Posted on 07/16/2002 9:33:12 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
I find it instructive however, that this "likeness" endowed by God, and then increasingly assumed by Man over his creation, establishes the battle between good and evil which has raged within him, and with God, ever since...which so far as we can tell, has never been the case with any other entity.
In that sense, the most profound question we could ask of any (extra)-terrestrial intelligence we may eventually encounter, is whether they too perceive of a deity in the universe.
I was just fitting that into the 6000 year old earth hypothesis. I think that as we keep digging up the ground we will find the universe looked the same 30,000 years ago, too, although records that far back are still kind of scarce.
6000 years isn't really that long ago. If there is an unbroken chain of old men telling young children about the old days, say a 75 year old telling a 15 year old, throughout the years, we can cover that span with just 100 people. 30 people would take us back to thew time of Christ, and if they were all alive at once they could fit in one end of the dining room at Denny's. It's not so impressive as far as scale.
JediGirl makes a good point. (JG, bumped ya like you requested!) Faith is not faith if you believe that you have tangible proof--why do we need to try to reconcile every verse in the Bible with the scientific & historic evidence out there? If we need to make reconcilations in order to be comfortable with our belief in the Bible, that would signify a lack of faith on our part.
To me, Genesis means more than a simple account of the creation of the world. It tells me that every human, every generation since prehistoric times has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. In other words, we all repeat the story of Adam and Eve in our lives--we do such destructive things and we throw away so much good for only a simple piece of forbidden fruit.
As for its scientific and historical value, I am extremely hesistant to conjure up theories without any proof, although I've certainly thought about it. One thing, though: we all too often miss the spiritual point of those views! The first two chapters of Genesis are a good summary of the destructiveness of sin, and how easily our human natures give into it.
What we do with our personal lives and how we treat others around us is far more important than the degree of "literalness" of our belief in the Bible--read through the books of Romans and Corinthians to see how we should behave in the world and in the church.
Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.
One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.
The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him.
Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
Picked up a Greek NT today. What is interesting as far as textual integrity is concerned is that they give the source documents for the version printed in the book. Where other versions exist, they acknowledge that. It leaves some wiggle room, but NT Greek is pretty well understood, even if interpreations of meaning aren't so widely uniform.
I have a "take" on the subject of Noah and the patriarchs, etc. that is an extension of this one - but I thought it might be better to limit the subject matter of this thread to origins. Do you think I ought to kick off another thread next week?
Definitely. But please link it to this one. All so informative and inspirational. Thanks so much.
How profoundly true. The problem I have with Hegel's dialectic, Marx's adaptation of Hegel, and Darwin's theory of natural selection or "the survival of the fittest" is that they teach man is perfectable, that the process of history will produce a "new man." This is just plain wrong - man is inherently flawed. The Founders, especially John Adams, understood this, which is why the Constitution contains so many checks and balances to keep our human natures from doing too much damage through our human government.
Bingo!
I have no problem with that conceptually at all. But at the practical and operating level it is not so simple. Which Bible, the KJV? If so, which VERSION of the KJV? The original which contained apocrypha? Which apocrypha? Or the later NKJV which corrected many acknowledged errors but may have added it's own? Etc., etc., etc.
>It is a revealed truth which cannot be discovered scientifically, a person either hears His voice...
Yes, but what if he reveals something different to me than to you?
I believe that, if God wanted all of us to think the same way, there wouldn't have been 12 disciples with such different personalities and points of view. If we had to all be like one of them, my choice would have been John because he loved Jesus so very much!
That which all of us Christians, all Christian denominations and the disciples shared is the Holy Spirit. And He speaks to each us about what is Truth.
That generally works for me. It is the very heart of a Prophets work but fits poorly with any institutionalized church which relys on it's "high priests" to maintain absolute unformity and conformity without benefit of added enlightment over time.
PS, I'll take Paul. Without him there would be no grace-based Christianity, only an abberent form of Judaism, IMHO.
So then what makes belief in the Christian god morally superior to belief in any other god? And if you don't have any proof that he exists how can you go around telling people that they will go to hell if they don't believe in him. For all you know, when you die you might find out that the christian god is fake and the "rock god" is real. Your punishment for not believing in the rock god could be to be pelted with boulders and stones for the rest of eternity.
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