h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And now that I have gotten to the end of this discussion, I find that it has been brought to a close. My apologies.

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No worries there, dude. I'm always up for a discussion

Anyway, I did a search on the internet for more information on the hemihidrosis thing, so I could get an idea on exactly how common it is, how much blood one could expect to see, etc. Search came up almost entirely negative. Found two mentions of the word. One was a German cartoon with a couple of blood cells making what must seem to somebody as a joke, and the other was a report from a Japanese research center that was unreadable. So, this must be an incredibly rare condition indeed, since it doesn't show up in any internet search (I used 8 different engines) nor in any popular medical sites or encyclopedias. Based on this, I must admit I find the theory implausible at best.

There are a lot of things not on the Internet that do exist. Visit your local library and check out some journals on thermobiology.

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This message is 17 weeks old as of this reply, but I still think this is worth saying:
Chances are, none of us know the answers to most of these questions. But we might know someone who does.

I personally am a Christian in the truest sense of the word. The word "Christian" originally meant "belonging to Christ" and the definition of a real Christian has not changed at all. Around a year ago, I had n experience where I really felt God, really felt him like he was another soul inhabiting my body. At that moment, I began to understand Christinity for real, not as a bunch of sterile rules and doctrines, not on the Dear-God-thank-you-for-this-food-Amen level but for real. If this feeling is an illusion, is it the same illusion that Christians and only Christians have been experiencing for 1,970 years? Because of this "feeling God," I knew exactly what I was getting into when I gave my life up to Christ. It would mean that every decision I make would be the decision Christ makes on my behalf. I would belong to Christ. It was the biggest decision in my life, but one I would make over and over again.

As for the science, it's nonsense. Up until my experience with God, I never backed down from the scientific view of the world. (I still haven't entirely- only certain theories.) I stood up for evolution as a theory (still do today, 'cause I understand it) but it doesn't bother me anymore to picture creation exactly as the Bible portrays it. I've heard some insecure Christins attacking evolution like they had something to fear from it ("'Origin of the Species?' Doesn't that say that man evolved from monkeys?" "No, Leslie, they evolved from AMOEBAS. *snicker*) Pure faith? No. We know that God is there, we know this book is true- what's there to have faith in? I have faith in the historical authenticity of the Bible like I have faith in the keyboard I'm typing on. I feel the keyboard here, it sure seems to be working, but you know, th odds of such a complex device being right in front of me... well, they aren't good, are they? Unless someone had some hand in making it and putting it there.

Something I find interesting is that the biggest critics of the Bible haven't read the book. They've "studied" it, but they don't read it even as a work of literature or a historical document. The historians who read it believe it to be one of the greatest sources of archaeological and sociological information in existence, the book of Nehemiah alone being a treasure trove equal to just about any other manuscrript discovered. The people who read it as a work of literature are overcome by the passion of the writers and the literary quality of the writing. Many of the people who read it with a passion like another book, rather than with the detached cnical view which so many people use, become Christians. Yet few critics of this book ever read it with any intrest at all. I recommend to anyone who has doubts about anything at all.

I agree with most of what you say, but I'd be interested to hear more of your thoughts on evolution.

Well, I don't see how any of this answers the challenges I made in that first post, but I'm always up for a bit of topic drift...

First of all, I see some validity in your statement about the Bibles critics; many have not read it. What is more frightening, however, is the fact that most theists haven't, either. It is indeed a rare day when I can argue theology with an xtian who has a biblical knowledge to equal or surpass my own.

I've read it several times. When I was a teenager, and full of the Holy Spirit, I decided to embark on a noble quest: I was going to read the entire scripture from cover to cover. I started becoming incredibly uncomfortable by the time I got to the prophets, I'm afraid, since what I was reading failed to match the things that everyone always said about God. So I gave up on the Old Testament, and went on to the New. I must say, it does contain some passionately worded phrases, and it's easy to get caught up in emotion while reading it, especially when looking at the red words (in my copy, every time Jesus speaks, it's in red ink) and thinking that they're the words of a perfect man. That is, until some of those passages failed to match that image, too, and so I never got past the Gospels. I did enjoy reading Revelations, though, even though, even as a deeply spiritual teenager, I still couldn't see it as anything more than the product of a deranged lunatic.

Then followed a time of spiritual turbulence. I'd read the Bible by myself, and nothing that any ecclesiast had ever said could come close to matching my interpretations. Was I wrong, or was everyone else? Of course, this made me feel intense bouts of guilt as I questioned my own self-worth, which is the hallmark of Christianity.

Over the years, I grew in my reading and interpretive ability, and I got my hands on a piece of literature which, while advancing a theory about some crazy secret society, happened to drop in a section of criticism of the New Testament. It had stuff about the various contradictions. Was it true? Was the real reason I'd always felt uncomfortable with the NT because I sense contradictions, without the knowledge to identify them as such? So I took the Gospels scene by scene, comparing this account of one incident to another account of that same incident. He was right! Suddenly, it was as if a massive weight was lifted off my shoulder, and a voice whispered in my head, "It's all right, you're okay, and you're a good person. It's the religion that's all screwed up." Since that time, I've delved ever more into different parts of the Bible, acquainting myself ever further. I do so with an open mind, and if there were certain episodes vital to the faith that I could point out and say "hey, that's a fairly reasonable claim," then I would admit it. But now that I've gained a historical background to place the teachings against, I find that my picture of what occurred and the common one are irreconcilable. This of course, only fuels my curiosity further. I'm trying to delve through 2000 years of rubbish to find tiny grains of truth, and I believe I've found a few.

I basically think it makes since for animalsthat don't die to survive, but I don't think that's where humans came from.

Animals that don't die to survive?! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha....

What makes humans any different from animals?

You'll have to pardon me if I'm getting a bit confused here- it's a bit late over here.

I've read what you've written, and there is no doubt in my mind that you're just not understanding basic things about the Bible. I think you're honestly not paying as much attention to the Bibe as you maybe should for such arguments- like the simple fact that Christians don't by policy hate anybody. I hope I don't sound too angry when I say this, but you're saying some things about Christianity which are just third-generation lies. So many people think of the Bible as some kind of cryptic book of short, God-based messages, or something like what Brother Maynard reads in Monty Python, but it's not. It's a real book which happens to be written by God. I think you need to try to get an understandin of God through the Bible. I've earned that you can go over a part of the Bible a dozen times and each time turn up something new and exciting. I don't quite understand you not following the If you decide to read again, please remember, IT'S NOT A STERILE BOOK. This is a book of love and judgement, crazy sex and fatal tent-stake injuries. But more importantly, it's for you. (BTW, start at Romans this time.)

Revelations confuses *everybody.* It's encoded so John could get the message off Patmos, and unfortunately noone has been able to decode it entirely. Some people think this was intentional. Although I haven't gotten that far yet, I've heard that if you don't want to dedicate you life to finding out what the end of the world is like, you just go with it and pick up the important parts.

The Bible says that the Word is your bread. A wise dude put it this way: If you go without food for a month or two, YOU'RE DEAD! You can't be fed in Christ and not get the Word at all. You'll find that real Christians- people whose lives are changed in God- read the Bible continually and almost constantly.

Now you can make all sorts of clever arguments at some nonbeliever, you can give advice, you can even perform healings, but it's not going to convince you. What will convince you is a changed life. Find a Christian who is passionate about God and whose life has been turned around by Christ and you will have no doubts about God.

And yeah, I've heard of the Gnostics. I was an attacker of traditional Christianity until, like Paul, it hit me right between the eyes.

"and there is no doubt in my mind that you're just not understanding basic things about the Bible": So I must be, then, some new-fangled sort of idiot? Perhaps it is you who has the problem of perception. You read the book through your filter of faith, and anything that doesn't go along with that is conveniently ignored. I cannot ignore it when it is so obvious. The Bible is no different than any other religious book. No different than the Koran, the Torah, the Gnostic Gospels, the Epic of Gilgamesh,... It's all a bunch of superstitious nonsense that tries to make sense of the chaos of the world. Why you think your Bible is any different, I have no idea.

nothing, in that respect. I just think we haven't had enough time to have the level of human evolution that anthropologists are so keen on.

Give me evidence of something in the Bible anything at all, a single verse- which cannot be explained just by reading in the regular context. Understand that the Bible is in fact so different in this respect that no other book in existence, especially one written over so long a time, one written by so many authors in so many languages and translated so many times, can provide nearly the same consistency of the story all the way through.

Consistency is the one thing you cannot find in the Bible story, I'm afraid to say. In order to even begin to chronicle the many contradictions between the NT and OT, I'd have to do another entire article on the subject. Hmmm, there's an idea...

So, by that explanation, am I correct in assuming you're an ascriber to the "earth is 10,000 years old" theory of "Creation Science" (my favorite oxymoron) ?

I don't mean to try to put words in Zeldagiss's mouth or anything, but I'd like to make a small observation on the topic of time and evolution. I believe that most scientists will agree that the evolutionary step from inorganic matter to single-celled life is at least as large as the step from single-celled life to man. Furthermore, I believe that the general theory today is that the earth is roughly four billion years old. Plenty of time for evolution, right? Wrong.

Scientists have found evidence of bacteria (in Greenland, I think) that is about 3.85 billion years old. If you go back a few more million years into the earth's history, you enter a time when the young planet was still being regularly bashed by large asteroids, making it hostile to the formation of life. That means that recognizable bacteria must have formed completely in just a few million years. Ridiculous. I've taken this argument from a book by Fred Heeren called "Show Me God," if you'd like more information. (I've done this from memory, though, so it may not be quite perfect...)

I just thought I'd point out one of the numerous holes in evolution. Perhaps this wasn't the place to do it, but I'm in the mood for a good argument. By the way, as I have stated elsewhere, it is extremely unscientific to flat out reject creation, just as it is unscientific to completely reject evolution. They are both valid THEORIES.

I invite you to try.

I agree, there are holes in evolution, but to equate the theory of evolution with the "theory" of creation is insane. Evolution is a theory that has been advanced based entirely on observation of empirical evidence, subjected to intense examination. It came about through application of the scientific method. The "theory" of creation is based on an old story in the Epic of Gilgamesh, with the same mythological overtones that permeate every other book of this sort. "Creation science" is an oxymoron for the express reason that all research into this area has been entirely unscientific. It starts with a conclusion, then makes wild claims masked in technical language to give them a bit of credence, and casually ignores anything resembling evidence to the contrary (fossil records, DNA similarities, etc.). That's why I never get involved in arguments over evidence of "creation science," because anyone who thinks it's a science is doomed from the start.

And you have started with the conclusion that God doesn't exist, Christianity is nonsense, and that the only things you can believe in are right before your eyes. In this way you are no better off than any believer of any faith. Every theory, religion, and philosophy are but shadows of what is real and true. Even Christians are often prone to forget that every element of the faith, every last doctrine, every last word from the Bible means absolutely nothing without the ultimate reality of God. Whether you choose to believe in this reality or not, do not try to pose as an unbiased scholar, when you have made it very clear where your prejudices lie.

Not true. I began thinking that God was real, but observation of empirical evidence and application of the scientific method have allowed me to see that that theory is false. Now, with that filter to my perceptions lifted, I am able to see the information in ways you cannot even consider, and even when I show them to you in plain language, you refuse to see what is before you, because the "reality" of God still filters your perceptions.

How about a single unexplainable discrepancy to start off a good article?