Posts Tagged ‘bible’

Psalms 1-10 as I understand them

Posted: July 6, 2023 by Zilla in catholic, Uncategorized
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It is still Wonderment Wednesday somewhere!

Hi everyone! Over at my place I have audio readings of Psalms 1-10 if you like to listen, but here I don’t want to hog Peter’s bandwidth so for you all, I went down a rabbit hole to find a website with the Bible translation that I happen to use – the New American Bible. Below I am putting each Psalm with the website’s commentary and a direct link to the site over there. After I have finished this, I will share my thoughts on what these first ten psalms mean to me. Thank you for reading, listening, and/or praying! XOXO

Psalm 1

1 Happy those who do not follow the counsel of the wicked, Nor go the way of sinners, nor sit in company with scoffers.

2 Rather, the law of the LORD is their joy; God’s law they study day and night.

3 They are like a tree planted near streams of water, that yields its fruit in season; Its leaves never wither; whatever they do prospers.

4 But not the wicked! They are like chaff driven by the wind.

5 Therefore the wicked will not survive judgment, nor will sinners in the assembly of the just.

6 The LORD watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.

Psalm 1 is a psalm of wisdom that describes the blessings that come to those who choose to follow the law of God. The psalm talks about how the righteous are blessed and how the wicked will perish.

Psalm 2

1 Why do the nations protest and the peoples grumble in vain?

2 Kings on earth rise up and princes plot together against the LORD and his anointed:

3 “Let us break their shackles and cast off their chains!”

4 The one enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord derides them,

5 Then speaks to them in anger, terrifies them in wrath:

6 “I myself have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.”

7 I will proclaim the decree of the LORD, who said to me, “You are my son; today I am your father.

8 Only ask it of me, and I will make your inheritance the nations, your possession the ends of the earth.

9 With an iron rod you shall shepherd them, like a clay pot you will shatter them.”

10 And now, kings, give heed; take warning, rulers on earth.

11 Serve the LORD with fear; with trembling bow down in homage, Lest God be angry and you perish from the way in a sudden blaze of anger. Happy are all who take refuge in God!

Psalm 2 is a messianic psalm that talks about the reign of the Messiah about all nations and the rejection of the rulers of the earth to Him.

Psalm 3

1 A psalm of David, when he fled from his son Absalom.

2 How many are my foes, LORD! How many rise against me!

3 How many say of me, “God will not save that one.” Selah

4 But you, LORD, are a shield around me; my glory, you keep my head high.

5 Whenever I cried out to the LORD, I was answered from the holy mountain. Selah

6 Whenever I lay down and slept, the LORD preserved me to rise again.

7 I do not fear, then, thousands of people arrayed against me on every side.

8 Arise, LORD! Save me, my God! You will shatter the jaws of all my foes; you will break the teeth of the wicked.

9 Safety comes from the LORD! Your blessing for your people! Selah

Psalm 3 is a prayer of King David amid a situation of danger and anguish. He calls for God for help and salvation, trusting in his protection and deliverance. The topics covered in this Psalm include trust in God in the midst of adversities, certainty of salvation and divine protection.

Psalm 4

1 For the leader; with stringed instruments. A psalm of David.

2 Answer when I call, my saving God. In my troubles, you cleared a way; show me favor; hear my prayer.

3 How long will you people mock my honor, love what is worthless, chase after lies? Selah

4 Know that the LORD works wonders for the faithful; the LORD hears when I call out.

5 Tremble and do not sin; upon your beds ponder in silence.

6 Offer fitting sacrifice and trust in the LORD.

7 Many say, “May we see better times! LORD, show us the light of your face!” Selah

8 But you have given my heart more joy than they have when grain and wine abound.

9 In peace I shall both lie down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me secure.

Psalm 4 is a night prayer that expresses confidence in God in the midst of anguish and injustice

Psalm 5

1 For the leader; with wind instruments. A psalm of David.

2 Hear my words, O LORD; listen to my sighing.

3 Hear my cry for help, my king, my God! To you I pray, O LORD;

4 at dawn you will hear my cry; at dawn I will plead before you and wait.

5 You are not a god who delights in evil; no wicked person finds refuge with you;

6 the arrogant cannot stand before you. You hate all who do evil;

7 you destroy all who speak falsely. Murderers and deceivers the LORD abhors.

8 But I can enter your house because of your great love. I can worship in your holy temple because of my reverence for you, LORD.

9 Guide me in your justice because of my foes; make straight your way before me.

10 For there is no sincerity in their mouths; their hearts are corrupt. Their throats are open graves; on their tongues are subtle lies.

11 Declare them guilty, God; make them fall by their own devices. Drive them out for their many sins; they have rebelled against you.

12 Then all who take refuge in you will be glad and forever shout for joy. Protect them that you may be the joy of those who love your name.

13 For you, LORD, bless the just; you surround them with favor like a shield.

Psalm 5 is a prayer of David in search of divine protection and guidance before his enemies. He calls for God’s righteousness and trusts his faithfulness.

Psalm 6

1 For the leader; with stringed instruments, “upon the eighth.” A psalm of David.

2 Do not reprove me in your anger, LORD, nor punish me in your wrath.

3 Have pity on me, LORD, for I am weak; heal me, LORD, for my bones are trembling.

4 In utter terror is my soul– and you, LORD, how long…?

5 Turn, LORD, save my life; in your mercy rescue me.

6 For who among the dead remembers you? Who praises you in Sheol?

7 I am wearied with sighing; all night long tears drench my bed; my couch is soaked with weeping.

8 My eyes are dimmed with sorrow, worn out because of all my foes.

9 Away from me, all who do evil! The LORD has heard my weeping.

10 The LORD has heard my prayer; the LORD takes up my plea.

11 My foes will be terrified and disgraced; all will fall back in sudden shame.

Psalm 6 is a lament prayer in which the psalmist calls for mercy and divine healing in the midst of a disease or crisis

Psalm 7

1 A plaintive song of David, which he sang to the LORD concerning Cush, the Benjaminite.

2 LORD my God, in you I take refuge; rescue me; save me from all who pursue me,

3 Lest they maul me like lions, tear me to pieces with none to save.

4 LORD my God, if I am at fault in this, if there is guilt on my hands,

5 If I have repaid my friend with evil– I spared even those who hated me without cause–

6 Then let my enemy pursue and overtake me, trample my life to the ground, and leave me dishonored in the dust.Selah

7 Rise up, LORD, in your anger; rise against the fury of my foes. Wake to judge as you have decreed.

8 Have the assembly of the peoples gather about you; sit on your throne high above them,

9 O LORD, judge of the nations. Grant me justice, LORD, for I am blameless, free of any guilt.

10 Bring the malice of the wicked to an end; uphold the innocent, O God of justice, who tries hearts and minds.

11 A shield before me is God who saves the honest heart.

12 God is a just judge, who rebukes in anger every day.

13 If sinners do not repent, God sharpens his sword, strings and readies the bow,

14 Prepares his deadly shafts, makes arrows blazing thunderbolts.

15 Sinners conceive iniquity; pregnant with mischief, they give birth to failure.

16 They open a hole and dig it deep, but fall into the pit they have dug.

17 Their mischief comes back upon themselves; their violence falls on their own heads.

18 I praise the justice of the LORD; I celebrate the name of the LORD Most High.

Psalm 7 is a prayer of David, in which he cries to God to free him from his enemies. He expresses his confidence in God’s righteousness and asks him to judge his cause.

Psalm 8

1 For the leader; “upon the gittith.” A psalm of David.

2 O LORD, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth! You have set your majesty above the heavens!

3 Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have drawn a defense against your foes, to silence enemy and avenger.

4 When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place–

5 What are humans that you are mindful of them, mere mortals that you care for them?

6 Yet you have made them little less than a god, crowned them with glory and honor.

7 You have given them rule over the works of your hands, put all things at their feet:

8 All sheep and oxen, even the beasts of the field,

9 The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatever swims the paths of the seas.

10 O LORD, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth!

Psalm 8 is a song of praise to God for His greatness and for granting man the position of dominating upon creation.

Psalm 9

1 For the leader; according to Muth Labben. A psalm of David.

2 I will praise you, LORD, with all my heart; I will declare all your wondrous deeds.

3 I will delight and rejoice in you; I will sing hymns to your name, Most High.

4 For my enemies turn back; they stumble and perish before you.

5 You upheld my right and my cause, seated on your throne, judging justly.

6 You rebuked the nations, you destroyed the wicked; their name you blotted out for all time

7 The enemies have been ruined forever; you destroyed their cities; their memory has perished.

8 The LORD rules forever, has set up a throne for judgment.

9 It is God who governs the world with justice, who judges the peoples with fairness.

10 The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed, stronghold in times of trouble.

11 Those who honor your name trust in you; you never forsake those who seek you, LORD.

12 Sing hymns to the LORD enthroned on Zion; proclaim God’s deeds among the nations!

13 For the avenger of bloodshed remembers, does not forget the cry of the afflicted.

14 Have mercy on me, LORD; see how my foes afflict me! You alone can raise me from the gates of death.

15 Then I will declare all your praises, sing joyously of your salvation in the gates of daughter Zion.

16 The nations fall into the pit they dig; in the snare they hide, their own foot is caught.

17 The LORD is revealed in this divine rule: by the deeds they do the wicked are trapped. Higgaion. Selah

18 To Sheol the wicked will depart, all the nations that forget God.

19 The needy will never be forgotten, nor will the hope of the afflicted ever fade.

20 Arise, LORD, let no mortal prevail; let the nations be judged in your presence.

21 Strike them with terror, LORD; show the nations they are mere mortals. Selah

Psalm 9 is a psalm of thanksgiving in which the psalmist expresses his gratitude to God for his protection and salvation in difficult times. He also calls for justice against his enemies.

Psalm 10

1 Why, LORD, do you stand at a distance and pay no heed to these troubled times?

2 Arrogant scoundrels pursue the poor; they trap them by their cunning schemes.

3 The wicked even boast of their greed; these robbers curse and scorn the LORD.

4 In their insolence the wicked boast: “God doesn’t care, doesn’t even exist.”

5 Yet their affairs always succeed; they ignore your judgment on high; they sneer at all who oppose them.

6 They say in their hearts, “We will never fall; never will we see misfortune.”

7 Their mouths are full of oaths, violence, and lies; discord and evil are under their tongues.

8 They wait in ambush near towns; their eyes watch for the helpless. to murder the innocent in secret.

9 They lurk in ambush like lions in a thicket, hide there to trap the poor, snare them and close the net.

10 The helpless are crushed, laid low; they fall into the power of the wicked,

11 Who say in their hearts, “God pays no attention, shows no concern, never bothers to look.”

12 Rise up, LORD God! Raise your arm! Do not forget the poor!

13 Why should the wicked scorn God, say in their hearts, “God doesn’t care”?

14 But you do see; you do observe this misery and sorrow; you take the matter in hand. To you the helpless can entrust their cause; you are the defender of orphans.

15 Break the arms of the wicked and depraved; make them account for their crimes; let none of them survive.

16 The LORD is king forever; the nations have vanished from God’s land.

17 You listen, LORD, to the needs of the poor; you encourage them and hear their prayers.

18 You win justice for the orphaned and oppressed; no one on earth will cause terror again.

Psalm 10 is a lament that expresses the perplexity of the psalmist in the face of God’s apparent injustice to allow the wicked to prosper and oppress the poor and needy. The psalm begins with the question, “Why do you keep you away? And why do you hide in the time of tribulation?” (v. 1).

https://www.bibliacatolica.com.br/the-new-american-bible/psalms/1/amp/

My hot take is that King David is relatable because he was having hard times and getting frustrated, but he never forgot that God is Awesome all of the time. These first ten psalms contain powerful big prayers. Amen. King David complains at God but continues to do for himself until God can get to him…

It is not difficult to identify with King David when he laments and to feel encouraged at his bold and eloquent words about what God can, will, or had done to the bad guys!

For me, these first ten psalms remind us that God loves us and that he deserves respect. God NEVER fails but He wants us to trust Him. God has feelings too.

People who love the Lord and follow His laws don’t have a whole lot to worry about.

The moment I accepted the above as truth, my whole life changed completely for the better. God is amazing.

Amen

An Unexpected Vatican “Yoo Hoo, Bible” (and Catechism) Update

Posted: October 11, 2020 by datechguy in catholic, Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

You might remember a few years ago (July 14th 2017 to be exact) I was rather shocked to find that the Bible had been pulled from the Vatican Site.

Here is the text if you can’t read the screen shot:

“The Holy Bible is available in almost every language on earth: the Episcopal Conferences take care of the continuous updating of the translations. In order to have access to the latest Bible version, kindly consult the website of your Episcopal Conference. ”

Seriously you’re the vatican and you TOOK THE &(#$(@(% BIBLE OFF YOUR WEB SITE! You actually think it’s more important to carry a 13-year-old document by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace available for visitors than the Bible?

What on earth is going on in Rome?

And about a week later I noted that the Vatican had restored the Bible to their web site but did not make it visible to people looking for the Scripture:

So the question on the floor is this:  What on earth is going on?  If you are still referring people to the local sites and not providing a link to the Bible, why put sacred scripture back up if you’re going to make it tough to find?

Two logical answers come to mind

A charitable suggestion would be that people realized that even though they wanted people to go to local sites for scripture, every single document on the Vatican site since it went up that had existing links to the former online scripture became dead once it was pulled.  Fixing all those links would be an expensive, time consuming and frankly herculean task. So given the choice between fixing those links or putting scripture back up without a direct link to it they choose the latter.  If I had been their tech advisor that’s certainly the advice I’d have given to fix the problem.

A much less charitable explanation would be that the Vatican didn’t like the blowback from pulling the Bible but didn’t want to link to it, so they put it back up without a direct link to allow a spokesman to say “Of COURSE sacred scripture is available at our site, we just prefer you to use our local sites translation.” or in other words: “Beware of the Leopard!”

Here is the screen shot from that date of the page in question

Well there has been a development.

Yesterday I was reading my daily scripture from the Vatican site I ended up clicking not on the back button to get to the reference page of the bible but on the keys of Peter which took me to the front page of the Vatican Web site which I haven’t visited in the three years since those posts.

I thought I’d poke around as I was curious if there had been any change to operation “hide the bible”. You will note that on the front page there is no link to the Bible so most people who might visit looking for it might use the search function

And of course if you did a search for the bible using the Vatican search engine it would to my complete and utter lack of shock, avail you naught.

However I remembered that the Bible had been kept under Archive under Francis rather than linked on the home page as it once was. So on the front page of the Vatican Site I clicked on Archive.

On the Archive page there was a link at the top that said “bible” which was a good sign but there were to other things that jumped out at me.

w of course I remembered that the Bible was on the Archive site if you were going to the Vatican site and didn’t know it was there you might have to do a search for it.

Before we click on the bible link I want to note the addition to the Catechism of the Catholic church link which based on wayback machine searches was added between July 17th and Aug 11th of 2018 meaning that from that date people going to the Vatican site wanting to find that official church positions on various subjects by checking the actual Catechism of the church were dissuaded from doing so at least if you are a person who speaks English because if you read Italian.

or Spanish

Or French, Portuguese , German or even Latin the Vatican Catechism has no such disclaimer. Why it’s almost as if there is a direct effort to keep English speaking folk in general and American in particular unsure of the actual teachings of the church if they wanted to find it online.

Not that they would have found the Catechism anyways as you can see from this result from the Vatican Search engine anyways, but we digress..

Well once we are on the page we can now click on the Bible link and lo and behold we have a different page than before!

While we still have the disclaimer that we had before asking you to look elsewhere we also have a direct link to the Bible online were a person can actually click on it and read it at the Vatican site.

Yeah you still won’t find it in the search engine and yeah you have to know to click on the “archive” link to get there but this still a vast improvement on the whole “Yoo Hoo Bible” game that the Vatican was playing before.

But I still miss the days when we these words from Christ…

Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.

Matthew 5:37

…were unambiguously at least the public policy of the Holy See.

Disproving the “Catholics kept the Bible from the People” lie in one exercise

Posted: July 19, 2014 by datechguy in catholic
Tags: ,

One of the most common pieces of idiocy I hear over and over on the net is the idea that there was some kind of grand conspiracy of the Catholic Church to keep the Bible out of the hands of the masses that was only foiled with the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg. This idiotic tweet is standard:

@DaTechGuyblog @JasonReinhardt7 @legioviferrata 2 finish WHO would dare keep Bible secret & persecute people who read it 4 millennia Any1?

— CassTete (@CassTete1) July 19, 2014

The amount of historical ignorance it takes to make such a claim is so astounding that one is shocked that a person would be willing to make it in public, but since people know so little of history let me suggest a simple experiment to illustrate the absurdity of it all.

The next time someone tells you this tripe, ask them to do the following.

1. Sit yourself down in front of their  laptop and open up your bible.

2. Starting from Genesis start typing the entire thing out including verse numbers

The new Testament contains 138,020 words in 7956 verses. As you are including the verse numbers that’s an extra word for every say 3 verses so add 2652 words for a total of 140,682.

Now because a person making such a claim is likely a protestant we’ll make the old testament easy by doing what Martin Luther did and lop off the books he didn’t like leaving you 602,585. To make things easier we’ll even excuse you from the verse numbers.

That’s a total of 743,267 words.

A professional typist using a standard keyboard averages between 50-80 words a minute. Taking the low end of 50 words a minute  that means it would take you 14,867.34 minutes to type out the whole thing.

As there are 1440 minutes in the day that means it would take you 10.324 days of 24/7 typing to copy an entire bible assuming you were able to maintain that 50 words per minute the entire time without food, drink or rest

Let’s be kind and assume you need to sleep and be generous and give you say 6 hours a night to sleep. Let’s furthermore allow you a full two hours to eat two to three meals, take a bathroom break and dress So instead of working 24/7 you are working a 16 hour day getting up at 5 to type and hitting the sack at 11 PM with two hours during the day for other things. That would make give you about 960 minutes a day to devote to typing the bible finishing in 15.48 days at that steady 50 Word per minute rate throughout without  error (96% correct simply won’t do)

Ok now lets take away your laptop and replace it with a manual typewriter without an auto correct. How much time would the loading of paper add? The correction of errors. The centering etc? Let’s be EXTREMELY generous and say it would only add 10% to your total time so now we’re up to 17 days to copy a Protestant bible working 16 hours a day seven days a week.

Now lose the typewriter and write it by hand. According to Keller in 1988 An average person can copy text by hand at a rate of 22 words per minutes and now you are dealing with getting pens, starting pages over if you make a mistake etc.  Just how long would it take to hand write a bible?  Well a retired fellow by the name of Phillip Patterson managed to do it in 4 years.

Four years after he began his project to write out every word of the Bible, Phillip Patterson penned the very last lines Saturday at an upstate New York church.“Every single curly-q, every single loop, it was all worth it,” said Patterson, 63, moments after inking the final two verses of the King James Bible. “I’m really going to miss this writing.”

It took Patterson just a few minutes to copy the final lines of the Book of Revelation before a crowd of about 125 people at St. Peter’s Presbyterian Church in Spencertown. He ended the ceremony by saying “Amen.”

But lets assume you are not a retired AIDS patient and much healthier than Mr. Patterson, Moreover we are working uninterrupted for our 16 hours a day every day unlike Keller who devoted a mere 14 hours a day on occasion to work on it.

I’ll wager we can cut that four years down to a single year easy.

Now let’s replace our Pen with a fountain pen.  You have to constantly refill your pen and get your bottled ink, but at least it gives your fingers a rest. Plus you’re going to have to worry about ink stains & accidents. How many days would that add to the project?  Less than 10% say a month or more?

Now replace that fountain pen with a quill, now you have to sharpen that quill and be much more careful since it’s easier to make a mistake as there is no normal ink flow. Plus there is a danger of puncturing the paper with the point. Where do you think we are now? 14 months? 15?

Now cut off your electricity. You can now only write during time of full sunlight or by candlelight.

Suddenly you’re limited to an average of 12 hours a day to work, but that’s OK because now you have 4 hours to use to actually live and rest, but that takes a full 25% off your writing time. We are now up to 18 months to copy that bible. And you’re pretty much doing it the way a medieval monk used to do so, except your glasses are likely much better so you aren’t straining as much as you write.

But if we want to do what the monk did there are two things we can’t ignore..

#1. Being a monk you are observing the sabbath. So you are now losing one day in seven that gets you up to 21 months to finish that book.

#2 What about calligraphy? Most bibles were not written in just plain you are now adding flourishes and fancy lettering.  This is the word of God not some dimestore novel we’re talking about.

Bottom line you are talking nearly 2 years of manual labor working 12 hour days six days a week to produce a single bible.

So are you really going to stand there and tell me that there was a vast Catholic conspiracy to keep Bibles away from the general public when it took two full man years of manual labor to produce a single copy?

Given the amount of man hours it’s a wonder that any Bibles were produced at all and it speaks to the dedication and the faith of both the Catholic Church and the monks at the time that there were bibles even for the clergy let alone for anyone else.

And we haven’t even taken into account the lack of literacy among people living at subsistence level or the cost of such a book. (At $2 an hour 12 hours a day 6 days a week no overtime that $7488 in today’s money not counting materials. Tell me how many $7500 items do you have in YOUR house)?

So the next time some fool tries to tell you of the grand Catholic conspiracy of millennia to keep scripture out of the hands of the people give them this post or tell them to put their fingers where their mouths are.

Evolution and God, goes together like the horse and carriage

Posted: January 31, 2011 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: , , , , ,

I noticed Jazz Shaw’s post on Evolution linking to Steve Benen “look how dumb those Christians are” post, and Stacy McCain’s answer..

Forgetting the fact that Mr. Benen apparently wants to put a religious test on who can serve in congress and forgetting his seeming ignorance concerning Christianity’s history and science. I suggest he buy a copy of How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (my review here no wonder the left hates Western Civilization so much but I digress).

I’ve already made my point in this post about the Bible and science:

In our science we basically have educated guesses in pursuit of truth. As time and our knowledge expands our guesses become better and more informed but in the end a lot of it is still a guess, yet these guesses are a million times better than Moses would ever be able to make. If our science would be beyond Moses, how much more beyond him would be the actual methods of how God works explained on a scientific level?

It is my opinion that God gave Moses the answers that were truthful, but also in a way that he and his people, bronze age humans could understand and grasp. Like at the waters of Massah and Meribah he didn’t give him a thesis on Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms combined to create water, he didn’t give a geological explanation of how steams wear down soil and cause erosion, he provided the water.

It doesn’t matter for example if the entire world was flooded in Noah’s time, or if it was an individual continent, or just a country the size of Iraq or whatever. In the understanding of Noah it was the world, and in the understanding of Moses it was the world. It makes it no less the action of God nor do the lessons drawn from it change. It is no different than trying to explain to a 3 year old how something works, you tell him the truth but in a way that he can grasp it.

Now as I said Science is a question of our best educated guess, but many people try to use it as a club to attack Christianity in general and the Bible in particular as Stacy puts it:

Having spent quite some time studying the arguments over evolution, it has for many years struck me that while the scientific priesthood of neo-Darwinian orthodoxy in astrophysics, paleontology and anthropology often disagree vehemently over their own theories and interpretations, they are united by one major agreement: The Bible is wrong.

On that point, they are quite fanatical, and one need not debate fanatics. Merely demonstrate that they are fanatics — occasionally point out their more obvious errors, provoking their predictably intemperate responses — and you will discredit them in the eyes of reasonable people.

I think people often confuse “natural selection” and survival and the fittest, which is certainly scientifically sound and full blown evolution the creation of one species from another.

The second has several problems the biggest of which for me is the math.

Here is what you need for evolution of that nature to work:

  1. You need some kind of mutation.
  2. Said mutation needs to be a beneficial mutation so it doesn’t increase the likely hood of the creature caught by a predator.
  3. You need a mutation that doesn’t prevent breeding with a similar creature
  4. The result of that breed must carry said mutation so it has to be dominant trait
  5. Continual breeding has to take place so that dominant trait spreads until all members of the species without that dominant trait disappear.
  6. Repeat until an amoeba becomes Snooki from Jersey Shore.

Now think about the mathematical odds of each of those steps and imagine the development of a claw from a fin.  Think of NOTHING else, just that single development.  What would the mathematical odds of each step taking place? How many times would the dice have to fall a particular way for that to happen just for that step to take place? What are the odds of such a thing happening by chance and not just by chance, but over and over again for every species that is out there?

Is that possible, sure. I believe in God, with such a God something like this is very possible, what I find amazing is that those who are so vehement in denying the existence of God are willing to bet their reputations on a process that mathematically is so unlikely that they’d never bet real money on it.

I submit that if you believe in Evolution you almost HAVE to believe in God because the odds of such a process taking place without him are so slight as to be nil.

Or to put it another way. You can have God without evolution, but considering the odds involved I submit you can’t have evolution without God.

Now is it really important? Not really, It’s an interesting scientific discussion and like anything such scientific discussion you go where the evidence takes you. We keep researching, we find clues and make assumptions based on them, test them, and repeat. That’s fine. Religion of course doesn’t need to explain the nuts and bolts of how a universe is created, it’s primary job is to save souls. These goals aren’t mutually exclusive and we need to remember what science and religion’s purposes are:

Man didn’t need God to provide him a science text, man can write those texts himself. Man did need instruction on the salvation of his soul. God provided that and still provides it through Scripture, prayer, the Church and Tradition. We can take advantage of those things provided or not. It’s totally up to us.

I await to see Steve Benen’s piece attacking the scientific ignorance of Islam.

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