>You are talking about First Cause. The "evidence" presented by those who favor "Creation science" starts from the premise that the one of the two Genesis Creation myths is "true" and then tortures all science and logic to try to make this happen. The same "reasoning" could be applied to any of the hundreds of other creation stories told by other cultures.
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>The God of Christianity and the Bible is an anthropomorphic God - the image beginning in the tribal stories of one of the first monotheistic religions and then modified for Gentile consumption by Paul's Hellenism.
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>The false choice presented by the believers is between an anthropomorphic God and Atheism - which in this argument always implies not as just a rejection of Theism - the God described in Biblical theology - but as a complete rejection of any transcendental reality and a reliance on an entirely materialistic view of the universe. That eliminates all kinds of shades of belief and really closes off religious experience outside of Biblical theology.

I am not so sure about that. I think many Christians feel there is just a lack of words or explanations to be able to comprehend the nature of God, and even if God is represented in some kind of "Human" form, it is more like a picture. It is like what Paul described in a way that we see through a dark glass, not really able to comprehend the truth until we see him "face to face". Many would admit that the image they make themselves of God is very distorted and very inadequate, but at the same time they would also say there is no necessity to try harder because from our limited spiritual standpoint we won't be able to understand anything more than that.

>The question is not "is there a God". The question is what do you mean by "God""? The God created in man's image is so clearly essential to Christianity. The extremely tortured philosophical gymnastics that try to defend the idea of the Trinity while still claiming monotheism is intellectually and spiritually weak and hardly defensible to anyone who does not start with the presupposition that the Bible is true because it says so in the Bible. Anyone who knows anything at all about church history through and after the Council of Nicea knows the Trinity is about as convoluted an argument as could be imagined and has never been the subject of full agreement.
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>I am *very* familiar with the history of not only the Bible but especially Protestant and even Evangelical theology. I don't reject them out of a giggling ignorance but exactly because I've spent 50 years studying them - and other religions and philosophies - and find them to be very limiting spiritually and indefensible intellectually.

I haven't referred to you by the giggling ignorance, reading your posts I did realize you are more open minded.

>As to the fools preaching a 6000 year old universe I reference in the website below, and clowns and self-deluded charlatans like Pat Robertson and any number of End Times preachers, they are the ones who scare me as they are beyond both reason and any kind spiritual seeking. Surely you don't defend them?

For myself I must say that for the lack of a better explanation, I would chose creation over evolution, but I would not put a date on the universe itself. The 6000 years would refer to the existence of mankind, and there are many different ideas about what was before, also in fundamental Christian circles. I believe evolution is just as fascinating improbable as is creation. If there is an intellectual author of the universe or creation, it does not matter how strange it sounds, but to say to know the truth would be inaccurate, because you can know only if you can see it.
I would think the most foolish view would be "Theistic evolution", which would say you have an all powerful God, but he used evolution to create all the mess. It's like the worst of both worlds, and Hitler was deluded in believing this and thinking he did God a favor in removing the less evolved creatures.

>Since you seem much more coherent than Rick, I would be curious about what Protestant tradition you accept. For some reason I would guess the Calvinist branch ...?

I would call myself an independent Baptist, certainly not Calvinist. Calvinism has so many flaws that it is not able to stand if you really think about it. It is also discriminatory in the worst sense. Independent, because I believe religion must be a personal experience, and you can tell nobody what to do or not to do. Organized religion all over the world has caused so much trouble (as did communism and capitalism as well), that it has brought a bad name on anybody who claims to believe in something. The independent churches don't respond to anybody, they don't need to accept anybody else's belief, they are political independent, they don't work for financial gain and are also financially totally independent. I think this is the best form of Christianity, because it suppresses no one and everybody can chose if they like to be part of a church or not, and if they don't like the church they can move next door or open their own church.