Posts Made By: Evan Reed

Mark,
Although I partially disagree with your opening statement, you have made a good observation. I purposfully omitted the distinction between following the Biblical story (God creating Adam from the earth and breathing life into him), and following a story seperate from that one, but none the less never doubting the existence of God (eg. God creates the universe and then eventually people evolve). I also would not care to make that distinction now. I feel that if one does believe in an omnipotent being, then they could, as you said, 'have created the earth & universe at any stage or age at all including fossils.' I suppose it is also possible that God created the universe long before the Earth was around, and had a plan for it that led to us being here.

ER

[I]I do have one question, though: Just what the heck is a Steeler?

[I]

It might cause some confusion if they were called the Ironers...

The biggest problem I have with this whole discussion is that changing how we classify something is not advancing our knowledge or understanding of anything. It is merely changing the name of something that 99.997% of us will never even be able to see directly. In short, my question is: who cares what we call it? There are many thing in (and out of) this world where the cultural definition and the scientific definition are very different. Also there are things which may fall into two categories; where do large planet-like objects end and brown drarfs begin? And are brown dwarfs really stars? I think we should stop making a mountain out of mole a hill. A planet by any other name is still an orbiting rock (in this case).

That was quite possibly the best post I've read in this discussion.

I was once told that lottery tickets are a tax for the non-mathematically inclined. Despite this, I still buy one every once in a while - but only if the jackpot is over 100 million.

ER