Posted on 09/21/2009 7:39:20 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
When you say “Free Venezuela” are using “free” the way Communists use the word “free”, or do use “free” the way our founding fathers used the word “free”?
I am not here to undermine your faith or demand that you accept God in exactly the same way I do, I am only here to explain how my beliefs and those of 800 million Catholics differ from yours. I will remind you that every word of the bible was first given to man who then gave it to you. As all men are imperfect and flawed so then may be the specific version of the word you have received.
In a 1981 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II taught that the creation passages are in the Bible not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe.
In an interview that was published in 1997, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) stated: Part of faith is also the patience of time. The theme you have just mentioned - Darwin, creation, the theory of evolution - is the subject of a dialog that is not yet finished and, within our present means, is probably also impossible to settle at the moment. Not that the problem of the six days is a particularly urgent issue between faith and modern scientific research into the origin of the world. For it is obvious even in the Bible that this is a theological framework and is not intended simply to recount the history of creation. In the Old Testament itself there are other accounts of creation. In the Book of Job and in the Wisdom literature we have creation narratives that make it clear that even then believers themselves did not think that the creation account was, so to speak, a photographic depiction of the process of creation. It only seeks to convey a glimpse of the essential truth, namely, that the world comes from the power of God and is his creation. How the process actually occurred is a wholly different question, which even the Bible itself leaves wide open. Conversely, I think that in great measure the theory of evolution has not gotten beyond hypotheses and is often mixed with almost mythical philosophies that have yet to be critically discussed.
Pax Vubiscum.
You shame Christianity, and disgrace Free Republic.
That’s not physical evidence, that’s anecdotal.
He can save everybody. All you have to do is ask.
I’d better be more clear on that last. You don’t just yell up at the sky, “Hey God,I wanna go to heaven!”
He has provided a way to heaven through God the Son, Jesus Christ. First you have to admit that you are a sinner (just like everybody else) and there is no possible way you can be good enough to deserve heaven (just like everybody else). You have to be sorry for your sins and vow to turn away from them.
Then you recognize that the penalty for your sins have been paid by Jesus dying on the cross. All of them. Past, present and future (and there wil be future sins, alas). Done. Paid in full.
Accept the amazing gift of that and ask for forgiveness, and you will receive it. Right then and there.
You don’t need to attend classes, or wear special clothes, or have someone else dip you or annoint you or validate you or lay hands on you or chant over you. It’s as personal and private (or public) as you wish, but it is strictly between you and Jesus Christ, who is the only possible way to God.
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.
Yeah, yeah, we can google "myth" and get a wikipedia reference too.
But "Wives Tales Busters" as a name for a show would have a different connotation to it!
Wives Tales Busters - LOL, love it!
Google “myth” and you get one of the greatest shows ever.
Why is this alarming? Since these interpretations are accepted by the Catholic Church clearly the vast majority of the world's Christians believe this.?
The Catholic Church stands firm on the belief that Adam and Eve were created separate from all other living things. That they did not descend from anything. The Church also does not regard Noah's flood as being a myth.
Myth does not mean false. It is a way to tell a story. The Catholic Church believes that the Noah ‘myth’ and the Genesis ‘myths’ are valid but in terms of what a myth is in folk culture/folklore.
Moral and cultural equivalences are the tools of people who have elevated themselves in their own minds and no longer humble themselves before the undeniable existence of the divine Creator.
The Living Constitution from Wikipedia
The Living Constitution is a concept in American constitutional interpretation which suggests that the Constitution has a dynamic meaning. The idea is associated with views that contemporaneous society should be taken into account when interpreting key constitutional phrases.
While the arguments for the Living Constitution vary, they can generally be broken into two categories. First, the pragmatist view contends that interpreting the Constitution in accordance with long outdated views is often unacceptable as a policy matter, and thus that an evolving interpretation is necessary. The second, relating to intent, contends that the constitutional framers specifically wrote the Constitution in broad and flexible terms to create such a dynamic, "living" document. Opponents of the idea often argue that the Constitution should be changed through the amendment process, and that the theory can be used by judges to inject their personal values into constitutional interpretation.
You are trying to apply the same argument to the Bible.
Actually that shows a remarkable ignorance of Scripture.
If you have accepted Jesus Christ's free gift of eternal life, you will not be judged, because God Himself gave you a pass.
Now treasures you build in Heaven are a different matter.
Your judgmental arguments do little to encourage anyone to accept the Free Gift of God, lest any man should boast.
Hard to assume otherwise from your posts.
That Adam and Eve were special and different from animals is not in doubt. Neither is the fact that they were formed by God from the dust of the earth. The Church dialog is on the processes used by God to bring them into existence.
"The Church also does not regard Noah's flood as being a myth."
Nor does it consider it to be geological and historical fact. If nothing else it is a significant symbol of the struggle between sin and salvation and the cleansing powers of baptism.
You must be confusing the Muslim Koran which the Muslims claim was dictated word for word from God over the Holy Bible which was written by inspired people but acting through their own reasonings and not as secretaries for God outside of the laws dictated to Moses (and Moses alone).
In reality it is YOU that is interpreting the Holy Bible like "a living document" because you view it and understand it from a MODERN point of view that is based on a view point (Science and the discipline of history) which did not exist at the time the Bible was written.
The science or art of history did not exist until the classical Athens came along. Modern science is only as old as Newton.
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