That just shows your ignorance in the Bible and Christianity. Read these words carefully; I do not judge your SALVATION because THAT is God's realm alone, I judge your guilt for ACTIONS because God has already told me which actions are right and which are wrong. We also have courts where JUDGES decide on a person's guilt based on their ACTIONS. There is a whole book in the bible named JUDGES where they, guess what, pass judgement on people!
As for love and tolerance, I have no love or tolerance for sin, but sinners are welcomed into the church (we are ALL sinners, that is in the bible, too), as long as their desire to explore Christianity is genuine and not simply to be a disruptive or subversive influence. Neither an alcoholic, nor a child molester, nor a homosexual, nor a thief would be allowed into the leadership of a church.
BTW, it is liberals who are always preaching "tolerance" of perverted lifestyles as if homosexuals had equal moral ground to stand on.
The ENTIRE bible is the literal truth. To pretend that you can believe some parts and not others allows you to pick and choose the parts you like and simply disregard those you don't. If you claim to be Christian but believe in evoltion, then you reject the teachings of Jesus Christ who talked and taught on the creation; Mark 10-6 "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female." (not amoeba and bacteria) and the flood of Noah, Matthew 24:38 "For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark;" ( I guess Jesus believed in the flood of Noah, huh?)
Now, when you say that "God has already told you...", do you mean that you talk directly to the Almighty on a regular basis? Or are those your interpretations of God's word, as written, edited, and politicized for a couple thousand years? And is that the same God everyone else talks to and believes in? Just so I can be clear on that point.
As for love and tolerance, I have no love or tolerance for sin, but sinners are welcomed into the church (we are ALL sinners, that is in the bible, too), as long as their desire to explore Christianity is genuine and not simply to be a disruptive or subversive influence.
Cool! I am glad to hear you say that. You're right, none of us are perfect, and a genuine interest in the love and tolerance that Christianity teaches is clearly superior to a more disruptive and intolerant take on things. I'm not sure how it relates to evolution, but I'm glad we agree.
Neither an alcoholic, nor a child molester, nor a homosexual, nor a thief would be allowed into the leadership of a church.
I should hope not :) But I'm not sure I see the relevance - Unless Dr. Dini is an alcoholic, a child molester, or a thief, in which case I wholeheartedly agree that we should not let him into the clergy, no matter what anyone else says.
BTW, it is liberals who are always preaching "tolerance" of perverted lifestyles as if homosexuals had equal moral ground to stand on.
Would accepting a theory, based on the application of the scientific method, constitute a perverted lifestyle?
The ENTIRE bible is the literal truth.
OK, let's assume we accept that, and ignore the idea of metaphor in religious texts altogether. Have all edits and additions to the Bible to date been the literal truth? Are all revisions equally true? Have politics and accepted religious beliefs at the time of said edits ever had any influence on the literal truth of the Bible?
In some Islamic countries, fundamentalism of this sort is taken to such an extreme that anyone suggesting that the Koran is anything other than the literal word of God will be put under threat of death. That is the case even when they are deeply religious and simply wish to understand the evolution of the main religious text of one of the worlds three great monotheistic religions - All of which share striking similarities in their basic tenents and which revolve around the same geographical areas and periods of time.
Is this really what we want? Is this level of fundamentalism and intolerance to dissent really a good thing? Is it good for any religion?
I believe that the original, literal truth of the Christian religion is in the Bible, somewhere - On that I most wholeheartedly agree with you. I also believe in the value of that truth. It's just a matter of where it is, how it is being expressed, and how you get at it. Theologians have not resolved this debate, so I don't see how we will either, but in a serious and objective study of religion, the matter of interpretation cannot be so easily brushed aside.
If you claim to be Christian but believe in evoltion, then you reject the teachings of Jesus Christ who talked and taught on the creation; Mark 10-6 "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female." (not amoeba and bacteria)
Does this mean that god made men and women, or did he simply decide on the concepts of organisms being male and female, i.e. the idea of the two sexes? Does this tell us how he made them, or simply that he did so?
and the flood of Noah, Matthew 24:38 "For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark;" (I guess Jesus believed in the flood of Noah, huh?)
The flood is most likely based on a real event, and whether it happened or not, or whether Jesus believed it or not, is irrelevant to the theory of evolution.
DFS
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/832645/posts?page=219#219
Give it some thought. And seriously - Scientists are not, on the whole, bad people, neither are they out to destroy Christianity - Most of us go into the sciences in order to use what has been given to us to help our fellow man by pursuing an understanding of the underlying laws governing our universe. I hope that we can do so, even when the answers we get may surprise us our challenge our beliefs. Such challenges are inevitable - Take the case of Galileo. He was not wrong, nor was he anti-Christian in any sense (in fact the man was deeply religious and by all accountrs very disturbed by his initial findings), but he was nevertheless persecuted for being objective in his pursuit of the truth. This is why this argument can be so dangerous. The idea of a spherical earth that orbits around the sun in no way detracts from the central message if Christianity, but this is exactly the debate that was going on then, and that is being paralleled, here and now. Thankfully, we no longer hang or burn people quite so often, but the ideas and emotions are the same.
Proper application of the scientific method (which is what I mean when I say "Science") can tell us a lot about the world in which we live, if we only have the courage to believe what we observe. Science cannot address who or what has put the underlying laws I mentioned above into place, however, and that's why we, as a species, have need religion and spirituality - This cannot be denied.
I don't want to generalize all of those who believe in Creation as being ignorant or hateful or intolerant - We are all human, and some of us fall farther than others, whatever our beliefs or training, nor do any of us have all of the answers. I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt; I hope I can count on you to do the same. But all of us, scientists or not, have to be able to entertain the possibility that maybe we do not understand everything, or, in the context of any discovery that challenges religious dogma (not true fundamentals, such as the value of tolerance and mercy, which can never be challenged), we will repeat the trial of Galileo over and over again, never learning from our mistakes. This would be a tragedy, and would benefit no one, religious or otherwise.
DFS