Understood. And I don't take offense.

Likewise for my observations.

One simple example is that for the most part, our wisdom teeth no longer fit into our jaws.

This is likely due to a change in diet over the millenia.

With an all-powerful God and a Bible that is at least partially open to interpretation, it's not difficult to make the claim that God started it all, put evolution in place, and let it run its course.

Is that not what you believe?

OMG! That is hilARious!!!!!

Well then someone better tell Obama's campaign manager to quit "smearing" Obama b/c he described Obama's relationship w/ Ayers as "friendly".

BTW: CNN aired a segment last night that shows Obama has lied about his connection w/ Ayers.

LINK

No Krazy, that is not what I believe.

But are you saying that you believe God DID create? If so, at what point do you think He stopped creating according to His will and let 'random chance' determine if He got or didn't get what He intended?

MrsZonie, I hope you're still around.

Here's a great review of the movie...

Maherly Fair
The Religulous parade.

By Mark Hemingway

Bill Maher has built a career at the nexus of Hollywood and D.C. (or Hollywood for ugly people, as Rush Limbaugh famously calls it) by convincing an audience that quick-witted retorts about contentious and complex debates are somehow indicative of high-level discourse. But you could say the same of most cable-news shows these days, so in some respects it’s hard to hate Maher as a player any more than the game.

Still, it’s never taken much to scratch the surface of Maher’s glib opinions to expose the underlying dermatitis of vanity, egoism, and even outright hostility. Maher apparently thinks he doesn’t show enough of these unflattering traits when he discusses politics; that’s just about the only conceivable reason someone of his temperament would make a documentary about religion.

And thus was born Religulous. It’s hard to pin down where Maher falls along the atheist-to-agnostic spectrum, except to say he’s an avowed opponent of organized religion, which he has described as a “neurological disorder.” (Maher serves on the board of Sam Harris’s Reason Project with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, which directly links him with the three biggest atheist intellectuals in the world.)

Of course, Bill Maher is also on the board of PETA, thinks milk is poisonous, and has stated that he doesn’t believe in vaccination or that Louis Pasteur’s germ theory of disease is correct. So while he may not believe in God, the idea that Bill Maher is somehow in a position to judge whose beliefs are reasonable is kind of laughable.

Particularly when Maher thinks he knows so much more about the target of his opprobrium than he actually does. He makes his first mistake in the first line of the movie by referring to the “Book of Revelations” — it’s not plural — and it just snowballs from there.

Within a few minutes Maher is denying not just the divinity of Jesus Christ but his actual historical existence, a question disputed by almost no credible scholar. You can argue that it is difficult to believe in Jesus’s existence considering that primary records for his existence are recorded by only a precious few devoted disciples who recorded his allegorical teachings in detail as well as the social unrest they inspired. Then again, if that’s the standard – you probably don’t believe Socrates either.

Still, Maher isn’t exactly on solid ground in questioning what he sees as the more fantastical elements of Christianity. Maher asserts that there are a slew of uncanny similarities between Mithraism and the worship of the Egyptian god Horus, on one hand, and Christianity, on the other, and that these beliefs, which predate Christianity, were bastardized to make up the foundations of the new religion. Here too he falls flat on his face; at best there are some commonalities (present among nearly all religions), and most of the specific similarities asserted in the film, e.g., that Jesus, Mithras, and Horus were all the product of virgin births, come from dubious sources.

The example of the virgin birth is particularly telling because Maher makes much hay of the fact that only two of the four Gospels mention the circumstances of Jesus’s birth. That others would omit this important fact is somehow proof that they were making it up. Well, Mithras was born out of rock (and the earliest known account of his origins seems to postdate the writing of the Gospels), and Horus was conceived by his mother Isis with a golden penis which may make her not quite a virgin? For the Gospel writers to ignore the virgin birth is no more strange than for a comedian to ignore the existence of the penis and all of the potential for hilarity it presents. Unfortunately, Maher ignores it because it doesn’t make his case. And again, we’re just getting started dissecting the facts in Maher’s documentary.

Fortunately for Maher, he doesn’t spend the bulk of the documentary making a factual case against Christianity. He spends a lot of the time traveling and interviewing various religious believers. These interactions are at times amusing and revealing, but say absolutely nothing about the film’s central contention — religion is bad.

That’s because Maher doesn’t confront one serious theologian or apologetics expert in the entire film. Not one. Faith is by its very nature something that’s intangible — difficult to explain or justify rationally — and as such, there is plenty of fertile ground for disagreement and argumentation for a nonbeliever like Maher.

And yet, Christian apologetics is perhaps the most studied subject in human history and because Maher’s critique seems to rest solely on sarcasm and snappy comebacks, it’s hard not to imagine that just about any serious scholar of Christianity would have eaten his lunch.

Instead, the film is a seemingly endless parade of believers who are from marginal sects, easily mocked, radical in their beliefs, just plain crazy, or some combination thereof. And it’s true that many featured in the film, such as a former soul singer turned prosperity-gospel preacher, an anti-Zionist Orthodox Jew who supports Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda (a crazy cultist who claims he actually is Jesus), don’t come off well. But it’s far from clear that Maher’s examples are representative of anything important: Using Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda to discredit religion is like citing John Wayne Gacy to prove that all children’s entertainers are sinister.

But oddly, Maher can’t even be fair to those believers who are obviously crazy. The editing of interviews is awfully suspect and punctuated with sarcastic subtitles and cutaways to various pop-culture references to make snide points. The film was directed by Larry Charles of Borat fame; that’s about all you need to know in determining whether the film was ultimately fair to its subjects. (At one point the film presents a cartoon about Mormon beliefs almost as if it’s Sunday-school material — when it is in fact from a notorious anti-Mormon film.) The film closes with a (literally) apocalyptic montage to make its point about where religion is leading us.

Of course, Maher never pauses to consider what heading in the direction of an irreligious society might mean. If you apply Maher’s logic, one could note that Stalin, Mao, and Hitler were far and away the most murderous tyrants in history and their societies were correspondingly totalitarian and hostile to religion. Nor does he contemplate or address in any meaningful way the societal good religion is responsible for, as anyone who has ever had need of a hospital can testify to.

I’m sure Maher would agree that the fact that Stalin was a fellow anti-religionist says little about his own beliefs. It’s a simple concession, but one that would seriously undermine the whole premise of Religulous. In the end, the only religious views that the viewer comes to understand are Bill Maher’s. And whatever Maher does believe, fairness and shared understanding are not a part of it.



LINK

I wish both campaigns would stop with the slime attacks under the guise of "it shows poor judgment"...

I would have greater respect for a candidate who focused on issues instead of trying to make himself look better by making the other guy look worse. I know, wishful thinking...

AGG

I don't beleive he created the world, but even if he did & created evolution, that wouldn't mean it was "random chance".

There can't be random anything if he's omniscient, including the exercise of free will. Sure, you might think you're making your own choice, but God already knew what you'd do since the beginning of time.

Then you'll probably love this too!

Especially when the tape gets to 4:44. LOL

Krazy, think about what you are saying here. If you eliminate random chance, you eliminate evolution, because one of the fundamental tenets of evolution IS random chance, not directed purpose, and no "design" by any "designer."

If God created "evolution" to operate according His design, it would no longer BE "random chance," it would proceed according to His design, according to His "blueprints" and no variation from that plan would be allowed, like the building of a skyscraper from the architectural plans, and the bringing together of all the right parts, in the right order, right?

As for God's omniscience, you seem to be confusion "all knowing" with lack of free will, which is not the same thing. Knowing what will happen is NOT the same thing as saying, in effect, that God directs all choices. Think about it this way, though it may be an inadequate analogy. Suppose you had watched a movie and you knew how it began, progressed, and ended. Then suppose you were able to go back to when the idea for the movie was just a thought in the producer's mind. The movie was "already done" in your mind, but in the mind of the producer, director, screenwriter, actors, etc. it was a "work in progress" with many choices to be made. Yet they all were made you DID know the movie "before" they had the "finished product."

Now think of time as God knows time if you can....eternal, with no beginning and no end. But for us there IS a beginning and an end to "this movie" that we are in. The "next movie" we star in is also known to God and it will have a beginning, but no end.


Free will is the gift that God gave us, and it carries with it the possibility that we will choose "against" God. That is the same way that God created the angels, and Satan(Lucifer), and Adam and Eve. Some of the angels and Adam and Eve "chose poorly."

You might also benefit a little from studying what the parable of the "Wheat and Tares" is all about, especially as it pertains to those who ARE His in Christ and those who are not.

McCain focused on the issues...but only because he didn't have the stones to say to Obama's face what he and Palin have said on the campaign trail. Coward.

SHOCKing.

Actually considering the man has proved his mettle over years I would suggest that you once again are clueless. One of the roles of the VP pick in an election is to do the dirty work...Joe Biden has the same role. Candidates try to remain as "presidential" as possible and above fray.

It's not as though McCain has acted like a huge coward in the past and now hides behind a keyboard acting all tough.

I totally agree GG. I HAD a lot of respect for John McCain until last week. Once he attached his name to the latest round of attack ads he lost mine. It shows his true lack of CHARACTER that he would stoop so low to win the Presidency. Simply because his campaign is behind. He wants to be President so bad that he would do nearly ANYTHING to get it. Too bad it's not going to work. He will always be McFairage, McWarmonger, McBush and it's career politicians like himself that have broken our government.

I'm Want2Stay and I approved this message.

Don't be so hard on yourself...you don't come across as tough.

I would respond to you...but I am in shock right now. How about we just couch this discussion.

Nice try! (pats the Trig on the head)

"Straight talker" :RollieEyes:

Hey all!

I found a really cool site that has all the candidates information nicely summarized with links to full quotes by each person.

Barack Obama

John McCain

Want2Stay

I don't know many parents that would appreciate their minor having a surgery and then not being informed about it.

Joe Biden and Barak talk tough on crime...the FOP has strongly endorsed McCain/Palin.

Healthcare is a RIGHT. Wow...give everyone...even if they choose NOT to work something for nothing.









He's got some good stuff in there...but this stuff stands out to me.

Medc,


I agree with most of what you said. There are concerns, but I do not think that John McCain would serve us any better. Something that bugs me to death is John McCain continually touting "preconditions" to entering into talks with Iran. Claiming that entering negotiations would legitimize the Iranian beliefs of Israel. He even made a video explaining his idea of "preconditions."

Iranian Preconditions

I think that is a total cop out. The Iranian government already has those beliefs whether we talk to them or not. They are aggressively seeking to build a nuclear missile and treating them like a child and basically saying "I'm not talking to you unless you meet my demands" is insane. I think entering negotiations and making it perfectly clear that 10 minutes after they level an attack against Israel, we would in turn make Tehran the largest parking lot in the world, may just shut them up.

Want2Stay

I will check out the link. BUT, I understand that McCain has only said that PRESIDENTIAL talks should not be held without preconditions...and I agree 100%. I have not heard him say that diplomatic talks should not take place...in fact, I have heard him say the opposite.

Obama now has adopted McCain's position after realizing he misspoke about HIS sitting down with these leaders without conditions.


as for the link...it is stupid! BUT, Iran should have been bombed already(although perhaps not by the US) and thankfully Israel will NOT allow these people to develop a nuclear weapon.