==Can you think for yourself or are you only capable of cutting and pasting from dubious sites?
That means alot coming from someone who licks the boots of Temple of Darwin fanatics because he craves the approval of men more than approval of God.
PS You never did answer my question. How does it feel to know that you were deceived by the fidgety-Ross into thinking that Augustine was talking about Young Earth Creationists, when he was really talking about Old-Earth (read: “pagan”) compromisers such as yourself?
And speaking of cutting and pasting...
You have no idea of the damage that you do to Christianity.
From Augustine to the DallasMikes of the WORLD:
“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.”
Augustine is describing the old-earth compromisers, but you don’t even understand that you — not creation scientists — are the ones hurting the cause of Christ and preventing others from believing.
Augustine—The City of God Against the Pagans (aka old-earth compromisers like DallasMike):
II Of the Falseness of the history which ascribes many thousands of years to times gone by
“Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. … They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed.”
I'll get to it. A lot of posters had a lot of questions. And unlike you, I answer questions. You have yet to answer questions from me. Yet you have the nerve to call me impolite.
Perhaps you should read the first part of Augustine's quote:
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...
In other words, if Christians do not understand the facts of science, then they should not talk nonsense on these topics. Why? Because it keeps non-believers from coming into the faith.
You are assuming that Augustine had perfect knowledge of the universe and thus, by his own words, I'm a pagan. But tell me about the state of science in Augustine's day:
Of course not.
Augustine's knowledge was limited. If he were living today you can bet that he would be slamming you for "talking nonsense on these topics" about which you have no understanding.
You are way out of your league in posting this garbage because you don't have the capability to sort out fact from fiction. He called Christians "disgraceful and dangerous" who talk about subjecta they know nothing about.
You dislike me because you're embarassed at how I point out the flaws in what you've posted or written.