Ok, I'll take a shot at it since you asked, but it's probably not going to make any difference to you.

The Bible declares that in the beginning he created the heavens and the Earth. It doesn't say how long that took. It also declares that Satan ruled the earth at some point in time, rose up in rebellion with his forces and was rebuffed (Isa 14). His kingdom was then destroyed by flood. The results are described in Jer. 4 and Gen. 1. Satan was already in that fallen state when he went after Adam and Eve and the only time that could have occurred is before they got there.

After that, God restored the world to a livable state in 6 literal days - seeds grew again - the skies cleared so the light could shine down - and he created lots of new birds and animals, along with man. Confirmation of multiple floods is seen in 2 Pet. 3 where the world is declared to have perished in a flood which could not have been Noah's local flood because the social system didn't perish then. Likewise the waters are said to have naturally abated after Noah's flood but fled at God's rebuke after the first one (Ps. 104:5-9). That the world was not created in a "void" state is confirmed in Isa 45:18. The word translated vain is the same as void in Gen 1 "without form and void" according to my reference notes. If nothing else, the command to Adam to go and "replenish" the Earth should be a clue that something was there before.

Other than acknowledging that Satan ruled the Earth and ruled a reasonably advanced people before the Garden of Eden, the Bible doesn't say anything about those times because the Bible isn't about that part of the Earth's history. The Bible doesn't say how long the Garden of Eden period lasted. It could have been a long time. At any rate if you study the scriptures there is no place where science and the Bible are in conflict. There are things recorded in the Bible that science says can't happen - the miracles and healing of individuals and such - but I've personally witnessed people I know healed of stuff the Doctors didn't have a way to fix, so I accept the rest as truth as well. You're free to dismiss my eye-witness testimony just as the accounts in the Bible are dismissed.

As far as evolution goes, I'm perfectly comfortable with natural selection and micro evolution in today's world. As far as macro evolution is concerned, since the Bible is mostly silent on the 4.54 or so billion years of the Earth's early history, I have no Biblical basis to argue with it either. It would be nice to see some evidence of it today on something other than a natural selection or micro level, but it isn't something worth arguing with a evolutionist over. Once you get past the micro level it gets tougher to convince me that beneficial changes sufficient to declare a whole new and different animal or fish or bird would propagate, but that's just my opinion - different colored bugs or critters becoming more predominant in a region is easy. But again, it isn't worth an argument about and this post is only meant to answer your comment. The Bible is about the history of God and Man. The Bible isn't a science book. But it doesn't conflict with science as we know it today either.

I suspect they were just more likely to find them during development since they have to reboot so often when updating Microsoft products. Reboots aren't nearly as frequent on Linux boxes. To say they never had them would be a stretch.

I'm sure if it came down to it, that could happen. Just don't mix it with the gas - they need all the gas mileage they can get to get from one city to another without a refill.

Actually Wyoming would be challenged by water resources to support a very large population since most water is required to be released to the downstream users of the various rivers - whether agricultural or human in any direction you'd care to look and the population centers in the far south - Phoenix or various California cities want more all the time. Part of it is classified as desert and most of the rest is pretty arid in general. As the winters become less severe, the available water will be drastically reduced as the state relies on a lot of snow melt for the water it does store for its own use.

So although you're welcome to try to overpopulate WY, it wouldn't be easy to do.

It is in West Virginia. Let that state take on its operating costs. They can charge the West Virginia users, other U.S. users, and foreign users a fixed price or a sliding scale based on their location and usage to cover its cost. All of the researchers can try to convince their respective employers or governments that they need to cover their now higher costs of research or try to go use some other facility.

After a couple of years, it will either be making money for the state, just covering expenses, or losing money. If the later, then at some point the legislature of West Virginia can decide if the money lost is worth the prestige of the science being done in their state.

Just because the federal government doesn't want to fund it anymore is no reason that it has to shut down. Is it a sad decision? Yes. But you can't live beyond your means forever and the bills that are coming due are big and there are fewer and fewer taxpayers coming along to cover them. The trouble is that the currently popular parties don't see science as a priority. For the Rs, shoveling money to defense and fighting wars is the priority. For the Ds, shoveling money to social programs while sucking 50 to 75% of it into government bureaucracy is the priority. Neither are sound policy.

If you want to change things, get involved in politics at all levels and swamp your elected officials with your opinions. They do respond - at least minimally - to voter pressure. For the foreigners posting, if the GBT is important to you how about chipping in money to pay for its cost yourselves?

Your reference to "Office of Unicorn-Based Programs" at the White House seemed to be a reference to the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships I referred to. Its goal is to selectively distribute funds through faith based groups or other neighborhood organizations to combat poverty - thus my comment. You could read the Wiki page on its purpose if you're interested.

I also checked the statistics after I posted and the latest government survey indicates as much as 70% of each tax dollar gets eaten up by overhead, so the percentages I gave for government help were quite optimistic. I wasn't going to post just to correct it, but since we're clearing up confusion I'll do that too.

Sorry I wasted your time. I'm sure that at some point the atheists will be running everything from the White House down. I just hope I and my family don't live to see that day and particularly not if I'm in need.

Many faith based programs are funded completely by individuals. They're covering all the overhead and operating expenses already internally and usually have large volunteer components at all levels including upper management. Some that I know of are 100% funded by the members and so 100% of donations received are used directly for what they are given for. They are being the best stewards of any funds or other items donated to them to have the greatest reach possible.

If the government can use them to funnel aid to individuals without more government bloat and paperwork taking a big chunk of that largess before anyone who needs help ever benefits from it, I'm all for it.

Certainly there are exceptions considering the thousands and thousands of programs out there and there are failures and there are cases where overhead is way too high. I suspect that if it were possible to score every single faith based program in the world including all major faiths as to how much of each dollar or dollar equivalent for goods like clothes or foodstuffs they received actually went to recipients and compared that to all private programs aiding individuals and compared that to all government programs aiding individuals, faith based programs would win hands down in doing the most good with what they get.

That isn't to say they do the most, because governments are huge compared to the number of faith based programs. It is only to say they are far more efficient. The Red Cross or Red Crescent or Salvation Army frequently grabs the headlines in dealing with disasters, but along with each of them are a host of faith based generally large denominational programs that also roll out help to provide food, shelter, and other items to help those who are suffering. Would I rather get 95 to 100% equivalent of a donation of food along with a tract or a brief word of hope if disaster had struck or would I rather get 50 to 60% from a public source. If you really feel people would prefer to get less without an encouraging word, I suspect you have never been in their shoes.

The Bible is not in conflict with science. Many people have interpreted the Bible in ways that are in conflict with science. That does not make their interpretation correct and science wrong, nor does it make the Bible wrong because their incorrect interpretation does not line up with science.

My interpretation, which I have held for decades, doesn't have issues with an old earth. Indeed, it requires the earth to be older than the ~ 6k+ year old value that is commonly bandied about. I feel my view is consistent with what the scripture actually says from cover to cover. My view doesn't address evolution, as the Bible doesn't address it. I am completely neutral on whether macro-evolution occurred in the past or whether God just had fun tinkering because He was bored. Science really can't prove that macro-evolution is true over other options due to the time scales involved. Natural selection and micro-evolution is observable, but macro-evolution is not and probably won't be at least in the near to mid range future. Macro evolution / God experimenting - will remain unresolved.

The important thing is this. Whichever view is correct doesn't matter as far as the purpose of the Bible and doesn't affect my religion at all. Pastors have taught young earth theories from the pulpit and have taught old earth theories from the pulpit over the course of my lifetime in a single church. I'd say the congregation was about evenly split if a vote were to be taken as to which was right. But who is right and who is wrong is completely irrelevant. It simply doesn't matter in the grand plan of things.

Since you mentioned it, I'll also note that I have no desire that the schools be forced to teach religion by law. All I do expect is that the schools be fair in their treatment of religion should the topic arise and present a balanced view of any side that wishes to be heard. I wholeheartedly agree that the place is not in a science class room.

I believe in God because I see His work in people's lives today. I observe how He is interacting with my life and in the lives of those around me who I personally know. I have observed tangible changes and events which cannot be explained by science or medicine. Yet they match up with what the Bible said would happen in words written ~2k+ years ago. Thus I stand as one of the few in the forum who is both a champion of science, and a champion of religion. Yet I realize that what I have experienced in my life will be just as irrelevant to you as the Bible you mock.

If you really are honest in wanting to be a Christian, find a smaller Pentecostal church and attend it for as long as you have studied science. Go in skeptically. Don't let those who attend off the hook about their beliefs and make them give you real answers, being respectful to ask the questions in a normal learning environment like a Sunday school class or small group when the topic arises. Realize that some topics like creation have wide ranging views. Remember that these topics aren't what Christianity is about - they are fringe issues which are largely irrelevant to the Gospel's message and that you will hear a wide range of opinions. Go with the intent of finding out what Christianity is really all about. Do go in with an open mind and stay for an extended period of time and really get to know the people and their lives. That way, when God does do something special that you observe, you'll have the confidence that it wasn't just some trickery since you really know the lives of the people involved.

If you do, then God will prove Himself to you, and that is the important thing. Once He has proven Himself to you, then you will look at the Bible in a new light and read it and see how it really is about a whole bunch of things other than the five or six that get bandied about in this forum when people start trying to tear it down and raise science up.

Having had such a huge increase in posts on the topic recently - as you've noted, I thought it a public service to throw out a thread at the top to catch the majority of the debate in one spot and make it easier for the rest of you to ignore. It was regarded by the audience as flame bait, but was actually intended as a public service that I thought might even get rated funny - guess my mood was off that day. It was also a throwing up of my hands at exactly what I was expecting from the article on variations on decay rates, which I did in fact read and observe that the variations were cyclical so of no consequence to anything in particular.

If it actually came down to God versus geeks, I'd bet on God. But that's just me.

Your point is taken. As an engineer, I must examine all of the data points. In the case of religion, this includes historical data points throughout time.

If a forum reader has never experienced God personally, then he or she is most likely to fall in the group that takes everything that the Bible says or any Christian says as a mere story with no basis in truth or reality and dismiss every miracle or healing or time that God spoke with His people completely because that particular exact thing cannot be duplicated on demand today, regardless of how many people witnessed it when it happened. I think I can safely say that this position represents the vocal majority on slashdot - and most of the world for that matter.

But to ignore a pattern of data points is equally wrong. It is true that many of the data points are recorded in the Bible. Most on slashdot don't like that. But most on slashdot also studiously avoid any place where they might discover new data points about present day Christianity themselves.

In the church that I have attended for a few decades, there have been people that I personally knew, and knew the histories of, healed. It doesn't happen often - you can't just go there on a given Sunday and see a healing, but if you attend long enough you will see people healed and you will have come to know them well enough to realize that they aren't faking it. The pastor isn't getting any glory for it. It isn't particularly publicized to bring in people because if you are going to church to see God perform, then you are going for the wrong reason. In my case, my wife was healed by being prayed for by a lay person. The doctors had narrowed her problem down to one of two things - neither of which they could fix. She went up, was prayed for, and came back with no symptoms. She has remained OK since, although the person who prayed for her said she might need prayed for again at some point. I know she wasn't faking, because I lived with her symptoms for months before she was prayed for and she hasn't had them since. She wasn't faking them. She was healed - just like the Bible describes in 1 Cor. 12. That is a personal data point, but it is no less relevant than all the data points being reported by missionaries around the world and other people in the Christian church today. God just doesn't do things that are reproducible, so the forum crowd waves the data points away and says none of them matter.

We do routinely have messages in foreign languages and interpretations by people who do not speak or understand the language being spoken. The first common comment is - well if neither one understands the language how do you know that that is what is being said? Partly, this is on faith and the other gifts operating that will check you if something seems off. But at rare times, there is a third party in the audience who does speak the language and will come up after the service and ask either the person giving the message or the interpreter something like - where did you learn to speak X as it is uncommon today? Neither the party giving the message nor the party giving the interpretation have ever learned it, but the third party can vouch that the interpretation was correct. This is again as told in 1 Cor. 12

Other times, a word of knowledge has been given to me as an individual where someone comes up and says God told me to pray with you about this or that you need to be aware of this. They have no way to know that I am dealing with the particular issue or have a problem at that particular point in my life about what they tell me, but it is spot on. Not even my immediate family knows about some things I deal with. But God does. This is also seen in 1 Cor. 12.

God is at work today, just as He was in the early church, and He is at work in churches and individuals all over the planet. There are also, sadly, a huge number of churches and individuals that have the name of Christ but who are far from Him. You have to pray to Him and ask His direction to find a good church for you to go to where you can be sure to be trained up in the way that you should go.

As an engineer, I can't make God repeat each single thing and since they are by definition super-natural, I cannot reproduce them myself. But for me the sheer number of interactions is conclusive without doubt. Since what I see today matches up with what I see the Bible saying happened 2,000 years ago and was prophesied to continue happening in the church, it gives me confidence that the promises are repeatable and that the rest of the Bible is true. I suspect that if we gave Him more glory and put more faith and trust in Him, we would see Him act more often than we do.

I can't answer for all the other God's that people worship today, but I know that Jehovah beat out all the other Gods in the Bible. It is easy to be a skeptic and stay away from any chance of seeing Him work and perhaps have to acknowledge that He is, but once you do you have to make a choice of whether to accept what you see as truth on faith, or to pretend you didn't see what you really did see or hear what you really did hear. Since accepting that there is a God as described in the Bible means what the rest of the Bible says is true as well, then that makes a lot of people uncomfortable and mostly they just try to ignore the whole thing and paint some whitewash over that part of their brain and go back to living they way they were because they don't want to take the responsibility and change their lives to conform to their new reality they now perceive.

If there is some other super - ultra - god, then that god hasn't been made known in any way to me, so as an engineer, I follow the Biblical blueprint that I have in front of me with the data points I have, the ones I have heard about from other Christians alive today, and the historical data points the Bible records and pick Jehovah and Yeshua. That will suffice for me. I always keep in mind the warnings that in the end times the anti-Christ will come to deceive even the very elect if they weren't ready to go in the rapture with signs and wonders. So if this post is still around and read post-rapture, read Revelation before falling in love with a new "god" who is doing cool stuff that probably will be reproducible on demand. If you find a "god" that is reproducible, you've probably missed the real one.

Some do think this, but you can also be a creationist who believes God created everything 13+ billion years ago - or whatever the latest estimates are and believe that dinosaurs actually lived in the proximity of time scientists say they did and that their fossils weren't created to just test our faith. This position is equally consistent with the Bible. It isn't the popular view, but it is the view of some who would still call themselves creationist. There is a consistent reading of scripture which would allow for an unknown amount of time to have passed between Gen 1:1 and what we view as a restorative process after the judgment on Lucifer recorded in the rest of Gen. 1. The Bible is largely silent on what went on during this time period so we make no comments concerning natural selection or evolution, other than to point out that as far as man and by far the vast majority of creation is concerned, it perished with that judgment and was restarted as noted in Gen. 1. The fossil record also seems to bear this out if I remember my Scientific American, as most early hominid fossils come to an abrupt end at pretty much the same time, and modern man starts shortly afterward.

While I would say that is a correct rendering of most of the text, I'd point out that it was likely the tree of life in the garden of Eden that kept them living and healthy until the fall. Their being banished from the garden and kept from getting at the tree of life was what gave them the ultimate sentence of death and sickness in between.

There is nothing in scripture that says death wasn't present for the rest of creation at this time. Adam and Eve just had access to a tree which provided significant benefits to them in terms of longevity and health, similar to that which is prophesied to be present in the millennial period.

Sorry for your experience. I wish I could say it was atypical, but I won't. What I will suggest is that if you put your eyes on the life of Jesus and to a lesser extent perhaps Paul who specifically requested that no offerings be collected for him when he went to a town to preach, and get your eyes off of man, you will have much better examples to emulate or to look up to.

I would also point out that for every pastor who gets rich, there are probably 1,000 people at all levels of church work from custodians to teachers to pastors to missionaries who either make nothing for their efforts or who make a very small amount of money for the hours they spend doing the work of the Father. They just don't get the publicity of the few bad apples in the bunch.

Your invocation sounds like some of the Roman invocations I've seen in history books. But the reality is that if there is only one God, He would rightly be mad at generalizing an invocation to anything that might be out there.

I happen to believe there is just one, and that He has made himself known to humanity. Others would disagree. Regardless, as He has done so to me, I must follow Him. And as an engineer, there are definitely times I will gladly acknowledge His help. There are also times in my personal life that I gratefully acknowledge His protection and help. The slashdot group ignores instances of divine intervention because they can't be reduced to a repeatable experiment, but they are sufficient for me.