Very interesting...I believe the first point you raised was perhaps the most significant. Religion was a survival mechanism during the slavery era; a concept of a good 'hereafter' that enabled people to get through the immediate suffering. But, like you said, it's prevailed through peer pressure...
Ah my bad it was hadith.
"(Sahih Bukhari Volume 4, Book 55, Number 543(SB 4.55.543) -
Narrated Abu Huraira:
The Prophet said, "Allah created Adam, making him 60 cubits tall..."
The fossil record of hominids demonstrates an increase, not decrease in size.
Jesus walked on earth. It's harder to get further away from 'off somewhere in the cosmos' than that. God himself walked on Earth and revealed his 'back parts' to Moses. God created Nature; technically, he too is a god 'of nature'.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Qur'an states Adam to have been physically and mentally 'superior' to modern man. Archaic hominids are both smaller and less intellectually developed.
Still banging the YEC drum, Danmac?
"Observable and testable" does not call for direct visual observation of the event taking place first hand.
Imagine a crime scene that a detective happens upon after a murder. There is a body, blood, DNA, a knife; all the 'standard' evidences that are used...
Standard fallacy of Pascal's Wager.
Be religious to be 'on the safe side'. However, there are hundreds of religions. Come the day of Judgement, if God as Islam describes him is the 'real God', Catholics and agnostics are equally screwed. Thus, there is no 'safe side'. There are over a thousand...
Well there are some Christians who hold that the Biblical leviathan is a reference to a sauropod of some description. Of course, they generally tend to ignore that later in the Bible it says God will slay the leviathans at the Apocalypse. God vs. diplodocus smackdown? Yep...
Where does it stop? It stops at teaching the Bible as a concrete fact. As part of RE, yes, because it is a fundamental part of civilization's development in the Western, and indeed entire, world, and an ideology that has influenced billions.
OK, Kepi. Why don't you go out and preach to Muslims then? I mean, you'd have to hate someone pretty damn badly to believe eternal life is possible and not try and point this out to them.
Answer: HELL NO. The Bible, the Old Testament in particular, is the biggest collection of misogynistic, homophobic, genocidal, violent, sadistic tales ever dreamed up by mankind. Teaching this to children will not give them a moral grounding; it will twist their minds and blind them to reality...