Abraham’s story about what happened when GOD said Let There Be Light is what it is. We understand that GOD wants us to, well, understand. We look into the heavens to see His great wonders, and realize that He left us no cautionary note saying, “Don’t look too close, lest you become confused.” Thus we shouldn’t be confused by science, which performs one job superlatively well, and that job is to help us understand GOD’s overwhelming glory.

GOD is love; we are created in GOD’s image, meaning that we are also capable of love. We’re imperfect, and miss that point most of the time. But, GOD being perfect, He supplies a way so that we, too, can be made perfect. After being made perfect we will spend time with GOD as perfected souls. That comes after our earthly body fails.

A failed body is ‘dead’ – a failed soul is ‘not washed.’ Jesus, the human life indwell by the second person of the trinity, lived a perfect human life. He died in such a way as to absorb the wages of our sins. Our bodies will die regardless. We sinned, andJesus undertook to endure bodily death so that our ‘wages’ could be paid. GOD died in body so that our souls’ wages would be paid.

We ask forgiveness for the sacrifice that our imperfections laid on Him. The second person of the trinity forgives us, and that forgiveness cleanses us of all imperfections. Thus, once this body “goes the way of all flesh,” our souls become acceptable for the afterlife. There we will know LOVE, and a peace that passes all understanding.

Please. Those who have guns fall into perhaps two of three primary camps:

A] out-of-control youngsters raised in poverty for whom gang culture is a next-door phenomenon. Being young, the ability to think past bedtime tonight is still largely unformed.

B] Adults who collect guns, treasure them, keep them in gun safes, spent time at firing ranges, – – fill in your own blanks.

C] Hunters.

I’ll omit other, much smaller groups such as hit men, adult criminals, or those whose jobs require them to carry, such as police.

Suicide is what it is. In the USA guns do more of that for the simple reason that they’re often handy. Guns don’t cause suicide. Just to get that straight.

Casual murder, the banal kind found among the first group above, happens with small arms that were obtained through theft, or bought after being stolen. Other ‘casual’ do murders take place, but the largest bucket is this one.

Psycho murder, the attention-getting kind, represents a tiny fraction of murders in the USA but of course also sells newspapers, hence comes instantly to mind when called up by folks who don’t like guns.

I’ll subdivide class B into carry and don’t-carry. Among the ‘carry’ set, stories abound of having used that fact to interrupt a crime, or prevent one.

SO – HERE WE ARE AT THE BOTTOM – some countries have no direct connection between the present and a (fairly) recent past in which owning a gun wasn’t unusual. Here in the USA owning guns is still not that unusual. Now please review whatever thought guided writing your question, and re-think it.

PS – I don’t own a gun. I live in an area where the class of people who regularly abuse guns, i.e. for other-than-legal purposes, seldom walk by. My issue isn’t with guns per se so much as the crazy argument from ignorance that underlies the anti-gun debate:

“I don’t know why you’d ever want one of those things, so you should listen to me
and get rid of them!”

That, my friends, is the classic argument from ignorance. Not based on facts, but on trepidation founded by misinformation and buttressed by a commitment to ignorance.

SO–feelings are inseparable from choices. “I just knew” that was the person who would become my spouse – – pure emotional response to a thousand subtle clues perceived in that first brief meeting.

Politics – I am slightly Aspergers (no trouble picking out cookies or spouse, thank you) but feelings are less important. My feelings of disgust spring from hokum and poseur-like behavior. I can’t spot all lies, but when I do, that lips-moving-politician goes to the head of the Not Ever list.

Politics – the right tends to view the left as “codependent enabler” for whom the notion of “we can ameliorate the little guy’s situation” is tantamount to an engraved invitation to pass a law. Said laws being promoted not for their effect on causes but on outcomes.

The right’s emotional responses don’t dwell in what they deride as “touchy-feely toward the ‘differently’ abled” so much as “get out of the way of the abled.” Neither view is well connected to “the greatest good for the greatest number” but there is a results-oriented “greatest good for those able to produce good” bias on the right.

Pick your poison – the center has fallen apart under the weight of a polarizing medium, the internet. Only volume counts, hence extremes rule. Finding our way back to collegiality in the halls of power can happen – so here is one idea.

California has something like open primaries, and in Blue areas of that Blue state the two candidates in November are often both Democrats. No problem – may the less-polar candidate win. But the cost of entry for the general idea is steep because it tends to diminish the power of the extreme elements in both parties, hence they will rationalize it to death: “Horrors! We can’t permit that!”

OPEN PRIMARIES, every registered voter, no caucuses, one ballot, one X per position. Democrats can try to seed a defeatable Republican past the primary, Reps ditto the Dems – “Horrors! We can’t permit that!” – but on balance the middle of the road will finally have a way to put moderate candidates in play.

You heard it here first 😉

Are we together so far? In case we’re on the same page, let’s keep going: so-called junk food is full of salt, fats, and sugar—all of those are important to health, but only in reasonable amounts, and junk food gets that name because it’s just not reasonable. You need a wide variety of proteins, carbs, vitamins, minerals—the “Mediterranean” diet does a good job of providing that.

Now you claim to burn calories off – then yes of course consume more calories. But here’s the rub. “Processed” food comes with many added ingredients which “retard spoilage” – – which also means they are inimical to many biological processes. The ratio of processed foods in a person’s diet when compared to raw or home-cooked food correlates well with dying before you should.

Junk? Make your own at home with popcorn, honey, nuts, yada yada. But if it comes in plastic with a long list of ingredients in a tiny font? Turns out there is an inverse relationship between sin and font size.

😉

DNA is a series of approximations that had to diversify for six hundred MILLION years after the advent of reproduction that involved exchanging DNA (sex) to reach homo sapiens. DNA researchers, if pressed, are likely to admit that the tightly woven series of WowThatWorkedOutAndIDidn’tSeeItComing moments that constitute our three billion codons looks like a collision in a parts bin more than a Detroit Diesel Design output.

Why is that? Precisely because an incredible series of very small copying mistakes, or cosmic ray level disruptions, is constantly at play. Not one of these changes has been “by design.” Rather, the effect on reproductive success reveals which changes were “accidental” and which were “serendipity.”

Here is one isolated datum to illustrate the larger point: dog breeders have failed to make puppy-like long-nosed breeds, and failed to make non-puppy-like short nosed breeds. It’s the other way around, i.e. breeding for hunting skills has involved allowing development to proceed to full functionality (like the long, turbinated adult nose that helps a dog smell) while breeding for lap dog cuteness has only worked when the successive generations fail, more and more, to develop those adult traits. Like long noses.

Why is that? It turns out that the DNA doesn’t have separate coding for “I’m playful and cute” and “I have a superb smeller.” Instead, traits bind together because development from puppy to adult is a continuum, and you can’t get off the continuum early without giving up things that develop later. And why is that? “It’s complicated,” which is exactly the point. It’s messy.

Individual genes turn out to have multiple good effects, as though each one is capable of “Swiss Army Knife” utility, in some limited way. Genes interact in ways that only unfold when, at some point, their combination is A) beneficial and B) gets coded into some of the controlware in the genome.

There aren’t just genes in the genome – far from it. For instance there is a “homeobox” which tells insects to have six limbs, arachnids eight and chordates four. Mess with that, and you will run across a way to make a fruit fly with four legs not six. GOD help us if some loose cannon in a DNA lab wants a child with four arms, because that isn’t actually too far out of reach.

All of the wonder and glory of every different genome coalesced via an enormous series of accidents. Once in a while a “good accident” turned out to be a “These dice are GENIUS” grade accident. When enough good accidents accrue, you might get fins on fish, rudimentary eyes, nerve clusters that develop into brains, better eyes, a swim bladder that helps a fish float, and finally that existential O CRAP!!! moment when some poor fish’s swim bladder and its throat weren’t divided from each other.

That was a rough go for a while, but in time that species used its swim bladder to breathe air, and its stumpy fins to propel itself across the beach mud. Invent your own series of little accidents that could have made the inside of the bladder able to do what gills do, i.e. take oxygen into the blood. The genes for that were already on hand . . .

There WAS NO stage of development along the way from light-sensitive cells to the eagle’s astounding eye that was not gradual and did not involve some series of “good” accidents, including of course a few “These dice are GENIUS” changes. Looking at the complexity that is there and assuming that “There is NO WAY that could have come together by chance,” is to say that your brain is powerful enough to prove a negative.

The real intelligence in the design began with particle physics. Minute changes to the particle physics we understand today, i.e. jigger any of a fairly good-sized number of “arbitrary constants” that define — the strengths and properties of the four nuclear forces; the speed of light; the relative weights of subatomic particles; the placements of electron orbits around an atomic nucleus; the sizes of the quanta themselves that control all of the above — and stars might not form. Or if they did, they wouldn’t cook hydrogen and helium into the heavier elements. Or if they did that, those elements wouldn’t work as elegantly as they actually do. OR if they worked kinda like they do, DNA wouldn’t work as elegantly as GOD had in mind when HE said, “LET THERE BE LIGHT.”

Brains are malleable and somewhat self-healing, and not always busy – external stimuli coming through skin, ears, eyes, etc. cause given parts of the brain to become active.

Fact – pound for pound the brain uses a large multiple of the calories used by e.g. red muscle. Resting the brain is a necessary economy. Revving up the brain such as to study, think, plan, design, etc. coincides with the rest of your body going into a resting state. Marathoners may do casual arithmetic about liters of water and miles to go, but they don’t solve quadratic equations in their heads.

Nature / GOD’s design / evolution / what-have-you tends to be very “smart” and economical in just about everything. Just like pumping iron or working out on the track, you can ‘train’ your brain. In fact, learning to ride a bicycle does that. Learning to study does that. Learning to play a musical instrument does that.

The net truth is that our brains are trainable, but not nearly as expansive as we hope.

The Pharisees did believe in life after death. When Paul had to appear in the Temple to answer charges the priests brought against him, he tossed in the question of life after death. This got the Pharisees on his side, which derailed their proceeding.

Each Gospel describes Jesus predicting his return from the dead – so odd a claim that no disciple understood it until after the fact. Subsequent lore details the remaining eleven apostles’ appalling deaths; only John survived to old age, and he died in captivity with no company other than Roman guards. No disciple considered recanting his story.

Paul Kalman’s answer points out that Jesus’ statement, “GOD is a GOD of the living not of the dead,” reinforces the idea of souls surviving bodily death.

A few days before His crucifixion Jesus told the high priests that Abraham had seen Jesus’s coming and was glad, and further that “Before Abraham was, I AM.”

To argue against the literal resurrection requires one to deny the entire Christian Scripture and its teachings.

Although from the beginning He had the nature of God He did not reckon His equality with God a treasure to be tightly grasped.

In other words, the Word took flesh, which became the human life known as Jesus of Nazareth. This human form did not of itself have GOD’s power over matter which we call “the ability to do miracles.” Jesus’ miracles all came about because GOD the Father gave him that power in the moment.

In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus realized the utter isolation and agonizing death he was about to endure, and beseeched the Father to be relieved of that burden, yet surrendered: “Not my will, Father, but Yours be done.” When on the cross one of His “seven words” was to speak the opening line of Psalm 22; in that day the effect was to ask all present to recall that Psalm in toto. The first half of Psalm 22 gives a horrific description of being crucified, while the second half leads to peace and completion.

So, while in human form as Jesus, the Word was less than the Father because He lacked the Father’s power. His sacrifice for our sins was for that reason a perfect atonement.