I don’t know how you might have gotten the idea that I was abused by a member of the Catholic clergy. No, this did not happen. You don’t have to be a victim of abuse to be a skeptical former Catholic. I appreciate that many people find great solace in religion. To some extent, I admire this.

What really repels me is belief without humility, faith that advertises and aggrandizes itself, and religion twisted into an angry, narrow political agenda. Listen to almost any conservative fundamentalist and there’s the proof: religion is bastardized and betrayed when it becomes political.

Peter –

Thanks for the exchange of views. Peace be with you, too.

For what it’s worth, I will continue to monitor this site, because as an investor (if not in other ways, too), I need all the help I can get.

I’m off this thread.

Thanks, H.

As for the middle east question, I find it a ludicrous situation that 1% of the world’s population should occupy the big dog’s (USA) psyche.

Ignore all the mideast clowns. let them battle it out and isolate them. No news reports. The world will be a much better place and terrorists, who thrive on news, will shrivel and die on the vine.

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.”

Peace Be With You.

peter

This web site may give you some insight to a Christian position regarding the origins of life, the age of the earth, etc.
See: http://www.reasons.org/evolution/molecular-evolution. These people are reputable PHD’s in physics and provide many articles and information that supports a Christian viewpoint. See: http://www.reasons.org/about-us/our-people#hugh_ross

When I say Christian I don’t mean Christian RELIGION as there are many varieties, each having it own viewpoint., one of which appears to have offended you.

As humans who spend a miniscule amount of time in physical form relative to the total human experience, we search for the truth and, more often that not, our thoughts and beliefs are egocentric. I don’t pretend to know how life came into existence, but there is sufficient evidence to believe something bigger that all of us combined is behind it and that humans have a special place in it and are designed to have some relationship to the author of it. Even the THEORY of evolution requires faith to believe.
If you take the time to do some research from the above mentioned site, it may help you understand the Christian viewpoint on some of the topics you outline, and may help answer your questions and allow you to formulate a less dogmatic position.

Peter is the real deal. He is open about his beliefs, world view, and how they relate to the financial markets. No second guessing here. Where are you going to find this calibre of market information and be able to add your two cents worth at no cost. You would do well to stay tuned to this site.

Cheers!

You obviously are intelligent and have a knowledge of the Christian faith. It is also obvious that you had some rather painful experiences in the Catholic Church. No way to know, but perhaps you were one of the abuse victims. Whatever the reason, your rage is quite palpable. And probably justified. The Church is not made up of Saints mostly, but rather, some saints, some “recovering sinners”, and a pluarity of hypocrites. (And there are far more hypocrites in the Protestant Church as well, where I originated from.) I’d love to talk to you about the Eastern Church vs. the Western Church, and why so many abuses ran rampant in the Catholic Church over time. And I will if you tell me to.

But you are absolutely right when you decide that to believe in God as the Creator vs. evolution, is based on faith. I’ve never read or seen a more eloquent presentation of the evolutionist’s point of view.

But for me, the evolutionist’s point of view leads only to despair. If there is nothing after this life, it really ain’t worth living. There is absolutely no point to the B.S. and suffering we all do down here, if there is no “hereafter”. Faith in the Bible and in what God has told us is the only thing that keeps me from ultimate depression. So!, either I am just totally weak, (and I am a very successful businessman), or the Promise of life in Heaven is the true Reality that keeps the life down here meaningful.

As far as your pain is concerned, I can only pray and hope that those responsible are held to account, and that you can find the healing that you need and deserve.

And please reconsider leaving the blog, just because Peter is a “religous nut”. It doesn’t mean he isn’t good at what he does.

I’m a religous nut too. And I admire you.

I came back to see if you had responded to my message, and you did. For your courtesy, which is rare in blogland, I will respond to you. Your questions to me:

“Who or what created the atoms that ended up exploding to create the universe?”

Neither you as a Christian, nor I can answer this. As you must know if you have read any science at all, science makes no attempt to ask or answer such questions. The theory of the Big Bang is itself less than 50 years old – there will certainly be more discoveries in this area of physics in our lifetimes, and more data to support and/or alter the known physical evidence, proven beyond doubt, of an expanding universe. My inability to answer this question is not proof of divine creation. You, as a religious believer, have no objective proof of anything – you are satisfied with this, because to believers, the creation of the world by God is a matter of faith. You believe what you believe, and that is all there is to it. You need, or profess to need, nothing more than faith – which means that it’s silly for you to even debate someone like me, because we are using separate, incompatible modes of thought.

As for all the atoms in this universe, which you argue must have been created – you don’t deal with the 6,000 year timeline in the Bible, so maybe even you have a problem with this – well, what exactly does “creation” mean? We now know there are many billions, possibly trillions, of stars in the universe. There may well be tens of trillions of planets. Think of that: earth could be but one of an almost infinite number of worlds in the universe. And this was all done for our benefit, us on one of trillions of planets? By a God that favored and created us especially? To what purpose? By what crazy probability? To put it mildly, that’s a stretch. But if you believe that (on faith, of course), what were the terms of this creation? Is it not possible that God does indeed move in mysterious ways, and that His ways might encompass a complex process of creation, destruction and evolution, extending over a vast gulf of time, almost immeasurable to us as human beings? What can you, or any Christian, profess to know of the mechanics of creation? The Book of Genesis offers a precis, a few sentences about creation that say almost nothing of how this vast event actually happened. Have you ever considered that Genesis may be a metaphor for the intricate and awesome forces science has just begun to give us insight into?

The Bible itself teaches that all is vanity, and that God and his workings are ultimately a mystery, unknowable to us. There is, therefore, no answer to how God may have created the world – and no basis upon which Christians can dispute science. Whenever any church has attacked science, it has lost. The discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo directly contradicted what is still written in the Bible, that the earth is immovable and that the sun moves around it. Obviously this is false, though – who knows? – you may still believe it. The church tortured Galileo for publishing his contractory observations, which became the basis for the Scientific Method. Torture cannot assert truth, even when committed in the name of God (in fact, it’s a travesty of everything God is supposed to mean). Darwinism is no less revolutionary than what Galileo proposed, and is supported by a huge and growing body of physical evidence. Christians have no argument against it, only their own faith to shield them from data they choose not to consider with their (God-given) reason.

“How did the earth end up on such an angle that if it was just one degree different, we would spin out to space and die?”

Luck, I suppose. And physics. As children, most of us played with spinning tops and learned how a symmetrical object, spun on its axis, will tend to maintain that axis. In the absence of friction, spinning objects will hold their position indefinitely. The earth does this. That’s not proof of God’s presence or absence. In fact, it’s possible the axis of the world may change – the magnetic poles have changed locations many times, and now move a small amount each year. If we get whacked by a big enough asteroid, the axis of rotation may change quickly (will that be God’s fault?).

“What came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Ha. Another question that can’t be answered. And even if it could, it proves nothing evolution or creationism – because it’s the wrong question. [But if you want an answer, I would refer you to the use of the egg as a symbol in religious paintings from the Renaissance throughout Europe. The egg is often shown as a symbol of the origin of life. So in religious, metaphorical terms, the egg came first. For what that's worth.] What came first was amino acids and elements that evolved into basic life forms (this process has been replicated in labs, BTW – it’s proven by science). Then came one-celled organisms, invertebrates, vertebrates, reptiles (laying eggs), then chickens. Over many, many millions of years, as the fossil record proves, supported by carbon-dating. It didn’t all happen in 6,000 years. The Flintstones is fiction, not a documentary.