whateverist

That seems fair. I think of myself as a person of faith in whatever truth I may find, hence my username. Not everything I believe true is based on evidence. Most of what I believe about what matters regarding people is based on discovery made in reflection, which I know I cannot defend in a manner capable of convincing every fair and impartial listener. In that I have sympathy for the position of people with religious faith. I assume you must feel as loyal to the truth you hold as I feel to the indefensible truth I have found. In humility, I do not place my truth above yours but I remain faithful to my own. After all, if I don't who will?

I'm not here to argue against belief in God but I don't think it makes sense to expect people who believe in a natural account for the origins of life to change that view based on a scarcity of evidence. If it is laboratory evidence people want, I don't think they're going to be any more satisfied with attempts made thus far to establish the manner in which God created life. It is fair to say the scientific evidence for either view is incomplete at best. In the mean time both sides have their reasons for the belief they hold in this regard. I don't think it is any more unreasonable to hold a basic belief in the completeness of the natural world than it is to hold a basic belief that in addition to the natural world we all believe exists, there also exists a supernatural world. We may be on the same footing here, we are both relying on what we feel most strongly to be true where verification is for now out of reach.

Hello Yves - or do you prefer Orphan? I've got to say, I'm sure glad I started earlier. If I waited until now when I'm 65 I'd have suffered more doing the heavy work in the garden and probably could not have done as much. I'm going to the Y a few times a week now to take better care of this tired old body and it is helping. But arthritis prevents me from doing a few things. So I'm very happy to have done the heavy lifting while I still could! Where do you garden if you don't mind my asking?

Hi fellow gardeners. I wonder if anyone else started out growing food plants but ended up growing flowers and other plants just for the sake of drawing birds and butterflies and bees into your gardens? That is what happened to me. When I first started out, if you couldn't eat it, I wouldn't grow it. Now I'm just about the opposite. Actually it started off as my wife's garden. She had a vegetable garden and planted a lot of roses. Well, mostly I dug the holes for her roses .. all the while insisting that unless she watered them they would die as I would surely not think to do so. Now the garden is mine and she is happy to enjoy it and do her own artwork in her studio. The summer after my first year of teaching I built an outdoor aviary for birds and kept finches, some of which nested and had babies. The next summer I built two more aviaries and converted an old 10 foot square garden shed into a place the birds could go to for shelter. Once I got around to planting the outdoor flight cages, I got hooked on plants. We live next to a year around creek and are on a natural fly way linking the bay to the hills. So I started reading about plants that gave food and shelter to birds and started planting to create verge areas which are more appealing to them. Anyhow, long story short, the more I read about plants and visited gardens, the more my planting for the birds started to be about planting to create scenes to please myself too. Twenty five years into it I am pleased to have full grown trees I planted myself but also lots of open areas. I retired from teaching a couple years back and last spring I hosted a Garden Conservancy garden tour to help them raise money. I met a fellow who makes a gardening blog called Succulents and more. Well actually I didn't meet him at first but another gardening friend who reads him set me this url in which he shares photographs he took here that day and writes about his impressions. I always find it so interesting to see my garden through someone else's eyes. http://www.succulentsandmore.com/2017/04...html#links

I was just trying to think of a lighthearted question to ask so I can graduate from newbie purgatory. I've never actually wondered about this before but when it popped into my head I realized I wasn't at all sure what a Christian might think about this. As a nonbeliever I don't think we exist at all until we are assembled in the womb. Likewise when we die I think that is the end of me (and I already know what a Christian would think about that). So is there an official Christian position on the pre-birth status of souls? Does God make each one fresh at the moment of conception, or is there a place where unborn souls hang out until it is their turn? Did God complete creation on the 7th day or is He still at it where new souls are concerned? Hey thanks for the reply, Yowm. I still don't have a reply box available to respond to what you said but I did appreciate your response. I suspect that would be how most Christians would answer. Would it be cheeky to ask whether He has sent the seeds of creation forward in the DNA?