Choosing a faith

Am I safe in assuming then that you believe that the Bible should be read literally? Would you agree then that the Bible is essentially a book dictated by God to His followers?

Based on what?Based on your personal religious beliefs without any support from real evidence (your misinterpretations of religious text does not count as real evidence).And completely ignoring mountains of real evidence whose existence you ignore and lie about.You're welcome to your own personal delusions. You are, however, not entitled to anybody else taking your personal delusions seriously.However, when you present your delusions with the expectation that we should take them seriously, then you are exercising the social convention of opening a discussion. Unfortunately for you, entering into a discussion requires that you discuss the subject with others in the discussion in which all parties are required to argue both honestly and in good faith, two qualities that are totally foreign to creationists. WHICH IS EXACTLY IN ACCORDANCE WITH EVOLUTION! As we keep telling you and explaining to you, but you refuse to even read (because your phone is too little for you to read anything on it).Each species only produce offspring of the same species. That is exactly what biology and evolution say! Nobody says that any organism would be expected to produce offspring that are of a different species, let alone of a different genus, family, order, etc. Nobody, that is, except for stupid creationists intent on lying about such matters. Stupid creationists like you who lie about evolution as requiring things (eg, your frequent rants about expecting dogs to give birth to kittens). We have repeatedly explained to you why that is a lie and yet you persist in telling that lie. Why? Because your god requires you to lie?Please explain your misunderstanding of evolution and biology that would lead you to promoting such a lie. IOW, what are you talking about?If you think that your assertion that evolution requires what you describe, then please support your assertion and explain it.If you realize that your assertion is just a lie, then admit that it is a lie.Your lack of response will serve as your admission to having lied to us. 
And OBTW, humans are still apes, members of the superfamily Hominoidea and its component family, Hominidae, that we share with the great apes (which excludes gibbons), and (skipping Ponginae for brevity) the tribe Hominini which consists of Panina (consisting solely of the genus Pan, chimpanzees) and Hominina containing Australopithecina which includes hominids and our own genus, Homo.Similarly, we and the other apes and dogs too are all still mammals. And Amniota. And tetrapods. And chordates (ie, vertebrates). Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.Please try to learn something so that you can contribute to discussion here and not try to drag everybody else down with your willful ignorance and willful stupidity.We are more than willing to teach you, but we cannot do it alone.

AZ, you have a warped sense of right and wrong. You
do not want anything to do with God. You want a personal
genie that is there when you need Him, and stays away
when you don't.It were men, under the influence of Satan, who burned
these precious little babies alive. They were not ordered
by God to do so.People like you, people who feel entitled, blame God for
allowing this to happen and then accuse Him again for
stopping it.Many who feel anger at the death of these little ones find
nothing wrong with mothers who kill their own babies.What do you not understand about God allowing humans
to experience both ways of life. "Get vs. "give."In all your infinite wisdom, how would man learn about the
malicious nature of "get" if God spares them from the
consequences of evil acts? Evil acts bring evil results.Read the Bible. Jesus is accessible to everyone who seek
Him. Through Jesus we can all pray directly to the Father.It is not God's fault if some idiots think they must go
through a priest or some other man in order for them
to get God's attention.They should read the Bible and pray to the Father to
help them understand what they read.Christ commands His followers to love one another. He
commands us to pray for those who mistreat us and
despitefully use us.He insists that we forgive others who wrong us.Christ orders his followers to treat others the ways that
we want others to treat us.The Gestapo and SS soldiers who operated the
concentration camps did not live how God commands
His followers to live.They did not destroy millions of lives by loving them. They
had nothing of God dwelling in them.They had a choice of how they were going to live their life.
It is not God's fault that they chose to follow the ways of
Satan.Again, I ask you: how can we determine the full extent of
Satan's way of life if we are not allowed to experience its
effect on us?There will be three resurrection. The first will consist of
God's elect. They will rule with Him as members of His
Government.Those in the first resurrection are called "firstfruits." This
term clearly proves that there will be other fruits.Those in the second resurrection will consist of those
who God never called and enlightened. The Jews in
Hitler's concentration camps will come up in this
resurrection.They will then have their opportunity for eternal life, as
members of God's family.What they experienced for a few short years will pale in
comparison to what they can experience for eternity.The third resurrection is for those who have already been
judged. Hitler and his followers will be in this rising.There are brought back just long enough to be sentenced
to eternal death.I would much rather be one of the slaughtered Jew than
the men who slaughtered them.After the third resurrection, all the Spirit beings, and
members of God's family, at that time will have
lived through both ways of life.They will have chosen God's way. They do it by their
own free will.It is men, men such as yourself, men who do not love
God, that commit the evil in this world.Someone who loves God with all his heart would rather
die a heinous death himself than inflict it on someone
else.

Son, the only one I need is reality and She doesn't care if I'm here or not. Disturbing. Your god, your genie, mean nothing to me. That's not what your bible says. Look at Job. Satan cannot act without gods will. It says so right there in your book. Is the book wrong? Apocryphal? Fictitious?You have read your book, right?According to your own book it is your god who commands the evil in his alter ego, satan. They are the same. As you can see in the trinity your holy ghost is the mover and shaker. The enforcer. Satan is your holy ghost. The evil that is your religion is built right in to its most basic structure. I should imagine for a believer there is already plenty of your gods evil around for us to experience. But no satan-god necessary. There is only the relentless march of entropy which is especially hard on living things.The rest of your reply just exposes more starkly your disconnect from reality. You have a very warped view. You embrace the blood and the hate and the violence your book says is good. That is you being personally sick in the head.You are a religious zombie programmed to do any evil your devine priests command. And you seek to spread this vile catechism as righteous, conveniently ignoring the millennia of blood, torture, war, visited upon the masses by you and your priests.Your religious thoughts are evil and are poison to humanity. Your religion needs to die.

AZ, you write the most senseless crap, rambling on about
blood and such, about zombies and evil.You rant much like a teenager. A little tack wouldn't do
you any harm.Again, I will yell you that Hitler and his followers did
not follow God's command to love one another.They did not love the Jews to death.They did what they did out of hate, not love.You should read all of Job. Job was quite pleased with
how it all turned out. In any event, you miss the entire
point of Job.When you create your own universe then you can make
the rules. Right now you are living in a universe that
belongs to someone else.You might very well be told one day that you are no
longer welcome in it.

That's tact, btw, not tack. Right. They followed gods hate as manifest in the holy spirit, satan.In actuality, they followed their vision of a deity as revealed by their priests that allowed such violence. Turns out, sociologically, it is the same deity you claim to love so much. Yeah and I'm sure his first family, whom he loved so dearly and suffered so painfully when your god had satan kill them, I'm sure they thoroughly enjoyed every second of their torture and death. You insensitive scumbag. And the same for you. The problem is you keep trying to dictate the rules of a universe you do not own. You, as am I, are already bound by the rules of a universe that doesn't care about your gods, your satans or you ... or me. At my age, I dare say that will be quite soon. Mother nature and father physics have already shown me what will happen. I am not anxious for the void but since there are no options (entropy will be served, energy will be balanced) you and I, candle2, will so become.
​

Dwise, let's talk about the evidence. Take a look at the
skeletal remains of Lucy.Look at her remains. What one sees is the glued together
remains of 47 of the 207 bones that make up her complete
skelton. This amounts to a little more than 20% of the
total. Nearly 80% is missing.Her bone fragments were found scattered on a hillside.
Over 20 tons of sediment was excavated.Found among these bone fragments was a neck vertebrae
Of a baboon. This did not stop them from displaying it as
part of her skeletal remains.There were no hands or feet bones located with the dig.She is shown as being bipedal based solely on Johanson's
vivid imagination and a set of human footprints located
1000 miles away in Laetoli.Her skull was comprised of 3 small pieces. The rest of her
skull and body is composed of plaster of Paris.The display of her in the St. Louis zoo is not based on
science. It is based solely on a misguided paradigm.Her display reeks of dishonesty. In the display she has
human hands and human feet.The eyes (sclera) are white like humans. The sclerosis of
apes are brown. It was not ethical for them to take such
a privilege.Some displays of Australopithecus Afarensis show them
without body hair.The display her has looking up as though she is contemplating
the meaning of life. Or perhaps she is pondering a difficult
medical procedure.The skeletal remains of other AF's clearly prove them to
be nothing but apes. The skulls of AF closely resembles
skulls of bonobos.The spinal cord of humans enters the skull of humans from
the bottom, which is perfect for walking upright.The spinal cord of AF enters the the skull from the rear, which
is highly suitable for walking on all four.This is not evolution, and these chimps are not missing
links.Even the inner ear of AF prove them to be knuckle
walkers.Stop worshipping apes. It is ridiculous.

AZ, I don't have a problem with this universe. I am
content with God in charge.You, on the other hand, have aligned your life and future
with Satan.In the end, we will see how well that works out for you.Those in the third resurrection will weep and gnash
their teeth.The reason they do this is because they realize too late
that they followed the wrong leader.They will get a look at what they are going to miss out
on. It will not sit easy with them, and their choices in
life will come back and haunt them.I do not wish to see anyone perish for eternity. I will
have deep heart-felt compassion for them.God does not want to destroy the wicked. But He is going
to give them eternal life filled with anger, hate, and misery.I used to curse God. I swore that I would never love Him.
However, I kept this between him and me.I wanted to love Him but I believed all the lies that
Satan had convinced me of. Satan is the father of lies,
and his powers of deception are truly remarkable.He had convinced me that God was the evil one.God knew that I wanted to love Him. In order for me to
be able to do that he had to open my eyes to what was
really going on.Those in the second resurrection will be able to change
because they will truly seek God's loving nature.The Holy Spirit will then be able to slowly infuse into them
the very nature of God.Without their willingness it will not happen.You need to seek God's true nature, not one Satan has
convinced you of.I really wish that you would seek Him. The true Him.

Phat, I had meant to reply to your post 2484 but it slipped
my mind.I am not sure what you, or Dwise, mean when you say
that we have been taught an agenda.The only agenda I have is to put God's truth out. I supply
Biblical support for what I say.My own personal agenda is to defend God. Much of the
world hates him. They hate Him because they don't know
Him, not the real Him.One example that the world has wrong about Him is that
He will burn unrepentant sinners in hell fire for eternity.When I see a preacher tell someone to repent or they will
burn in hell it really upsets me.This concept makes God out to be a monster. There is no
way that it makes Him look like a loving, compassionate
God.One must love God because he agrees with Him. The
threat of burning in hell can cause a fear of God, but it
cannot lead one to love Him.How could I love Him if He was going to burn someone
that I love dearly in hell for eternity?God placed a man in my path that caused me to evaluate
everything that I had been taught about Him and His plans
for us.If only one person looks deeply into what I am stating then
I will have repaid what was done for me.I don't ask anyone to automatically believe me. I advise
everyone to pray to God about what is right.God fully intends to give eternal life as members of the
family of God to all who truly want it.In Revelation 21:6 God will give all who thirst for Him
access to the fountain of the water of life freely.This happens after the new Jerusalem comes down from
God.Verse 7 clearly states that we will inherit all things. It also
state that we shall be His son.This is not a trick statement, nor is it a difficult statement to
understand. We will be members of God's family.I know that sometimes I might appear to be a little rash,
but it is simply the way I have been most of my life.I am not trying to offend anyone.

Yes, candle2, we already know how you say your god wants to torture us because we pissed him off … by coming into being … at his command … and then doing stuff with our pee-pee’s, or whatever. None of that is in doubt. We know your religious horror stories.The problem, Oh Poisoned One, is you believe. You believe in this fanciful absurdity in place of demonstrable reality. You not only believe, you honestly admire the violent use of such divine killing power, such easy bloodletting, and you make holy excuses for those who use it in his name.You believe the cult to the point of letting this known falsehood guide your thinking. You seek to spread your poison by counseling others to do the same. And because you believe these absurdities you cannot be trusted to NOT think religious absurdities.Religious history has shown us what blood and evil results from absurdist thinking. The list of religious evils suffered by humanity is well known and well documented. You are an absurdist thinker. You and your cult cannot be trusted with others lest you poison their minds as well. You and your cult cannot be trusted with the future of the world, or of humanity or of your own children. The human meme-pool needs to be cleansed of your religious evil, your religious thinking. The religion you shill for must die. Oh, candle2. How childishly naive. Like the tooth fairy, there is no him and the fact you still believe in a him is the poisoned kind of wishful thinking this species has suffered under for far too long.

quote:

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The only agenda I have is to put God's truth out. I supply
Biblical support for what I say.

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The first is obviously untrue. The second is laughably untrue.Where - for instance - is the Biblical support for your claim that God’s activities on the fourth day amount to clearing the atmosphere of clouds and “debris” that completely obscured the sky? The Bible doesn’t say that - it doesn’t even mention that the sky was obscured?Or for the Anglo-Israelite nonsense you posted? Are we to believe that the writings of J. H. Allen are the “Word of God”?

quote:

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If only one person looks deeply into what I am stating then
I will have repaid what was done for me.

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So you want people to know that you are ignorant, gullible and dishonest. Good news! I know all of that! As will anyone who “looks deeply” into your claims.

You mean the evidence that you keep ignoring and lying about? As you would know all too well after having watched "Gutsick Gibbon" Erika's video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo2ZLnucuHY (18:51) -- How do we KNOW Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) was BIPEDAL?, where she presented the physical evidence and explained it pointing to the details in the physical evidence. I pointed you to that video in my Message 2508 complete with timemarks for the pertinent parts that address your claims directly. All your lying creationist source did was to flap his gums and wave his hands and all you are doing is flapping your gums and waving your hands, whereas Erika knows what she is talking about and shows us the actual evidence with detailed explanations.After having watched Erika's video, how could you still be telling the same old stupid creationist lies yet again? Before having watched it, you were nothing more than an ignorant idiot who didn't know any better, but now that you do know better, repeating those same creationist lies with the knowledge of their being lies makes you a DELIBERATE LIAR!That's the only way you can serve your god? Through incessant lying? And what does that tell everybody about your god who can only be served through lies and deception? Christian doctrine names that god who can only be served through lies and deception: Satan. Here is what I wrote in Message 2508: The single individual we call "Lucy" is just one of FOUR HUNDRED INDIVIDUALS who combined fill in the gaps of Individual Lucy's remains. Even YOU admit to those 400 individuals. The name "Lucy" serves the same purpose as "Private Joe Blow" and "Seaman Smuckatelli": using a generic name to personify an entire group.But instead, being an idiot literalist, you hear that generic name and you claim like a stupid literalist that everything we know about Australopithecines are based solely on that one single individual. What a fucking idiot! Or is it simply that you do not know the difference between the numbers one and four hundred? If that is the case, then I strongly recommend that you find and enroll in the nearest remedial Kindergarten. Erika did mention that too. That bone fragment was removed, so I don't know what display you are talking about.And guess who discovered that mistake and corrected it. Was it a creationist? No, it never is; no scientific mistake or hoax (eg, Piltdown) has ever been exposed and corrected by a creationist. Rather, it has always been a scientist applying the self-correcting properties of science. All creationists ever do is to lie about it. Again, those missing hands and feet are present among those other four hundred (400) individuals, so we know what Individual Lucy's hands and feet looked like. For example, Stw 573 (AKA "Little Foot") is a near-complete skeleton which includes foot bones that conclusively indicate bipedality.So all you can do is flap your gums and wave your hands hoping that we will buy your lies.Also, you're being an idiotic literalist again. You claim that we think that Individual Lucy had personally laid the Laetoli footprints. In Message 2556 you wrote to me: Nobody makes that claim ... except for stupid creationists! What a pack of fucking idiots! But wait! We've just caught you in yet another lie!Here you say "There were no hands or feet bones located with the dig." But in your Message 2504 you wrote: But if Lucy's remains didn't have any hand bone fragments and all that, then just how could you know that her fingers were curved? Could you please explain that? Hmm?The explanation is quite simple: you are nothing but a fucking lying piece-of-shit creationist (all of which is redundant, since the term "creationist" includes the adjectival modifiers and much more).And just for completeness, I will repost my Message 2508 response (which like the rest of my reply, you have never replied to): Not only does white sclera also occur in other species of ape, but it can also be missing in modern humans who have brown sclera.Yet again, here is my reply in Message 2508 -- maybe you should read it this time: Please pull your head out of your ass, open your eyes, and look at the evidence! And stop your damned lying! By "AF" I assume you mean "Australopithecus afarensis", but shouldn't you have written "AA" instead? Where did you get that "AF" from? And why didn't you provide a definition of it as is called for in any essay (or is that just in military writing)?And chimps, A. afarensis, and H. sapiens are all apes as well as being in the tribe Hominini which consists of Panina (consisting solely of the genus Pan, chimpanzees) and Hominina containing Australopithecina which includes hominids and gives rise to our own genus, Homo.Not only did I tell you that a full day before, but that was in my Message 2567 which you mendaciously claim to be replying to here. You didn't even bother to read the message that you falsely claim to be replying to? What a fucking lying idiot!Also, Erika shows us three skulls -- chimp, Australopithecine, and human -- and describes and compares their characteristics -- AKA the physical evidence. No gum-flapping nor hand-waving, just the facts. An added benefit is that Erika is working on her PhD in this very field, which means that, completely unlike your lying creationist source, she actually knows what she is talking about. You should be listening to her instead of your lying creationist source. She covers that too as I discussed in my Message 2508: Are you being trapped in that stupid fundie black-or-white-but-grey-does-not-exist binary mentality? Do you really believe that two and only two angles exist, both at right angles (90°) to each other and that no other angles exists between them? What a stupid rube!As Erika shows us in her video, the angle of the human foramen magnum is very different from the chimp's angle while the Australopithecine angle is very close the human one. You can see it for yourself! Explain that one, please. In detail! And provide your sources! Gum flapping and hand waving are not allowed.And yet again you display your abject ignorance of knuckle walking, which is a specialized adaptation. As I already explained to you in Message 2508: In order to demonstrate why body proportions are important in this question, YOU try to knuckle walk. Go ahead and try it!It's very very awkward for us to attempt to knuckle walk because our proportions are completely wrong for it: our legs are too long and our arms are too short. Our proportions (ratio of arm to leg lengths) are good for bipedalism and very poor for knucklewalking. Australopithecine proportions are similar to ours, very poor for knucklewalking but far better for bipedalism.If your own failed experiment in knucklewalking did not convince you, then watch videos of the making of the recent Planet of the Apes movies; eg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FF64Wpskts -- Planet of the Apes' Actors Get Movement Training | The New York Times . In order to achieve knucklewalking, the actors had to use arm extenders that added about a foot and a half to their arm length. Without those arm extenders, their limb proportions would have made knucklewalking virtually impossible, especially in their action scenes.Watch it for the (for you) unique experience of learning something. Well, what you say most definitely has nothing at all to do with evolution. Tell you what, why don't you learn something about evolution? That way, you might be able to discuss it. Your constant regurgitation of stupid creationist lies accomplishes nothing except to discredit your pack-of-lies religion (a pack of lies according to your own testimony).And nobody says that chimps are missing links ... except for stupid creationists like you. Chimps are Panina while Australopithecines and Homo fall under Australopithecina. Please try to get the facts right. We don't. But you do worship liars and deceivers. Now that is ridiculous.

AZ, name me one war that was started because the
aggressor loved the nation/people he was attacking.Hitler did not murder the Jews because of his great and
overwhelming love for them.Hitler had no respect for God's 10th Commandent: "Thou
shall not Covet."Hitler craved power, but he also saw war as a way for
Germany to steal (#8) land from other nations.I am not getting political, but Hitler admired the ways in
which the Jacksonian Democrats took land from the
Native Americans as America grew and grew.The Catholic Church and the Muslims fought each other
because of their greed. It had nothing to do with either
love for fellow man or love for God.My Church (and I agree) teaches that God forbids one of
His true follower to intentionally take up arms against
another human.God knows that wars are sometimes inescapable. At
times war is the only means by which to stop evil people.However, he leaves this to those He has not called. Those
He has called are not allowed to intentionally take life.In the OT God was more of a King to Israel than that of
Savior. He was not trying to save them at that time. Only
a few of them were called and offered access to God's
Holy Spirit.What we saw was that without the Holy Spirit, even with
God actually leading them, they could not love nor trust
Him.It is your leader who causes all the the killing on earth.
You do not have to recognize him as your leader in order
in order for him to be so.Your problem is that you have false pride, much like Satan.You do not want anyone telling you how to live your life.
Don't play coy with me. I know how it works.Do you want to know what ignorance is?You are actually siding with the being who is trying to rob
you of your opportunity for eternal life.Like Satan, you constantly accuse God.You should be careful. You have reached a point to where
you actually fight against God. You do it openly. And, you
try to get others to join you.I know that you know He exists. No one could become as
angry as you are at an imaginary being.I can guarantee you several things: one is that I have as
much compassion, probably more so, as do you or anyone
else.Another is that you are no more deceived about the
nature of God than I were.Also, you do not hate Him any more than I once did.Love is so important to God that He states "Love can
cover a whole multitude of sin."

Paulk, some people lack the ability to understand things
if it is not spelled out "step by step" for them.If you believe that I am wrong about the creation week,
it is up to you to show me where I am wrong.I do not even know if you believe the account of the
creation week or not. That isn't the point.Correct me if you can with what really happened on each
day.If you have no idea about what happened on each day,
then don't try to correct me.I don't want the blind trying to lead me.

Dwise, it would work out better if you kept your replies
short and sweet.You can reply in your own words. I have already read
many articles with differing viewpoints than mine.I don't have time to read long articles. Please, make your
poi