Takoda

Speaking as a physicist (retired) no one really knows where the centre of the physical universe is located. It may even be that there is no centre of the universe.

I agree. That post was quite brilliant!

In the literary tradition of that time and place the term "nakedness of the father" suggests that Ham took advantage of Noah's drunken state to have sex with his father's wife. To simply accidentally see his father drunk and naked seems insufficient for the punishment inflicted on Ham.

I can explain if you like.

My grandson was. He had his 6th birthday just a week ago. In vitro was the only way he could have come into this world. His birth was natural--- his father's sperm and my daughter's egg --- just getting them together was awkward.

When it comes down to issues that divide Christians, issues like homosexuality, it almost always comes down to a matter of Bible interpretation. One of the finest Biblical scholars of the past several decades was the late Walter Wink. He has written an essay on the question that indicates that the Bible doesn't always say what we think it does. You can find it at: http://www.stpetersloganville.org/images/Homosexuality_and_the_Bible.pdf

The Roman Catholic Church was still in the process of formation until Constantine. It cannot really be said to have been an established church until then.

Sadly, the President of the USA seems to fall into this category. He will say anything that comes to mind if he thinks it will gain him some advantage or praise.

The corruption of the Republican Party in the Trump era seemed to set in with breathtaking speed. In fact, it took more than a half century to reach the point where faced with a choice between democracy and power, the party chose the latter. Its leaders don’t see a dilemma—democratic principles turn out to be disposable tools, sometimes useful, sometimes inconvenient. The higher cause is conservatism, but the highest is power. After Wisconsin Democrats swept statewide offices last month, Robin Vos, speaker of the assembly, explained why Republicans would have to get rid of the old rules: “We are going to have a very liberal governor who is going to enact policies that are in direct contrast to what many of us believe in.” Complete article at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/how-did-republican-party-get-so-corrupt/578095/

The center of the world is approximately 4000 miles straight down from anywhere on its surface.

I am reasonably certain that you did not put all this together yourself. It appears to be lifted entirely or at least in part from a creationist web site. When you do something like this the honest thing to do is cite your source so that everyone knows where you are coming from. I have neither the time nor the energy to deal with all this point by point. I will point out that many of the sources are quite outdated with a few dating back to the very early days of nuclear research. I will tackle one issue --- your post mentions Robert Gentry and his research on polonium halos. This has long been refuted. I cite the following article in Talk Origins http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.html

As we examine the evolution of the Hebrew/Jewish perception of God in the Old Testament, what becomes obvious was that in the earliest layers El was merely just another tribal god. El was however the ONLY god that was permitted for the Hebrew people to worship. This is known as henotheism. As time went by this exclusive tribal deity evolved into the ONLY deity. This of course is monotheism. Viewed in this manner Elohim as plural refers to the pantheon of middle-eastern gods of whom El was regarded as the chief god. In the Hebrew scriptures we see an evolution in their understanding of God from polytheism through henotheism into monotheism.

Allow me to illustrate this with the central Christian symbol, the idea of God as a Trinity. Is that a truth about God or a description of human experience? Is a knowledge of God’s being ever a human possibility? Are not definitions of God always definitions of human experience? Theology thus is always about my understanding of God, not about God. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, therefore, describes the evolving of the human experience. It was certainly not a revealed truth, nor was it the way the earliest Christians understood God. Paul, for example, was clearly not a Trinitarian. For the Jewish Paul, God was “One;” nothing approached or modified that “Oneness.” Paul says in Romans that God “designated” Jesus as “Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). God is the designator, Jesus is the one designated; that is not co-equality or Trinitarian. Paul said that the life Jesus lived, he lived to God. We become alive to God through Jesus, he asserted. For Paul, Jesus was a doorway into the ultimate, Jesus was not “the ultimate.” God, as “Father” reflected ideas from the childhood of our humanity. God was the protective power that human beings sought desperately to access. To make the power of God work for them was the essence of worship and of religion. This distant, powerful, parent-deity was believed to have the ability to control the weather, cure sicknesses and defeat one’s enemies. Natural disasters like the flood at the time of Noah resulted from the human failure to keep God’s law. Our hymns still express that hope. We sing: “Eternal Father, strong to save, whose arm hath bound the restless wave.” Floods, tidal waves and tsunamis, however, reveal that the restless waves were not bound. Religion, including Christianity, in this period of human history was childlike based on a protective deity. In many ways, early Christianity was a religion of fear and control. Because we had failed to be pleasing to God, Christianity became a religion of penitence, guilt and a begging for mercy. We were not allowed to grow up. We were children seeking to please the powerful “Father” or parent God. It is hard to grow up until we leave the “Father’s house.” Developing Christology was one of the things that allowed us to begin to grow out of this childlike religious form. Christology arose in the late third and early fourth centuries with the suggestion that God had entered human life, which served to give human life a dignity it had not had before. As Christianity came to understand itself in this new way, we began to tell the story of the father God, who by drawing near to us, suffered the consequences of being in the human arena of pain and death and who called us into a new level of humanity. Of course, the Jesus story got corrupted in the telling of it. The idea that God could take on human form, however, meant that we had come to an awareness that humanity might have a potential we had never realized before. It was a major shift in consciousness. Next we began to entertain the story of the Holy Spirit, which universalized the Christ story. Now all people, not just Jesus, could be God-filled.

That opinion was voiced centuries before the Trinity was formulated. I have to wonder if Paul would have accepted that new doctrine.

The Doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most confusing and divisive issues in all of Christianity. It is certainly never mentioned in the Bible The New Catholic Encyclopedia: "The formulation ‘one God in three persons’ was not solidly established, certainly not fully assimilated into Christian life and its profession of faith, prior to the end of the 4th century. But it is precisely this formula that has first claim to the title of the Trinitarian dogma. Among the Apostolic Fathers, there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective." – (1967), Vol. XIV, p. 299. For many years I have struggled to understand the doctrine of the trinity. To say it is a mystery that we are not expected to comprehend simply doesn't cut it for me. Some time ago I discovered that in the original formulation of the trinity, the word in Greek which we traditionally have interpreted to mean "persons", as in "three persons in one God" is actually the same word used to designate the mask worn by actors in Greco-Roman theater. We cannot call this a "person" but we can certainly call it a "persona". This insight has put a totally new spin on the entire concept for me. We finite creatures cannot possibly hope to describe our transcendent God, but we can speak of the modes or roles or personae that assist our understanding. God as creator/father, God as spirit/sustainer, and the glimpse of God we obtain in the life and teaching of Jesus. In other words, trinity is not a description of God but is, rather, a description of the human experience of God in the language of fourth century Greek speaking Christianity. We are not limited to just these three. Any persona that promotes our understanding of and our relationship to God is completely acceptable. God could be mother as well as father. God could be Wisdom / Word / Allah / Krishna / Manitou. God's possibilities are endless. These are merely our human images of God. God is, as always, ONE.

*sings* Only mad dogs and Englishmen (golfers) go out in the mid day sun.

That is not quite true. Many Gentiles were strongly attracted to Judaism but were unwilling to convert due to an unwillingness to undergo circumcision. In the synagogues of the Diaspora they were known as "God fearers". They seem to have been Paul's main source of converts in his missionary work. However, I am not sure how often this occurred in the synagogues of Judea and Galilee.

Cletus--- you called me a skeptic. Thank you, that is high praise indeed! All of us as Christians should be very skeptical of scientific claims, of historical claims and of religious claims.

As a Christian of over 75 years it saddens me to say that there is a lot of misinformation being produced and directed toward Christian believers today. It would seem that truth and the search for it is no longer a priority with us today.

Can you give me a reference to a legitimate scientific journal that documents this. I don't want wishful thinking or more false news.

From my understanding very little water from the Jordan River (the main tributary) actually makes it to the Dead Sea because most is diverted for irrigation by either Israel or Jordan. Because of this the Dead Sea is shrinking and becoming even more saline, so much so that a big potion of the DS is now being used as salt farms. Fish that are washed down from the Sea of Galilee die very quickly. There is a plan afoot between Israel and Jordan to build a pipeline down from the Gulf of Aquaba to deliver sea water to the DS in order to restore its water level to its historic level. There is very little fresh water entering the DS and fish are definitely not returning in spite of what you might hear from false news sources.

In any discussion of moral standards I think that it might be helpful to discuss the difference between sin and evil. But before attempting that, let us examine a similar situation in the secular realm. Governments at every level pass legislation that prohibits certain actions. We use the word 'crime' to refer to the deliberate breaking of such a law. However, is the commission of a crime the same thing as committing an evil act? Here we come up against just how we might define evil. For the purposes of this discussion let me give a very simple definition: Evil --- any deliberate action or inaction which compromises the physical or psychological integrity of a human being. This, of course, is a narrow definition and we could likely spend a very long time extending it and refining it. Let us leave that at least for the moment. The point that I am sneaking up on here is that 'what is evil is not necessarily a crime' and conversely 'what is a crime is not necessarily evil'. To me this is obvious but let me just attempt an illustration of each statement. First, 'what is evil is not necessarily a crime'. By my definition above, the killing of another human being is to be regarded as an evil act. However, the law does not regard this as a crime if it is done in self defence or in war. Second, 'what is a crime is not necessarily evil'. In Singapore, for example, it is a crime to chew gum. I think most would not quibble about this not being evil according to the above definition. Can we make similar distinctions in the spiritual realm concerning sin and evil? I believe that we can. First, we need a working definition of sin. Let me suggest a very simple definition: Sin --- doing that which is forbidden by a spiritual authority. Once again, we could debate this definition. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this definition might involve whether or not a spiritual authority, such as a church or a scripture, can actually express the will of a Deity. Setting that aside, we once again are faced with two problems. The point being that 'what is evil is not necessarily a sin' and conversely 'what is a sin is not necessarily evil'. First, 'what is evil is not necessarily a sin'. I think that most would agree that to torture someone is an evil. However, if we just look at Christian scripture, I do not see any specific prohibition that would make torture a sin. A similar argument could be applied to female genital mutilation (circumcision). Second, 'what is a sin is not necessarily evil'. Here, we can get into a very much more controversial debates. It is certainly true that Christian scripture regards homosexual actions as sinful. However, within society at large and within a number of Christian churches in particular, homosexual behaviour is no longer regarded as an evil in and of itself. It is also certainly true that Jewish scripture regards the breaking of the dietary laws as sinful and even an abomination. However, within society at large and within a number of Jewish traditions in particular, the breaking of the dietary laws is no longer regarded as an evil in and of itself. The distinctions made here between crime and evil and also between sin and evil lead us in a real quandry for society at large. The western world has become, and is increasingly becoming, extremely diverse in language, culture and religion. There is also no real way of reversing this. Since different religions cannot agree on what is sin, I do not think that we can rely on religion entirely to inform our moral and ethical behaviour. Since what is regarded as sin has so often in the past led us into framing our laws to determine what is criminal, I think we need a new approach to the problem. We need an approach that avoids the imposition of one set of religious beliefs on society at large --- an approach broadly constructed on a concensus of what is evil and therefore what is criminal. Leave what is regarded as sin to the consciences of those in particular religious traditions.

You speak from experience???

You and I have rather similar memories!

I believe that you are confusing the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library. Both were precious discoveries although of a somewhat different nature.