Creation vs. Evolution

[alwight]

Just to tidy up a bit, I don't know that ToE dares to be cosmological, which is the realm of this thread. Is it your understanding that it explains origins, including any philosophical questions that arise? Or are you just referring to a later process once everything is up and running?

What thinking person is only going to test naturalistic theories? When people gave up on Greek gods it was because they had too many human faults. They never worked as an ultimate explanation. But Ovid also said that naturalism does not explain life or that life was hideously meaningless upon that basis. So people have given up on both of them because of faults or because there was no meaning to life after all. That does not mean that they give up on God if he provides answers about both of those things.

These questions are perennial. You can't just confine yourself to those which are answered in a naturalistic, closed universe.

I've at least attempted to discuss things rationally with you, involving evidence and science, but I really can't make much sense out of whether the "ToE dares to be cosmological"?
The ToE relates to life on Earth only, not cosmology, and not even how life began, just what and how it gradually became over time. Maybe you just don't understand what Darwinian evolution is all about?
Maybe you don't want to know?
This thread is about life evolving versus being created supernaturally fully formed, not all that long ago.
I'm sure that Greek gods have their place in another thread but not this one. If you want to talk about science and evidence or how creation is more reasonable and rational to believe then do get back to me. lain:

 

[Interplanner]

Evolutionists portrayed Neandertals originally as hairy stooped over dimwitted beasts. Science has proven those beliefs we're false.
Ancient man was intelligent.

6days,
I think a note here from Ross may clear up some confusion. He has a section on 'hominids' in CREATION AND TIME. I don't know if he bothers with a physical description, but he does say that the gap between hominids and mankind is breathtaking, and there is no explanation for steps in between. Mankind shows up with art, records, history, tools abruptly.

(check your spelling...we're for were)

Did you restudy 'ekpalai'? It has a timestamp. It ties itself in to the timeframe of Greek mythology, though not because of being a myth. In the Greek mind, Tartarus was way back there. A person could try to date Is 14's description of Satan, but it's complicated starting from there. I suppose some might connect the Titans (that's who is imprisoned in Tartarus) with the Nephilim of Gen 6. But check for yourself, the mythological period of Greece is before any humans as they know them, but is part of history as Greeks thought of it. It is not humans who are being scandalous or faulty, but gods. It is the sinful angels of 2 Pet 2:4 who are back before the ancient world of the flood. That's ekpalai.

btw, one of the textual arguments against the tight continuity of Gen 1-11 (genealological) is Job 1:2, the greatest man in the East. It is unlikely he would not have shown up in the tables if they were intended to be that tight.

Here are some of Rabbi Cassuto's examples of pre-existing conditions in Moses' grammar:
5:2 When God created man... (then additional action or information). (this is separate from 'section titles')
6:1 When men began to increase... (then additional action)
6:11 Now the earth was corrupt... (then additional action)
4:2 Now Abel kept flocks, and ... (then additional action)

So it is with Gen 1:2. When God began forming the earth (three pre-existing conditions)... Then v3 is the additional new action.

 

[6days]

Evolutionists portrayed Neandertals originally as hairy stooped over dimwitted beasts. Science has proven those beliefs we're false.
Ancient man was intelligent.

6days,
I think a note here from Ross may clear up some confusion. He has a section on 'hominids' in CREATION AND TIME.

Why do you defend people like Ross who rejects the clear teaching of scripture.
Besides that, your comments have nothing g to do with the point from me you attempted to respond to. Science has proven the evolutionist beliefs about Neandertals to be false.... and helped confirm the truth of God's Word. We are all one blood and all descendants of Adam and Eve.

(check your spelling...we're for were)

Tell that to my auto correct

 

[6days]

Did you restudy 'ekpalai'? .... It is the sinful angels of 2 Pet 2:4 who are back before the ancient world of the flood. That's ekpalai.

No matter how hard you try to convolute scripture by adding in Greek mythology. .. you a make no sense...you still deny what God's Word tells us.


God's Word is clear "For in six days God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them"

Intetplanner says God is confused and only reshaped what was there.


Also curious... what ancient t world of the flood are you talking about? Scripture tells us about ONE flood. God created earth from the waters but there is no mention of it being a flood.

 

[DavisBJ]

Evolutionists portrayed Neandertals originally as hairy stooped over dimwitted beasts. Science has proven those beliefs we're false.
Ancient man was intelligent.

In reality, it is anthropologists (not the evolutionists) who are the scientists who are most directly concerned with determining the physical and social characteristics of groups like the Neanderthals. Of course, if you are a creationist with a dedication to discrediting evolution in any possible way (6days being a classic example), you try to lay every possible misstep of science at the feet of the evolutionists.

 

[6days]

Evolutionists portrayed Neandertals originally as hairy stooped over dimwitted beasts. Science has proven those beliefs we're false.

Ancient man was intelligent.

In reality, it is anthropologists (not the evolutionists) who are the scientists who are most directly concerned with determining the physical and social characteristics of groups like the Neanderthals. Of course, if you are a creationist with a dedication to discrediting evolution in any possible way (6days being a classic example), you try to lay every possible misstep of science at the feet of the evolutionists.

Actually Davis, it was evolutionists who made all the false conclusions. The conclusions were based solely on their belief system...not on science.*

For example.... their was zero evidence Neandertals had hairy bodies, yet that is how they were portrayed. The reason for this was simply a belief in common ancestry, and that humans evolved from a hairy ancestor.

Ex. Evolutionists based on their belief system said Neandertals were incapable of speech, and would have only made gutteral sounds. Science has proved that wrong. Neandertals had the exact same capability of speech as we do.*

More examples of evolutionist beliefs proven wrong...
Science has shown Neandertals were jntelligent... They had culture....they understood medicine.... they ate grains (not carnivores)....they interbreed with other humans... etc etc.

 

[DavisBJ]

… There are only a couple possible explanations to explain our existence.

1. Something has existed throughout eternity

You claim that is a “possible explanation(s) to explain our existence." OK, then that explanation must include what it means for something to exist, say, 20 billion years ago (before either Genesis or science says the universe existed). Can you give me a rational explanation for what it means for something to exist 5 (or more) billions years before time itself came into existence?

… Science and logic suggests that what appears fine tuned or designed may have a tuner or a designer.

I agree – “may have” a tuner or a designer. Engineers by trade are often recognized as designers, and we know that nature can create things that seem, at first sight, to be designed.

…Science and logic tell us that anything which begins to exist has a cause.

No it doesn’t. See post #12,479.

…We can find that Cause in Gen. 1:1

Same essential idea claimed by many societies with creation myths that are at variance with your preferred one.

 

[alwight]

Science has shown Neandertals were jntelligent... They had culture....they understood medicine.... they ate grains (not carnivores)....they interbreed with other humans... etc etc.

So they had their own place in the evolutionary history of all life on Earth?

 

[Interplanner]

How many more times!!!!!! You don't have a creator you have a belief in a creator. It's the BELIEF that you worship.

You just assume your creator because you have convinced your self that it must be the explanation for everything. And by shear chance, it just happens to be the very same God that you already believe in. What luck........ :first:

No one has to justify nature to you until you can justify your god to them. What is unknown is unknown. It's that simple!

What I hear you doing is 'worship' of your belief that all there is is nature. The last I checked this was not the Soviet Union, and there is no dictatorship that all there is is nature.

In 1805, Thomas Payne thought he wrote the 'atom bomb' that would end Christianity and its belief in things beyond nature like miracles, and messiah.

Pastor Peter Holford studied up on the Jewish Revolt of the first century and on what Christ said about it in 33. The event had foreshadowings no doubt but did not start until 66, and ended horribly at Masada. What Christ said about it was pretty starkly accurate. No one realized it would be as awful as that.

Most scholars date the verbal version of Christ's 'gospel' to 2 years at the most after the events, allowing time for the changes and traumas. In German scholarship, they call this verbal version 'quelle' for source. Then Mark wrote, the shortest of the written versions. Finally Luke wrote. He was a physician and investigated the details of the two pregnancies etc at the beginning much more than the others. The three accounts have so much solid overlap that it is clear that this material is dated as understood--during the final week of Christ's life.

Pastor Holford then took quite a few examples from Josephus' account about the Jewish war and showed to the British public that the very opposite of Payne's pamphlet was the case, in evidence that had not been discussed much. Holford showed that Christ's claim to be God was thus supported by another stream of evidence than just miracles within his own work and his resurrection. This knowledge was powerful enough for many in England to dismiss Payne for a generation.

We then notice the timing of Huxley's insistence that Darwin finish up and publish. Do you see the point? There was no where to go about Christ because Holford had had such an impact, so folks like Huxley had to go 'deep' into other realms of discussion that would supposedly undercut all supporting concepts of religion.

I know you may be terrified of a living, personal God but I hope you will move toward seeing that he did create as claimed, did inhabit Christ as claimed, did bring about the destruction of Jerusalem as claimed 35 years earlier in Christ, etc. There is no need to be terrified per se; he 'loved us and gave himself up for us' in Christ, to provide us with righteousness to be acceptable to him.

 

[Interplanner]

No matter how hard you try to convolute scripture by adding in Greek mythology. .. you a make no sense...you still deny what God's Word tells us.


God's Word is clear "For in six days God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them"

Intetplanner says God is confused and only reshaped what was there.


Also curious... what ancient t world of the flood are you talking about? Scripture tells us about ONE flood. God created earth from the waters but there is no mention of it being a flood.

You're quite confused about what I'm saying.

There is no "adding" of Greek mythology. It is being used as a timestamp. The confinement of the angels is way back. If you have a problem with 2 Pet 2 using the term 'tartarus' (the confinement place of the Titans) you have to work that out with him. Peter said they were evil angels, but he used the term 'tartarus' for where they were confined. Check any lexicon on that. Perhaps he found it so similar to what the average person on the street in Little Asia thought that he had no problem using it as the title.

6 days. You are so used to one kind of opponent that you can't hear what I'm saying. The text is quite clear that the universe had been there, and a random form of the earth, but God did the forming of the earth as we now know it in 6 days (there needs to be room for debate about the initial light question--before the sun). It may be that evolution was taking place before this, but there is no way that the creative acts of God are evolution, and what God did interfered with it as far as I can tell; it domesticated a world that evolution would never have produced.

re the ancient world. Please get familiar with the text... (sigh). 'archeia' is the world that goes from Adam to Noah. 2 Pet 2 and 3 keep this clear and distinguish it from 'ekpalai' which is the older universe and the time of the angels revolting etc. Notice how Peter groups the flood with the forming, with water common to each. He does not do this about the 'kosmos' before forming 'estoso'.

Genesis 1 speaks to other ancient near east myths which later degenerated from it. It says that Yahweh/LORD was the one who formed this earth, liveable for mankind, from the chaos that preceded which was not liveable. It is the Lord who deserves credit, not a supposed 'divine' king or a force or another deity, as the other cultures would try to say.

There is nothing confusing about it. You just need to get more familiar with the materials.

I hope the other discussion, naturalism vs supernaturalism, will continue, for the darkness of naturalism is a much greater problem than missing a few pieces of the creation account as you are.

Be sure to pick up GOD IN THE DOCK and go through the 1st 10, and then Schaeffer's GENESIS IN SPACE AND TIME.

 

[6days]

There are only a couple possible explanations to explain our existence.

1. Something has existed throughout eternity

.....Can you give me a rational explanation for what it means for something to exist 5 (or more) billions years before time itself came into existence?

Sure... something prexisting must have caused time to exist. Time itself can't just begin to exist without a cause.

… Science and logic suggests that what appears fine tuned or designed may have a tuner or a designer.

I agree – “may have” a tuner or a designer. Engineers by trade are often recognized as designers, and we know that nature can create things that seem, at first sight, to be designed.

Wooooo partial agreement.

Nature can create beautiful canyons, caves, sunsets etc. Nature can't create an FM radio. *It generally pretty easy to identify something which has been formed by laws such as gravity and random processes like wind erosion against something designed and with purpose.
Example:
SETI has bent multiple millions of dollars listening in space for a code. They hear all types of amazing sounds. .. but they are listening for a code. In other words there is a difference between something from random process and that which has been created by intelligence. They know if there is some type of code, that it will have been intelligently created. Every code...including that in DNA has an intelligent creator. *

…Science and logic tell us that anything which begins to exist has a cause.

No it doesn’t. See post #12,479.

OK. ....
Post 12479:
"In our everyday experience, it seems a pretty safe bet to say that “nothing which ever has begun to exist which is not caused.” But that is an empirical observation, not a demand that nature is obligated to obey.

"There are a couple of ideas that you need to keep in mind. First – think of a game, such as chess. You know how the pieces in chess can be moved, and the consequences a move will have in the game. A pawn can only move a limited distance and in limited directions. But does that rule, which is non-negotiable within the game of chess, apply when the game itself is being set up? If your buddy, getting the pieces out of the box, picks up a pawn and walks across the room, has he violated the rules of the game? Who says the rules that must be followed in bringing the universe into existence are the rules that are operative within it, once it exists?

"Creationists, in defining a God that exists outside of the universe, that creates from nothing, etc. are gleefully making up whatever rules they want without paying any heed to the rules that apply within our universe.

"The second thing to keep in mind is that from hard experience, in science we have learned that it is unwise to dictate to nature how it must act. Much better to learn about how nature works, and strive to conform your thinking to reality, no matter how “illogical” it may seem. For example,

"It’s logical that one discrete particle cannot be in two places at the same time. But it happens.

"It’s logical that if I am riding a bicycle at 10 km/hr and I throw a rock ahead of me at 10 km/hr, then that rock will be gong 20 km/hr over the ground. But it doesn’t.

"It’s logical that a child cannot be older than it’s parents. But in high speed experiments, exactly that type of effect is routinely observed.

"If someone asks what existed before the universe to cause it come into existence, I immediately wonder what they are talking about. “Before”, as in “before the universe existed” presumes there was time before the universe existed. But the thing we call time came into existence when the universe did, and it makes no more lexicological sense to talk about something “before” our universe than it does to ask what is north of the North Pole."
You really didn't address the point that everything which begins to exist has a cause. I get what you are saying, but you are not being logical. In essence you are saying that my point is correct, but maybe nothing caused everything. Science and logic suggests your belief is pseudoscience.*

…We can find that Cause in Gen. 1:1

Same essential idea claimed by many societies with creation myths that are at variance with your preferred one.

Of all the various creation stories, including the atheist one, there can at most only be one possible that is true. If you can believe that there is an intelligent cause that created...then we can start comparing various stories eliminating ones that defy logic and science.*

 

[MichaelCadry]

No that is not what I have said and anyone can read my posts and check for them selves. My objection has been about you demanding an explanation for nature without your God, but then keeping deafeningly quite when asked the exact same question regarding your God. That's what I have said and you should have the honesty and good grace to refrain from adding your own rendition of what I have actually said. It may be much easier for you to knock down your own straw man but it doesn't show you in a good light.

Nonsense, irrelevant drivel. :dunce: Stick to the point. Put up or shut up.

No one knows anything about the original, pre Big Bang, cause of the universe. Not me, not you, not 6days, not anyone.

Claiming your God did it is nothing more than a God-of-the-gaps argument. If you think differently then show us the cause of your God. No more drivel, just answer the question or leave it.

Dear Hedshaker,

If you are referring to Jesus, who died and came back to life in 3 days, God made Himself in flesh form. And yes, you will be surprised to find out that life can come from being dead. You will find that out shortly, is all I will tell you for now.

It is all very simple. Think of God as a circle. No beginning and no ending. Same thing with Jesus. He is also a circle. He says Himself, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end." {See Rev. 22:13KJV}.

Please see, Hedshaker. God has always been. God will always be. It is simple, unless you must put a beginning and end on something or someone. That's too human. Otherwise, it's quite easy to understand. What do you have to say? Like you say, "put up or shut up."

Warmest Wishes,

Michael

arty: :angel: :cloud9:

 

[6days]

You're quite confused about what I'm saying.

You have been very clear what you arw saying..... You reject God's Word.

God says "In the beginning..."
You say it was a beginning.

God says He created the heavens and the earth in six days.
You say He recreated everything in 6 epochs of time.

You reject what God says inserting Greek mythology and heretical ideas.

 

[DavisBJ]

Sure... something prexisting must have caused time to exist. Time itself can't just begin to exist without a cause.

Define what preexisting means without implicitly or explicitly invoking time – because remember, time has not yet come into existence.

 

[DavisBJ]

This post is for 6days on 'ekpalai.' 2 Pet 3 says that the heavens existed (middle voice) 'ekpalai' a long time ago. But then he says that the earth was formed out of water and through water. This is a more recent action which is grouped with the flood and its water. You already have material there when you form something.

6days thinks that 'ekpalai' is not so old because of a separate kind of context like 2 Pet 2:3: the judgement of bogus teachers has been waiting a long time.

Peter then says that way back some time a mass of angels revolted and have been imprisoned since their defection. That happened 'ekpalai.'

Some time later, the ancient world, meaning the world of Noah, was judged. the vocab used there is 'archaiou.' That is as old as earth gets in the vocab of people writing in the NT. When they wanted to speak of anything older than that, they went to 'ekpalai.' In that time period were things as old as Tartarus which was the Greek subterranean world, or one of the dark masses in the night sky. Either way they were horrible places of torment even though they were waiting places. The Titans were confined there, said the Greeks. My interest is to show that 'ekpalai' was clearly before human and earth history as we know them from Adam to Noah.

Like 2 Pet 3, 'ekpalai' is again distinguished from that ancient world, and is back before it. (There may even be some connection that made the earth 'formless and void.') But there is nothing in these texts that says that the dark phase of earth or the constricting of the evil angels is close in time to this world--this ancient world which goes from Adam to Noah. From the wording here, those things may be way back there in time.

The fact that Peter would incorporate such terms (from the Greek scheme) shows that the suddenness and unrelatedness of earth to anything before, as 6days does, is out of the question. The scheme Peter was using, twice, was that there was an old universe, but the earth was recently made for God's reign among mankind.

IP, in your mind, what message is the text found in the Bible trying to convey, and to whom did God want that message to be delivered?

 

[DavisBJ]

… Nature can create beautiful canyons, caves, sunsets etc. Nature can't create an FM radio.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an FM radio proposed as being the product of natural processes, have you?

It (is) generally pretty easy to identify something which has been formed by laws such as gravity and random processes like wind erosion against something designed and with purpose.

Agreed – “generally”. For a whole long time the diversity of life was pretty universally considered as being the product of an intelligent designer. Till Darwin showed that just may not be the case at all.

… Example:
SETI has bent multiple millions of dollars listening in space for a code.

Are you an active supporter of SETI?

They hear all types of amazing sounds. .. but they are listening for a code.

To be a bit more accurate, I think they are looking mostly for correlated signals. I am not aware that “sounds” (audio) is being monitored in any real sense in SETI.

In other words there is a difference between something from random process and that which has been created by intelligence.

You think that is really true? I have a report I did long ago when I was a student that I titled “LGM”, meaning “Little Green Men.” The report dealt with the detection of a high-powered signal that had been received from a clearly distant source in space. The regularity of the signal was so predictable and precise that some astrophysicists said it had to come from an artificial source (maybe LGMs). That was before there was a very good understanding of what a pulsar was. That was an example of some pretty smart guys thinking something natural had to be artificially made.

They know if there is some type of code, that it will have been intelligently created. Every code...including that in DNA has an intelligent creator.

And once again you use slight-of-hand and dress up your religious dogma and pretend it is science.

You really didn't address the point that everything which begins to exist has a cause. I get what you are saying, but you are not being logical.

Amazing. I was responding to your freely saying “Science and logic tell us that…” and then making whatever claims you want to support a point of theology. What I did was to list specific examples showing that when we get very far from the world we are accustomed to dealing with, then everyday logic cannot be depended on. I know, and apparently you don’t, that trivially claiming “science and logic” support some of your ideas is a classic example of “fools rush in, where …”.

Of all the various creation stories, including the atheist one, there can at most only be one possible that is true. If you can believe that there is an intelligent cause that created...then we can start comparing various stories eliminating ones that defy logic and science.

Is it logical and scientific for a fellow to take up residence in the belly of a fish for a few days?

 

[DavisBJ]

Dear alwight,

I know that most scientists are trying to search for the truth. It seems to be the case. I just know there have been a lot of mistakes also, some intentional and some not. No, I'm not going to list them all.

Michael

:wave2:

Dear Michael,

First, my thanks to our British friend who finds himself confined to a 400 sq km island southwest of London. His timely response to your post inferring that science was pretty much a rat’s nest of dishonest liars prevented me from coming down much harder on you for dipping that deep into the slime.

But, I see you have recanted and admitted scientists are like other people – not perfect, but certainly not dedicated to evil. But that brings us back to the original question. Geologists, caring little about other fields of science, concluded that the earth is very old. Astrophysicists, totally apart from other sciences, concluded the universe is ancient. And so did evolutionists. And geophysicists (including Lord Kelvin). And nuclear scientists. They all walk into a room to compare answers, and they all agree that we are on a billions of years old planet. Now is God intentionally misleading each set of scientists – misleading them all with the same wrong answer – or just maybe they (and God) actually agree on the age of the earth as being vastly old?

 

[MichaelCadry]

Dear Michael,

First, my thanks to our British friend who finds himself confined to a 400 sq km island southwest of London. His timely response to your post inferring that science was pretty much a rat’s nest of dishonest liars prevented me from coming down much harder on you for dipping that deep into the slime.

But, I see you have recanted and admitted scientists are like other people – not perfect, but certainly not dedicated to evil. But that brings us back to the original question. Geologists, caring little about other fields of science, concluded that the earth is very old. Astrophysicists, totally apart from other sciences, concluded the universe is ancient. And so did evolutionists. And geophysicists (including Lord Kelvin). And nuclear scientists. They all walk into a room to compare answers, and they all agree that we are on a billions of years old planet. Now is God intentionally misleading each set of scientists – misleading them all with the same wrong answer – or just maybe they (and God) actually agree on the age of the earth as being vastly old?

Dear Davis,

No, I don't believe in what each set of scientists come up with. They all feed off of each other. I don't believe in all of these galaxies either, but I do believe in our galaxy. I will leave you with Heb. 11:3KJV. Think hard about it. Everything is not as it appears to be. God did that!!

Michael

 

[DavisBJ]

Dear Davis,

No, I don't believe in what each set of scientists come up with. They all feed off of each other.

No they do not. The integrity of each science depends on how much it can rely on its own results. For example, in geology, there are factors that do not depend on the other sciences (rate of erosion, tectonic movement). Astrophysics – the Hubble expansion rate. Geophysics – planetary cooling rates. Evolutionists - rates of observed mutations and time to embed in a population. Nuclear scientists – radioactive half-lives.

… I don't believe in all of these galaxies either.

Those galaxies show up In the telescopes, you can easily observe many of them. If they don’t actually exist, then then you are just one more of those who your God must be deceiving.

… Everything is not as it appears to be. God did that!!

Assume you bought what looked to be a new car, but then you find out it is "not what it appeared to be". The salesman says "he did that", he admits you were misled because of him. Do you still give him your trust, or do you ask why he was not honest with you?

 

[MichaelCadry]

No they do not. The integrity of each science depends on how much it can rely on its own results. For example, in geology, there are factors that do not depend on the other sciences (rate of erosion, tectonic movement). Astrophysics – the Hubble expansion rate. Geophysics – planetary cooling rates. Evolutionists - rates of observed mutations and time to embed in a population. Nuclear scientists – radioactive half-lives.

I don't buy it. Talk to the hand!! Their dating methods are incorrect. I don't care how red their spectrum is, for one thing. If don't believe in radioactive half-lives, when man could never live a half a life of it to even check if it were true. Just keep on tacking on the 000s. Millions, billions, trillions of years old. Ha!! Who is going to prove them wrong. None of us know what was happening a half million years ago. Who are you trying to kid? God said He created everything in six days, which includes the Universe, Earth, man and animals, etc. He didn't say it took a few billion years, dude. If He created them to look old, that is really His prerogative.

Those galaxies show up In the telescopes, you can easily observe many of them. If they don’t actually exist, then then you are just one more of those who your God must be deceiving.

So what is seen in a telescope. If man wasn't so nosy and trying to be superior, there would be no need for a fake Universe. It's just like when men tried to build a tower {of Babel} to reach heaven, and God had to confound their languages because of what they were doing. Same thing going on right now. Man thinks he can outsmart God, so God deals with it and confounds men. God is not the one misleading man. Man is poking around in places where he doesn't belong. So God makes the Universe to appear as large as it takes before man can reach the outside edge of our "Universe." He makes every thing aged, just as He did Adam and Eve. They weren't born as babies. Neither was all of the animals God made. The chicken was created first, not the egg. Now you know what to tell your friends when they ask who came first, the adult chicken or the egg.

Assume you bought what looked to be a new car, but then you find out it is "not what it appeared to be". The salesman says "he did that", he admits you were misled because of him. Do you still give him your trust, or do you ask why he was not honest with you?

You can still put your trust in God with no problem. Like I said, if mankind wants to build a tower up to Heaven, then God WILL confound their efforts. They will fail. He's not going to put up with it. He is good and His love and understanding, and forgiveness is great, but man keeps crossing the line.

Michael