RE: [SPAM]Re: God's evolving humor

Drsyme@cablespeed.com
<Your posts carry a tone of hostility towards
<science, I dont know if that is intended or if that is
<ultimately your point.

Dick Fisher
<Maybe nobody answered the question about whether or not God causes
<"natural" catastrophes. None of us can know with absolute certainty, but
if <He does then maybe He causes traffic accidents, kitchen fires, or any
bad <thing that happens in life.

No hostility here. Rough week last week, but peace made on all fronts.

I'm trying to concisely state my goals, and I can't do it. But, I'll try to
beat around the bush a little, and maybe it'll get you in my neighborhood.

God is.
Our purpose here is to love and trust.
God build a logical and scientific world.
But God wants us to trust, so we aren't going to figure it all out.
This world is 'school'. It's a means to an end that isn't here.
The Bible is our closest look at God other than our own personal
relationship with him.
Our personal relationship gets clouded with other voices.
The Bible is the only way we really have to get back on track.
The Bible isn't scientifically verifyable - in fact the two (science and the
Bible) conflict on numerous points.
Adam and Eve were what? Geneology seems to indicate that we have a common
ancestor. Is it Eve? Or is it Noah's wife?

If I ask a question like "Who were Adam and Eve? Where did they
originate?" - is it hostile? If I ask it another way, it would legally
speaking be a leading question.

I have received wonderful answers to my questions. Whatever 'agenda' I may
have had has been fulfilled. I don't know that I had a formal agenda, but
seeing as I feel satisfied, if I did, it is met.

Personally, I do feel that God makes fools of us all. It is for our own
benefit. I asked my husband if there was anything left that I said I would
never do. He replied that the only things left were immoral, so he thought I
was safe.

The Bible is for our learning. The O.T. is full of punishment and
limitations. In the N.T., we are cut free. However, we are very limited by
the size of space. Yet, we find all these methods, light spectroscopy for
example, of making discoveries anyhow.

Logically speaking, given the ionosphere and distances of space - why the
Tower of Babel? Would we have discovered the atom bomb too soon and blown
ourselves up? Why carte-blanche today?

Don't you wonder how God can be the same yesterday, today and forever and
the Bible can be the word of God and since Jesus is the word of God then the
Bible is holy, but yet we have these fundamental differences in what it says
and implies and what science is able to do today? I want to know! Nothing
hostile there. Tell me why!

(I paraphrased some Bible - don't beat me up for plagerism ;) I confess.)

I know I mix metaphors - but, did my bush beating get you into my
neighborhood? I have questions and I have answers. I have things I know and
I have things that should correlate with things I know, but of which I don't
have a clue.

I've has this issue in virtually every subject for virtually all of my life.
I know all sorts of things about a subject, probably could give a successful
lecture on it to a bunch of college students if no questions were allowed -
but I have basic questions at the fundamental level. I may have wonderful
answers to PhD questions on the subject - but might miss questions from a
100 level test. The best way I've found to deal with this is to ask very
primitive questions that beg a long answer. Then, in the long answer I can
ask - 'what's that? What's a Thummin? I couldn't remember what a Thummin was
called and I don't know what it is, so how could I ask you about it?" And
then they can tell me scholars think it was a stone that lit up to give an
answer to a question posed to God through a priest.

In response to Mr. Fisher,

Faith flourishes in hard times and under persecution. The O.T. illustrated
this and scholars have documented many cases of it in current times. The
whole Old Testament is full of 'this happened because'. Jesus died to free
us from the law. The book of Job speaks of Satan's objections to God
protecting him and not making him prove his faith. But in Job, God didn't
cause the happenings, he allowed them to happen. I'm running up against an
inability to find the question again...

The whole Old Testament cannot be discounted. It is one thing to say that it
is figurative not literal, it is another to say that the figurative cannot
be true because then God would be mean and we know him to be nice.

Maybe the question is, 'Why does God change his limits?' or 'What
establishes God's limits on Man?'

Or maybe, since we discovered the secrets that could have blown us up, and
we chose not to do so, doors will continue to open and knowledge to expand.

My question is still unstated, though I've sat here deliberating about it
for a while.

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
Behalf Of drsyme@cablespeed.com
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2006 10:10 AM
To: Debbie Mann; Asa
Subject: [SPAM]Re: God's evolving humor

I have read all of your posts but have not responded to
any of them, because I am not sure what you are trying to
say. Your posts carry a tone of hostility towards
science, I dont know if that is intended or if that is
ultimately your point.

But can I ask you to be a little more clear in what you
are trying to say because I just dont get it. I guess it
is my fault, clearly I am dumber than a dying dog.

On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 09:14:17 -0500
  "Debbie Mann" <deborahjmann@insightbb.com> wrote:
> In the O.T when man got to big for his britches, God
>stopped it - the Tower
> of Babel being the most notable case. I asked last week
>if any of you
> thought there was divine intervention in the destruction
>of Minoa. However,
> now we've been to the moon.
>
> There is a cute little e-mail thang - I'm sure you all
>get more of them than
> you want - about a little boy and a dying dog. The boy
>says dogs don't need
> to stay here long because they're fast learners in what
>God wants to teach
> us.
>
> Science said that ecology couldn't be restored within
>several hundred years
> in a western mountainous area destroyed by sulfer from
>manufacturing. One
> man's prayer and diligent work had it largely restored
>in his own lifetime.
>
> The little boy story summed up what it took me years to
>derive - we are here
> to learn certain basic concepts. They have nothing to do
>with science.
> Death, illness, the struggle to help others, the need to
>know - are all part
> of the environment to help us to learn love and trust.
>
> Back to the evolution - I wouldn't be surprised to learn
>someday that God
> added quarks to the equation in the 20th century - or
>that their whole point
> was to keep scientists from knowing it all. Dark matter
>also - or rather the
> puzzle of too much gravity that had been called dark
>matter and may be
> branes. It wouldn't surprise me if God were continually
>tinkering with our
> 'classroom' - adding levels of complexity as we progress
>through 'school'.
>
> We've got AIDS under control and the flu still eludes
>us.
>
> I'm sure we are the source of much laughter and tears in
>heaven.
>
>
>
>
> Debbie Mann
> (765) 477-1776
>
Received on Tue Mar 28 22:22:51 2006