In U.S., 42% Believe Creationist View of Human Origins.

Actually, in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus ((Luke 16:19-31) seems to indicate that there were two parts of hell. Both Lazarus and the rich man died and went to hell, but Lazarus was comforted in the bosom of Abraham while the rich man was in a place of torment. A great chasm separated the two parts.

The Catechism explains: Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell"— Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek—because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into "Abraham’s bosom": "It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell." Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.

Yes, that story is a parable, in the middle of other parables. You know what they all have in common? They never happened. Like Aesop's Fables, they're fictional accounts meant to provoke thought on a subject. Here the subject isn't hell, but rather who is more righteous in actions.

And so it is with all mentions of 'hell'. This is why they used the local terminology for the world of the dead, because there is no real place as such. The people of the time would have understood that these are analogies. If I said I was going to 'raise a little hell', no one would believe I mean that literally.

Understand the Christian concept of life-after-death has changed since the books of the Bible were authored. To understand the original concept you have to understand the true meaning of the word 'soul' (from Hebrew 'nephesh', which means literally 'to breathe as an aspect of being alive). The first few uses of the word Nephesh in Genesis 1 refer to plants and animals, and is translated variously as 'living things/creatures/beasts'. It's only when you get to man that they translate the word into 'soul'.

Look at Genesis: "And God breathed the BREATH of life into man, and he BECAME a living soul". A soul isn't something man was given, it is something he IS...as long as he is alive (breathing). Remember this, we'll get back to it in a moment.

The Jews don't concern themselves with the afterlife in their sacred texts, as they are more focused on actions rather than beliefs. The reward for living a just life for them is that their descendants would be blessed (found numerous times in the OT).

The original Christians had no concept of an immortal soul, which is why they deemed a physical resurrection necessary for an afterlife, as they understood you do not exist without your body. This is why punishment after death is referred to by John of Patmos as 'The second death'...it's literally 'dying again', and does not refer to 'eternal punishment'. (We can get into the whole 'aion/aionos = eternity' debate if you really want to).

Indeed, Matthew 10:28 tells us "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (It is Gehenna that is translated as 'hell' here.) What we're seeing here is basically "...fear him who is able to destroy you so completely that you cannot be resurrected again." The connection here with Gehenna (the valley where they burned children) is the visual imagery, not an actual destination. Again, the original audience would have understood this.

The ideas espoused today about immortal souls and hell and such came from later writings such as Origen and Augustine, who were heavily influenced by Platonic ideas.

Modern Christianity hardly resembles the ideas of the authors of the NT at all. It's been perverted, twisted, and manufactured for various reasons that I'll leave to you to muse over.

I study religion not for the spiritual aspect, but rather for the cultural ideas of the times in which they were written, as one of my fortes is ancient civilizations. In fact, it was the study of religion (and physics) that lead me to the inevitable conclusion that such things cannot be as they were written. You get into all kinds of contradictions and obvious borrowings from other religions when you go back to the original languages. Christianity and Judaism are both based on a Hodge-podge of beliefs that preexisted and were incorporated into both.

@br0kenrabbit: That was an interesting read. Thank you =)

It's not that they think the Earth is 10,000 years old, but that they believe humans were created, by God, in their present form 10,000 years ago.

YVW. The Bible in its original context and languages is very interesting. The translations...well...let's just say that the translations have led to a lot of problems.

@br0kenrabbit: It's an interesting concept that those texts might have started as more practical and down-to-earth and became more fairy tale-ish (no offence intended towards believers) with time.

This is indeed the case. What originated as a text focused on ones own actions has been perverted to be a text to damn others. That fact is more blasphemous than anything I can think of.

@br0kenrabbit: It's kind of ironic that the texts that (in part) made me turn away from the religion are "perverted" versions of texts that encourage living more the way I started living after leaving religion behind.

Even if you're not a believer I would encourage you to study the Bible academically. There's some good ideas there, there's some bad ideas there, but it's certainly worth musing over for a few years.

Just don't restrict your study to Judaism/Christianity, otherwise you won't understand the context of it. You've really got to study the culture and other religions of the times to get where they were coming from.

@br0kenrabbit: Seems like a lot of work when the basic moral values that the texts are trying to impart are fairly obvious =) But for someone in your line of study, I can definitely see the appeal.

So the data is basically saying you're more likely to deny evolution if you: go to church weekly, not achieve a high school education, not graduate from college, the older you are, the less familiar you are with the theory of evolution.

@lamprey263: Shocking, huh? XD

lol. my super fundamentalist parents recently wanted me to come over and move up some water for their dispenser and it was a big hurry and i asked them what the hurry was since it was already 4 billion years old and not likely to go bad anytime soon and they would hardly even speak to me afterwards.

they can't help it really. they just get brainwashed by a bunch of stupid people that dangle the keys to paradise in front of them and tell them if they don't believe brainless shit they won't get in.

that's the real crime of religion.

believe dumbass shit or you get tortured for eternity.

if you are not a very bright person or willing to make some waves standing up for common sense what are you going to do?

risk it?

for most people it is just easier and safer to believe whatever ignorant shit people are rolling with.

leave it alone. it's progressing along nicely

I thought in Hades the souls were judged and those deserving punishment were given impossible labors like the guy who had to push the rock up the hill or try and pick the fruit that was always just out of reach

@lostrib: Sisyphus was special, because he was a grade A asshole XD

Never liked to discuss this kind of thing. No one ever agrees with my belief:

Generally...
One side believes a bearded man snapped his finger.
The other side isn't much better and believes that an explosion created this complex universe. Scientists are at a level where they're getting braingasms from pictures of sand from another planet but yet you believe how the universe was created? Ya ok.

Personally I believe that it could be anything; aliens created us to kill off planets, the story from the Lifter's guide, strategy game of the gods, big bang even, whatever. It's impossible to know, which is why I think that people who laugh at religion while firmly believe an explosion did all this aren't any better. I do however believe in evolution though but how does us being apes a long time ago prove there is no higher entity...?

So in conclusion I think humans believe they know everything but we really don't know crap so it's kinda wrong to act like these theories like Big Bang are proven facts.

why are you talking about the big bang theory in relation to evolution?

The big difference is there is a ton of evidence for the big bang and evolution, and not a single piece for creationism.

People don't laugh at creationism because it sounds stupid, they laugh at it because it is stupid. Yes the big bang sounds stupid to the uneducated mind, but when you look at the evidence it is clearly true.

Because on page 1, people are clearly discussing religion and big bang.

Even if there is evidence of there being an explosion, there are a lot of other questions. And I've seen quite a few who believe in Big Bang that seem to like to use the big bang to prove there is no higher entity which doesn't make much sense... (not necessarily in this thread)

And the evidence all these educated minds have? Waves here and there, traces and laws, created in a half tiny-tiny-second^29479. There's a lot of things ya but how can we know for sure? I'll be happy we got slightly more proof that "We've got a wave and according to this law, made up by humans, this means Something". I'll be happy when we've recreated it properly. It just reminds me of programming; you can program an application all you want but you can't know for sure how it will work until you've tried using the application. Furthermore, if I allow a user to put a number into a field, it will be all good. Except for when the number gets above 1037837, then I'll log him off and smack him up with a window saying "wot u doing m8?". The user will think he's free to input any number, he could go up as far as 1037836 but until he tries to go above 1037837 he'll never know.

In other words, all they got are traces and applying man-made laws to it, but how can we know this law are true for all scenarios?

that's a nice world salad

What man made laws? I have no idea what you're talking about and I have a feeling you don't either.

Stop lying.

Give me the Big Bang for Dummies; what evidence is there of Big Bang then?

@wis3boi: I dont know if it is. I though creationism was centered around a specific view of how the universe was created. I dont think it means you simply believe some sort of power inspired or had some part in the direction of the universe and its origin.

Red shift.

if you believe the making of the universe and people is of divine origin/supernatural, you are a creationist. If you do the whole 6-10,000 years bologna, you are the "Young earther/Young human" type

42% of people obviously don't have a working knowledge of established science.

Right.

Well it's time to clear some things out:

1) I'm not even sure how we got into this, I've never claimed that Big Bang didn't happen but rather that Big Bang does not prove that there is no higher entity or similar.

2) About my second post...Clearly I am not qualified to disprove the theory but my point was that it's a theory. We're stuck on a planet, observing traces, coming up with laws and calculations, there are lots of "based on this and that" and hypothesises. In my last post about the programming thingy, the point was that I still believe that we can't say for 100% sure how it all exactly happened. We have theories that say "this _should_ happen". We have a theory based on knowledge known to humans, do we humans know exactly everything about the universe? Nope. I can't name specific examples but I feel pretty certain there are have been situations in the past where theories and laws that have been accepted as the truth that later have been disproved. We're a tiny planet and meddling with forces that are infinitely big and infinitely far away. How can we possibly claim to know the exact truth about universe?

1) Nobody here claimed as such. You seem to be setting up a strawman.

2) A "scientific theory" is not the same as a colloquial "theory". A scientific theory is a collaboration of many different people's work on a set of observable and/or demonstrable FACTS. It is the best available explanation for those FACTS that we currently have. If you have a better explanation for those FACTS that can be shown scientifically (i.e. reproduced by others in the lab or through the working of your theory) then go right ahead and present it.

There is no evidence to suggest a God exists. It's called "faith" for a reason. If you cannot accept that, then you really need to reevaluate why you believe in God in the first place.

1) As I said in my first/second post: That's a common argument in threads like these, not necessarily in this thread though.

2) I did say I can't prove anything which was never my intent either. You said yourself: the best _available_ explanation. Why are we even bloody researching the damn thing if we apparently already know the truth about everything, if the puzzle is already solved? Why can't we reproduce Big Bang then already? Why did it even happen in the first place? How can we say we know for sure how it all happened exactly if we don't know all about it yet then? I am not trying to dismiss the proof we already got but rather saying that the proof we have so far is hardly enough for us to have covered the area to 100%. If we just pretend we're at around 30% then that means there is 70% of unknown possible groundbreaking discoveries that could possibly bust up theories or possibly enlighten us. Feels like we're far from the goal line but we're already celebrating?

3) I've never stated I believe in God. I said I don't like that the idea of an infinitely large explosion that came from absolutely nothing and created everything is considered an absolute fact when we don't even have it all figured out yet. I believe that it could very well be the case but it could also be something else. In other words, sounds just as weird to believe in an explosion that just "popped up" and created everything as believing the universe just popped up from God's imagination.

Edit: To end this; let's just agree to disagree and accept my crazy belief of not considering something that is far from set in stone as the absolute unquestionable truth.

I'm pretty sure they are intelligent... in some things, whatever it is that they're studying. You can be intelligent in certain subjects, and still be unintelligent in certain other subjects (in this case, biology).

2) The only person here claiming to "know the truth" is you. Science does not claim to know the "truth" about anything. Merely, it has the best explanation currently available given all the facts. I don't think anyone here ever said the big bang theory was the absolute 100% factual reason the universe came to be... but it's the best explanation we have given what we can observe.

3) The big bang is not an explosion, first and foremost. It is a rapid expansion of space and time. It isn't a bunch of stuff being blown outwards. It's space itself expanding. The gaps between atoms growing at an exponential rate, which carries on to this day (at a much slower pace mind you, given the relative distances). The big bang didn't come from nothing. Science doesn't claim to know what came "before". There was something, but we can never know what it is. Since the big bang was the point where that "thing" ended, and became our current model of the universe.

There is plenty of evidence for the big bang. Plenty for evolution. There is very little evidence EXPLAINING gravity. We know it exists, we can mathematically calculate how it works, but we don't understand the mechanism.

And go ahead, back out of the discussion. You should learn more about the science you criticize as being "weird". There is a reason why the scientific community bases it's conclusions on peer review and the concept of doing everything to prove a hypothesis incorrect before finding the actual answer. You would be amazed at how much you could learn by just doing some reading on Wikipedia.

Having TA'd a couple of classes, unfortunately that part isn't even true. It's kind of sad sometimes

Creationist/"young earth" creationist are basically used interchangeably colloquially regardless of what each is actually supposed to mean

I think the text actually at least from the translation I've read (ESV) does still tend to focus on individual actions instead of the actions of others. I think people tend to take passages in isolation from the rest of the text and apply them in that way, which leads to some of what you two are talking about.

There's still a whole lot of forgiving and not judging others at least in what I've read. :P (to sum up a few hundred pages in a couple words haha)

That's not what it said. It said that 57% of high school drop outs are creationists. Though there is an obvious education divide in this topic.