Church, part 2

Warning: Logic and internal consistency may not exist in the following. I'm OK with that.

What I believe? Let's start with the easy stuff:

The Bible not the inerrant Word Of God, completely true, accurate, historical...whatever; it was written and translated by men (possibly inspired by the Spirit, mostly with the best of intentions, but still men); it is not internally consistent (Don't you think God could manage to be consistent?); it does contain some useful suggestions for how to live and interact with one another; and the King James version (translation errors and all) contains some beautiful poetry which the New King James version generally manages to keep (with a fewer errors).

Creation did not take place in a week, certainly not in the way we experience time. I read a book (well part of it, got tired of it about 1/2) where the author put way too much effort into using relativity and time-dilation to explain the 6 days thing. It was forced, he was a physicist who desperately wanted the first chapter of Genesis to be accurate. I have no problem with Genesis 1 being a creation myth; it's just a plausible as Gaia being created out of Chaos, creating Uranus and then the two of them having babies. "Believing in" evolution does not, for many, people, require a lack of a God. (Evolution doesn't actually require "faith" in anything except facts, so I'm not sure one really "believes" in it; one agrees with the facts and the conclusions drawn from them.)

Church attendance is not required to be a believer. God does not actually require his faithful to get up early on the one day a week when most of us could sleep in, finally, and catch up on the sleep debt. It can be enlightening, pleasant, and uplifting; it can also be boring, guilt-ridden, and a pain in the rear (figuratively and literally).

That's enough for now. I'll write up some of the more complicated stuff later.