Iron Chariots Wiki - User contributions [en]

United States Constitution

2009-11-11T01:15:57Z

Vandalism Sucks:

[[Image:United States Constitution.jpg|200px|thumb]]

Designed by many influential [[deist]]s such as [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[James Madison]], the '''United States Constitution''' is a [[secular]] document, despite the claims of people who think that [[America is a Christian nation]].

==The First Amendment==

The first amendment (part of the Bill of Rights) reads:
: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The first two clauses are known as the ''establishment clause'' and ''free exercise clause'', respectively. Together, they define the ''wall of [[separation between church and state]]'' that [[Thomas Jefferson]] wrote of.

The [[Supreme Court]] has interpreted the establishment clause as meaning that the government may not favor one religion over another, or favor religion in general over no religion (or vice-versa). In other words, the government must remain strictly neutral in matters of religion.

At the same time, the free exercise clause guarantees freedom of religion. A proper balance between these two clauses can sometimes be hard to find.

In the 1971 case Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Supreme Court established the ''Lemon test'' for determining whether a law violates the establishment clause: a law is legal if:
# It has a legitimate secular purpose, and
# Its principal effect neither advances nor inhibits religion, and
# It does not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.

==See also==
* [[Religious test]]

==External links==
* [http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution.html US Constitution at the National Archives]
* [http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/207/ Lemon v. Kurtzman]

[[Category:Law]]

File:United States Constitution.jpg

2009-11-11T01:14:01Z

Vandalism Sucks: The U.S. Constitution, pg. 1.

The U.S. Constitution, pg. 1.

Young-Earth creationism

2009-10-18T20:06:25Z

Vandalism Sucks:

{{religion-stub}}
'''Young-Earth [[creationism|creationists]]''' (YECs) believe that [[God]] created the [[Earth]] and all life on it in six 24-hour days, exactly as described in [[Genesis]], and that the [[universe]] (and by extension the Earth) is less than 10,000 years old. There is quite an amount of contradictions that this claim has with history and science.

==Scientific difficulties with Young Earth Creationism==

===Speed of Light===
One problem with Young Earth Creationism is with light. Supposedly, the Earth is 10,000 years old. Since light travels in light years, we would only be able to see stars that are less than 10,000 light years away. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy Great Andromeda Galaxy] is 2 million light years away. Other galaxies are even further away. Some scientists have even saw some stars about 13 billion light years away from the Earth. If the universe was only 10,000 years old, the light from these objects would not be able to be seen by telescopes.

===Universe Formation Problem===
Models of the Big Bang show that it happened about 13.7 billion years ago. This is, by far, much older than what creationists say. The evidence about this is all on the Big Bang side.

====Age of Earth====
One topic that comes up frequently is the Age of Earth. Young-Earth creationists believe that Earth is about 6,000 years old. This contrasts with radiometric dating of the Earth, which puts her age at 4.6 billion years. Rocks from space also have been dated around 4.6 billion years. Geologists also track changes in the Earth happening over millions of years, such as plate tectonics and mountain building.

==Other Scientific Difficulties==
#Fossil remains and artifacts in the Americas show that humanity migrated to the Americas thousands of years before Young-Earth creationists believe when the Earth was created. Does the biblical textual evidence outweigh physical evidence?

[[category:Religion]]
[[Category:Creationism]]

Young-Earth creationism

2009-10-17T18:24:46Z

Vandalism Sucks:

{{religion-stub}}
'''Young-Earth [[creationism|creationists]]''' (YECs) believe that [[God]] created the [[Earth]] and all life on it in six 24-hour days, exactly as described in [[Genesis]], and that the [[universe]] (and by extension the Earth) is less than 10,000 years old.

==Scientific difficulties with Young Earth Creationism==

===Speed of Light===
One problem with Young Earth Creationism is with light. Supposedly, the Earth is 10,000 years old. Since light travels in light years, we would only be able to see stars that are less than 10,000 light years away. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy Great Andromeda Galaxy] is 2 million light years away. Other galaxies are even further away. Some scientists have even saw some stars about 13 billion light years away from the Earth. If the universe was only 10,000 years old, the light from these objects would not be able to be seen by telescopes.

===Big Bang Problem===
Models of the Big Bang show that it happened about 13.7 billion years ago. This is, by far, much older than what creationists say. The evidence about this is all on the Big Bang side.

==Other Scientific Difficulties==
#Radiometric dating show that the Earth and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System solar system] are over 4 billion years old. Geologists see evidence of many different geological processes taking place over millions of years, hundreds of millions of years and thousands of millions of years. Is it likely that so many respected scientists are wrong and a few theologians are right?
#Fossil remains and artifacts in the Americas show that humanity migrated to the Americas thousands of years before Young-Earth creationists believe when the Earth was created. Does the biblical textual evidence outweigh physical evidence?

[[category:Religion]]
[[Category:Creationism]]

Noah's ark

2009-10-14T23:02:02Z

Vandalism Sucks:

In the [[Bible]], this is the story of how [[God]] drowned every person on earth with a great flood, sparing only a man named Noah and his family of seven. [[Fundamentalist]]s believe that the story is literally true, and there have been many claims to have found the ark on which Noah and his family sailed.

==The story==

The story of Noah's ark is told in {{bible|Genesis 6:11-8:22}}. God sees that the world has become full of evil, and decides to kill everyone on Earth, with the exception of Noah, Noah's unnamed wife, and his three sons and their respective unnamed wives.

God explains to Noah that he is going to flood Earth, and tells him to build an ark. God gives instructions on how to build the ark, what its dimensions should be, and so forth. He also tells Noah to bring representative samples of all living creatures: either one pair of each animal ({{bible|Genesis 6:19-20}}) or seven of each clean animal (or seven pairs) and two of each unclean animal ({{bible|Genesis 7:2-3}}).

After the animals have been loaded onto the ark, God sends rain and opens up the "fountains of the great deep" for forty days and forty nights, until the earth is covered with water and every living being has died, except for those on the ark. The floodwaters start subsiding, and a year later the ark rests on "the mountains of Ararat."

Noah releases a raven through the window of the ark, but it can't find any dry land, and keeps flying around until the water subsides. Noah sends out a dove, but it returns, not having found any dry land. A week later, Noah releases the dove again, and this time it returns with an olive leaf in its beak, indicating that the water level is getting low. A week later, he releases the dove again, but it fails to return, and Noah looks out to see that the world has dried out.

==Counter-arguments==

# This story assumes that a perfectly loving [[Omnibenevolent]] God killed the whole human population including innocent babies and children. A perfectly just God judges that these babies and children deserved death by drowning.
# There are millions of known animal species in the world; it would take an impossibly large ship to hold representatives of all species, not to mention food for at least a year.
# Assuming that Noah did not take two of each species, but two of each "[[Kind#Biblical_.22Kinds.22|kind]]", that still requires an awfully rapid [[evolution]] explosion to account for the biological diversity today. If all creatures on earth were destroyed some five thousand years ago in the Great Flood, it would require incredibly fast evolution to cause, for instance, the dog "kind" to produce both dire wolves and Chihuahuas. If we take a very conservative estimate of 1 million species that descended from creatures on Noah's ark, and assume that 16,000 "kinds" of animal were on the ark, each "kind" would have had to evolve into over 62 species in the 4000 years since Noah's flood.
# The flood story does not explain the present geographic distribution of species, e.g., how did marsupials wind up in Australia, and only in Australia?
# The story of Noah is not the first Middle Eastern deluge story. The story told by [[Utnapishtim]] in "The Epic of [[Gilgamesh]]", in which the god [[Enlil]] and other deities drown the world to rid it of evil, is referred to as far back as 2000 B.C.E. Its most complete version comes from tablets dated between 669 and 633 B.C.E. The modern book of [[Genesis]] was not compiled for another 200 years.
# The Deluge would have meant the resetting of DNA lines for nearly every living thing on earth. All DNA lines should curiously and rapidly narrow to small breeding populations located in the Middle East. Ignoring every other creature on earth, we can say with some confidence, that human DNA lines appear to originate in Africa. Most lines do not appear to have stopped in the middle east 4000 to 5000 years ago.
# The Deluge, according to available time lines, occurred between 2348 B.C.E. and 2150 B.C.E. It should have represented a clear historical breaking point for every civilization around the world. No such breaking point exists. The river of history appears to have continued flowing uninterrupted through the Great Flood.
# Once the animals got off the ark, they would have nothing to eat. All the plants would have died in the flood, so the herbivores would have nothing to eat. The carnivores would wipe them out anyway, and then they would die too.
# Creationists often claim that there were only babies of each species and only seeds of each plant on the ark, but then this would require a time for them to grow. For every ten units of mass on one level of the food chain, only one unit of mass can be created on the next level. That means for a lion, which weighs over 400 pounds, to become fully grown, he needs to eat 4,000 pounds of meat, and that animal would have to eat 40,000 pounds of plant to get that much weight.
# The Deluge cannot explain the distribution of fossils in the fossil record, for example why dinosaur fossils only appear in lower rock layers that can be dated to be at least 65 million years old, and trilobites only appear in rocks that are dated to at least 250 million years ago, while human fossils only appear in the highest rock layers, radiometrically dated to the past couple million years.

==Flood models==

===Vapor Canopy===

This is the Flood Model in which the water was suspended above Earth in ice, liquid water, or water vapor state. At the end of the seven days, it came down to the surface as rain.

If a canopy of more then 40 feet of water were suspended above Earth, atmospheric pressure would skyrocket to 64 times the norm; nitrogen and oxygen would reach toxic levels causing [[Wikipedia:Decompression sickness|the bends]] worldwide. If the canopy began as vapor, it would have to be at a minimum of 100 degrees Celsius to remain in a gaseous state. As this heat dispersed, Earth would have been cooked. If the suspended water were in ice form, the gravitational potential energy would also have raised the temperature past the boiling point. Some models have the ice orbiting Earth; if it were not within the ozone layer, UV radiation would have broken them apart.

A canopy thick enough to provide the water for a global flood would have blocked a great deal of sunlight, lowering the temperature greatly.

===Hydroplate===

This model proposes that roughly ten miles below the Earth's surface was a layer of water, and at the end of the seven days, the crust of the earth ruptured and and the pressurized water shot out and fell as rains.

Rock (with the exception of pumice) doesn't float, a layer of water below Earth's crust would have been forced to the surface long before the flood. Even a mile deep, the earth is hot enough to boil water. When it did finally come out it would have been superheated, as that heat dispersed throughout the atmosphere the global temperature would have increased dramatically and the ark would be cooked. There is also a large lack of evidence. When the water escaped from the ground, it would have left huge gashes in Earth's crust. Blowing through ten miles of rock is no small task, there should be large holes, and poorly sorted basaltic deposits (Noah also would have had to watch his head for falling rocks). Such formations should be easily visible but we see none.

===Comet===

Kent Hovind proposed that the flood waters came from comets that broke up in the atmosphere and rained water down to Earth.

Any comet large enough to contain all the water needed to flood Earth would have been too large to just break up in the atmosphere, and it would have taken far too many smaller ones for them to all come at Earth at the same time. Comets entering the atmosphere would have been burned up, and the water would be steam.

===Runaway Subduction===

This flood model proposes that the pre-flood ocean floor sank into the mantle, the heat released caused the plate to melt faster. All the original plate subducted and the new magma raised the ocean floor and boiled off water that then fell as rains. When this magma cooled, the sea floor lowered again and the oceans got deeper. Isostatic rebound formed mountains like the Rocky Mountains and the Andes.

To get the proposed subduction rates, the thermal diffusivity of Earth (how well heat moves through Earth) would have to increase 10,000 fold. Additional miracles are required to cool the new ocean floor in months in stead of the millions of years it should take. Studies estimated that the energy released would be 10^28 joules, more then enough to boil off the oceans. The mantle also would have had to be hotter for this model to work. All this heat would have to be radiated to the surface, and eventually out of the atmosphere.

===New ocean basins===

This is the model that most others use to explain where the flood water went after the flood. It states that the water became our present day oceans, Earth's topography was much flatter in the time before the flood, and during the flood there was widespread reconstruction of the surface. After the flood the water drained into the new ocean basins.

The heat required to make the crust malleable enough for such widespread reconstruction packed into a few months would require additional miracles. Most sediments are found on high ground. Most sediments are transported with the water until the water slows down. Since it is expected that the water was rushing off the continents and into the basins, there should be much more sediment on the ocean floor, where the water slowed down and deposited to sediment. The opposite is true. With all that water rushing to the lower ground, there should be evidence of large torrents crossing the continents. There are similar marks in Washington when an ice dam broke and a lake drained.

==External Links==
===Logical Inconsistencies===
* [http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/bad0d3c8a5fb8d8b?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 Torpedo Ye Arke], by Pat James
* [http://skepdic.com/noahsark.html The Skeptic's Dictionary]

===Biblical Timelines===
* [http://atheism.about.com/library/chronologies/blchron_ot1.htm About.com Religious Timelines]
* [http://www.andrews.edu/SEM/bket/BKET%20OT%20Time%20Line.htm The Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary Timeline]
* [http://www.wordsight.org/btl/000_btl-fp.htm Word Sight's Bible Time-line]

===Historical Timelines===
* [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/03/wam/ht03wam.htm The Metropolitan Museum of Art historical timeline]
* [http://fontes.lstc.edu/~rklein/Doc6/3rdmill.htm Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago historical timeline]
* [http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001198.html Infoplease.com Ancient history timeline]

===Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim===
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utnapishtim Wikipedia Entry: Utnapishtim]
* [http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/ The Epic of Gilgamesh]

===DNA and Mapping Human Migration===
* [https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html National Geographic and the Genographic Project]

[[Category:Religious mythology]]
[[Category:Bible]]

Gnosticism

2009-10-13T02:06:33Z

Vandalism Sucks:

'''Gnosticism''' is the position that there is proof of the existence of a [[God]] or divine being. Gnosticism is the absolute opposite of [[Agnosticism]]

Religion

2009-10-12T03:52:39Z

Vandalism Sucks:

{{wikipedia}}
A '''religion''' is a system of [[belief]]s that asserts the existence of at least one of the following:
# a human [[soul]] or [[spirit]],
# a [[deity]] or "[[God|higher being]]", or
# the continuation of the self after the [[death]] of one's body.

As an [[wiktionary:uncountable|uncountable]] noun, '''religion''' is a "way of living" or the set of customs or rituals that follows from such beliefs.
{{wiktionary|religion}}

It is notoriously difficult to define what does and does not constitute a religion, due to the sheer variety of human religious beliefs and practices. [[Taoism]] and [[Confucianism]], for instance, are sometimes described as [[Philosophy|philosophies]] rather than religions.

==Classification==
Many religions are subdivided into [[sect]]s or [[denomination]]s, resulting in a huge number of labels for the religious to choose from. The major world religions are typically, however, divided into three large groups:
# [[Abrahamic religion]]s
#* including [[Judaism]], [[Christianity]], [[Islam]]
# [[Dharmic religion]]s
#* including [[Hinduism]], [[Buddhism]], [[Jainism]], [[Sikhism]], and sometimes [[Zoroastrianism]] (historical precursors of Dharmic religion can be found in [[Vedic religion]])
# [[Taoic religion]]s
#* including [[Taoism]], [[Confucianism]], [[Jeung San Do]], [[Shinto]], [[Yiguandao]], [[Chondogyo]], [[Chen Tao]], [[Caodaism]]

==Largest world religions==
According to data collected by [[Adherents.com]], the religious traditions with the most "adherents" around the world (including traditions outside of the three major divisions listed above) are:<sup>[http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html]</sup>

# [[Christianity]]: 2.1 billion
# [[Islam]]: 1.3 billion
# Non-religious, including [[secular]], [[agnostic]] and [[atheist]]: 1.1 billion
# [[Hinduism]]: 900 million
# [[Chinese traditional religion]]: 394 million
# [[Buddhism]]: 376 million
# "primal-indigenous", including various tribal/ethnic religions and [[animism]]: 300 million
# [[African traditional religion|African traditional and diasporic]]: 100 million
# [[Sikhism]]: 23 million
# [[Juche]]: 19 million
# [[Spiritism]]: 15 million
# [[Judaism]]: 14 million
# [[Baha'i]]: 7 million
# [[Jainism]]: 4.2 million
# [[Shinto]]: 4 million
# [[Cao Dai]]: 4 million
# [[Zoroastrianism]]: 2.6 million
# [[Tenrikyo]]: 2 million
# [[Neo-Paganism]]: 1 million
# [[Unitarian-Universalism]]: 800 thousand
# [[Rastafarianism]]: 600 thousand
# [[Scientology]]: 500 thousand

==Major approaches to religion==
Note that statements below about "God" can also generally be made about "gods".
===Lack of (belief in / certainty about / support for) religion===
* [[Ignosticism]] — statements about God are ill-defined or meaningless
* [[Agnosticism]] — lack of knowledge about God
* [[Atheism]] — lack of belief in God; belief in the nonexistence of God
* [[Antitheism]] — opposition to belief in God; belief in God seen as harmful
* [[Humanism]] — supports reason and ethics; rejects superstition and the supernatural; humans have to solve their own problems
===Forms of deism===
* [[Deism]] — God created the universe but is not presently active in it; typically rejects miracles and other supernatural events
* [[Pandeism]] — the universe is God
* [[Panendeism]] — the universe is part of God
* [[Polydeism]] — multiple gods created the universe and are not presently active in it
===Forms of theism===
* [[Theism]] — belief in one or more gods who are generally active in the universe and in human lives
====Number of gods====
* [[Nontheism]] — no gods; encompasses atheism and agnosticism, but also religions having no gods (e.g., many [[Eastern religion]]s)
* [[Monotheism]] — belief in one god
* [[Monolatrism]] — worship of one god among many, the others of which are not worthy of worship
* [[Henotheism]] — worship of one god among many, some of whom may also be worthy of worship
* [[Kathenotheism]] — worship of "one god at a time" from among many
* [[Duotheism]] — two complementary (often male and female) gods
* [[Polytheism]] — worship of many gods
====Number of aspects of a single god====
* [[Unitarianism]] — Jesus was a great spiritual teacher, but not divine
* [[Binitarianism]] — "two-in-one" God (e.g., Father and Son)
* [[Trinitarianism]] — "three-in-one" God (e.g., Father, Son, and Holy Ghost/Spirit; see [[Trinity]])
====Nature of God====
* [[Dystheism]] — God is partly or wholly evil
* [[Pantheism]] — God is the universe
* [[Panentheism]] — God is "immanent" in the universe but transcends it
* [[Transtheism]] — One or more gods are "immanent" in the universe but transcend it
* [[Transcendentalism]] — God transcends the physical universe and/or human understanding
===Other ways of understanding/knowing God or the divine/spiritual===
* [[Acosmism]] — the observable world is an illusion
* [[Animism]] — unification of matter and spirit; all material things have souls or spirits
* [[Esotericism]] — knowledge of the divine is available to only a few enlightened individuals
* [[Gnosticism]] — knowledge of God; more specifically, a diverse religious tradition in the first few centuries A.D. which stressed knowledge of the divine origins of the universe and human beings
* [[Mysticism]] — stresses experience of the divine or "ultimate reality"
* [[Natural theology]] — approach to knowledge of God stressing reason and rejecting the supernatural
* [[New Age]] — diverse religious movement beginning in the late 20th century involving "an eclectic and individual approach to spiritual exploration" ([[Wikipedia:New Age]])
* [[Omnitheism]] — all religions have some appreciation of the inherent spirituality of existence; stresses reconciliation of different religious traditions and of religions with scientific understanding
* [[Spiritualism]] — religious movement popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries centered around the possibility of contacting spirits of the dead
* [[Theology]] — "reasoned discourse" concerning religion, spirituality and god(s)
* [[Theosophy]] — a purported "body of truth" that forms the basis of all religions

==External links==
* [http://www.adherents.com/ adherents.com] - This site attempts to track numbers of members of different religions, both in the US and abroad.
* [http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/aris_index.htm American Religious Identification Survey]

[[Category:Religion|*]]

Scripture

2009-10-12T03:48:32Z

Vandalism Sucks:

{{stub}}

'''Scripture''' refers to any [[sacred]] book, text, or collection of texts.

In [[Christian]] cultures, the terms "Scripture" and "the Scriptures" are often used as synonyms for the [[Bible]].

In [[Muslim]] culture, the [[Qur'an]] is often used as the scripture.

[[Category:Religion]]

Christianity

2009-10-09T04:37:42Z

Vandalism Sucks:

{{wikipedia}}
'''Christianity''' is the largest [[religion]] in the world. Its members are split between [[Catholic]]s, [[Protestant]]s and [[Orthodox Christian]]s.

Christianity takes its name from [[Jesus Christ]], but the religion is based to a large degree on the writings of the [[apostle]] [[Paul]], some of which constitute several books of the [[New Testament]]. The religion is based on the [[Bible]].

==External links==
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDHJ4ztnldQ&NR=1 10 questions that every intelligent Christian must answer]

[[Category:Christianity|*]]
[[Category:Religions]]

Earth

2009-10-09T04:34:34Z

Vandalism Sucks:

{{wikipedia}}
'''Earth''' is the third planet from the [[Sun]] in our solar system. It is the only planet — or, indeed, the only ''place'' in the universe — that we know harbors [[life]].

[[Scientist]]s estimate the [[age of the Earth]] to be approximately 4.57 [[billion]] years. This is roughly one third of the estimated [[age of the universe]], 13.7 billion years. These estimates directly contradict the views of [[young earth creationist]]s that the [[universe]] (including Earth and its life) was created by [[God]] 6,000 to 10,000 years ago in accordance with the book of [[Genesis]].

In some [[religion]]s the Earth is worshiped as a deity.

==Center of the Universe==
It was previously thought that the Earth was at the center of the universe. From a person on Earth, they would see the stars and planets moving. Naturally, being the young humans, they assumed that the Earth was at the center of the universe and everything moved around it. This formed the basis of the Catholic church believing that the Earth was at the center of the universe. Scientists such as Copernicus and Galileo theorized later on that the Earth was not at the center of the universe, but was revolving around the Sun. The scientists who did support this position were attacked and prosecuted by the Christian Church.

In the late 1900's and the early 2,000's, the [[Pope]] officially recognized that the Earth was revolving around the sun and regretted how they have acted against Galileo and other scientists.

==See also==
* [[Gaia]]
* [[Moon]]
* [[Mother Earth]]

[[Category:Science]]

Universe

2009-09-22T04:24:36Z

Vandalism Sucks:

{{wikipedia}}
The '''universe''' is generally understood to be everything which physically exists, including all forms of matter and energy, and all events that occur involving the two. It is sometimes contrasted with a supposed "other world" of some metaphysical nature (e.g., other "planes of existence").

==Scientific description==

According to the most widely accepted [[scientific theory]], the universe consists of a four-dimensional [[Wikipedia:continuum|continuum]] of [[Wikipedia:spacetime|spacetime]] (three dimensions of space and one of time) that grew out of an incredibly small "ball" of matter/energy (perhaps even a [[Wikipedia:Gravitational singularity|singularity]], a dimensionless point) in an event called the [[Big Bang]] about 13.5 billion years ago.

It is currently unknown whether the universe extends beyond the ''observable'' universe, that part which we are able to observe (at least theoretically) from our particular vantage point at this particular time (see [[Wikipedia:Light cone]]); many cosmologists assume that there are portions of the universe which we can not presently see. Also there may be a larger [[Wikipedia:Multiverse|Multiverse]]. Still, even the observable universe is (theorized to be) bigger than the 13.5 billion [[Wikipedia:Light year|light years]] that its age would seem to imply. This is because of the curvature of space-time; see Wikipedia's articles on the [[Wikipedia:Observable universe|observable universe]] and the central ideas of [[Wikipedia:Introduction to general relativity|general relativity]] for more information.

==Religion and the Universe==
Many religious people, particularly those believing in a theist religion, believe that their god created the universe, with some believing that the Earth is in the center of the Universe. In a sense, yes, Earth is in the center, but Earth is in the center only of the observable universe. Scientists cannot view other parts of the universe because the light waves from those parts have not come to Earth yet since the beginning of the Universe.

[[Category:Science]]

Afterlife

2009-09-22T01:54:23Z

Vandalism Sucks:

{{stub}}
{{wikipedia}}
The notion of an '''afterlife''' involves the belief that some aspect of the individual, such as ones [[mind]] or [[soul]], continues to exist after [[death]]. Christian faiths believe that based on their sins, they will continue to reside in [[Heaven]] or [[Hell]]. Other religions believe in an afterlife. Currently, there is no proof that an afterlife exists, apart from religious texts, such as The [[Bible]].

==See also==
*[[Heaven]]
*[[Hell]]
*[[Reincarnation]]

[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]

Life

2009-09-22T01:51:52Z

Vandalism Sucks:

{{wiktionary}}
The word '''''life''''' may refer to:
# The state of being alive, as opposed to being dead (see [[Death]]).
# The collection of all living organisms, as on a planet (see [[Life on Earth]]).

Life is sometimes used by creationists, who say that life is proof of God's existence. This, however, has no logical backing, as life is not mutually exclusive to being created by a deity.

[[Category:Science]]

Young-Earth creationism

2009-09-21T04:23:24Z

Vandalism Sucks:

{{religion-stub}}
'''Young-Earth [[creationism|creationists]]''' (YECs) believe that [[God]] created the [[Earth]] and all life on it in six 24-hour days, exactly as described in [[Genesis]], and that the [[universe]] (and by extension the Earth) is less than 10,000 years old.

==Scientific difficulties with Young Earth Creationism==
#The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy Great Andromeda Galaxy] is 2 million light years away. Other galaxies are further away. How did the light from there reach us in 6 thousand years?
#Cosmologists have found evidence that the Big Bang happened [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe over 13 billion years ago]. Is it likely that so many respected scientists are wrong and a few theologians are right?
#Radiometric dating show that the Earth and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System solar system] are over 4 billion years old. Geologists see evidence of many different geological processes taking place over millions of years, hundreds of millions of years and thousands of millions of years. Is it likely that so many respected scientists are wrong and a few theologians are right?
#Fossil remains and artifacts in the Americas show that humanity migrated to the Americas thousands of years before Young-Earth creationists believe when the Earth was created. Does the biblical textual evidence outweigh physical evidence?

[[category:Religion]]
[[Category:Creationism]]