Title: James Carville explains everything about Mike Johnson Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Nov 12, 2023 Author:James Carville Post Date:2023-11-12 23:48:41 by A K A Stone Keywords:None Views:3820 Comments:48
I believe it because of a variety of time markers in space and on earth seem to indicate it. The "time candle" quasars appear to indicate certain ages of star systems. Uranium dating seems to indicate that certain things on earth are hundreds of millions or billions of years old. Carbon-14 dating seems to indicate the age of things back to 50,000 years. Continental drift occurs at a measurable rate. Looking at the gaps between the continents, which clearly were once connected, works out to the continents having separated several hundred million years ago. Dinosaur bones, uranium dated, give us indications of life a hundred million years ago. To me, this is convincing, mutually reinforcing evidence that the world and universe are very old, so that's why I think that.
So rather than carping about it, this is what I really believe:
We are spirits that inhabit bodies. When we die we leave our bodies and go on. Ten thousand consistent NDE's tell me this. About 10% of those NDE's are hellish, and those hellish experiences tend to skew heavily towards suicides, and towards people who consciously did hellish things on earth (murderers, rapists - not people who had illicit sex).
My own contacts with God confirm this basic structure. I'll call God "the Holy Spirit" to line it up with Christian thinking, so that others can understand what I say. To me, God is God.
I don't fear death, or worry about my "salvation" (meaning, my going into the light at the end), because I don't murder people, rape them or otherwise intentionally hurt them. I don't have guilt. Sex? Men care about sex. God doesn't. I don't like the endless whining about trans- issues, but to me sex is not the issue - I care as much about actual sex as YHWH did about male masturbation (wash whatever you get spooge on with water and be unclean until evening) or female masturbation (he did not care at all).
In terms of moral judgment, I rely on God (the Holy Spirit) who speaks directly to me. I recognize that I am more violent and implacable than God. God restrains my worse nature in that respect, and I listen to him, because he's God and I know it will be better for me if I do, rather than let my own anger carry me to extremes. I am a military man by training and at heart - I want to see my enemies DEAD. It is God who reminds me that what HE wants is reconciliation, where possible.
That's my religion. I listen to God.
I note that the Shroud of Turin really does seem to show a miracle, and so I allow that Jesus probably was resurrected, and was in some sense the Son of God. So I am drawn to know what he taught. I have every church, and practically every Christian, telling me Jesus taught me what THEY thing. And when I read the Bible for greater clarity, I find eight different Jesus' in the text: Mark's, Matthew's, Luke's, John's, Revelations', Paul's, James', and Peter's. Jude doesn't really talk about Jesus, but he talks about Enoch, which should (therefore) by all rights be included in the canon.
I see the conflicts between these Jesuses, which is to say, between what these men thought about Jesus, and what they asserted was the most important thing. I think that Mark's Jesus is the closest to what Jesus himself actually SAID (it is much closer in time to him, at least). Paul never met Jesus, so what Paul is giving us is his own view of God through his encounters with the Holy Spirit.
If I want to be inspired by Jesus, I read Mark, and I look for passages in the rest that don't conflict with what Jesus says in Mark. And that's as far as I can go.
For actual day to day living, I rely on the Holy Spirit, and do what it tells me is best.
If you don't believe in that, then you don't believe in the book of Mark either.
Well, if that REALLY is the choice, between believing Genesis is science and what Jesus says in Mark, or believing neither, then I'm going with neither.
As you point out, the Shroud of Turin isn't in the Bible (actually, it IS, the burial cloth is mentioned in all four gospels), and it's the only evidence I have for anything miraculous about Jesus.
So,if I took your position, I'd put the Bible down and stop talking about it. I don't think it's a choice I have to make. You clearly do. Put to that choice, I'll set down the Bible and walk away from it. If one part being wrong makes the whole thing wrong - not my philosophy but yours - then the whole thing is dragged down by its contradictions and errors.
Not much for us to talk about without the Bible. So, good day!
