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To: GodGunsGuts
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; 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.”

-St. Augustine of Hippo, “On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis”, A.D. 408

90 posted on 09/22/2009 10:52:52 AM PDT by Ira_Louvin (Go tell them people lost in sin, They need not fear the works of men.)
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To: Ira_Louvin

LOL!...St. Augusting was referring to people like you!!!:

Augustine—The City of God Against the Pagans

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.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=ReU2M8cLtGcC&pg=PA511&lpg=PA511&dq=Let+us,+then,+omit+the+conjectures+of+men+who+augustine&source=web&ots=wiAokxvGEb&sig=5blUfiE5bl5szUaDhYKvswTPbUg&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#v=onepage&q=&f=false


93 posted on 09/22/2009 11:01:42 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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