Posted on 03/20/2009 7:59:40 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
The Bible is a work of the Church, inspired by God.
The Bible is intended to help us know how to live.
The Bible was never intended as an historical or scientific journal of fact.
Only that there are and always have been other possibilities, besides immediate Heaven and immediate Hell.
Another point?
It is perfectly OK to pray for the dead, Jesus did so.
What is the point of such prayer, if the destination is a fore gone conclusion?
The Corinthian church...The Ephesis church...The ROMAN church...The Colossian church...and on and on...
Nonsense, each of the Churches you mention sent a representative to the Council in AD 397 that Canonized the FIRST Bible.
I can tell in how you worded your statement. YOur little insinuating comment about ‘brothers and sisters....hmmmmmmm...”.
It’s a standard deflection tactic by people who don’t really care about or believe it, they just say “chapter and verse, please” and then go on arguing against that.
And anyway, I can tell just from your argumentative posture is that you are not one who believes in the creation account as it is written. You don’t spend a lot of time in the bible, if you’re asking ME to give you chapter and verse, you’d know what I was saying was correct and you’d generally know where to look seeing we’re talking about Genesis.
That’s all fine and good. I am just telling you the Roman Catholic Church is wrong on the idea of theistic evolution. You reject the creation account as it is written.
In Genesis, God said “Let us make man in our own image.” Man is formed from the dust of the ground by God and the breath of life is breathed into him. And how Eve was formed out of one of man’s ribs by God Himself. God’s own account.
The RCC position of theistic evolution (ie God uses evolution to get to man) is totally opposed to the Genesis account of how God created man and woman.
God is not Bill Clinton, whos says it depends on what the definition of “is”, is.
When God wanted to give us a message we can understand, He does so in terms we can understand. He doesn’t use words to say something to confuse us. He does not go out of His way to confuse us. He uses terms and references that can be understood by us. He is not speaking legalese or trying to mask what He has done so that we wind up with a wrong impression on purpose.
There is nothing to indicate that he means anything other than a normal day as to what we are used to as experiencing ourselves.
Why dod you think God cannot create everything in 6 days? The same God who exists outside of time and space, who is ‘super’ natural. Why do have so much more faith in man’s measuring of material things but has no way of measuirng the supernatural other than to say ‘because we can’t measure them, they must not exist.’ We are talking about a being that has infinite powers and has made the material universe and the physical laws that govern it.
I do not believe that physical universe in which we exist is infinite, Regulator Country. I believe it is finite. I ponder, from time to time, what is beyond our physical universe. Nevertheless, that is also God's creation.
Regulator Country, we are created in God's image and likeness. I believe, Regulator Country, that God expects us to use the gifts he has given us collectively and individually. The Bible makes no mention. Regulator Country, of evolution. Nor does it make mention of many other things God revealed to us through his gift of observation and reason. So, Regulator Country, although the Bible makes no mention of gravity, billiard tables, a good Merlot, and airplanes. Nevertheless I do believe they exist.
I'm sorry I mad you sad. I hope the hurt goes away soon.
I'm having a delightful day and wish the same for you and yours.
Well and truly said, TXnMA!
May I share a couple thoughts/questions I have about Genesis? Maybe you, TXnMA, or other people can help me think them through.
I have a very strong impression that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are not taking place in the same ontological domain. What I mean by this is Genesis 1 deals with the spiritual creation; there's nothing physical going on in Genesis 1. You have to wait for Genesis 2 to get to the physical; for this seems to be where incarnation first occurs, when God breaths the breath of Life into Adam, and he first becomes a living soul. (I.e., a human being comprised of body and spirit).
From our human perspective, the creation of Genesis 1 can only be unfolding a-temporally [which involves a paradox]. For time as we humans intuit it — serially, within a 24-hour cycle of day and night — is absolutely rooted in human perception of the measured movements of the planetary bodies closest to us. That is the sun and the moon. But they were not created until the fourth day. So we humans absolutely cannot know "how long" a day of Genesis 1 is. God Himself is not in time. And it seems to me His work in Genesis 1 was thus not in time. Indeed, if I can put it this way, the "creational manifold" of Genesis 1 can be characterized as "no-space, no-time."
Yet in Genesis 1 God's entire plan for His Creation is laid out, each stage (or "day") built on the ones that came before in the necessary order. His "original materials" are the formless void and the darkness "upon the face of the deep." Thus, first of all must come Light. Then there had to be a firmament, which divides "the waters from the waters."
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.I'd be very interested to hear other people's views regarding the "firmament." Somehow it suggests to me that God here creates the very "creational space" in which He is working by separating it from Himself. In other words, here we see the "seeds" of space and time being planted. But still nothing "physical" has come into existence.And God called the firmament Heaven. — Genesis 1:7–8
Next is the creation of dry land. Then the creation of multifarious vegetative life, each after his kind, whose seed is in itself. Note the interesting point that vegetation comes before God makes the "two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also." Without sunlight, plants cannot conduct photosynthesis. [Photosynthesis is the fundamental natural process sustaining the entire biosphere of our planet.] So this tends to support the idea that although vegetation was created in all its forms on the third day, there still are no physically existing plants.
Then the fourth day — which was reserved for the creation of the sun and moon and the stars, as just mentioned. Which is a good thing; for without the stars to generate them, there are no heavy elements — which are indispensable for biological life to arise in the universe.
In the fifth day, God created sea creatures and birds, each after their kind. On the sixth, God brought forth the rest of the living creatures — every beast of the earth after his kind, cattle and creeping thing after his kind.
And finally, comes man, created "in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." And "God saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good." Then, on the seventh day, God blessed and sanctified his work, and rested.
Yet I think nothing "physical" has happened yet. That doesn't happen until Genesis 2:4–7:
These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.THIS is the physical creation. Genesis 1 specifies its form(s); but actual incarnation does not occur until Genesis 2.But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Interestingly, the physical creation of Genesis 2 starts with man, rather than as culminating in man as in Genesis 1. Then the vegetation appears, then the fowl and beasts. Finally Adam, after naming all the animals at God's behest, gets a wife.
Anyhoot, the above being my current understanding of biblical creation — subject to modification as the Holy Spirit guides me — I don't see any necessary "disconnect" between God's revelation in Genesis and His revelation of Creation in "the book of Nature," which science studies. In particular, the Big Bang/inflationary universe cosmological model seems entirely consistent with the Genesis account (though John's Gospel makes the connection more explicit).
Also I see nothing here that tells me that evolution doesn't happen. The entire cosmos and all its life obviously develops, changes, "evolves" from one moment to another all the time. What Genesis proclaims is that such evolution does not proceed by chance alone, but according to a rule — there is a guide to the system.
When the LORD God speaks of creatures being "after their own kind" — reiterated several times — He is telling us that each creature has its God-given Nature, or form. The form is metaphysical, because it was created in the non-physical, non-temporal creative space of Genesis 1.
Thus while all creatures are finite and contingent and thus subject to accidents and so forth; and though they clearly show adapative behavior in response to changing environmental conditions, the operation of "random chance" in their development (speciation) is ultimately constrained by God's creative Will in the Beginning.
So that wipes out the credibility of Darwin's theory of macroevolution for me, right there. But that doesn't mean that evolution per se doesn't happen. The universe itself has evolved from a beginning. Both Genesis and Science tell us this. Science can even estimate the duration of the universal evolution from the inception event till now at roughly 14 billion years of human time. Similarly, the age of our planet also has strong scientific evidence behind it: ~4.7 billion years.
If we see a discrepancy between the time of Genesis and the time of the physical universe, to me all that means is we do not have a way of applying our finite, human notion of time to the grand scale of God's creating, and eternally sustaining, His Creation — out of "no-space, no-time" altogether.
I hope you had a splendid day yesterday!
Hope my maunderings make sense. Thank you ever so much for writing, dear brother in Christ!
About the candles, I believe they reflect (no pun intended) a prayer to saints soliciting their intercession with the Lord to ameliorate the suffering of those in Purgatory. The candle does nothing to ameliorate that suffering - only the Lord can do that.
And I understand yours. Have a good rest of the weekend.
I see, so you think God is whizzing around the universe at the speed of light, waiting patiently for Einstein, and you, to clarify things for us.
Very apt caricature.
I found Timber Hill,
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/timberhill/index.html
but what’s the 1850s town?
Tsk tsk. Thanks for the good wishes just the same, starlifter.
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