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

It's nice to see another Christian on here.

Nice to meet you too, Josh.

If you want to meet other Christians we have a place on H2G2 for just that purpose.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A202519

There's more of us than I thought. Hey, they're tearing us up in the evolution vs. creationism and I'm feeling kind of alone in there.

Where's the action? I love a good debate.

Here it is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F19585?thread=85699&post=1459477#p1459477 Go get 'em!

Watch it with the 'us' stuff, booboo. You did not submit your entry as a Christian. You submitted your entry as a researcher.
I bristle a bit as a Christian myself whenever anyone pretends to speak for me. The only one who speaks for me is Christ.

Okay, I'm sorry, that was rather harsh.
But this 'us and them' stuff is silly. It is also a form of self-righteousness.
Remember the parable of the two fellows praying? One said,"I thank you,God, that I am not like that other fellow!"
The other said,"I know I have no right to ask anything of you."
I know it's a bad paraphrase.
It matters not how the world began or how it will end. What matters is that Christ put up with a lot of stupid questions from his disciples, a lot of doubts, but he did not reject them. His own family doubted him, but he did not reject them.
Peter denied him three times, but he did not reject him.
What he rejected were the scribes and Pharisees and the teachers of the law who kept asking,"Why? Why? How? How? When? When?", as an occupation while they picked the law apart so that they could give their tithe of mint while farmers were expected to meet the full burden of the law.

I don't see what you're trying to say.

You know what? Neither do I. I must have thought it meant something at the time.

Serious or Sarcasm?

It's so hard to tell online.

Actually, it was a mistake. I was talking out of forum. And out of context.

Now that I look at it hard, it is a polemic against condemning those who disagree with us.

And I never did get around to the part about 'shake the dust of that place off your feet'.

Our pastor stood in the pulpit yesterday and talked about looking over some of his old sermons as he was cleaning out his desk.
He said that since he is 44 years old and has been preaching since he was nineteen, there is a lot that he has said and done.
And looking back at some of those sermons, at some of the things he believed and taught his congregation, he found some things he was very ashamed of. In fact, his first thought was to burn the old sermons.
One of the things he was ashamed of was his temerity. He did not want to offend. He was conscious of the shakiness of his position when there were people in the congregation who had been Christians longer than he had been alive. He hadn't wanted to scare them off or scare them into bouncing him out of the pulpit.
But today he he is conscious of the temporary nature of all creation.
Every person that he has an opportunity to save that he fails to be completely forthright with will be one more person that he will have to account for when called before the judgement seat of Christ after he is swept up in the Rapture.
So, he said, I'm not being nice anymore. I will preach hard and I will preach loud and if you don't like it, there's probably something that I am saying that is making you uncomfortable and that is good.
'Cause I'm not comfortable, I'm not feeling good about the fact that here, in these pews, there are unsaved people. You know you are unsaved, because I have told you. You come every Sunday and some of you will remain unsaved until you or I die or the Rapture comes, but I have preached salvation to you. I have not softened the blow. You are going to hell and I'm not comfortable with that....

I forgot my original point again.
Oh, my reaction to Josh.
And the comments about the Creation Vs. Evolution forum
and Josh' subsequent creation of his own guide entry to reiterate what he had already said and to restart the same thread in another place.

Christ had many opportunities to be offended. But he always dealt with them with wit, wisdom and carefully chosen comments that came from the philosophy of his attackers. He knew whereof he spake.

As for my reaction to the situation, reflected in the postings above,
as I said, it was a mistake, and those words carried a lot of baggage with them.

No sarcasm.

Well, I really screwed up on the evolution thing. That part in the Bible that says "Lean not on your own understanding," you know? Listen to that. I realize now that without depending on God for help, which it didn't, I miserably failed to prove anything. I felt a couple days ago that God was instructing me to take up the agrument again, so I'm rewritng the entry. I just need to pray as well as write. That's what I'm doing now.

This is where the 'shake the dust from your feet' part comes in.

It's not you. It's not the subject. It's some of these people.

They are professional arguers.

When Christ duelled verbally with the Teachers of the Law, he had been doing so since he was a boy.

When Paul spoke to the observant jews, he spoke as having been one.

It is not enough to believe what some 'approved' Christian writer tells you in a book that he has written against something. You have to learn it for yourself.

I regularly use five translations in Bible Study, while my Sunday School teacher and pastor use two other translations. I want to get closer to anything I can in the text and I think at almost forty I'm getting pretty good at Bible Reading. That does not mean I am going to argue about interpretation with a Hebrew or Greek scholar.

The whole evolution argument is a reaction to a reaction to a reaction. Erudite Church of God scholars once fought vehemently against the use of bicycles, then automobiles, then radios by their congregation members. And if you go read those sermons, you might even be convinced of the sins you commit in the use of these items.

You have to remember that Darwin was not a Darwinist. Darwin was an observer and a cataloger. He himself did not say that God didn't do this or that. In fact, through his researches, he became truly amazed at the infinite diversity of God's imagination in creating the various species he observed.

And Social Darwinism, usually truncated to the faulty shorthand of 'survival of the fittest' predates Darwin by millenia. It is even found in the Old Testament.

I've been thinking of getting a tattoo on my right forearm in bright green ink. It will say GOD IS NOT STUPID!
I've been running into a lot of strangeness and silliness that suggests that he is and most of it comes from putative christians.
All four hundred and twenty-seven varieties of them.
My pastor suggested a quotation: God is not mocked.
I said that is an old favorite of the Catholics. No 'GOD IS NOT STUPID' expresses exactly what I want to say.

Oh, and the scopes trial was a hoax perpetrated by the ACLU as a test case to test the law.

Thanks. That was a comfort.

Just wanted to say that Tonsil made some good points...

(no tonsil, I am not following you around h2g2... I found this thread from the Information page and thought it looked interesting. I was shocked out of my boots to see you posting here. *grin*)

peace.

Sorry. I'm like that. I'm a PK (preacher's kid). Everything turns into a lecture.

If I detect acerbicity in your reply, I apologise for that, too.

acerbicity? I don't know what that means...
Some of my best friends are PK's... I don't mind lectures... if I can read them (i have a short attention span though, so if someone is telling me IRL, I may have trouble following!) so I can go at my own pace.

I just realize now why u r often on the top 10 lently posters list...
I wish to crack that sometime. Maybe.

peace.

Ok... I looked it up in the dictionary...

No... I did not mean that. I was just saying that I agreed with you. I am a Christian and sometimes struggle with how that should be *applied* on h2g2. And your statements helped with that.

peace.

I wasn't talking to you, booboo.

I'm on a list?

rushes off to find notoriety......