I'm not taking a side in this issue, but we should always remember - this country was founded by Christians. The government was formed and structured by Christians, based Christian ideals and beliefs. Had America been founded by Moslems or Moonies we would very likely not have a First Amendment. Just a thought.

Yes, the country was founded by Christians (deists, in fact). If, in the future, the majority of Americans became Wiccans, would it be fair, or even tolerable, to require lip service to Christianity when dealing with the government?

The US doesn't work because it is a Christian nation. It works because it is a secular nation.

For contrast, look anywhere in the Middle East.

All religions should be allowed as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others.

Crystal, are you arguing, or just making at statement?

Because I agree with you. If a government promotes a religion, no one can ever be sure that government isn't giving preferential treatment to followers of that faith.

Let me rephrase: I agree with you, as long as it's a real religion, not a tax dodge.

glad that you mention taxes and religion, the whole premise of the blues brothers is tax money for the orphanage->"what?" since when do non-profits pay taxes? ableit that is still a great movie, leading to this................
I think most people that don't dig on religion have never had a spiritual awakening.
Granted I don't think peoples beleifs or lack there of should be held against them( asuming that they're not sacrificing unwilling participants for the sake of religion). I think Christ was willing wasn't he?!

ps spiritual awakening-feeling something inside of you besides yourself, and no intercourse does not count! and neither does drugs or food.

Interesting you should bring up Jesus. I've been thinking about this lately.

God created Jesus, basically himself in human form, for the express purpose of his being sacrificed on the cross to absolve the human race of sin. It seems to me the whole thing was a set-up from the beginning.

He was born, he lived, he got in trouble, he got nailed up, he died. If you believe the press, that was the plan all along. And somehow, this helps humanity.

If I owe you ten bucks, and you loan me ten bucks to pay you back, which I do, you're still out ten bucks and I haven't changed in the slightest.

That's what happened. God sent us Jesus, we sent him back. How is that supposed to have changed our status?

There's just something wrong with that.

David,

God created man with a free will. Man willingly rebelled against God. God's penalty for that rebellion was death. That may seem harsh to you but what kind of society would we have if there were no penalty for crime and no respect of the law.

God loves us. He dosen't want any of us to die the eternal death so, He created a way out for us, the blood of his Son Jesus. The perfect sacrafice. There is nothing that man can do to pay God back for this. We have nothing to offer. It is a free gift from God. All we have to do is accept it and believe it.

How does this benefit humanity, you asked. One day all who believe will live in paradise with our Lord. This is His promise. The grave will not keep us, as it did not keep our Lord.

David, you will know the Truth when you seek it with all your heart, when you value it above silver and gold, when you value it more than life itself.

If you never find the Truth, it will be because you never loved the Truth. If you spend eternity without God, it will be because you exercised your free will, not because God condemed you to Hell.

Kevin, don't you dare proselytize to me on my own web page. The story of Jesus, as read, is a con job. If God wanted to give us a second chance, he could just say so and it would be done. Nobody would have had to get nailed to anything.

If real, the Crucifixion was theater, nothing more. It was a sacrifice without sacrifice. If Jesus was God, his death had absolutely no meaning, because God cannot die.

And don't talk to me about finding or refusing the truth, either. Religion is for people who want an easy answer instead of working hard to find the right one. "What's that noise?" "The sky god is angry!" No, it's thunder, you ignorant piece of human refuse.

I love truth. Truth is science. It's what can be proven. Everything else is opinion and not worth discussing.

I readily admit I don't have all the answers. I don't even have all the questions yet. That makes me better than you. You're sure you have the answer, so you stopped asking questions.

By the way, Man didn't rebel against God. One man did. Adam. By your lights, we're all being punished for the actions of one man. Is that just?

However, without that act of rebellion, we wouldn't exist. Adam and Eve would still be alive, in the Garden, frolicking. So, was it rebellion, or was it part of the plan? God set us up from the beginning, and has been fucking with us ever since. If the stories are true, that is.

Come back when you have something interesting to say.

Kevin,

If God wanted to nail His Son to the cross, he could also have done so and it would be done. In that way, the penalty for sin could be paid for. He is, after all, God, and can choose to pay for sin.

How do you know God cannot die? If He chose to become a man and die as a man, and then be resurrected again, He could certainly do so. After all, He is God.

If you really love truth, did you ever determine where the science you love so much came from? If you think Adam was the result of millions and millions of years of chance, then you must also believe a tornadoe can sweep through a junk yard and assemble a Boeing 747. That takes more blind faith than I've got. If God did not create man and he is the result of random processes, then one of the scientific laws of the universe you love so much is broken - entropy. Entropy says that nothing can go from disorder to order, which is what evolution falsely claims. Kevin, these things HAVE been proven. So you see, faith in God is for people who have worked hard to find the truth.

I certainly don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know who does.

BTW, since by one man we can all be pardened from our sin, i.e., Jesus Christ, then it is just that due to one man we are all being punished. Why complain of the punishment if there is a means of parden? That is, unless you just love sinning.

Redemption was always part of God's plan, yet He did not set anyone up. When He gave us the ability to choose for ourselves, He gave us the ability to set ourselves up. It is not God's fault you or I have sinned, it's our own fault.

Not sure if you found that interesting, but I tried to answer your questions. I hope, as you say, you love the truth.

Kevin,

Oh yes and , if you owe me ten bucks, and I loan you ten bucks to pay me back, which you do, then I'm still out ten bucks. However, you have changed in that you no longer owe me 10 bucks. It's really pretty simple, and there's really nothing wrong with that. Try not to confuse yourself too much.

Jim,

One, you're talking to me, not Kevin.

Two, a tornado could sweep through a junkyard and assemble a 747. The odds are just very, very, very low. Possibly lower than 1 chance out of a number greater than the number of atoms in the universe, but not impossible.

I think you would call it a miracle.

Three, entropy does not make evolution impossible. The entropy (disorder) of a closed system always increases. Planet Earth is not a closed system. There's this big yellow glowy thing about a hundred million miles away pouring great gobs of energy into the system. Universal entropy always increases. Local entropy is not so constrained. Thermodynamics 201.

Combining 2 and 3, it is not impossible that life and therefore mankind spontaneously formed on this planet. In this galaxy, there are roughly a hundred billion stars. There are at least that many galaxies in the universe. All that's needed for life to have started is that the proper conditions occured once in 1x10^22 chances, at some point in time in the last 4.5 to 12 billion years, depending on whose cosmology you use.

We don't know how unlikely it is for DNA to spontaneously generate. We don't know how thinly you would need to divide than span of time to determine the number of times you would roll 1x10^22 dice. Even if it's once a year, and the odds are 1 in a billion trillion against, odds are (if I've done the math right) you'll hit the jackpot 45 billion times since the start of the universe.

We are not special.

Four, if I owe you ten bucks, and you loan me ten bucks, I then owe you twenty bucks. If I then pay you the ten bucks you just loaned me, I still owe you ten bucks. The math is not that hard.

Five:

"If God wanted to nail His Son to the cross, he could also have done so and it would be done. In that way, the penalty for sin could be paid for. He is, after all, God, and can choose to pay for sin."

But, He could also just decide to forgive the sin without the spectacle of nailing anyone to anything. He is, after all, God.

Thanks for sharing.

David,

One, sorry for mixing up your name, but Kevin is free to listen as well.

Two, if you would like to place your faith in such "very very very low" odds, you have more faith than I do.

Three, nice try with the open system theory, but if life began spontaneously, it occurred at the molecular level, not at the cosmic level. The appearance of a living cell in some primeval chemical reaction pot would involve an intense local decrease in entropy (corresponding to an increase in complexity, information content, and free energy content). The entropy law when developed in terms of statistical mechanics (i.e., by a mathematical model for the interaction of large numbers of atoms and molecules) takes a form in which it can be used to predict the probability of such a local decrease in entropy. That is, the probability of the chance appearance of a living cell can be calculated based on the free energy content of the living cell compared with the free energy content of the buillding block molecules which are assembled to construct the living cell.

The probability of this event is is one in one with 340,000,000 zeros behind it. In other words, the entropy law predicts that abiogenesis is impossible in this universe, even if it were trillions of times as large and old as it is alleged to be.

Four, nice try with the tricky math, but there's a big difference between loaning someone ten bucks and giving it to them for free. If you study the Bible, you will see that the doctrine of salvation doesn't say anything about a loan. It is a free gift. So, here we go again, and try not to muddy things up this time: If you owe me ten bucks and I GIVE you ten bucks, then you still just owe me ten bucks. Then, if you pay me the ten bucks you owe me with the ten bucks I GAVE you, then you don't owe me anything. I think we both know the math is pretty simple. Just try to get the logic straight.

Five, actually God couldn't have just decided to forgive sin without nailing anyone to anything, even though He is God. You see, God, being God, does things according to His own laws. And, according to His law, a sacrifice was necessary for the forgiveness of sins. It's kind of like our own sense of justice. If someone killed someone you loved, you would likely consider it unfair for them to go unpunished. When someone volunteers to take on the punishment due another, it's like GIVING ten bucks for free instead of loaning it.

BTW, I think you make some good points about church vs. state. However, I'm definitely not with you on America working because it's a secular nation. Not sure where you come up with that. I was under the understanding that most people pray and place their faith in God.

It appears to me that all attempts at taking God out of government have occured since the founding of our country. What's happened to "the government shall make no law concerning religion"? If you look at the statistics, you see a large jump in crime and other unwantables dragging this country down beginning about the time when the law was unconstitutionally interpreted as prohibiting prayer in school.

That said, I do agree, however, that I wouldn't want my kids to be forced to pray to a God I didn't believe in. Then again, there is really no forcing going on in public prayer. If this country were to be overcome by another religion, I really wouldn't want to be a part of it. I think its basis in Christian principles and ideals is what makes it great, even if others do not realize it.

Thanks for letting me share.

"Two, if you would like to place your faith in such 'very very very low' odds, you have more faith than I do. "

I never expect to see a 747 spontaneously constructed out of junkyard parts by a whirlwind. But it could happen. In theory, you could flip a perfectly balanced coin ten thousand times and get ten thousand "heads" results. Probably, you won't. But you might. Nothing about the process of flipping the coin or the mechanisms of the universe prevent it. That's why it's called, "Probability," not, "Possibility."

I've had this argument before. "Possible" has nothing to do with "likely." If you can't see that, I'm done talking to you.

"Three, nice try with the open system theory, but if life began spontaneously, it occurred at the molecular level, not at the cosmic level. The appearance of a living cell in some primeval chemical reaction pot would involve an intense local decrease in entropy "

Frost forms on the windshield of a car overnight in winter when the air temperature is above freezing because the glass radiates heat to space. Cosmic factors can influence relatively small Earthbound events.

Cells didn't form spontaneously from the primordial ooze. Amino acids did. The very first, smallest, simplest self-replicating molecules, short chains of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and/or carbon formed. They managed to stay formed long enough for the proper chemical reactions to occur for a duplicate molecule to form. Variations occurred, some of which could survive the local environment, and some of which couldn't. Those that survived kept multiplying, those best suited to the environment multiplying most often. X generations later, something resembling a cell formed. The rest, as they say, is history.

There have been laboratory experiments duplicating the supposed environment at the time life is believed to have begun. Under such conditions, amino acids form readily. Of course, you won't believe that because it's science.

Besides, your initial objection was that the law of entropy made spontaneous generation impossible because "nothing can go from disorder to order." That's what I was refuting. Stop moving the goalposts.

"Four, nice try with the tricky math, but there's a big difference between loaning someone ten bucks and giving it to them for free. "

Agreed. But that's not what you said. You said:

"...if you owe me ten bucks, and I loan you ten bucks to pay me back,..."

I can only respond to the points you try to make. Don't ask me to read your mind.

Why did God need to (to use our metaphor) give us the second ten bucks? Why not just declare the debt paid and skip the accounting acrobatics? Oh, wait. You address that...

"Five, actually God couldn't have just decided to forgive sin without nailing anyone to anything, even though He is God. "

So, he's not omnipotent? You might want to check with the Vatican or your preacher of choice before pushing that one.

If God has laws he cannot break, he's not God. Any limits God faces are self-imposed. Therefore, he could choose to ignore them. If you say, "He can't do X," what you mean is, "He doesn't want to do X." So I ask again, why a blood sacrifice? Why his blood?

Wait, I know! God wanted to see blood as payment for all the horrible things we humans had done. He wanted justice. I see what you're saying. Too bad he couldn't just forgive us out of the goodness of his heart. To bad he insisted on someone paying the price.

Oh, wait. There goes omnibenevolent. The only one left is omniscient. Care to go for the blasphemy hat trick?

"Then again, there is really no forcing going on in public prayer. "

Because the US law is prevented from requiring it. Everywhere that the law differentiates between believers and non-believers, the result is hideous injustice for the non-believers. Look at any modern Islamic state, or Europe under the Inquisition. Religion in government destroys impartiality. The US works to the extent it does because we keep them separate.

Actually, the same is true for any legally-defined inequality. Black people, women, slaves (for examples) were all royally screwed by every government in history all the way back past the Greeks to Hammurabi until a set of laws finally defined them as equal to everyone else.

Yes, oaths of office and various other legal documents contain a variant of the phrase, "So help me God." That's because the people who wrote them wanted to reinforce the determination of the person taking the oath to stick to it by appealing to their underlying morality, defined as their faith.

You could go through and cut the word "God" out of every place it appears in American law, or replace it with "Allah" or "the goddess" or "Jubu, beast lord of the jungles" and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference as far as the legality of it is concerned. And that's what I mean by ours being a secular government.

"I was under the understanding that most people pray and place their faith in God. "

The people are one thing. The government is something else entirely. If you can't separate the two in your mind, this discussion is pointless.

"screwed by every government in history" was an overstatement on my part. I meant, "screwed at various points in history by various governments".