Saturday, November 05, 2005

Anne Graham

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this happen?" (regarding the attacks on Sept. 11).

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.

And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"

In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school . the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself.. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.

Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing?

37 comments:

Anonymous said...

You seem to neglect the fact that the terrorist attacks were committed by people who believed (as do you), that they were doing the work of God. Religion and a mindless belief in God is the problem, not the solution.

Bri said...

mindless is the key word there, Andrew. Stephan's belief in God is certainlynot mindless. And I think that most terrorists do not have a mindless belief, they have cerainly thought through what they believe.their beliefs are just not grounded in facts, and the reliegion that they hold to is a very violent one. do you think that it really is mindless? if so, come ton my blog, and we can talk =)

Anonymous said...

Islam is not a violent religion. In fact, I'd argue that Islam has done far more to promote peace and improve humanity in the world than Christianity. I suppose mindless was poor word choice on my part. I realize that many people have thought deeply about their choice to believe in God, just as I thought deeply about my decision to cease practicing and believing Christianity. I probably should have said "unquestioning".

Anonymous said...

Abby, I have a feeling you have have me confused with someone else. I haven't posted anything about my beliefs on my blog, although I do plan to write a short piece on how disappointing it is to see Kansas return to mysticism, superstition, and ignorance with the recent ruling on Intelligent Design.

Bri said...

that is not andrew perkins. i commend you for thinking deeply about whatever desicion you made there. it is true that many christians have not thought too much about what they believe, but that is true for most religions. I have looked at it from the scientific point of view, because I cannot just believe in what a book says, if the facts surrounding me everyday do not agree with it. That is why I do not agree witht he theory of evolution, there are just too many loop holes and assumptions. I am sure that we will never be able to scientifically prove what happened "in the beginning", but we can come close. What made you leave the christian faith? (if you don't mind me asking) was it something in the church, or in what the believe?

Anonymous said...

If you truly believe that there are too many holes and assumptions in the theory of evolution, I suggest you read into the subject a bit more deeply. Modern biology is entirely based off of the idea of evolution, and no evidence has ever been found suggesting that this the theory is erroneous. You may want to read this (long, but worth it, read the critique and rebuttal of the critique as well):

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

If you have any other questions about evolution, the following link contains a lot of good information:

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html

The reason I left the church was that I found it to be a way for people to soothe their fear of the unknown. If someone didn't know why something happened, it was always "God" who did it, and he had a plan, which is a comforting, but silly, point of view. That, and the Catholic religion (I was Catholic) seemed centered around pride. All I ever seemed to hear was "God made us special! We're the most important! We were made in the image of God! God came down to save us! God cares about every little tiny thing we do, and needs us to pray to him since we're so important!", and yet, they claimed they were "humble". The church used to refuse to believe they weren't the center of the universe. They killed people who said otherwise. What happened to that belief?

Bri said...

thank you very much for those references. i will certainly visit them all. Actually, if I only studied biology more extensively, then all i could learn would be more biology. well, i have read teh most recent findings of more than just mainstream biologists. most of them are actually under pressure from their funders to "find" data that fits theie presuppositional ideas. i have read very extensively on the subject of evolution. actually, mostly in the area of cosmology/physics, but really if you look at the facts from a purely scientific point of view (only gathering data, and then basing your conclusions off of that data) then you might see some of the original blunders of the idea. Darwin himself said that after new research was made, tehn his view would most likely undergo change due to new findings. however, it is very hard for the scientific community to let go of a really good hypothesis. A couple of the biggest loophole that i can think of jsut now would be:
#1 A lack of trasitional forms. According to the theory of evolution, everything in nature originated from one cell. therefore, there should be TONS of tranisional forms everywhere. not just humans, but every living thing. there are no transitional forms. none.
#2 the cambrian explosion. this was an unexplained "explosion" of phyla. never before had mammals been seen, and suddenly they appear on the focil charts. there was not enough time for them to evolve in the course fo a couple thousand years.

as for why you left the catholic church, if people that i was surrounded by also believed that, and praticed hypocrisy as you have described, then i would have left too. I think we come from very different church backgrounds though. in every sect of any beliefs, there will be those who do not practice what they say they believe. i certainly do know some catholics who know what they beleive, and do not seem hypocritical. however, that is all very subjective. I am sorry that you had to experience that. to tell yuo the truth, i find that pretty common in places where there is no persecution. Like in china, all of the christians i know there, genuinely are committed to what they believe. they are also believing it becayuse they think that it is true (using their minds), not just going along with what everyone else does (tradition).

hope tha made some sense =)

Anonymous said...

Andrew: Modern biology's basis in evolution means nothing. If evolution's wrong, we simply know far less about biology than we thought. Sheesh, have we learned nothing from Euclid?

One major problem with evolution is the universe's sheer complexity. Know what a good unit for the information contained in DNA is? Six hundred page books. This is what we're told formed at random. If I told you that even one page of information came about through a computer's random selection of letters, would you believe me for even one second?

Also, the Catholic Church hid the word of God from the public. Probably got bothered by the part that said, "Thou shalt not kill." I personally doubt that the leaders were real Christians. I'm more inclined to agree with Galleleo, who said that God wrote the universe in mathematics.

Anonymous said...

Here are some answers to the arguments you have made.

#1 A lack of transitional forms.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html

#2 The cambrian explosion.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC300.html

#3 Too complex.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CI/CI101.html

The complexity argument is one I find especially silly. I have personally used the concept of evolution to write a computer program which evolved the answer to a hugely complex optimization problem, starting from completely random numbers, and resulting in a complex electronic circuit. There were over 10^25 (one with twenty five zeros) possible solutions, and I only had to evolve 100,000 generations of them to arrive at an answer. Now imagine the same process, in an incredibly parallel fashion, over millions and millions of years. It doesn't take much imagination to see how this could result in the amazing organisms we see around us.

Oh, and darkangel221, calm down, take your meds, it's okay. I'm just expressing my opinion. ;-)

Steve M said...

Andrew, i'm going to comment on each comment that you left. First, you saying that I "seemed to
neglect the fact that the terrorist attacks..." I
didn't neglect saying anything about that at all, my
post was about the frequently asked question "how
could God let something like this happen?" If I put
down anything else, it would be wandering from the
point.. I didn't write this, Anne Graham did. the post
isn't about Islam.
Next, Islam overall may not be a violent religion, but what is constantly heard about is how the "terrorists attacked such and such place" These attackers claim to be under the religon of Islam, and also consider their attacks to be a holy war. Also concerning Islam doing more for the world/humanity , you are incorrect. Christians, are very dedicated to helping. There is one agency, Baptist General Conference, which gave so much relief aid, 2nd only to the red cross that helped when hurricane Katrina hit. If you name any Ivy League school, and find out who started it, it was Christians. I can continue, with more examples, but as of now you don't even have one, and I'm going to continue onto the rest of you comments.
Modern Biology is NOT based entirely off of evolution, nor has there been any evidence found to prove that the theory of evolution is actually true. Your first link is primarily about the writer finding the word and meaning of "evidences" through-out literature. It doesn't even try explaining anything about evolution. it is not "worth it" as you said.
The next link has several links inside it, which branch into more topics. Some of them are incorrect immediatly such as "are mutations harmful?" they say "no, not really." Mutating cells constantly turn into cancer. If you take the four winged fruit fly, you'll find that no other fly will mate with it, so that in the end, its mutation will not be passed on.
It does look like the church you attended was leading you falsely by what you've said. But not all churchs are like that. There are dead churches, and that's why Christians need to be close to God, so that they can hear when God says to move on, or that a church is dead. I'm sorry that you had a bad experience with that Church. And I'm also very sad that that shaped you view of Christianity. Because what you said they were like, is not what true born again followers of Christ should be like. In fact I believe most churches have twisted what Jesus taught, and especially was like. Something to think about is when you look around a church of any kind, what do the men "strive" to be? "a nice guy." But Jesus wasn't crucified for teaching men to be a "nice guy" was he? A book you might look at is "Wild at Heart" by: John Eldrige. I challenge, and dare you to give it a try.
Concerning your last comment, I'm going to spend more time reading the links you posted. I'll comment later about it.

Anonymous said...

Stephan, I think you're a bit confused. My first link was not a single page thing. There's a next button near the bottom of the page, which takes you through a quite decent introduction to the theory of evolution (there's quite a few pages, so take your time). Here's the link again (it is most definitely "worth it", as long as you keep reading, and pressing the next button ;-) ):

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

About the mutations, I take it you haven't read many research papers in the subject? Your ideas on mutation are, quite simply, wrong (according to decades of research and experiments).

Anonymous said...

You speak of research; I've seen the mutations. National Geographic did a show on them. They made a point of saying that mutations could sometimes be beneficial, but didn't show any examples just yet. It'd disappoint their viewers greatly, you see, if they told them so soon that the only one they could come up with was one that kept a freak-lover farmer from killing a couple of cows. Carl Sagan estimated a one in ten thousand chance of a beneficial mutation, and I doubt he meant something that would only benefit the individual, not the whole species. I've heard about some of the experiments. They used computer simulation. Hmm, why do I suddenly distrust the results even more? Why, why? Oh, yes! Because we still don't know enough about DNA to write a program that can read it! Otherwise, we wouldn't experimentally look for a gene to explain a mutation, we'd look it up! And, as it happens, I read much more from pro-evolution sources than creationist ones, so don't accuse me of not reading enough on the subject.

Anonymous said...

William, I find it tough to believe you've read with an open mind then, since much of what you've stated is factually incorrect. My roommate is studying molecular biology, and she's headed off to graduate school to study genetics next year, so I have direct observation of the actual science involved. There is no longer any debate in the vast majority of the scientific community (ie: 99.9%) about whether evolution happens. Millions of years of evidence and a vast quantity of research show that it does. Of course, there is still plenty of argument about many of the details, but that's how science works! We still don't fully comprehend how gravity works, but does that mean that angels are holding our feet to the ground? If the evidence supported something else, guess what? Scientists (including me), would believe that! But, as it stands, there is a huge body of evidence indicating that evolution happens, so it's what I believe. I'm guessing many of you don't have much experience in the science world beyond that of simple high school classes, or are simply choosing to ignore the facts.

Bri said...

well, i live with a polymer chemist, PHD, every day, and he has seen SO much new evidence that completely points away from the theory of evolution. this is harded to debate from a boiological point of view because so much of it is based on the assumption of natual selection. i think you need to integrate different areas of science first. what do yuo think about the lack of transitional forms all around us? i mean YOU, not just a link.

Anonymous said...

You know 99.9% of everybody can easily be wrong. Again, it's like we've learned nothing from our experiences with Euclidean geometry (not to mention Newtonian mechanics).

Jesi E. said...

Hello, Stephan. I hopped over to your site because I saw it on Kurt's site. It's very interesting, and I glad I came over.

I would take careful pause about saying that God has politely left our nation as we asked. In our most deeply religious periods and in our most secular periods, America has faced extreme circumstances. If it happens during times where we follow him, Christians say, "God is testing us." But it if happens during times where we are not following him, Christians say, "This is what you get for abandoning God." Some people of non-Christian faiths believe that their god(s) are punishing us. (One muslim when asked why he believed Europe was so sucessful and why Allah hadnt' destroyed it said that he believed Allah liked cars and hoped Europeans would bring their cars to heaven.) I think we should encourage people to follow God because it brings joy to their life and the opportunity to live a good life. When connecting God's will with terrorist attacks, I'm afraid that looks like scare tactics to get people to join our religion. I want to encourage people to the love of God, and, not that I'm necessarily saying you've said this, but stay clear of communicating a need to fear (fear meaning the emotion of feeling afraid) God.

Anonymous said...

So Andrew, do you believe in God? Why or why not?

Anonymous said...

Miss Black and White: Yeah, people get carried away with that sort of thing. It really bothers me that we look at the events in the Bible and forget that whenever God was about to judge the world, he gave HUGE warnings. Yet today, some think that Hurricane Katrina was some kind of judgement. Back with the Flood, Noah was warning people, and that boat of his was pretty much a big hint that something was going to happen. Everyone noticed. With Katrina we had what? A weather man?

Why do I think this was not the hand of God?

Anonymous said...

William, I don't think you've thought your argument through. Yes, of course 99.9% of people can be wrong, and I freely admit that I may be wrong about evolution (not something you hear often from the creationist side). As I said before, I choose to believe what the evidence points me to, and currently, that is evolution. If something that better describes the development of organisms through millions of years and has irrefutable evidence behind it comes along tomorrow, I will admit my mistake and work to understand that instead (again, not something you hear from the creationist side, and hence the reason creationism is not science). I do not shape my beliefs around my religion (or lack thereof). In the case of Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics, we did not fully understand things fully, true. Modern understanding of geometry and mechanics is different, yes, but it's a revision of the same old ideas. It's not like we found problems with Newtonian mechanics and said "That's it. We don't understand what's going on. It must be GOD!" Instead, scientists worked day and night to further our knowledge, instead of taking the easy way out and saying "Whelp, I guess God did it!"

darkangel221: What exactly do you plan to do to me? Burn me as a heretic? It's amazing how easily some people are brainwashed...

Bri said...

hey! ;)

ok, i have a proposition to make. Andrew, you give me your top 2 or 3 reasons why evolution is a good theory of origins, and i'll give you my top two or three why some higher being could have been the cause. then we simply talk it out from a purely scientific stand point, only using data and the conclusions that the data brings us to. we both come to this with an open mind, so lets see where it takes us. what do you say?

Steve M said...

I'm going to start on another topic as well. Evolution had to start somewhere correct? So how about when the universe was created. However, to begin talking about how the universe was created I'm going to start by talking about what science is, and what it can do to solve this question. To me science is made up of observation, and experimenting. However that can only take us so far. Science can't know the ultimate nature of things. Observation and experimentation can take us only so far. After that there stretches out, beyond our ability to observe, the unreachable vistas of a limitless unknown. Despite its accomplishments, science has given us no final answers. No on knows what life is, nor do they know what the final building blocks of matter are. No one know how the mind influences the body. We know some things about phenomena, but we don't know anything about the ontology of things. We know what things do, but we don't know what things are. Science can't know the origin of thins. We know of the present existence of certain entities and phenomena, but the provenance of these things escapes us. The assertion that something was created or brought to pss ex nihilo (out of nothing) is an assertion about which science is unable to comment. No oberserver of anything can tell us the origin of that thing solely on the basis of observation. Whether or not the universe was created out of nothing is a question that the scientist, as a scientist, has no more competence to answer than an ordinary man. When Darwin wrote the "Origin of the Species" he told us nothing about origins. He only spoke and believed or processes through which biological life replicated itself upward from the simple to the complex. But this theory was arbitrarily distilled from his observation of present life forms and residues. It was not based on empirical observation, for NO observer but God himself was present to observe the beginning of things. The scientist who says, "this is how it all began" isn't speaking as a scientist, but rather as a speculator on a par with all others who speculate about beginnings. Science can't fathom past processes, because the function of science is observation of the present. Nor can anyone know the age of anything if he wasn't present to observe that object's beginning. If you think about it, even observation is superficial. Processes, even in the present, vary hugely under the influence of many known and possibly many more unknown conditioning factors. To think that the theroy of evolution is scientific is to deprive the word scientific of any meaning. for once again scientific knowledge has to do with observation and experiment.So called knowledge of a thing like evolution comes neither by observation or experiment and therefor can't be called scientific. Anyone who isn't a Fool should know this. "But Wait!" I can hear a scientist saying now, " evolution is the most probable account of the past." But, on no, here the logic breaks down again. Nothing can be called probable unless it is tested against that which is provable. Without provabilities there are no probabilities. So when he insists that evolution is true, the scientist loses his credentials as a scientist and as a logician. Aren't you glad your not a scientist?

Anonymous said...

Stephan, two things.

#1: Of course science cannot observe everything. But, through continued effort, we can expand our ability to observe, and thereby improve our knowledge. Isn't that preferable to giving up and saying "Well, we weren't there, and it's hard to understand, so lets just say God did it and be done with it."? Imagine how we'd be living if scientists had listened to the people who said "No one will ever be able to understand disease. We simply don't have the ability to see the invisible forces at work. Lets just say God did it and give up." I am glad I'm a scientist. I am proud to be on the side that is progressing forward with knowledge, improving the human condition, and ensuring a bright future for the human race (even for those who don't believe that it's possible).

#2: Again, your post is full of what is, quite simply, false information. Look in any biology inclined scientific journal, and you'll find a large number of highly scientific experiments investigating evolution, with observable, repeatable results.

Herohtar said...

Actually, it was the majority of scientists who didn't believe in germs/bacteria and were saying that disease was something built in to the human body, and just randomly happened...

I know this is probably an overused example, but it once was a known "fact" that maggots grew from meat; they had even done many "highly scientific" experiments (with quite observable, repeatable results, I might add) that proved it.

The point being, just because the experiments seem to be right, doesn't make anything true. But on the topic of experiments, where can I get more information on some of the ones you mention? I've read quite a bit about the evolution hypothesis, and I don't recall seeing any experiments that claimed to prove evolution.

Anonymous said...

Andrew, you're using framing to guide readers to believe that your points are the only sane option, e.g. "Isn't that preferable to giving up", "lets [sic] just say God did it", and "I am proud to be on the side that is progressing forward with knowledge". Cut that out.

Few Christian scientists use God as the final cop-out to what they don't understand, let alone the first. You've limited Christians to a group that's scared science might prove them wrong. Just as that group exists, however, Christians in other groups believe that it is fascinating to find out how God designed the world.

Now then, which group to choose...crazy Christian fearmongers, or "improving the human condition"? Geez, I guess I'll take "improving the human condition". *grin*

Anonymous said...

I'd rather improve the human condition, too. Seems much preferable to burning someone you've decided is a witch at the stake, especially given how unscientific the tests were to see if someone was a witch. (Hey, I may think science and the supernatural are compatible, but that doesn't mean I'll ever be optimistic about a "witch-detector.")

Plus, you know, whatever happened to mercy? Didn't Jesus forgive an adulteress rather than let everyone else stone her?

Anonymous said...

Kurt, yes I know I was making rather sweeping generalizations in my post. Stephan's similarly sweeping rhetorical questions ("Are you laughing?" & "Aren't you glad you're not a scientist?") were annoying me, so I figured I'd add some of my own. ;-)

Also, I have a question for you then Kurt, what hard science has been done by creationists to determine how life developed on earth?

Herothar, many of the research papers are not freely available, and must be obtained in journal form. That being said, there is a library of the (rather limited) selection of freely available biological research papers here:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/home/

Even with the limited number of papers available through that service, I get over 2000 results to the keyword 'evolution', 0 to 'creationism', and 2 results for 'intelligent design (neither of which is actually about intelligent design).

If you would like to investigate further, here's a good site with some other resources you may want to check out:

http://bubl.ac.uk/link/b/biologyresearch.htm

Enjoy. :-)

Anonymous said...

Andrew: Technically, the "Are you laughing?" part wasn't written by Stephan, remember? Most of the post is a quote from Anne Graham.

Bri said...

oh my gosh! " what hard science has been done by creationists to determine how life developed on earth?" have you really studied this wholoe topic from an unbiased point of view? if so, you would have found that an overwhelming number of the European scientists that made so many break-throughs during the Scientific Revolution were christians. i actually researched this topic very extensively and wrote a paper on it. all of the histrical evidence shows that the scientific revolution in europe far exeeded the quality of teh ones in india and china for example. and as i researched this, it becames evident that europe was the only place that widely practiced christianity. could be a conicidence, but if you look at history, after a few hundred C.E., the christians, or those around tehm, are the ones who have made the most scientific break-throughs.


what field of study are you exactly, and what degrees do you have? i know someone who is accepting applications for scientist, preferably younger, that would recieve a grant to work together with a philospher and a theologian to do break-through research. you might be interested. here is the link if you want to check it out.

http://www.ctns.org/stars/

the link to apply your application will not be open until Jan 15 though. my father is the program director of STARS, so i might be able to put a good word in ;)

Anonymous said...

andrew: do you believe in the Big Bang theory or something else?

darkangel221: chill, about the only thing you share with this guy is your name.

Miss black and White: a very good point!

Jesi E. said...

Thanks, Selah.

I wish to break into this conversation, but I wish to do so carefully. I want to remind myself of one thing: I believe that if God would choose if He'd prefer me to argue the accuracy of Biblical history or share love with my brothers, I think He'd go for sharing love. So, I ask your forgiveness if any of my statements below are offensive. I never intend them to be. I just enjoy "iron sharpens iron."

So, I am a Christian. I do not believe in a literal interpretation of Creation.

Why? Well, for the longest time, I believed that empirical evidence could prove that Biblical creation was true, but I've since discovered I cannot believe that.

I've studied, in depth, the evidence of both sides. I was for a long time a creationist apologist, until I took a general science class at College of the Ozarks in Missouri. I read wonderful book called "Finding Darwin's God" and my worldview changed.

I agreed with you, Stephan, for a moment and then it was gone. I believe that science is meant to study the natural world. In that way, I do not believe science can ever speak on the nature of the supernatural. But, scientists can study the past. They can walk into a room a return a few hours later with a drop of blood, fingerprint from a weapon, and a hair telling you who died, how the died, when they died, and who did it. They don't have to see the event to study the remains of the event. Every event leaves evidence. What does one make of the evidence that exists in our world about how it was formed? Background radiation. Birth and death of stars. The fossil record. It points to a process. If the stars were all created in the same moment, or even within a period of 10,000 years of each other, then they should all be the same age. They're not. In 10,000 years, very little happens in the life of the stars. Why is the important? Because the presence of many elements (such as Carbon) comes from a much longer period of life cycles of stars.

But, perhaps God only meant it took seven days to create the Earth. Why, then, is there stratification in the fossil record? Shouldn't it all be mixed up if it all existed at once? Maybe carbon dating is wrong, but why would there be levels where some less complex species exist and more complex levels exist above them?

For a while, I thought: Perhaps God could have created a world in seven days that looked like it was billions of years old so they we could enjoy the privelege of a mature universe. But, then I questioned that belief, because why would God create a world where the evidence deceives those who seek the truth? I believe that God designed the natural universe that we could study it and learn the wonders of its workings. It is not designed to frustrate us.

I'm done tonight. I'll come back when you shoot holes in my incomplete argument. :-)

Anonymous said...

Hi Stephan - Great web site, and lively discussion! Thanks for initiating this by making us all aware of Anne Graham's remarks.

This post is actually for Andrew.

First, I am aware that I am entering the discussion very late, but I have been traveling recently, and am very intrigued by the exchanges here. Andrew, I commmend you for your openness, your commitment to follow the data wherever it leads, and your self-awareness in terms of your evolving religious beliefs. I just wanted to ask a little more about your current beliefs. You already mentioned that you left the church for certain reasons, but I am wondering what your concept is of God at this point in your life. Would you consider yourself an agnostic (not sure whether or not a supernatural being exists), an atheist (certain that no God exists), a theist (belief in a transcendent creator of some kind), or maybe a deist (a creator exists but is currently uninvolved in the physical universe)?

For myself, I am scientist and a theist, however, I am well aware that within many theistic religious traditions, including Christianity, there is a whole spectrum of positions on how God interacts with the physical universe. Rather than make the details of how, through what mechanism, or over what time frame a creator may have done the creating, I just wanted to first ask you your current understanding or concept of God, or lack thereof.

Dennis

PS - By the way, how do you use the HTML tags for italics, bold, etc. Thanks!

Bri said...

See you tomorrow. =)

Anonymous said...

Dennis. Place the <b> or <i> tag in front of the text, then place the same tags with slashes in front of the letters when you want it to be normal again.

Anonymous said...

That ought to have worked...

The "<"s should be <

Anonymous said...

I give up.

John said...

TA DA!

Anonymous said...

God is the true path. Anne has a passion for this and took her time to learn the truth and shes sharing it with the world. People love to judge but when they are judged its not right, we should learn to accept peoples opinions and choose to learn more about them.