It's AUGUST. And just the start. Now I feel tired.

I know. I was booking my flight for a business trip (!! I haven't had a business trip in years and years!), and figured I might as well look. It is bananas though.

( continues...) beliefs quite different from my own.

And for the following, none of the options as stated work for me.

The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word 34%

The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally 48%

The Bible is an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man 15%

No Opinion 3%

The second option would be closest for me, if it didn't have the "but" and words that follow. I could also choose the first, if it stopped after the word "God." On the other hand, I can see where, throughout what I know of history (and throughout my own life to date) how God gives work to humans, and gives them latitude in how they perform it, so I don't actually have big arguments with option #3 either, provided I can use the first definition of legend, here: [link] (and with the understanding that, to me, parable=fable), but I'd never select that third option on a poll. My actual perfect answer would probably not be an option a poll.

My brother and sister went into a bible store on a lark and saw a t-shirt that said, "Hot girls don't come from monkeys."

Gives a whole new meaning to "get your paws off me you damn, dirty ape!"

Also makes me want to ask "but do they come from primates?"

Okay, that was funny. It was like I hiccupped up Jesse.

Okay, that was funny. It was like I hiccupped up Jesse.

Heh. Sorry for interrupting!

Also makes me want to ask "but do they come from primates?"

I believe we are all descended from the Lawgiver. Who, um... traveled back in time at some point....

eta:

The Lawgiver, the wisest ape of all, had written long ago in the twenty third Scroll, ninth Verse,what Dr. Zaius knew of man. "Beware the beast man, for he is the devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport, or lust or greed. Yes, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him. Drive him back into his jungle lair: For he is the harbinger of death."

don't involve God "testing" people by planting fake evidence--a view that makes me want to heave

That's one of my favorite arguments, because it works with some views of the OT God (the planter of the Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil, f'rinstance), where he's the deity who loves to say "gotcha!" like a 12-yr-old prankster. Why this view of divinity appeals to some is utterly foreign to me, but I'd bet you anything that this is George W's god: evidence can be faked, but what you feel is the truth IS the truth if you're on the lord's wavelength.

I believe we are all descended from the Lawgiver.

So Roddy McDowall, then?

ID itself doesn't rule out macro-evolution

If you capitalize it, yes it does. Just because the Discovery Institute refers to macro-evolution as "neo-Darwinism" doesn't change that.

I'll allow that, in a survey, it's impossible to tell what any one individual means by "intelligent design" because most of the people answering were probably using the term for their own private belief system before it was co-opted by DI. Which is of course what makes their marketing department so very clever -- they've taken a term that was once used for various flavors of "however it is, that's how God made it" and turned it into a political movement to teach creationism in public schools.

I am the Way, the Light and the Truthiness.