[elf]

I’m not the most eloquent person in the world so bear with me if you please . . .

Why does it have to be one or the other? Why couldn’t it be that God did make people from primordial ooze? Did He carve Adam out of rock or sculpt him from clay? It makes more sense to me that a higher power would have prompted it to grow with a mere thought or will to make it so. Does God have hands? Why would he? ‘In his own form’, so it says . . . but then, his own form would have needed air and food to survive just as we do. If He doesn’t need it, then why do we breathe and eat? Is it ‘in his own form, only not as spiffy?’

It says it is so in the bible, and therefore that’s the way it is. Would it be too much of a stretch that pehaps the bible had been simplified to understandable terms for the mindset of the peoples thousands of years ago? Just like schoolbooks are simplified to make it so that children can grasp the concepts, and then move on to make their own decisions and understand more deeply.<b> School is not the end-all be-all of education, and seeing as the bible is a tool of religious education, isn't there room for your own questions or conclusions? </b>Or do you have to read it and accept it just as it is worded (translated? How many times? To mean how many different things?) and not question?

To be perfectly honest, I find it difficult to believe any one theory. People’s minds and their souls are so very complicated that it is rather difficult to think that it was completely and purely evolutionary, and yet, to have God just decide to and proceed to slap together what is now ‘human’ and make everything just the way it is now, and just plunk them down onto a fertile ground seems kind of hokey to me as well.

The fact that different people view God differently tells me that there’s more than one way to believe and to have faith. The bible is not the only way, and therefore it doesn’t belong in school. The teaching of religion belongs in your house or your church.

Something scares me about teaching creationism in the classroom. It begs children not to question. No? I was taught evolutionism. No one ever brought me to church and told me “this is what you need to think” – or even “This is what we believe”. I was taught that science is just that, ‘science’ – studying, assuming, testing, drawing conclusions and linking things together in a way that makes sense. And yet still I believe in <i>a</i> god. it’s just not necessarily <I>your</I> God. Or, rather, not the <i>same way</i> you think of Him. I think it would be comforting to close you eyes and imagine that God looks familiar.

It seems so much easier to <i>know</i> wholly and completely that your belief is correct.
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Wow, this got a lot wordier than I had intended. Must be off for now, work to do and all that rot.