Wha's the lion's predator? What's the shark's predator?

Sure, if a lion falls in a crocodile pond, he's gonna get eaten, and so will any man.

Man is no different in the food chain as a lion, a wolf, a grizzly bear, a shark or a crocodile. He eats meat, and gets eaten himself if he get caught by a pack of other predators.

You got 600 weakest!!!


Anyway, I don't think the Bible was meant to ever be taken literally. It is a guide not a situation.

I can see what people who don't believe are saying. It can't be proven by any scientific means we have right now so it is not true.

But for me I don't think we will ever have enough science to see if it is or not. I believe that is why it is called faith. For me, we are made of and with in this place for what ever reasons. Even a accident has reasons for it to happen. A question could be raise that what caused the elements to create this accident to be there in the first place?


In other words the accident can be part of the design.

Just thought I would throw that out there.

Mankind's natural predators? Hmmm, let's think for a moment.

Well there was The Black Death (Bubonic Plague), TB, Polio, to name a few of the earlier nastier ones, and more recently there's AIDS, SARS, West Nile, etc. I could go on......point is, mankinds sole predator is and always has been the nasty little virus lurking just around the next corner.

Man's natural predator is woman. I speak from experience...

Actually, tuberculosis and bubonic plague are caused by bacteria, not viruses... but I get what you're saying

-Drew

I eat men for breakfest!

Fuzzys right



[Message Edited]

Actually, tuberculosis and bubonic plague are caused by bacteria, not viruses

And dont forget those protozoan-caused diseases like malaria. (Which is much more of a problem than SARS or West Nile)

Surely the very fact that such a person can differentiate between right and wrong, moral and immoral, disproves the entire theory anyway.

Try this next time you have a kid...

Never show him/her right from wrong. (Its wrong to color on the walls with crayons...Its wrong to chase your brother around the house with a steak knife just because he has a toy you want etc.) See if they develop morals out of thin air. They might eventually get a sense of what is acceptable based on their parents actions, but they will never grasp the idea of morality on their own.

Parents are (in most cases) the ones who teach their children whats right and whats not. And where did they (The parents) learn? From their parents... and so on. Will you find that morals just 'appeared' somewhere along the line? No. On the contrary, they had to be taught by someone...and not just another person.

If, as has been suggested, a person who refuses to accept God into their life has no concept of morals, then surely they would just be a wild, uncontrolled force who did whatever they felt like doing when the whim took them.

(Like many liberal politicians?) Just kidding

The above quote is the way little children act. (impulsively) ...Without proper instruction, they will never get past that stage.

The point is though, God plays absolutely no part in children learning morals. I'm not saying that a person can develop morals spontaneously, I'm just saying that the influence of God is irrelevant to that development.

If it were true that only people who believe in God can develop morals, then surely the influence of the parents wouldn't matter either way.

Technology...

Man eaters in Africa and India have a long history. Humans ask " what turned the Tiger into a rouge that is now a Man eater? " and blame it on sickness and all sorts of other things.

Alligators, in Florida it is against the law to feed them. People still do it and you hear about the results at least once a year. * Child eaten by Gator, Woman or Man attacked and killed *

The fear is remove from gators once they have been fed by humans long enough, they end up equating the odd nasty un-natural smells that hide our natural animal smell and revert back to the natural process of seeing humans as part of the food group.

If you stank like the animal you are if you could stand the subtraction of social grace from your normal day to day living and would move into the wilds without anything covering your body odor. You would find out just how fast anmails feed upon any other animal once they learn just how easy it is to kill them.

Huamns used to hide in caves and only ventured out in packs for protection. In time they learned to pick things up and use them as tools and eventually weapons, then they learned to improve upon them. Animals over time learned that Human kind with those weapons were not an easy meal as they once were. and Over a longer period of time they learned to out right avoid huamns as the weapons technology expanded and they found they had become the hunted.

The fact that on the norm animals do not hunt humans in the middle of the city does not define humans as not having natural preditors by any means...

just my pov...

but when is the last time you hugged wild hungry Grizzly Bear, or let a wild hungry Bengal Tiger slobber kisses all over your face?

Even worse, the "scientifically accurate" Bible reveals not a single fact about nature that wasn't commonly known at the time.

very simply not true.

"Do not the rivers rush continuously into the sea, yet the sea does not overflow its banks?" man figured out the Water Cycle many centuries after that writing.

"It is I who put the roundness ( "compass" ) in the face of the depths". man proved that the earth isn't flat many centuries later. there are many more which i won't list.

All other species have a natural predator that controls, as an example, its population. Mankind does not

mankinds natural predator is microbes.

yes, fuzzy, and women too.

Once a foolish man spoke out of turn and claimed the Earth was in fact not the center of the solar system, that everything revolved around the Sun, silly man, they almost killed him for it, them being the church ad him to be killed for speaking with a heretics tounge...

Good thing they set him straight, because I could not even venture to guess where human kind would find itself if scientific discovery was allowed to run amok unchecked!
[Message Edited]

scientific discovery ran amuck unchecked in nazi germany.

(careful now, we don't want to call Godwin on this thread )

scientific discovery ran amuck unchecked in nazi germany.

Nope, idiocy ran amok in nazi Germany. Apart from some work in jets and the V2 (which was actually more along the lines of engineering), there was little *true* science under the auspices of the Nazi party (and what there was, was pretty much in spite of the party). Experimentation may have run amuck, but very little, if any, of it was actually scientific.

Science and technology are, in and of themselves, neutral. Good and bad are done by Man.

If a person kills another with a hammer, there is nothing evil about the hammer, only the wielder.

I would also argue that the quotes you make describing 'scientific facts' from the Bible are much more likely to be merely observations. There certainly isn't any text that indicates a detailed, accurate understanding of those observations. Additionally, there are alternate interpretations for many of those quotations (which I've heard from various clergy).

Either way, we still get down to interpretation.

Once a foolish man spoke out of turn and claimed the Earth was in fact not the center of the solar system, that everything revolved around the Sun, silly man, they almost killed him for it, them being the church ad him to be killed for speaking with a heretics tounge...

Thats interesting you should mention that IPlural, Im reading a book about that person/incident right now... Its entitled: 'Galileo's Mistake'. I highly reccomend it.

recommend*

The point is though, God plays absolutely no part in children learning morals. I'm not saying that a person can develop morals spontaneously, I'm just saying that the influence of God is irrelevant to that development.If it were true that only people who believe in God can develop morals, then surely the influence of the parents wouldn't matter either way.

"Parents are (in most cases) the ones who teach their children whats right and whats not. And where did they (The parents) learn? From their parents... and so on. Eventually you will find that religion was the source of morality. And where would religion be without God? It simply wouldnt exist.

Without God, there is no religion, without religion, there are no morals.

Nowadays we have laws to keep everyone on the (more or less) right track. These laws are based in morality. Which in turn came from religion. You will find that virtually all criminal laws in the US are based on a Judeo-Christian system of values. And I would assume that the laws of other countrys are not too much different.

You know - I have to say that I clicked on this topic thinking it would be something related to skinning! You know, about whether certain designs are a creation, or merely an evolution of an older, and the merits of each.

Oy.

2:9 "And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil."

OK, so there are two trees. So far so good.

2:16-17 "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

....but don't eat from the Tree of Life or your dead. (Not just dead, but surely dead.) Remember this part.

3:4-5 "And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

But the snake says the knowledge tree will give knowledge! A little scientific method now........

3:6 "She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."

....so at this point we would expect her to die, right? I mean that's what God said ...

3:7 "And the eyes of them both were opened"

Oops!!!! Looks to me like the serpent was right.

3:14 "And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:"

And this is the model for the creation theory??? No really??

Turns out the tree doesn't really kill you, so let's just clarify what it does do.

3:22 "And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever..."

...at this point the Tree of Life is quickly uprooted and hurried away from the bad humans.

BTW, who is He talking to in this particular passage?

Without God, there is no religion, without religion, there are no morals.

So can you conclusively state, with hard scientific proof, that before we had religion there were no morals? In my opinion that's just another example of religion breeding arrogance.

Morals, or the ability to differentiate right from wrong, are developed through experimentation of how far the boundaries can be pushed before something is offensive or unappealing to the majority. Certain morals are taught through the influence of others around us, but others are learnt through experimentation. They are based upon how certain actions make us feel, whether that be mentally or physically, and are at their most basic level part of our instinctive behaviour.

To claim that the root of all morals is religion and/or God is both highly unlikely and based on nothing but arrogant speculation.
[Message Edited]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003) :

morals
n : motivation based on ideas of right and wrong [syn: ethical
motive, ethics, morality]


Sorry, but Religion and God have nothing to do with my perspective of what is right or wrong in the least.

Bow or broil is a screwed system to base ones morals upon in my opinion...

Besides, to many people spend 6 days a week screwing over the next person in the way of what they want only to bow on Sunday and their seat in Heaven is secure for the following 6 days.

Also I heard and read claims that everyone finds religion or speaks to god facing death in the past. I find that rather presumptious, along with the claim that God is all mighty and no one can know God and yet people like to throw around what was really ment with the "Thou shalt not kill" really meaning Murder...

Hey, did everyone know that the Devil and Hell never specifically showed up in the scriptures until after many revisions....?

To claim that the root of all morals is religion and/or God is both highly unlikely and based on nothing but arrogant speculation

mmm, I've spent some time in chat with EventH and do not believe there is any arrogance in his make up. Though there is in the teaching that leads up to such a position...

"....Fundamentalists correctly perceive that universal moral standards are required for the proper functioning of society. But they erroneously believe that God is the only possible source of such standards. Philosophers as diverse as Plato, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, George Edward Moore, and John Rawls have demonstrated that it is possible to have a universal morality without God. Contrary to what the fundamentalists would have us believe, then, what our society really needs is not more religion but a richer notion of the nature of morality."

---Theodore Schick, Jr