiction, one does not have to site specific examples in religious text. The fact that there are so many Christian denominations is proof that the Bible is riddled with ambiguities and contradictions. Is the Bible scientific and logical? Ha! It’s as thick and dark as mud. It’s no wonder that so many people interpret it differently. Dinosaurs you say. Well, as demonstrated by our fellow religious respondees, it seems possible to fit even dinosaurs into this screwed-up Christian mosaic. I say leave Christians to their delusions of grandeur. As long as they are not too obtrusive, I can tolerate them – though I have known some Machiavellian Christians, whose cunning machinations are only perceivable by the slyest fox. Tolerate, but remain vigilant. Remember, Christians are everywhere, and often in places you least suspect.
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Name : Patrick-W30436, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Agnostic, Age : 19, City : Toronto, Ontario, State : NA, Country : Canada, Occupation : Research Assistant, Education level : High School Diploma, Social class : Upper middle class,
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