It's Not Like There's A Real Option

it's not rational to believe in evolution for everything but humans.

Hawking said in "A Brief History of Time " that the universe had no beginning and that it came from a previous shrinking universe - meaning perhaps there was a previous universe, negating the story of a 'god' creating this one, because it already existed before 'god' was invented. ~Evolution Revolution

because it's possible for science to answer them

Questions about origins, the nature of things, why is this so -all overtly 'answered' in religious texts- are necessarily scientific questions.

well i just have to clarify something, hawking doesn't claim that the big bang initiated the universe, he says in his famous book " a brief history of time " that the universe had no beginning and that it came from a previous shrinking universe and so on, thus the universe -in his own words- " would just be ! "



i dont think that any religion intended to solve scientific misteries, otherwise the bible would have been filled with equations. people need to have answers to everything, and when something the science fails to explain, people goes to religion, but later when science is capable of answering the question, and the answer is different than the one people found in their religion, it will look like a competition and that one has to win and prove the other wrong, this often ends up in what looks like a " hit " to religion, because science is more credible and it makes sense.... i agree with Joan on that the mistake is that people tried to find the answer to a scientific question in their religion, and as i said it doesnt really seem that religions ever tried to answer those questions, im not gonna go through details about metaphors from the bible, and im not defending any particular religion, but in general, religious texts are usually vague and bears many meanings so u can always modify them to what suits the current scientific beliefs but ur just falling in the same mistake of relating religion to science... i personally believe in god and in a certain religion, and i consider religion as something that isnt concerned with answering scientific questions since we can figure those out by ourselves, religion is responsable for answering the questions that are impossible for us to answer, things outside the universe, an after life, if those really existed.. and since no one can really prove anything concerning things outside our universe, believing in god becomes an option that one can take with absolutely no scientific reason . its just a matter of wether u would rather believe in god and die to find out that there isnt, than to not believe in god and die to find out that there is. so i choose to believe in god, it gives me some comfort to believe in a bigger meaning to all whats happening, and as long as i keep it away of science i stay away of becoming stupid :P , and if i turn out to be right then great, if not, the pseudo effect was worth it.

Metaphorically anyway

OK, so the deity using one of Adam's ribs to make Eve was actually theraputic cloning? I get it!

And get your science from the lab. If it matches the Bible, good. If it doesn't match the Bible, oh well.

...or the stars came from the "Big Bang" which was the creation of the entire universe. At the nanosecond or whatever time unit Hawking used to describe the infinitely small seed of the universe exploding and distributing itself across billions of light years, I'll bet there was a lot of light! LOL!



Take the Bible as bits of history, philosophy, commentary and fables. it really works a lot better that way.

Except god gets it all wrong, he creates light before he creates stars, which of course are the source of light. I wonder what that metaphor is all about.



Another sad stretch of the religious imagination is that the single mention of "behemoth" refers to the dinosaurs.



lol

Actually, I'm not sure that there is a conflict between evolution and Genesis. It's all how you look at the metaphors.



Do you think that when Hawking describes the "Big Bang" creation of the universe that he might be describing what happened when G-d said "Let there be light."?



The problem comes when people take the Bible as the literal, exact word of G-d. The Catholic Church and their Jesuits went through centuries of work to smooth some of that out. Modern people who believe that the King James Bible is inerrant are buying into a mismatched brain twister.



As far as I can tell, G-d wants us to be better than we were. That's evolution.