[Beerinkol]

A few people have mentioned times when they felt especially inspired/challenged, someone else mentioned cross references.
I also like writing the place/date I was reading a passage if it's out of the ordinary. One of the things I love about my faith is that I can read the same Bible with kindergartners in Japan, an old clergyman in England that has dedicated his life to God, and in South African high-security prisons- and they all read it with the same glint in their eyes. Reminding me of that in the margins helps keep perspective, I guess.

[brraverishhh]

My Dad's Bible. The physical evidence of a lifetime of faithfulness, study and living what you believe in

That is awesome. Looks a lot like my wife's. I'm... recently... Christian. My bible has almost nothing written in it yet. I'm still new. I've read all of the old testament in my younger years, but have only just started Matthew in the NT. Soo... I'm learning still.

[9mm_fan]

Oh man. I'm so excited for you, I wish I could read Romans and Hebrews for the first time again. Seriously you've got such an awesome journey ahead of you.

[Fegasderty]

I hope you will learn more!

[brraverishhh]

I'm all in... I've always been a scientific minded and logic minded guy... Funny that the more I learn about each, the more they work together.
Funny how things work that way isn't it?

[9mm_fan]

"Dude, how can you believe in God? Do you not care about science?"
"I believe God created science."
And from there on they can either respect my beliefs or we don't need to talk about it. It's easy to reconcile science and faith -- for me, at least, they're really the same thing.

[softy54534]

But science is all about discovery and learning, understanding the universe, life and ourselves. It's about seeking answers to questions through the scientific method. Wouldn't you think, faith by definition (belief not based on proof) sits opposite science? I don't see how the two are related or reconcilable. Can you explain what you mean that they are the same thing?

[Slonopotam845]

I kind of see science as our trying to understand a world around us to big and too complicated to possibly comprehend. My faith in God is my noumenal rationalization that this universe can even exist in the first place. The scientific method gives us answers that we can put into human terms -- the kind that we can express to one another; communication with God gives me inexpressible insight into those discoveries, and inspiration of ones to delve into further.
God made the universe around us; science as we know it just allows us to really appreciate that.

[tgs]

Okay so it's that constant amazement and wonder at God as you experience and learn about the universe. Not that it would certainly change someone's faith, but what do you think about all the discoveries that have given us a more accurate understanding of how life began here? Or any question that we now have answered that the bible gave a different (or philosophical?) answer for? That almost every ancient religious text gives an answer for?
I used to be Christian, and a lot of my friends still hold onto "The earth is 5,000 years old, everything in the bible literally happened." But I'm amazed at what may have ACTUALLY happened. It's impossible- the evidence has already been found. We're so close to reproducing the origins of life in the lab. We're literally creating proteins, fatty acids, even RNA by very simply taking the elements that would have been here and putting them through conditions they would have faced. It blows my mind that we're the result of just hydrogen.. chemical reactions, billions of years of evolution and now there are things so amazing as people, self-aware with higher brain function that gives us an opportunity for amazing, fulfilling lives and advanced societies..technology. Neuroscience and origin of life stuff, the process of evolution and everything is just so amazing. I couldn't possibly be satisfied with that part of life being ignored, even if I did have faith I think searching for truth.. You know, you're searching for God. I just have that in me- I want to know! What I am.. how did we get here.. what's going on in the Universe?? What is it? The big questions. And a lot of the answers are already there or 90% there.
You know, a personal faith might not be affected by that at all because it's a critical part of how the brain has learned to survive, think and function. But it's the bible I don't understand. The bible is a religious text, not a scientific one. It's a text that says it is the one truth because God told me so and you may not question anything in here or you're defying God. It's restricting and cult-esque, and absolutely non-credible as a scientific text. It's supposed to be infallible, but for people who are scientists.. something is clearly wrong with the explanations it gives for the questions we ask. So where does that leave one's faith when the bible is wrong? Where do you find answers? How do you reconcile it? Does God become something else not-so-Christian as more and more is discovered? Are you able to approach discovery objectively?
(When I was Christian I could not do this. Faith came first. If something didn't make sense, I wouldn't think about it or would parrot off whatever was the popular (often asinine) answer floating around Christian circles at the time. It was a personal experience for me, Jesus was real and God was real and love was real to me, so I was more concerned with love than logic or anything else. The trouble now has been that I don't know how to be a successful person without the Church, without those people, without that society. I feel like I've gone to a foreign country and have had to acclimate to their culture to get what I want (friends, money, women). Definitely had some culture shock and some difficult years.)

[NeroASERCH]

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God exists, and I believe as strongly as I can that He loves me/you/everyone/Billy Idol. I don't have plain, numbers, black-and-white evidence for that, but I just know. I'm gonna beg your respect on that one.
Science is fantastic, but I think anyone who believes that humanity as a whole can ever know, much less understand, even a small fraction of Everything, is off base and arrogant. There's just too much for us to wrap our brains around.
More and more is discovered, but the thing to bear in mind is that (at least by popular belief) God created everything we're discovering.
The Bible is not a scientific text because it really has no need to be. All it gives us is respect and understanding of our Lord. Anyone who tries to use the Bible as a scientific text is making some kind of grave mistake, just as someone who looks for spiritual answers in a scientific journal is barking up the wrong tree. The Bible only provides the why; we're discovering the How right now, and it's exciting as hell.
Creation is a whole other can of worms I can get into if you want, but generally when I consider the improbability of evolution leading to the kind of moral consciousness that allows us to be having this very conversation I kind of like to think someone is pulling the strings. I believe evolution is a totally valid theory, but I also believe God started and supervised the process.
What scientific discovery have we come across that actively disproves God? If anything, learning the details of what makes our world tick should amaze us and inspire us to appreciate Him more.

[tgs]

Oh yeah man I respect your faith.
What is the why? (For love, as I saw it. Love as most people think of it is just an emotion or a choice that we can observe (just something that came about as we evolved higher brain function and the empathetic abilities modern humans now have) but if you get beyond that, philosophically it just becomes a holistic constant that can never be achieved by any one of us but that we're all part of.)
Yeah I'd definitely like to talk about creation! I love it. Once I started to understand what is really going on in the brain, something like a moral compass made evolutionary sense. And not just to say "well it's better so it happened". But the inevitability of this moral consciousness, the role it plays in our survival, why and how it came about through evolution are all things that we understand to a high degree and things that I don't consider too wild to happen without intelligent direction, which is what really blows my mind because of how awesome it is. And I wonder if any significant organic evolution in humans could take place now that we have dominated the planet and are so close to intellectual and technological event horizons.
Scientific discoveries disproving God- Many but it depends on your definition of God.. If you have an open mind as to what 'God' is, then searching for and finding answers to the questions of the universe will only give you a greater appreciation for God. We can poke holes in the factuality and philosophy of the bible all day- it leaks like a sieve. But if someone's belief in God is based on a personal connection with everything then nothing can prove or disprove it- this is the nature of faith.
And what do you think about heaven and hell? Beyond all the clouds and pits of fire or whatever. Because I know that I don't exist. My consciousness and sense of self will not go on once my brain dies. I'm a body, a robot, an animal trying to decide what to do next. I'm relatively high-functioning but I'm just a part of the universe as dictated by the frequency of hydrogen. What I am was here when the universe was a singularity and will still be here when it returns to it. So I am interested to hear the views of someone who has faith yet does not walk away from science & reason on an afterlife because I think it could start a good conversation that goes in a lot of different directions, namely: history, philosophy, neuroscience, psychology and religion.

[Ifroham4]

It seems to me that you may have grown up in a fundamentalist Christian area, due to a few assertions you made. The thing is, the Bible was written by Man, not God. As much as the fundamentalists want to say it was. It's not the Islamic belief that somewhere exists a perfect version of our text, personally inscribed by God. It was written by man, man is errant, therefore the Bible cannot be inerrant.
Most of the time, when people point to inconsistencies in the Bible, they fail to realize that nearly half of the Bible either clearly was, or probably was, written in parable. So no, you're not going to get scientific answers from stories meant to guide someone through life morally. (IMO, that's where we get the YEC beliefs)
As for the questioning, we are CALLED to question everything, not just blindly follow. For a man that can question his beliefs, his faith will grow stronger as he seeks answers and communion with those who hold the same belief as he. It's one of the many reasons the Catholic faith is so strong - their entire faith isn't solely based on the Bible.
When you construct your entire belief system on believing that this book is infallible, and then you find out "oh gee, it was wrong about something", one of two things are going to happen. You're going to write it off as science is just wrong (or perhaps just ignore the problem like you said). Or your faith is going to be destroyed.

[tgs]

Thank you. I am actually from California and came to God on my own at 18; the journey was a personal one.
Interestingly enough, for me it happened a little differently. I wound up in an emotionally abusive Christian cult (some people from it went to my home church) and it got so extreme that I developed dissociative identity disorder and I remember it happening: I remember it being so painful for so long with no escape and no answers from God that at some point when I could not go on living, my brain decided to reboot over the course of 2 or 3 days. It was terrifying watching my entire personality be taken from me, and my faith along with it, but who I was had to die so that I could go on. I was basically a zombie after that and have been trying to rebuild for the last 6 years. I loved as best I could but at the end I did not find love I found only death.
The world just doesn't make sense with the Christian God. It's a slow process but I am doing much better now without faith because I am able to see the world as it is and act accordingly. There are no surprises and everything makes sense. I feel much more sane and in control of my life.

[softy54534]

You have a long journey ahead of you. I know when I first came back to God I couldnt read enough.