Francis
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Posts posted by Francis
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37 minutes ago, zapatos said:
So if the Church doesn't have a definite interpretation of the talking snake, then why did you say it shouldn't be taken literally?
Because it may not be literal. The snake is Satan and he "spoke" to Eve, thus influencing her actions, but it may not have been with a literal voice and there may not have been a literal snake. Demons don't to be seen and heard in a physical sense, in order to make their presence known or felt. When people become demonicially possessed, no one can hear or see the demon, except perhaps the victim, who intensely experiences its presence.
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30 minutes ago, Itoero said:
A church, is a building used for Christian religious activities, particularly for worship services.
So Christ died out of love for a building?
"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her "(Ephesian 5:25).
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7 minutes ago, dimreepr said:
It literally didn't... And the word of God was written by people; you're not helping...
The NT wasn't officially compiled until about 300 years after Christ. The Church, on the other hand, came into existence 50 days after Christ. The early Christians only had access to the OT (if they were lucky) and the gospel and the teachings of the Church (as formalised by the apostles) were made known by word of mouth. But I'm not going to get all that here. Suffice to say that I was once a Protestant - been there, done that.
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26 minutes ago, zapatos said:
Can you provide a citation that shows where the church actually interprets ... 6 day creation as figurative? I've seen members of the church argue both ways.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:-
337 God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine "work", concluded by the "rest" of the seventh day.204 On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation,205 permitting us to "recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God."
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7 minutes ago, zapatos said:
You realize the church is made up of people just like you, right? They are not the word of God. Their interpretation is no more valid than yours
I don't believe you. The Catholic Church is, in effect, the word of God. It exists before the NT did.
11 minutes ago, zapatos said:Can you provide a citation that shows where the church actually interprets a talking snake and 6 day creation as figurative? I've seen members of the church argue both ways. Who is the authority I should believe.
The Church probably doesn't have a definite interpretation of the talking snake, because whether it's interpreted literally or not, I guess it doesn't matter.
As for the "six days", the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states they are "figurative" (if memory serves). I can provide the exact wording, but it might some time.
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2 minutes ago, zapatos said:
So then we still to believe that the sun orbits the earth?
As far as the Church's mission is concerned, such things are irrelevant. Catholics can believe the moon is made of cheese and the earth is flat, if they want to.
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8 minutes ago, zapatos said:
So what is your criteria for deciding what is literal and what is not? Saying something took six days is meant to be figurative, but saying a virgin birth is meant to be literal? Sounds like you are cherry picking to meet your needs.
My criterion is the Church. It decides how Scripture is interpreted, not me.
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On 14/11/2018 at 5:19 AM, Strange said:
That is not a scientific fact.
I will rephrase my comment: Catholics are obliged to believe that the universe had a beginning.
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14 minutes ago, zapatos said:
Agreed. They don't sound literal at all. And neither do virgin birth, rising from the dead, the Holy Trinity, turning bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, or heaven and hell. Do you also agree those were not completely literal?
No
3 minutes ago, zapatos said:They would be stupid for... admitting to a mistake? And you wonder why people think religion is indeed stupid.
The Church's role is not to be a judge of science.
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It's a shame your church doesn't go that extra step and say " we accept the theories produced by science and so must you".
Brilliant idea! When an "accepted" science theory is replaced by a better one, then what? The Church will have to say, "Yeah, well, er ... about that ... we got that wrong ... but this new theory is a beauty!" Thankfully, the Church is not that stupid.
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On 14/11/2018 at 2:33 AM, mistermack said:
So whatever suits your story is literal, and what doesn't is symbolic, or describing a vision?????
The author of Genesis (and countless readers after him) may well have believed that the "six days" of creation were literal, but science has confirmed that the "six days" in Genesis 1 are in fact, symbolic - just as the talking snake and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil are probably symbolic. Science has confirmed also that the verse that got Galileo into trouble was symbolic. I believe the Genesis accounts of creation are a mixture of literal and symbolic - just as the book of Revelation is (which is the account of a vision).
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20 hours ago, mistermack said:
If that was the case, why on Earth would they say six days? The meaning is obvious.
Are you familiar with the concept of figurative/symbolic language? How do you know that the author was not describing a vision? And you're cherry-picking - do you really think a talking snake and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil were literal too? Have a gander at the last book of the New Testament - Revelation - and try and tell me that the author was being completely literal!
18 hours ago, beecee said:It's these god botherers that see the need to conduct crusades on forums such as this that irk me.
Glad to see that you sincerely support freedom of speech
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5 minutes ago, mistermack said:13 minutes ago, Francis said:
No it doesn't. They would all have understood a day as a length of time. It's not as if days varied in duration from day to day.
They would also have understood that without the sun, there would be no days at all - yet the author says the sun wasn't created until Day 4. They would also have understood light as the sun, yet the author says light was created on Day 1 - three days before the sun was created. They would also have understood that snakes don't talk and that knowledge of good and evil doesn't grow on trees. In chapter 2 of Genesis there is a second creation account, which takes place in a "day" (not six days) - do you suppose the author might have noticed that the two accounts were different? Do you think they might be different because they are not literal? Do you think they might have understood the concept of symbolic language?
Furthermore, the authors of Genesis didn't have to understand what they were writing down (and probably didn't), as they were supernaturally inspired to write whatever God wanted them to write.
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1 hour ago, mistermack said:
Who cares what they say now? The people who WROTE the bible knew what they meant by a day, and they knew exactly what their audience of the time understood by a "day".
The Catholic Church can perform it's present-day contortions to make things fit, but they can't change the obvious original meaning by the original authors.
The author of Genesis says the sun was created on the fourth day. This suggests he wasn't offering a literal description of creation. A tree of knowledge of good and bad, a talking snake, God resting on the seventh day, light being created before the sun ... do these oddities suggest a literal description? I don't think so.
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1 hour ago, DrP said:
Because the theory they are accepting as scientific fact completely contradicts chapter 1.
Perhaps you're referring to the "six days" of creation - if so, the Catholic Church has never offered a definitive interpretation of the "six days" in Genesis 1, and has never obliged the faithful to accept that the "six days" are a literal six days or to accept any other interpretation of the "six days".
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31 minutes ago, StringJunky said:
Science deals with quantitative questions and 'the meaning of life' is not one of those.
beecee seems to think there is no truth outside science. In that case, the meaning of life isn't worth discussing.
On 11/11/2018 at 8:59 PM, beecee said:I check it out in an appropriate science book with scientific truth and the relevant knowledge. That is knowledge...that is the only truth.
If science is "the only truth", how can you claim, for example, that God is a "ridiculous myth", when science hasn't nothing to say on the matter?
If science is "the only truth", no one can claim it's wrong to steal, murder, rape and pillage, because science has nothing to say on the matter.
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On 11/11/2018 at 8:59 PM, beecee said:
The only truth that matters is scientific truth
In that case, the meaning of life doesn't matter, since science has nothing to say in that regard.
On 11/11/2018 at 8:59 PM, beecee said:Science is the discipline of acquiring knowledge and is without doubt the best method that we have or can ever have using the scientific method as its foundations. If I want to know how humans evolved, or how our solar system formed, or how the universe evolved, I don’t go to a philosopher, or any religious text.....I check it out in an appropriate science book with scientific truth and the relevant knowledge. That is knowledge...that is the only truth.
If science is the only truth, where does science say "Science is the only truth"?
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1 hour ago, beecee said:
I'm more concerned with the pointless banal unsupported claims often made by god botherers and others on a science forum, with absolutely no evidence to support their myth.
The difference is, pointless banal religious claims don't pretend to be science. Religious claims are usually based on faith; science is based on empirical evidence and the testing of theories - but someone forgot to tell evolutionists that. Their idea of "science" and "understanding" and "knowledge" is endless hypotheses that can't ever be tested.
2 hours ago, beecee said:its rather dishonest and insidious to use the blanks in scientific knowledge to attempt to deride all of it.
Which theist has derided all scientific knowledge?
4 hours ago, beecee said:Again, an emotional outburst, a result of fanatical belief in that which is nothing more then unsupported myth.
If this was meant to explain how an untestable theory qualifies as understanding, it failed.
30 minutes ago, StringJunky said:It's not falsifiable, therefore whether a god exists or not is not a scientific question.
I know that. I was trying to make sense of beecee's quizzical comment.
4 hours ago, beecee said:The lame and inadequate tag you put on the forces of evolution are simply due to the brain washing you received in your younger years.
... which just goes to show how little you know about my younger years.
32 minutes ago, DrP said:Because the theory they are accepting as scientific fact completely contradicts chapter 1
How so?
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1 hour ago, beecee said:
As sure as any scientific theory can be, yes.
There is a "God doesn't exist" scientific theory?
1 hour ago, beecee said:And of course as you have already been informed, the edict of the Catholic church in finding the evolution of life as acceptable and compatible with the Catholic doctrine, actually makes the bible a laughing stock.
How so?
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1 hour ago, beecee said:
Claiming religion being an evolutionary trait is certainly made up nonsense, while the emotional 99.999999999999999999% you claim that cant be tested is simply false and a made up number due justifying your emotional post.
Some evolutionary explanations can be tested. But what I had in mind were the pointless, banal discussions that evolutionists indulge in and are found on scientic forums like this one. Eg, where did instincts come from? My point is, what is the point of evolutionary hypotheses that can't ever be tested? One may as well hypothesize about the colour of the Tooth Fairy's hair.
1 hour ago, beecee said:You prefer a ridiculous myth encompassing some magical being to explain the natural forces which not only gave way to evolution, but also abiogenesis.
Are you sure the God of the Bible is a ridiculous myth?
Regarding abiogenesis - when humans manage to get inanimate matter to give rise to a viable life-form, wake me up.
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14 hours ago, Strange said:
Yep. We can never know how antibiotic resistance evolved. It could have been caused by rap music. Or Catholicism. Or sunspots. Anything really. How could we ever know.
Er, antibiotic resistance can be studied and tested using observed, repeatable experiments. It's called empirical science. On the other hand, an hypothesis about how feathers evolved, for example, is just pie-in-the-sky gibberish - nothing can be tested or learnt and no benefit can be gained.
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17 hours ago, Strange said:
As in, driven by fashion, etc.
Maybe, but fashions come and go. Pink never goes out fashion - in a thousand years time, girls will still like pink.
How do you know females don't have a biological predilection for that colour? Think "babies" ... maybe
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16 hours ago, Strange said:
You deny there is evidence and therefore you are anti-science. You claim scientists make things up, therefore you are anti-science.
- When did I say there is no evidence? Evolution is the only explanation science has to account for the history of life on earth. If the first life-forms were microbes and billions of years life ends up at human beings, evolution is a perfectly reasonable science theory for what happened. But I don't believe the history of life is the result of purely natural forces - which helps to explain why evolutionary explanations for life's progression are often so lame and inadequate.
- When it comes to evolution, "scientists make things up" all the time ... 99.9999999999999999999% of which can't be tested. So it's just worthless story-telling, not science.
16 hours ago, Strange said:Basically, you are substituting ignorance and personal beliefs for understanding. I'm not sure your god would be very happy with that. And, by denying something that your church accepts, are you in danger of straying into heresy?
- An untestable theory is "understanding"? How does that work? You seem to be conflating a belief with knowledge, truth and fact.
- How ironic that you mention "ignorance" ... you obviously know little about what the Catholic Church teaches. Catholics are not obliged to believe that man evolved from some kind of ape, or in any kind of evolution at all. They can believe the earth was created 6000 year ago if they want; or that the earth is flat and that the moon is made of cheese. As far as I know, the only scientific fact Catholics are obliged to accept is that the universe had a beginning.
12 hours ago, Itoero said:Evolution = change over time...you can call everything an evolutionary trait but why would you do that? You imo only call something an evolutionary trait when it's clear it evolved somehow
My point is, you could probably think of an evolutionary explanation for just about anything. But so what? Hypotheses that can't be tested are a pointless waste of time.
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A chimp made it into space before any human did, so chimps appear be evolving very fast. They could overtake humans as the dominant species on earth soon
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Religion as evolutionary trait
in Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology
Posted
I've just read this. Okay
That's a Masonic term, actually - many of whom are also Protestants.