I am not by any means a progressive, I do not demand preferential treatment, nor insist upon the rightness of my understanding of Christianity.
I propose that a system whereby one allows their knowledge of the reality that God created to influence their interpretation of scripture is superior in philosophy and results to one in which the favored interpretation is deemed “God's teaching” and anything contrary is just “man's teaching”.
The subject of this thread is intellectual suicide, and I propose that such a dead end is committing intellectual suicide because then your ‘knowledge’ becomes a dead thing.
Thus we see why creationism is such a dead end, that produces nothing of any value.
Science is intellectually live and robust, it produces information and products of inestimable value.
Didn’t the Church, who’s supposed to be guiding us in accurate scriptural interpretation, eventually agree that the earth wasn’t flat? :-)
I know of no Christian who does not, as an article of faith, believe that God created the universe (the heaven and the earth). Do you?
”I am not by any means a progressive . . ."
“I propose that a system whereby one allows their knowledge of the reality that God created to influence their interpretation of scripture is superior in *philosophy and results* (emphasis mine) to one in which the favored interpretation is deemed ‘God's teaching’ and anything contrary is just ‘man's teaching’” (your post #676).
As quintessential a declaration of Progressive faith as one could hope to find (if, that is, one wishes to maintain the fiction of Christian faith while denying the legitimacy of the Biblical authority upon which that Christian faith is founded). Otherwise Progressivism simply denies the existence of any religion. What scientific finding (or findings) leads you to the inescapable conclusion that the Judeo-Christian belief is valid?
Of themselves, scientific findings cannot inspire Judeo-Christian faith. They do, of course, provide support for that faith: “That the Truth of reason is not contrary to the Truth of Christian Faith: ”THE natural dictates of reason must certainly be quite true: it is impossible to think of their being otherwise. Nor again is it permissible to believe that the tenets of faith are false, being so evidently confirmed by God. Since therefore falsehood alone is contrary to truth, it is impossible for the truth of faith to be contrary to principles known by natural reason.” (Saint Thos Aquinas, Of God and His Creatures)
And, the Scientific Method has perhaps been the happiest inspiration of the Western Civilization from which it arose. I could go on, but I see no point in restating what metmom has already summarized in her Post #678.
“The subject of this thread is intellectual suicide . . . ”
And that precisely summarizes the ultimate fate of a Western Civilization that now rejects the Judeo-Christian tradition. The struggle encapsulated in this thread has nothing to do with the Intellectualism either of Science or Christianity. It is quite simply a fight for the control of public money. You want control of that money without any say from the people you propose to take it from. That is, likewise, a quintessential definition of Progressivism.