Ok... I'm now able to address the last part of your reply, Tom. Please forgive me my so sudden exit then.
On Fri, 20 Dec 2002 10:35:19 ... > >>In one case the word *belief* means a critical judgement on the balance of >>evidence, in the other a complete conviction that things must be exactly so >>because a book which is taken as *absolute truth* says so. The meanings >>implied by the word "belief" are fundamentally different. >> >I'll address the above and below later as I need to go now. > Ok. What happens here is this. Both sides of the debate call for *faith* on something to justify their theories. That's basically what I was trying to convey, Tom. Evolutionists require "time", while creationists argue about 'God' being the One responsible for things, like the Creation topic. Now, 'faith' according to Scriptures themselves is "the *certainty* of things not seen". In other words, the believer uses faith (and, quite frankly, does need to do it at times!) when he cannot explain certain things. However, Tom, faith is not necessarily "blind". For one to trust that the Word of God is the "truth" s/he must be given enough "evidence" or assurance that the Book CAN be trusted to be what it claims it is. Therefore, faith from a Christian perspective is something that is built, "conquered". If the Book proves to be "trustworthy" it would merit the believer's trust, you see, even on those parts that seem more... problematic, because if they see that the Book is indeed the Word of God, it *deserves* to be trusted. Well, in my case I see absolutely no reason NOT to distrust Scriptures (actually, quite the opposite). Therefore, I exercise my faith that it is in actual fact "The Word of *GOD*", even though it was evidently written by men. ... >>Indeed you were not. I was referring here to the Extraterrestial Genetic >>Engineers theory, which would be certainly be leaped upon by those espousing >>the retention of Colonial Measures to try to paint the metric lobby as part of >>some lunatic fringe. >>... Anyways... I think we've veered too off-topic with the discussions above. Therefore, perhaps let me suggest that if you're still interested in talking about this topic that we bring this to a private forum, ok? It'll be my pleasure to continue doing it with you, Tom! :-) In the meantime I apologise to the others here if we went too far on this. Now, back to metrication... Marcus ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
