Evidence of God's Design

[EDM]

ok.....jesus came to earth as man, performed miracles and then died for us by being crucified by the hypocrites.......

for the people bit.......do YOU know every single person in the world by name? even after checking the internet, records, etc.....can you remember them?

Talking about other people after adam and eve is like writing a biography and not putting the name of the pizza delivery person in the chapter......so why should everyone's name be there? the original sin started because of adam and eve....and it was passed to every new person created/born.....kinda like a fraud in a company and all people who work there get their reputation busted.......whether they were involved or not....

plus, if you read more, you'll find that it all comes down to the jewish religion being formed in the OT......

and Quag....."there's no such thing as simple logic......simple logic comes from a complex basis......"

now what do you say to my statement???

Edited July 12, 2010 by EDM

[Guest]

Big guns good. The reason this thread was started was because of the "What happens after death" thread. I made a comment of how I believe and was ripped for it (not directly) but still the idiot I am for believing in God. Let me say this, although you won't read any of it, 'Life' evolves, grows, changes, a rock does not. To have evolution or the process for which things can change and adapt LIFE NEEDS TO BE IN THE PICTURE. How did it start? Evolution and the THEORY of it can't explain it, period. Now I looked at a lot of evidence and have studied a lot, DO I DNOW EVERYTHING? No, and don't claim to.

So with this--The gospels were written in 50a.d. up to 70 75a.d. Please this is why I say I know that Jesus is.

Just read it okay I don't want to have bad blood with anyone, to me this is fascinating. Jesus died in about 33a.d. on a cross, (form of Roman capital punishment) written in letters or (books) that were widely read and proclaimed in 50a.d. state that He died was put in a tomb and covered with spices. Traditional at that time, covered his body with a big pile of them. Closed the tomb and sealed it (with a roman seal) with wax at the points where the stone met the tomb. Then it says the Soldiers or Roman guard watched it. His Death was scourging, Crucifixion, and a Roman soldiers spear in his side. They made sure he was dead. All this written and widely communicated in 50a.d. To have a roman soldier at that time break that seal or leave that post would have been death, it was a military post. Options- Roman soldiers conspired to take His body and bury it or hide it somewhere-But when the new Christians were proclaiming He had risen-Easy to produce a dead guy and stop the uprising. Don't you think. Option- The Jewish rulers who had him handed over to be crucified took his body, no that don't work either. So the silly Christians must have taken and hid or buried his body somewhere in the wilderness (after they fought off the Roman Military Post and started this new religion. Then THEY ALL GAVE THEIR LIVES, some in horrific ways. I might Live for something I know is a LIE, don't think I would DIE for it though. When the tomb was found open it was written and proclaimed that just the cloths were there. The spices were not disturbed, just kind of sunk down where His body once lay. After all this it says He showed himself alive to Hundreds of people in Jerusalem.

Written in as early as 50a.d. other books and writings up to 75a.d. That's only 20 years after this had all taken place. 20 years. It would be like me writing and proclaiming a new highly controversial religion that says Princess Diana not only died in that car accident but 3 days later came back to life, showed herself alive to hundreds of people, oh and while she was alive before she died and then was alive again, she healed the sick, caused the blind to see and raised other people from the dead.

You see my point, Don't have to agree with it. I could not write something like that, ONLY 20 years later. People are still alive to know what happened. Just as it was back then. Accept the people that saw what He did and what happened knew it did. So you have a man that taught for 3 years in a romote part of the world proclaimed to this day as the Son of God. Is it okay with you if I believe that this is TRUE? not that I'm asking.

The context you are missing is that Christianity was a persecuted minority in the Roman Empire until Emperor Constantine in 300s AD. So only the faithful read the texts while there was still someone around to disprove it and they kept them secret from the majority of the Roman populace until they gained enough followers (who never witnessed any of the events therein described) and became the majority. Constantine converted to Christianity because he saw it on the rise and realized that continuing to force the Roman Pantheon on the populace against a growing portion's will would destroy the already crumbling empire. He hoped that by uniting under Christianity (and moving the capital to Constantinople (Istanbul in modern-day Turkey)), he could save the foundering behemoth. (It didn't work, but that was largely because of events outside his control. )

So by the time that Christianity went mainstream, there was no one alive to call BS. I don't know of many people who form an anti-religion: that is, a religion devoted to debunking the statements of another religion, since that would be the only thing that could have countered Christianity's rise. If the Roman guards stole Jesus' corpse, no one outside the faithful would have cared at the time. Only 300 years later did it become widely relevant. No one would have bothered keeping the guard's diary around to counter their argument. "Dear Diary: Me and the boys broke open that tomb of that crazy Jew. We thought that there might have been something worth taking there and anyway, we just wanted to yank on his followers' chains. We had a good laugh about what his mourners will think when they see it in the morning... "

If there was any documentary evidence to counter Christianity's claim, there was no reason for anyone to hold onto it and there was an incentive for the faithful to destroy any record that might exist, since they didn't want conflicting stories (at least beyond the conflicting stories that already exist). So to say that no one claims to have seen the dead body anywhere doesn't prove (or disprove) anything since none of us were there to witness it and it's not like every document ever written about the issue was preserved for our viewing pleasure today.

As for evolution, I highly recommend "The Beak of the Finch" by Jonathan Weiner. It's a fascinating book examining the studies being done today (a.k.a. 20 years ago now) that help to verify the fact of the theory of evolution. At the very least, it shows natural selection at work, taking populations and setting them on divergent paths. And as Quag has repeatedly said, the theory of evolution says absolutely nothing about genesis. It is completely agnostic about the origin of life. It examines only what happened after life began. It doesn't know and it doesn't care about how that life began. Somehow primitive bacteria formed somewhere deep in the ocean and began their amazing progress to diversify through evolution over 4 billion years to life as we know it today. We don't have all of the answers, but evolution is the theory most thoroughly supported by the evidence available. To say that all "evidence" of evolution is a carefully crafted hoax is to say that thousands of otherwise respectable scientists are actively engaged in a massive fraud to falsify their research regarding the fossil record and other studies. You mentioned somewhere up thread about various kinds of early Man being proven to be hoaxes, though you failed to provide context for your rather serious claims. Who has proven Lucy to be a hoax and how do we know?

[Guest]

Lucy, found in northern Ethiopia in 1974 and supposedly provided evidence of a link in the evolution of man. Led be Professor Richard Leakey, said that Lucy was 3 1/2 feet high, walked erect, and lived over 3 million years ago. Lucy described as an early ancestor of modern humans. Catalogued Lucy as Australopithecus afarensis, claimed she was an early human because the knee-joint proved she walked upright. More digging at the Lucy site found fossilized bones of extremely ape-like creatures with chimpanzee-sized forearms that made it probable that these creatures walked on four feet as opposed to the erect posture that characterizes humans. NATURE, 368:449-451, 1994.

One of the most famous paleontologists is Richard Leakey, son of evolutionary scientists Louis and Mary Leakey. Leakey identified Lucy as a hominoid, an ancestor of mankind. However, Leakey admitted that the paleontologists are often working from their imagination more that from the fossil evidence. Leakey admitted, "Our task is not unlike attempting to assemble a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle in which most of the pieces are missing, and those few bits which are at hand, are broken!" Internet site: http//emporium.turnpike.net/c/os/evid4.htm

Some scientists have candidly admitted that their preconceived opinions in favor of evolution govern to a great degree the conclusions they reach about the nature of the fossil evidence. Dr. Gareth Nelson, of the American Museum of natural History, admitted this in the following statement. "We've got to have some ancestors. We'll pick those. Why? because we know they have to be there, and these are the best candidate. That's by and large the way it has worked. I am not exaggerating." Garth Nelson, LUCY'S CHILD, (New York: William Morrow and Co) 1989: 74.

[Guest]

So did Elvis

Elvis never said he was God's son, and as far as I know still in his grave.

Actually Wiki says up to 150 a.d. (mid second century, so the fable was passed on, same as many other legends and myths were).

No wiki says the gospels were written around 50a.d.

Well, somebody thought the same thing Paris Hilton said a while ago and I quote: "It will work. I'm a marketing genius."

Bible and Christianity are nothing but the biggest marketing scam of all times!!

I gotta hand it to them, they did quite a job, we are still suffering from the ripple effect, but I'd still rather believe in Wizard of Oz!

You don't have to believe anything.

Dude... this is not cool. You are talking about a real person here. She was a humanitarian and helped a lot of people. While G.W.Bush wipes his hand on Bill's shirt, she always shook hands with everyone without hesitation or disgust.

Jesus is a real person too, I only picked Di because most famous death I could think of. I respect everything she did and her as a person.

You do know that back then there was no internet, nor TV, nor radio, nor paparazzi, nor anyone who'd listen to than kind of gibberish?!

Those things written weren't available to people for centuries, they could have written WHAT EVER THEY WANTED! Think of people's lifespan? They weren't around long enough to worry about Jesus really, they were busy staying alive.

Your conclusions are totally out of context!

Not really out of context, just something you don't agree with.

EDIT: minor typo's

[Guest]

Lucy, found in northern Ethiopia in 1974 and supposedly provided evidence of a link in the evolution of man. Led be Professor Richard Leakey, said that Lucy was 3 1/2 feet high, walked erect, and lived over 3 million years ago. Lucy described as an early ancestor of modern humans. Catalogued Lucy as Australopithecus afarensis, claimed she was an early human because the knee-joint proved she walked upright. More digging at the Lucy site found fossilized bones of extremely ape-like creatures with chimpanzee-sized forearms that made it probable that these creatures walked on four feet as opposed to the erect posture that characterizes humans. NATURE, 368:449-451, 1994.

One of the most famous paleontologists is Richard Leakey, son of evolutionary scientists Louis and Mary Leakey. Leakey identified Lucy as a hominoid, an ancestor of mankind. However, Leakey admitted that the paleontologists are often working from their imagination more that from the fossil evidence. Leakey admitted, "Our task is not unlike attempting to assemble a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle in which most of the pieces are missing, and those few bits which are at hand, are broken!" Internet site: http//emporium.turnpike.net/c/os/evid4.htm

Some scientists have candidly admitted that their preconceived opinions in favor of evolution govern to a great degree the conclusions they reach about the nature of the fossil evidence. Dr. Gareth Nelson, of the American Museum of natural History, admitted this in the following statement. "We've got to have some ancestors. We'll pick those. Why? because we know they have to be there, and these are the best candidate. That's by and large the way it has worked. I am not exaggerating." Garth Nelson, LUCY'S CHILD, (New York: William Morrow and Co) 1989: 74.

None of that is evidence that they are hoaxes or totally made up. It only offers up the suggestion that it's a fake. And of course, it's hard to know exactly what someone said when it's being "quoted" from a third(fourth/fifth/sixtieth)-hand source with an agenda. I could probably find someone on the Internet who claims that Jesus advocated eating babies. It probably would be false, but there's no immediate evidence to disprove that he may have said that. Based on the evidence we do have (from the Bible of course ), it's unlikely that he would say such a thing so long as we agree with what the Bible says about his words.

There's an apocryphal story propagated by Creationists about how Darwin renounced the "Origin of Species" on his deathbed. The source seems to be one conservative evangelist who claimed to have visited him near the end of his life, but there's no corroborating evidence and his children deny it happened. So merely stating that someone somewhere claims that Leakey expressed doubts as to the veracity of Lucy's existence is hardly darning evidence to the contrary. Besides, the fossil record is only one aspect of a multifaceted examination of evolution. There are so many other things that we can examine in the here and now to help us understand evolution.

Go to the library and find "The Beak of the Finch" that I mentioned above. I thought it was a fascinating study of what biologists are examining today to find the evidence for evolution. The main story follows researchers examining the 13 distinct species of finch living in the Galapagos Islands and how they diverge and combine depending on the competing species and the available food and shelter. In some cases, the difference of a millimeter in beak size can make all the difference between survival and starvation. It also looks at other studies being done and I highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in the subject but is intimidated by Dawkins (especially given Izzy's signature ).

[Guest]

Have read some about the finches, the ones with the medium sized beaks lived or something. Will have to read it again. You pretty much stated what I am saying, I say evolution can and has happened but not to the point of we came from apes, that is crazy talk. (as far as I am concerned). The origin of Life, Evidence of God's Design. The Creator made everything. That is what I believe. You can't tell me How Life began by using evolution, period. I can tell you I believe Gen 1-1 In the beginning God created. For me to prove God to you will never happen, I can however tell people why I believe the way I do. You believe the way you do based on what evidence? I am sure you have some. You want to start a thread to show why, I say go for it. This thread started when Izzy asked me to prove my God, to give reason and evidence. The evidence is not good enough for most all of you. It is for me. That's alright. I am not one to try to change anyone's mind and have been around this site for awhile and pretty active, most of you know that I did not at any time write riddles, or post any topics like this before. This is however what and how I believe and I will stand for what I believe, just as you all stand for what you believe.

[unreality]

you seem to not be understanding that evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis

[Quag]

sigh hambone you refuse to actually listen to what the theory of evolution is or even read the descent of man. Darwin didnt say we descended from apes, he said that at some point in the past we shared a common ancestory. the implication is that apes and humans both evolved on similar but different paths. creationists continue, since the scopes monkey trial, to say that apes were our ancestors according to darwinians. that is a blatant misrepresentation. your stuff about lucy jsut says that some guy doesnt think lucy is the missing link, how does that prove a hoax?

EDM from your reply i will assume that i was correct the bible never said god created other people it just started talking about other people. you seem to be a litteral reader of the bible. so ill call you on that. if you believe everything in the bible is exactly what happened. despite the fact that you have never ever ever ever actually read the real bible in your entire life and never will(yes please call me on that ive already explained but am willing to do so again), than if something is not in there you can not just invent it to go along with your wild theories.

again why was jesus in backwards place 2k years ago and not china 6k years ago?

only logical answer: because he wasnt the son of god

hmm simple logic.

if 1+1=2 and 1+1+1=3 then 1+2=3

simple enough for ya?

[EDM]

being an avid and enthusiastic reader of the bible (i read it like a story book.... ), I happened to read other versions of the bible as well.....the bible has never completely been accurate and it says so (at the bottom, they mark the places where the translation might differ)......but i'll say again that it's history.....just like any proper history book; yes, it will not be completely right, but the main bits are right and I totally support it.......(if i sound like i'm trying to be extreme on this, let me know....)

and i'm not going with wild theories; i study my faith and i'm pretty sure i'm right on some things. Have you ever discussed this with a roman catholic priest? try doing that......they know wayyyy more than I do and they are quite learned enough to have a better discussion on this than me.....

why jesus was not in china 6k? because it wasn't time........it's like saying why abraham lincoln din't come before 1809 (his b'year).....that means he's not the 16th president of the USA and he didn't stop slavery....

simple answer: it wasn't time for him yet....a time was set where people said he would come, and then he did......

plus: he came to Israel, the 'jewish' country, not the chinese.....

Edited July 13, 2010 by EDM

[Guest]

Quag, sounds to me like your a fool when it comes to God and His Word. You may think you understand because you may have looked into some and I do say some of the Greek and Hebrew Lexicon, not good enough. You (sounds like to me, know nothing about the Spirit of God or how he chooses to operate)Israel is the place, backwards as you may think it is, I am sure have never been there. 2000 years ago is very specific timing. Do I want to go here? Okay- The book of psalms and the book of 1st Peter 3:8 Say's that 1000 years on earth is like 1 day in Heaven (or to God) and 1 day in heaven is like a 1000 years on earth. God is not bound by time tomorrow is Gods yesterday. Read the boring stuff like Gen 5. Genealogies, and add up some stuff. Jesus showed up 4000 years after the bible Say's God created man. Hmmmm, 4 days to him, gave his life and saved (for those who choose to believe) mankind from sin. Just as Jesus showed up 4 days after Lazarus was dead, and raised him from the dead. (But Lord he has been dead 4 days and stinks now) Since the time Jesus was here has been another 2010 years give or take a few, Born approximately 4 b.c.e. Total 6000 years, or 6 days from the time He created man. How many days does God work before He rests. Oh, that's right 6 days. You can look at the sky and read signs of the weather but can't read the signs of the times. Jesus is real, His Word is real, lets maybe talk about prophesy, show me another book that has any prophesy in it that has come to pass. There isn't one, just the Bible.

[Guest]

Let's talk science as well not just life, The force of the gravitation He created was, and still is, precisely balanced with precision to match exactly the Universe's powerful expansion force. God caused the Universe including time, space, matter, and energy to begin expanding at an extraordinary speed, which continues today. God used the force of the gravity to cause matter to combine together to form galaxies and stars, while the expansion of space caused the Universe to continue to grow in size and not collapse back upon itself. if the expansion force and speed were even slightly and I mean slightly stronger, no stars or galaxies would have been able to stabilize, and our solar system would not exist. However, if the expansion speed were even a fraction weaker, then the Universe would have collapsed upon itself. How precise did the expansion speed of the expanding space need to be balanced against the force of gravity? They need to be balanced to an astonishing level of precision that totally defies the odds of probability. Dr.Stephen Hawking (although an agnostic) admitted that it was incomprehensible that the Universe that exists today could ever have formed by random chance: "Why did the Universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separated models [of the Universe] that re collapse from those that go on expanding forever, so that even now, ten thousand million years later, it is still expanding at nearly the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the Universe would have re collapsed before it ever reached its present state." Stephen Hawking, A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME-FROM THE BIG BANG TO BLACK HOLES (New York:Bantam Book,1988)p.122-123.

Edited July 13, 2010 by hambone

[Guest]

How about the Earths circular orbit? Every one of the other planets in our solar system circles the Sun in an elliptical orbit, not in the virtually perfect circular orbit of 93 million miles that the Earth does, our solar system's sole exception. Coincidence I guess. If the Earth's orbit were elliptical, as are all of the other planets' orbits, such as Mars and Venus, then we would freeze for part of the year, as the Earth would move much further away form the Sun than it does now. Similarly, an elliptical orbit would cause a huge rise in temperature when that elliptical orbit would bring the Earth far too close to the Sun for the other part of the year. Our precise circular orbit at 93 million miles for the Sun provides a perfectly balanced temperature throughout the entire year.

[Quag]

sorry earth does not have a circular orbit, though circular or eliptical i see no relation to what it has to do with god. As to freezing part of the year please come up and visit me in january. aparently according to you it doesnt freeze here?? and using quotes from the bible to prove that the bible is correct is well so mind numbingly bizzare it makes no sense.

umm gravity?? wtf?? the universe is still expanding. there is still debate as to weather that can continue forever or the universe will fall back and collapse upon itself one day? so again no proof of god.

abraham lincon? so according to your view god wanted america to have slavery? wasnt the time? fyi britain banne dslavery long long before america and activly pursued the slave trade to try and stop it. guess they were closer to god?

admit it you believe the bible because you want to. You do not know how the universe was created so you decided that you would let others tell you. again as i said im an agnostic i dont know if there is a god or not and frankly find it such hubris on the part of people who not only think there is a god but claim to know what his thoughts are. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that your religious beliefs are wrong. you think you are right, but again every time you throw a point down i have shown how it is more plausible that you are wrong than right. still waiting for proof on jesus resurection . why did it matter that jesus was born to jews? why not chinese? is god racist does he not like orientals?

have you read the iliad? it is a historical document and mentions the greek gods. we know that the trojan war happened therefore i guess the greek gods must be real.

[EDM]

how could you say something like that?! god wanting slavery?! you obviously didn't get my point........

I believe that the bible is right with most facts (depending on which bible you choose...). I also believe the Quran and the fact that Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) existed just as jesus did........see? i choose to believe the bible as i know it's right.....

You need to read the bible (or atleast about it)......God appeared to Abraham and from there, the jewish religion began.......it's all about the belief and doing good.......read history and the bible to get my point......

God's not racist; he loves all of us, whether we believe in him or not.........you don't understand that, i think....

and frankly, YOU don't know how the universe was created; if it started from the big bang, what caused it? and i'll keep going backward with questions since you can't prove that God does not exist.......

**if only there was a speaker type program here; i like to talk, not type when discussing.......

[Guest]

Oh and to go back to an old post that was posted by UR:

your argument: Universe is too complex to just be, God must have designed it

counterargument: then if God is more complex, where did He come from?

your argument: he just is.

Just to add a little to that conversation:

My argument: He just is. And if He didn't create the universe...How did it come to be?

I'm not sure what the answer would be. Big Bang maybe? If this so called "Big Bang" occured...What caused it to occur? If before said "Big Bang" there was nothing...How could it occur FROM NOTHING???

[EDM]

yes! that's it! thank you P_M

[Quag]

I never claimed to know how the universe began like i said im an agnostic. please look up the term you seem to confuse it with athiest. if you believe the universe is to complex to have just been and therefore must be created then who created god. seems he must of necessity be more complex than the universe and therefore must have been created.

im just pointing out a circular argument here. you cant explain the universe so you say god made it. no need to explain god he jsut is. FYI all mythologies were created to explain the world. INCLUDINg JUDAISM! genesis is just another myth of creation. no better or worse than the others.

I believe that the bible is right with most facts (depending on which bible you choose...). I also believe the Quran and the fact that Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) existed just as jesus did........see? i choose to believe the bible as i know it's right.....

i choose to believe therefore i know?

well i know your bible is just a story. you believe it is the divine word, yet i know it is not.

again still waiting for reasons why hambone believes in christianity and not in the other religions.

as to studying the bible why? i KNOW it is NOT the word of god. i have read enough to know that. just as hambone knows enough about other religions to know they are false. I do know 1 person who has intensivly studied the bible. he has a doctorate in theology and teaches at a christian college. but darn it all he isnt a christian or even an agnostic hes 100% athiest. knows the bible insiode and out better than most priests yet he knows it all bunk too.

as to the errors in the bible i dont think you understand how major they must be. a small insignificant error can be a huge difference. you say where the translations differ are noted but you dont realize that they are talking of translations from latin to english and ignore the previous errors that may have occured. also there are errors of ommision and errors in transcription. dont believe me? read up on the anglo saxon chronicles. same story written over a period of several hundred years many copies (partial in most case due to ravages of time/misfotune) and yet though basically the parts tell the same history of britain there are differences.

Again you believe in jesus i KNOW he was just a man. you claim to have proof and yet not 1 single post by any of you pro christians has even come close to do anything but prove that you just want to believe something. hambone continues to cite the complexity of the univers and often gets science of it wrong, yet complexity doesnt prove gods existence it only proves the universe is complex

[Guest]

I never claimed to know how the universe began like i said im an agnostic. please look up the term you seem to confuse it with athiest.

Not once did I say anything about you knowing how the universe began nor did I claim you to be atheist...what I said was a general statement not directed a specific person.

Edited July 13, 2010 by Prince_Marth85

[Guest]

Quag you have not said anything educational yet, YOU just want to hate God and anyone who believes in Him. Your obviously not intelligent enough to understand the unbelievable balance required to sustain this universe between the gravitational pull and expansion rate. Instead of just out of the side of your neck comments why not study something? Then comment.

[EDM]

no.....i choose to believe BECAUSE i know......and i KNOW jesus was NOT just a man....

and judaism is NOT mythology......it's like saying that the Mughal wars are myths......yeah, suuuure it is....

you haven't come up with solid proof to believe that god does not exist....you just keep repeating things we've heard and found to be theories.....you can't prove your statements.......

and the bible i read talks of translations from hebrew, aramaic, etc.....not latin.....read different versions of the roman catholic bible.......same stuff written in different sentences....the basic outline is the same.....

the atheist teacher you speak about may have mugged it up......if he understood it, he would atleast believe in a higher power, not necessarily god.......i have nothing against someone i dont know, so i won't pounce on him.....

overall.....you've only twisted my words and statements and tried to put it in your favour......that itself shows that you don't seem to understand.....like i said before; please understand what i'm saying......

ok, now my fingers ache......i'm off to bed.......

[Guest]

Okay, Here is something for all you Math phenoms,

A Listing of the Phenomenal Features of Sevens Found in Genesis 1:1

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"

This would of course be a lot better if my lap had Hebrew in it but you'll get the point.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 20 30 40 50 60

Okay example using the English alphabet, the first ten letters have the same PLACE values and NUMERIC values. However, when we get to the eleventh letter K, the numeric value begins to increase by 10 with each additional letter until we reach the value of 100. From that point in the alphabet forward the NUMERIC value of each letter will increase by 100.

Every single word in Hebrew contains a series of letters with individual numeric values. For example the Brayshith, or beginning. If you add up the total value of the individual letters in Brayshith the numeric value of the word is 913. Since each word has a numeric value we can add up the value of each of the words in a biblical verse to determine the numerical value of the sentence.

MAKE SENCE?

Genesis 1:1

1. The number of Hebrew words------------------------------Seven

2. The number of letters equals 28(28/4=7)-----------------Seven

3. The first three Hebrew words translated

"In the beginning God created" contain

14 letters(14/2=7)--------------------------------------Seven

4. The last four Hebrew words "the heavens

and the earth" have 14 letters (14/2=7)-----------------Seven

5. The fourth and fifth words have 7 letters--------------Seven

6. The sixth and seventh words have 7 letters--------------Seven

7. The three key words:God; heaven and earth

have 14 letters(14/2=7)---------------------------------Seven

8. The number of letters in the four remaining

words is also 14(14/2=7)--------------------------------Seven

9. The shortest word in the verse is the middle

word with 7 letters-------------------------------------Seven

10. The numeric value of the first, middle and

last letters is 133(133/19=7)---------------------------Seven

11. The numeric value of the first and last

letters of all seven words in 1393(1393/199=7)----------Seven

When professors on the mathematics faculty at Harvard university were presented with this biblical phenomenon the naturally attempted to disprove its significance as a proof of divine authorship. However, after valiant efforts these professors were unable to duplicate this incredible mathematical phenomenon. The Harvard scientists used the English language and artificially assigned numeric values to the English alphabet. They had a potential vocabulary of over 400,000 available English words to choose form to construct a sentence about any topic they chose. Compare this to the limitations of word choices in the biblical Hebrew language which has only forty-five hundred available word choices that the writers of the Old Testament could use. Despite their advanced mathematical abilities and access to computers the mathematicians were unable to come close to incorporating 30 mathematical multiples of 7 as found in the Hebrew words of Genesis 1:1.

By the way the number 7 in Hebrew is significant to or means COMPLETION. Coincidence I guess.

[Guest]

you really should study the last post it is amazing.

[Guest]

All the evidence you have provided is circumstantial at best; "because I want to believe" at worst. That's not evidence. I don't really understand the relevance of the sevens. It's the first strange prime, which has made it interesting to humans for centuries. Two is even, three is fairly straightforward with a multiplication pattern that is easy to understand, five is easy, always ending in 5 or 0, but seven is unique in that there is no immediately obvious pattern to how the numbers progress as you multiply. Since you still didn't provide a link or a reference to the Harvard study, I really have no context for figuring out what they tried (and apparently failed) to do. It doesn't seem that hard to me to build a number system around different characters and create interesting word combinations with certain unusual properties within that arbitrary number system you devised. I'm sure that someone could come up with something to post in the puzzle section of this forum that would be similar in nature to what you have there. I'll confess I'm also not completely sure which seven words you're talking about since you never posted the sentence. When you keep dropping context from your argument, it's hard to verify or validate.

Douglas Adams (of "Hitchhiker's Guide" fame) once wrote a short story about a puddle. This anthropomorphic puddle could reason about its environment and it looked around and found that this hole that the puddle lived in fit its shape perfectly. Therefore, the puddle excitedly determined, "God must have made this hole in the ground specifically for me! How special I must be!" It's like Izzy brought up with the deck of cards. The likelihood of dealing any specific set of cards is monumentally small, but no matter how unlikely it is you will still deal out a set when you turn the cards over. That one in a monumentally small chance of dealing that hand occurred, but it's completely uninteresting because no one tried to predict that they would deal that set beforehand. The puddle is reasoning about the hole it lives in as if it were at some point outside of that hole, with God able to find the perfect place for the puddle to fit. It's a silly little story, but it tries to demonstrate the backward thinking required to justify God's intervention. We know from physics that the puddle will fill its hole due to gravity and air pressure, not because God created a hole specifically to fit that puddle.

The Universe is the same way. If someone had been around to say, "I predict that the Universe will create a planet that can support life and a species of animal that calls itself human will develop there," then that would be an astronomically unlikely event to have predicted accurately. However, coming from a position where we are in the Universe and we do exist, we cannot reason about how likely it was that we would have existed or not had the Universe come out differently. Someone said, "If the Universe didn't support life, then we wouldn't be having this conversation." It reminds me of the joke, "If your parents didn't have children, chances are you won't either." We can say that it's incredibly unlikely that the Universe would have come into existence randomly able to support life, but given that this Universe can support life (as evidenced by our existence), we can't reason about how unlikely it was before it occurred since it did occur. It sounds really confusing, but it's sort of the nature of the problem.

Regardless of what anyone says, the Bible was written by men with their own ambitions and desires. That doesn't preclude Divine intervention, but it doesn't provide proof of said intervention. If there were some eternally burning letters somewhere saying, "Sorry for the inconvenience," then I'd be a believer. All we have are scripts written by mortal parties with a vested interest in their reception. After 2000 years, including the European Dark Ages, we have very little independent data on the events and people who lived at that time. Mainly we have Roman Census records and the like which provide little context regarding the nature of the people of the time. We simply don't know anymore.

[andromeda]

Let's talk science as well not just life, The force of the gravitation He created was, and still is, precisely balanced with precision to match exactly the Universe's powerful expansion force. God caused the Universe including time, space, matter, and energy to begin expanding at an extraordinary speed, which continues today. God used the force of the gravity to cause matter to combine together to form galaxies and stars, while the expansion of space caused the Universe to continue to grow in size and not collapse back upon itself. if the expansion force and speed were even slightly and I mean slightly stronger, no stars or galaxies would have been able to stabilize, and our solar system would not exist. However, if the expansion speed were even a fraction weaker, then the Universe would have collapsed upon itself. How precise did the expansion speed of the expanding space need to be balanced against the force of gravity? They need to be balanced to an astonishing level of precision that totally defies the odds of probability. Dr.Stephen Hawking (although an agnostic) admitted that it was incomprehensible that the Universe that exists today could ever have formed by random chance: "Why did the Universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separated models [of the Universe] that re collapse from those that go on expanding forever, so that even now, ten thousand million years later, it is still expanding at nearly the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the Universe would have re collapsed before it ever reached its present state." Stephen Hawking, A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME-FROM THE BIG BANG TO BLACK HOLES (New York:Bantam Book,1988)p.122-123.

How do you know that different forms of Universe weren't created millions of times, over and over again, collapsing, evaporating until, by mere chance the Universe turned out just right!

YOU DON'T KNOW!

[Guest]

Your right andromeda, I do however know that there is a God and you don't. The funny thing is, the name of this thread is Evidence of God's Design-----Most everyone posting are non-believers in God, trying to do something you just can't. Which is prove non-existence of God. Quag by the way, that was not my number system and I welcome anyone who thinks they could come close to accomplishing something even close A = 1, B = 2, etc. The miracle is numbers have always meant something in the Hebrew language, like the number 5 for example means grace. Get it. 7 means COMPLETION. It is finished, done, nothing left to do.

Don't worry, you will most likely Never believe in any form of God. Not until one second after your dead anyway.