[GodGunsGuts]

Ping!

[wastedyears]

Sorry

[tpanther]

“So what happened”?

Arrogant liberals decided they were smarter than God.

[Natural Law]

"An alarming number of Christian leaders and teachers instead believe that God "created" through evolutionary processes over millions of years, that Adam and Eve descended from a hominid population, and that there has never been a global flood, suggesting that the account of Noah and the Ark is a story adapted from a Babylonian myth."

Why is this alarming? Since these interpretations are accepted by the Catholic Church clearly the vast majority of the world's Christians believe this.

[Pan_Yan]

I've had this argument in a dozen different forms with a hundred different people. I believe God is all or nothing. Either Jesus was the Son of God as he claimed or he was a liar. Either the Bible is all accurate or a complete fraud. Either God is all powerful and can protect his Word throughout history or he is nothing. Either we are created in God's image or we are just modified mud. Either God created the world in six days, as he said, or God did not create us and therefore morals and conscience are meaningless.

[urroner]

Any physical evidence of Moses and the Exodus? Any physical evidence of Abraham? Any physical evidence of the flood? Any physical evidence of King David? Any physical evidence of Joseph in Egypt? Any physical evidence of a Garden of Eden? Any physical evidence that the Bible was created in 144 hours?

There is none, this is all accepted on faith. I have faith in God, but not in your interpretation of His word.

Do you really expect me to accept you belief that the Bible is a scientific textbook?

[T Minus Four]

Yes, it seems that the Catholic Church, as dogmatic as they are on so much, leave the belief of a literal creation up to the individual.

Now that I am “escaped” from Catholicism, I find that stunning. If you don’t believe the bible is the truth, I guess you are free to interpret it to fit your purposes.

Me? I believe.

[tacticalogic]

When did hunting heretics get to be an exercise in political activism?

[Quix]

THANKS.

[AndyTheBear]

"But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female." Man was created male and female "from the beginning of the creation," not after millions of years.

A literal interpretation of Genesis would put it 5 days later, which is still not at the beginning.

But lets go back to Mark 10:6 in the original:

απο δε αρχης κτισεως αρσεν και θηλυ εποιησεν αυτους ο θεος

The key words being αρχης (strong's 746) and κτισεως (strong's 2937). I am not sure why this implies the beginning of the creation of the decaying universe we find our selfs in, but rather in context seems to mean the start (or foundation or corner stone) of humankind (disclaimer: I am only a beginner at biblical Greek).

Also, I recall that Adam was put to sleep and had a rib taken out from which Eve was formed (Genesis 2:22-23). And following in Genesis 2:24 we see something familiar, which the NIV translates as:

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

Which seems to convey support for the principle of what Jesus was saying in Mark 10:6, which I take to be Christs purpose there, and the Holy Spirit's purpose in Genesis 2:22-23.

I also observe, that biblical books of prophecy are not written in the same form of the historical books of the bible, but have symbolism (like animals and beasts representing empires in both Daniel and Revelation) and even riddles (such as the 70 sevens of Daniel chapter 9). But none of bears on the question of them being true or not.

Prophetic books get the message God wants across, and yet, He does not usually choose to inform us through literal historical narratives on these occasions.

Seems to me, the books that are historical were the ones written by eye witnesses, or at least those who interviewed the live witnesses. The books more entirely dependent on the Holy Spirit are usually not historical in form.

That being said, it seems to me that the early chapters in Genesis were not composed by eye witnesses, thus I would not expect them to be historical in form, so much as they are similar to prophecy (only telling about the past rather than the future).

Yes I think the Tree of Life is a real thing. Just as I believe the Whore of Babylon is a real thing. I'm just not sure if the one was really a tree, or the other will really be an individual woman. But I believe that what God says about them is true and something we should learn from, even if we do not know the kinds of details a literal history would afford us.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Mainstream Christian orthodoxy regarded the opening chapters of Genesis as just as real and reliable as the rest of the Bible until 150-200 years ago. So what has happened?...

[heavy sarcasm] Nonsense! Why, don't you know that until the rise of Protestant Fundamentalism" in nineteenth century America no one had ever taken this stuff seriously? Why, the Catholic, Orthodox, Non-Chalcaedonian, and Non-Ephesine churches all knew that Adam, Eve, and Noah were myths derived from Babylonian paganism! As a matter of fact, they already believed in evolution. Shoot, they'd always believed in evolution from day one! Everyone believed in evolution until Charles Darwin arose and provoked white trash neanderthals into suggesting for the first time in all recorded history that the first eleven chapters of Genesis were historically true!

Wake up and smell the coffee, you racist rednecks! You're the only people on earth who have ever believed that stuff and everyone knows you're all stupid! It's time to join the rest of the world in the ancient, traditional, immemorial belief in evolution and higher Biblical criticism! [/heavy sarcasm]

[Ira_Louvin]

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”

-St. Augustine of Hippo, “On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis”, A.D. 408

[Glenn]

You are such an ignorant freak.

God may very well call you stupid.

[Nikas777]

The first eleven chapters of the Bible have been relegated by many to the category of myths, not real history.

Myth does not mean "made up" or "fairy tale". A myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind came to be in their present form told in a way that can be remembered as a story told orally.

Please note that I am not arguing your faith or lack there of - I am correcting the error made about what a "myth" is.

I will give you an example. On an island of Greece, in red clay earth is a bone yard of pre-historic bones. The Greeks described this as the place where the Titans were slain by the Olympians and those were the scattered bones of the giant Titans. This is a myth but it describes a real thing through the cultural understanding of the Greeks of that time. Even though this myth is not false it is also not the real history of those bones. But that does not make it any less valid/true. I forgot the name of the Greek island by the way.

Seeing Genesis as such an origin myth does not invalidate it. I think the western mind has become unable to see the world in a mystical light so I see desperate attempts by such people to force their faith to match up with science because for western man science is their new God. The Bible was never viewed as a scientific document but rather a mystical one and should be read and understood in that light.