Posted on 12/28/2015 11:25:02 AM PST by presidio9
The early Christians prayed from many Gospels, some of which are no longer used today. Or none at all -many, maybe most, couldn't read. The point is to be comfortable in your own relationship in God. Confident in your own religious beliefs. To paraphrase soon to be "Saint" Teresa of Calcutta, in the end it's between you and God, not you and me.
The early Christians prayed from many Gospels, some of which are no longer used today. Or none at all -many, maybe most, couldn't read. The point is to be comfortable in your own relationship in God. Confident in your own religious beliefs. To paraphrase soon to be "Saint" Teresa of Calcutta, in the end it's between you and God, not you and me.
You have completely ignored my question about why you are attacking "literalism." Perhaps you should define "literalism," because I'm not sure you and I mean the same thing by the term.
I haven't been chrstian for over 25 years and don't use the KJV. I use the original Hebrew and interpret it according to the traditional commentaries.
Now again . . . why are you attacking the historicity of Genesis 1-11 as if that portion of the Bible undermines Catholicism???
Offering solutions, all of the bad. Yes.
I wasn't aware that I was attacking that verse (or any verse) specifically. You may be right that you and I have different definitions of the term "literalism" -which I never used, by the way.
If it matters to you, I believe that the Old Testament was inspired by God, but written down by human beings, who are fallible, and who had an incomplete understanding of the biologic, geologic, astrologic, and physical phenomenon that they were dealing with. It is also based, to a large extent, on oral tradition.
So, it is indeed often possible to take the scientific evidence available today and back a particular Old Testament verse into it with a shoehorn. If that is what you mean be literal interpretation, I'm all for it.
Let's take the verse you suggested, using the KJV:
"And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."
Given what we know today, if it were important to me to accept the Bible literally (it is not), and given what paleoarcheologists understand today about the origin of life on this planet today (given the available fossil record), this seems unlikely. However, if you accept some of the theories that astrobiologists are suggesting, it is indeed possible that life was seeded on this planet by comets and space rocks. These, in turn, could have been intentionally sent here by God. You still have a problem with "How a fruit bearing tree appeared 4.5 billion years before the fossil record?" But we can correct that by saying that the people who wrote Genesis did not have a proper understanding or the language to record the events 100% accurately.
To make all of this work of course, you have to also tie yourself in knots with the previous verses, converting Biblical "days" into billions of years. But, to me, this is no different from the knots atheist physicists tie themselves into creating evidence-free "multiverses" just so they can get around the problem of "How did something come from nothing? And even if you choose to believe in multiverses, eventually you get to the "Yes, but what came before that?" problem.
As you have probably guessed by now, I choose to take all of this with a grain of salt. But if interpreting the Old Testament literally works for you, I wish you luck with that.
You say the prof is a Jesuit so he has nothing to do with the Catholic church.
No, I absolutely did not say that. Dr. Fidel Fajardo-Acosta is a lay professor who happens to work at a Jesuit school.
In the future, the both of you might want to follow the FR guidelines and RTFT (and article, for that matter) before posting.
In this case, even the first comment that I left after this article(and which you are both responding to) probably would have worked.
Thank you for your admission.
Have you considered the possibility that the "new testament" may also have mistakes in it?
As there are at least four different versions of the Gospel, written for four entirely different audiences, and each was, again, translation errors and two millennia's worth of copy errors, it is impossible that it doesn't.
But when you call any of this an "admission" on my part, I think you must have me confused with someone else.
Because I was trained by Jeusits, I suppose, I accept that my religious faith is based on just that: Faith.
Certainly because I was trained by Jesuits, I don't discount the religious views of others, except to call into question where they assert that their own beliefs are superior or mine are invalid. You should try it sometime.
Says it all.
If it matters to you, I believe that the Old Testament was inspired by God, but written down by human beings, who are fallible, and who had an incomplete understanding of the biologic, geologic, astrologic, and physical phenomenon that they were dealing with. It is also based, to a large extent, on oral tradition.
Thank you for your admission.
Have you considered the possibility that the “new testament” may also have mistakes in it?
Systematic Theology is a lost thinking but may help you in your quest. One cannot look at just one part for answers.
http://www.ligonier.org/learn/series/foundations/
Now is the Bible true? Yes. Is some literal and some figurative and some stories for instruction? yes. But this leads you back to the systematic approach to the Bible not just taking one part to determine the truth.
Is this approach going to cost you time and effort? yes, no quick and easy answers, this is God you are dealing with.
Let me guess . . . if it's in Genesis 1-11, Daniel, Jonah, or Esther, it didn't happen; if it's in the "new testament," it did.
Am I right?
You forgot the rest of the quote:
because I was trained by Jesuits, I don't discount the religious views of others, except to call into question where they assert that their own beliefs are superior or mine are invalid. You should try it sometime.
Indeed it does.
Am I right?
Again, spend your time actually reading it...............
I never claimed that you said much of anything (much less that second sentence)...but instead my own words were commenting upon the article itself.
Both of who?
I'm not going to reread the thread to find out who said what was attributed to myself as having said. That should be your job, being as you're the one making noise about whatever it is you are complaining about.
But where did I go against FR guidelines in any comment on this thread?
I could add --- where do you get off hinting around that I did violate some rule or another ---when I didn't?
Perhaps you'd like to reassess the situation and re-phrase/retract.
But it gets better: Because these posts appeared on my own timeline, I missed oxtex's immediate retraction, where he actually apologized for posting without reading the thread.
The point is that you implied that Dr. Fidel Fajardo-Acosta is a lay professor who happens to work at a Jesuit school is himself a Jesuit. Then you used that wrong assumption to attack Jesuits.
He is, in fact, not a Jesuit -and this was covered several times in this thread, including in the actual post that you were responding to with your comment.
Look: The reason the guideline exists in the first place is as a courtesy -so the people you post you brilliant analysis to don't get stuck addressing the same topic over and over again. We all think we're the smartest person in the room. A little courtesy goes a long way.
RTFT: Learn it. Know it. Live it.
Yes, I mistakenly identified the professor as himself being a Jesuit.
That part of my commentary, although erroneously identified (he's merely a chosen instructor of impressionable college students -- AT A JESUIT university!) was not a breach of rules of this forum -- unless the instructor was a known freeper perhaps -- but then he could be taken into account for his own words all the same.
Other than that error -- Jesuits are still not immune from criticism -- or "attack" as you put it.
RTFT?
What is that?
FOrget it.
I don't think you understand the forum rules.
If it's a breach of 'common courtesy' that I committed, on the other hand, then perhaps I can be faulted to some degree, but after all the years of being attacked by Romanists every ol' which-a-way, having been subjected to just about every forum tactic game-playing, attempted mind-screw-over imaginable and then some, pardon the blasted jimminy crickets out of me if I could hardly care less if some Jesuit gets his feeling hurt. That clan has historically -- hurt a lot more than people's "feelings", regardless if you have done so yourself -- or not.
What is that?
You know what? There's this really cool website called Google. It tells you all kinds of things, if you don't mindBig Brother in Oakland keeping track of everything you do, think or wonder.
On the other hand, it is particularly helpful at times like this. Give it a try.
I'll live without chasing it down. It's doubtful I'm a total stranger to whatever principles themselves there are which are being discussed, anyway. This is not my first rodeo. I've been around for a while.
Otherwise;
You could have explained it, but then again I don't care much for being lectured, and did tell you more or less "never mind" already.
I'll just stick with that.
I suppose, just as there will always be people who think its ok to fart on elevators, there will always be people who are so infatuated with their own bs that they simply can't deprive the rest of us by Reading The F-ing Thread before posting.
The rest of us know that both of these actions are antisocial behavior. I'm all about antisocial behavior. So it really only bothers me if the poster says something stupid that I've already explained. It especially bothers me if the person says it in response to a post that has the correct information in it.
No doubt this happens to you all the time. Not forgetting to read the thread that is, just saying something stupid.
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