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Genesis: Real, Reliable, Historical
ICR ^ | September 2009 | Andrew A. Snelling, Ph.D.

Posted on 09/21/2009 7:39:20 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts

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To: Glenn

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”?


121 posted on 09/22/2009 8:14:13 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: Gordon Greene
"Call it what you wish and point to whatever you’d like, but your beliefs are entirely inconsistent with the Word of God. I don’t give a flip what any man says."

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.

122 posted on 09/22/2009 8:29:52 PM PDT by Natural Law
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To: GodGunsGuts
Proving once again that you are nothing more than a misguided

BIGOT.

You shame Christianity, and disgrace Free Republic.

123 posted on 09/23/2009 3:46:52 AM PDT by xcamel (The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it. - H. L. Mencken)
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To: urroner

That’s not physical evidence, that’s anecdotal.


124 posted on 09/23/2009 6:47:03 AM PDT by T Minus Four
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To: urroner

He can save everybody. All you have to do is ask.


125 posted on 09/23/2009 6:49:56 AM PDT by T Minus Four
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To: T Minus Four

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.


126 posted on 09/23/2009 7:24:02 AM PDT by T Minus Four
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To: GodGunsGuts; wastedyears; tpanther; Natural Law; Pan_Yan; urroner; T Minus Four; Dr.Deth; ...
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.

127 posted on 09/23/2009 7:59:52 AM PDT by Nikas777 (En touto nika, "In this, be victorious")
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To: Nikas777

Yeah, yeah, we can google "myth" and get a wikipedia reference too.

128 posted on 09/23/2009 8:28:45 AM PDT by T Minus Four
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To: T Minus Four
'Mythbusters' is a fun show but they really bust Old Wives tales not myths.

But "Wives Tales Busters" as a name for a show would have a different connotation to it!

129 posted on 09/23/2009 8:39:20 AM PDT by Nikas777 (En touto nika, "In this, be victorious")
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To: Nikas777

Wives Tales Busters - LOL, love it!


130 posted on 09/23/2009 8:44:17 AM PDT by T Minus Four
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To: T Minus Four

Google “myth” and you get one of the greatest shows ever.


131 posted on 09/23/2009 8:49:56 AM PDT by wastedyears (The best aid we could ever give Africa would be thousands of rifles to throw out their own dictators)
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To: 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.?

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.

132 posted on 09/23/2009 8:57:14 AM PDT by mtg
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To: mtg

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.


133 posted on 09/23/2009 9:20:15 AM PDT by Nikas777 (En touto nika, "In this, be victorious")
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To: Nikas777
I appreciate your courteous attempt to water down the true history written by the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God but you are wrong. I do not worship the God of yesterday - the God of mysticism and cultural naivety. The God I worship is beyond the constraints of time and the whims of man and does not change. He is every bit as relevant today as He was the six days He created the world. He is not an oral tradition or figure of lore and tribal knowledge. The Bible was written by the same God who wrote the rules of science. He does not contradict himself.

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.

134 posted on 09/23/2009 9:56:15 AM PDT by Pan_Yan (All gray areas are fabrications.)
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To: Nikas777
Let me put it another way:

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.

135 posted on 09/23/2009 10:03:45 AM PDT by Pan_Yan (All gray areas are fabrications.)
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To: dcgst4
How I am judged is up to God, not you.

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.

136 posted on 09/23/2009 10:31:01 AM PDT by itsahoot (Each generation takes to excess, what the previous generation accepted in moderation.)
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To: urroner
Are you assuming that I don’t?

Hard to assume otherwise from your posts.

137 posted on 09/23/2009 10:31:45 AM PDT by itsahoot (Each generation takes to excess, what the previous generation accepted in moderation.)
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To: mtg
"The Catholic Church stands firm on the belief that Adam and Eve were created separate from all other living things."

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.

138 posted on 09/23/2009 10:37:57 AM PDT by Natural Law
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To: Pan_Yan
I appreciate your courteous attempt to water down the true history written by the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God

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).

139 posted on 09/23/2009 11:15:38 AM PDT by Nikas777 (En touto nika, "In this, be victorious")
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To: Pan_Yan
I am not applying any argument - I am saying your ability to understand the Bible is limited. I am calling you - forgive me - mystically illiterate. It is because you think like a Westerner and not as a mystically minded person from that era.

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.

140 posted on 09/23/2009 11:22:37 AM PDT by Nikas777 (En touto nika, "In this, be victorious")
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