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very impressive, whats your point again?

So its basically a very long self help book?

radiohead, floyd and chilis could eat them for breakfast

"There are many ways to look at a text, and yes, they leads to many interpretations. However, I was addressing the atheist websites that continually only interpret texts as literal. It works to create a straw man. " It is you that are creating a straw man. i dont know which athiest web site you are reffering to although nice of you to lump all atheist into one basket, should we do the same with Christians? But Im not aware of any that say the bible must be taken literally. What they do is to point out the absurdity of taking the bible literally.That is not the same at all. If no religious people took the bible literally then yes such an excerice would be a straw man. But of ocurse it is not because so many people DO take it literally. Once we agree the bible cant be taken literally though we have to agree that the bible cant give any objective morality because so much is open to interpretation. here are key issues which Christians have taken both sides of the fence on: slavery abortion gay marriage anti semitsm death sentence for heretics Whast interesting about this list is that both sides of the argument had Chrsitians motivated by their Christian beliefs. This is not just a disagreement as to who is the best rock band in the world. Now if Chrsitians cant agree on this its clear Jesus at least didnt make his messgae very clear, the bible is no reall guide for life. As an atheist my self (I cant speak for others) I point out the absurdity of a literal interpretation and my purpose is two fold 1) to show the absurdity of the literalist position and 2) to imply that if the bible is not to be taken literally then it cant be any sort of authorative guide to real life. Consequently we should not live our lives based upon some ancient book which no one can agree upon who wrote it, what it says and what it means.

"You gotta love those who are clueless to biblical interpretation" What a ridculously arrogant statement. Your assuming that there is some kind of objective correct interpretation proven by biblical scholars that happen to agree with your particular interpretation of the bible that you hold. But biblical interpretation is necessarily subjective. I have to laugh when you say you are ignorant of sceintific matters and hence dont comment on them but the opposite goes for biblical matters as if these are equivalent. These two are not comparable. Science has a lot more objectivity to it than literary criticism. Its a fact that the speed of light in a vacum is a constant. Its not a fact in any similar way that for example when the bible says death it means a spritual death,rather than a physical death.that is interpretation ie opinion. people who hold atheist, liberal Chrsitian and fundamentalist views have all studied the bible and they dont agree. So your suggestion that by simply studying the bible one will come to the "right" conclusion is clearly nonsense.

On what basis are science and religion not overlapping? Its eeasy for Stephen Jay Gould to say this, that doesnt make it true. Science has a view on the origin of the universe, so does religion. Science has a view on the origin of man, so deos religion. Science has a view on the origin of diseases so does religion. Science is even starting to work on the origin of morality, something I think religion has somethign to say on. On all of these things science and religion differ and they are not exactly minor questions. they are key question abut our very existence. Of course they are overlapping.

Im not asking you to defend those immoral acts which were not commanded or condoned by god. But killing gays is commanded by god and by most Chrsitians definition god=JC. Lot and his family were the only people spared in Sodom and Glamorah, everyone else was killed by god including little children. in fact the so called merciful god even killed Lots wife simply for looking back at the destruction. She followed natural human instict of curiosity and instict presumably created by god? I think we can infer from that that god thought Lot was righteous and maybe we can also infer god likes killing children. In fact Ill expand on that; in Egypt during the PLagues god selects all first born Eygptian to be killed, this instead of simply killing the pharoh, you want to infer from the bible I can do the same. My inference is that god likes killing children and so I think hes closer to the paedophiles than you imply. Think about it, he selects children to killl becuase of the crimes of their leaders, he does make rulings on sexual behaviour eg commanding death for gays but says nothing about paedophilia.

i dotn agree with your analogy at all. If iron fertilisation can lead to a reduction in temperatures then its like making them less fat. I agree with your concerns and I dont suggest this is something we do, just something we should research more. i dont htink thats asking too much.

we are already messing with the enviroment not just by global warming but also over fishing this could have major impacts on the food chain including plankton. Im certainly not suggesting we go and dump all our iron in the sea staright away , merely that we research the issue more so we have have a better understading ,it might give us a very cheap solution to the whole global warming issue. Of course i agree our level of uncertainty is too right now but it may not be so in the future with more research.

"It "jives" with typical Jewish beliefs at the time and is consistent with other teachings of JC " So you are saying you have no evidence whatsoever that god or Jesus condenms peadophilia even though they command the death penalty for homo sexuality. This" it jives" argument is pure speculation and irrelevant even if true; we r not talking about what the poeple at the time believed we are talking about what god commanded. Infact lets not forget that Lot offered his virgin daughters to be gang raped and he was the righteous chap saved in Sodom and Glomorah! and you call this moral?

there are at least three possibilities. 1 it condemmed it because they were young 2 it condemmed becausue it was prostiution 3 it condemmed it because it was home sexual. You are in no position to assume option 1 is true

more research would be my focus; alternative energy sources but also carbon capture and iron fertilisation may hold promise.

Not true at all. i dont have faith in parachutes. i have emperical evidence that parachutes work. If no one had ever seen a parachute, had no idea how it worked and had never been tested i wouldnt use it to jump out of a plane, i doubt you would either.

Theer are books out there claiming all sorts of whacky insanse stuff, so what? Science works by submittign claims to experimental verification. If those claims make specific predicitons, measurements are done that confirm tose predictions then we start to take those claims seriosuly. for example modern big bang cosmology predicted the temperature found by the CoBe satellite, so the big abng cosomolgy was verified. This methodology provides us with a reaosnable foundation for knowledge. Faith on the other hand gives us no reasonable foundation for knowledge, it the equivalent to saying this is true becuase I want it to be true.

Uhm Im not looking for something outside of the bible thats from god , but there are passages in the bible which are not spoken by god or by Jesus. The passage you mention is such a passage and so does not count. by the way I read your passage and I didnt see anything that mentions paedophilia, although i did notice that all fornicators are banned from heaven. the fact remains homosexuality is condemmed, paedophilia is not. Thats a screwed up morality by most peoples standards.

Maybe you should study a bit of cosmology. Nobody thinks it just happened there is a process that explains the origins of stars and atoms. perhaps if you studied a bit mroe you would see that.

ok fair point, then ill amend my question form the bible to god. Where does god condenm paedophilia? Also can you give me the exact verse u r using for Paul please?

Last time I looked Paul is not god. god outlaws homsexuality , where does he do the same with peadophilia?

Christ spooke about the issues he thought were important. its entirely possible he didnt speakk about peadophiles becuase it wasnt very prevalent then. After all witht eh avergae life expectancy of the population being roughyl half what it is now its not unreasonable to think people were reproducing much younger and as a result paedophilia just wasnt an issue. If jesus had divine knowledge he would be able to see the future and maybe speak about issues such as paedophilia and slavery that became issues in the future(for people of the time that is). the fact he didnt speak on such issues is much more consistent with the idea that if he existed he was a normal human unable to see the future, rather than some kind of all knowing god concerened with more than the his issues at his time. In fact from my memory(please correct me if am wrong) the bible condemms home sexual sex acts but not sex acts for minors, implying that god prefers paedophilia to homsexuality.

i think u need to disntiguish the hysteria and the evidence. Yes u r right there are many on the left who use the global warming issue to further their own anti corporate agenda. They exxagerate the nature of the threat and the media likes an exiciting headline so they are exxagerate with them. BUT and this is a big but, that does not mean there is no threat. The best estiamtes of global warming as given by the IPCC are between 1.5 to 5.8 degress warming over the next century. Sure there are those on the left who immediatley assume its going to 5.8 or even higher and there also those on the right who assume its going to be 1.5 or even lower. The truth is we dont really know how big the problem is but we definitley do know we have a problem. Those who deny it completley are just as guilty as those who exxagerate it.

Steve Im sure you know because I have posted them b4 that many of those who defended slavery in the 19th century did so (correctly or incorectly) on the basis of chrsitian theology. So to selectively pick Wilberforce as anti slavery Christian when there were so many pro slavery Christians is either ignorant or dishonest. I wil repost an example to remind you: "Such were the nature and extent of slavery in the world, when our Saviour appeared, to proclaim "peace on earth, and good will to men"--to preach the glad tidings of salvation to a ruined world--to redeem us from sin and everlasting death, and to "open the kingdom of Heaven to all believers." And how did he regard it? What had he to say of this institution, as he found it existing among the people he came to save? Did he condemn it as anti-scriptural and unjust? Did he enjoin on his disciples an immediate emancipation of their slaves? Did he so much as caution his followers against purchasing them in the future? Not a word, disapproving the practice, ever fell from his lips. "A.E. Miller, Printer to The Protestant Episcopal Society for the Advancement of Christianity in South-Carolina, 1837):

that is hilarious so the rules of physics came after civilsation had already been founded did they? do you have any idea how stupid that is?

u think its an awesome promise not to wipe out the whole planet.?if Hitler had won WWII and said never again will i try and kill millions of people for their religion would you go "wow what a guy"?

the plural of anecodte is not evidence. If the vaccine is causing a rise in shingles, where is the evidence? if we have a vaccine for shingles why would it even matter? 100 dead may not sound like a lot but the relevant question is will more poeple be saved from the vacicine than are harmed by it? Lets not forget thousands were hostpilised form the disease as well and if one the hundreds was one of your loved ones you might think differently. If you can show me even a few deaths caused by the vaccine then maybe its worth looking at, if you can show more than 100 deaths a year then there would be a good case not to vaccinate, so far I dont think you can.

james randi took 64 time the prescribed number of homeopathic cleeping pills in one day, he didnt even get drowsy. Still think it works?