Creation questions

davewhite04 said:
Agreed, but there are billions of christians so more views, or dogma.
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There are a lot of Christians but within a given sect their views are largely similar. Counting the number of sects would be a more accurate way of determining how many differing views there were out there.
 
billvon said:
There are a lot of Christians but within a given sect their views are largely similar. Counting the number of sects would be a more accurate way of determining how many differing views there were out there.
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To be honest mate most christians just believe in jesus/God, as you probably know, they don't delve into science. i just enjoy atheists/agnostics take on some biblical stories, and obviously religious views as well :).
 
Jan Ardena said:
So what? How is ''religion'' itself, a problem?

jan
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How is a set of unquestioned assumptions a problem? One that demands obedience to long outdated teachings? Maybe because the 21st century requires something more than unquestioning faith.
 
Jan Ardena said:
Show how religion itself is the cause of the things you mentioned?

jan
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War = Crusades past, Israel and Palestine modern day, in fact all if not most conflict in the middle east.
Unrest = Islam is causing this in my area hence a planned demonstration.
Isolation = Most Muslims live in isolation in the UK, so do the practicing Jews.
 
davewhite04 said:
War = Crusades past, Israel and Palestine modern day, in fact all if not most conflict in the middle east.
Unrest = Islam is causing this in my area hence a planned demonstration.
Isolation = Most Muslims live in isolation in the UK, so do the practicing Jews.
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You have yet to explain, why religion causes wars. Come with something that isolates ''religion'' as a cause.

jan.
 
Bells said:
Which means they do not believe in all of the old testament as it is written - in other words, they do not believe in it literally.
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Get a ruddy education. Do you not understand that portions of the Old Testament were rich in metaphor? Those portions were not meant to be taken literally any more than the metaphors in On the Origin of Species were meant to be taken literally. Next you will be telling me that if I don't take all of Darwin's work literally I do not believe in evolution. You are being ridiculous.

Since you are a moderator - what a frigging joke - I cannot put you on ignore, but frankly your stupidity on this point is offensive. Stew in your ignorance.
 
davewhite04 said:
To be honest mate most christians just believe in jesus/God, as you probably know, they don't delve into science. i just enjoy atheists/agnostics take on some biblical stories, and obviously religious views as well :).
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You make it sound easy for most people to avoid confronting the issue. But I think you overlook the fact that all schoolchildren nowadays learn basic science at school, from the media, from books, on museum trips etc. This obviously includes such topics as evolution. Dinosaurs in particular are a perennial source of interest to children. The fact is that all children learn about the long age of the Earth and enough about evolution to understand that different animals lived at different periods within this long age, and that later forms developed from earlier ones.
 
Kittamaru said:
To me, it's that they are following the "old ways" as opposed to the teachings of Christ. I could be misunderstanding though - do understand, I am not a theological student by any stretch.



1 Peter, 3:18 - Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit.

Isaiah 53:5 - But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

Romans 5:8 - God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

1 John, 3:5 - You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.

Ephesians 1:7 - In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,

Colossians 2:14 - By canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Those read, to me, to mean that through our faith in Christ, we are forgiven.



Confession is necessary - you are to bring your sins before God and one another, and ask forgiveness for them. What I find odd/unnecessary is that, in the Catholic faith, it seems that one is told you are not worthy/capable of bringing these sins to the Father yourself, and so must do so via a Priest; I understand the idea of confessing together (where two or more are gathered to pray), but the idea that only certain men, dictated by the Church, can bring your sins to God just seems... I don't know, arrogant?
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This still seems to me a muddled argument that does not stand up. First you say that seeing value in confession is a sign of following Old Testament, rather than New Testament ways. Then you quote the New Testament words attributed to Christ in St John's Gospel, which say forgiveness of sins by the Apostles is required for them to be forgiven. Then you turn round and say confession is after all necessary, but produce 5 more quotations, bizarrely including one from the Old Testament, as evidence that confession is not required. (None of these contain the actual reported words of Christ of course, whereas the St John quotation, which supports the idea of confession, does.)

After all this, it seems to me the most one can say is the NT is open to differing interpretations on this point - as the bible so often is, in fact. The church seems to have taken the view that Christ's words trumped, or constrained, the possible interpretations of Saints Peter and Paul, all the way up to Reformation, when a new doctrine grew up that claimed confession wasn't necessary. It is true, I grant you, that the idea of a private, anonymised confession to a priest, rather than a public confession, only came into being after one of the Lateran Councils in about 1200 or so (I think it was?). But one might think this was a more civilised way of doing it than before.

But either way, you have yet to address what struck me as the most peculiar and unwarranted part of your original assertion. This was that the Catholic faith is "almost entirely" based on unworthiness of people "to bring their sins before God". What do you base this on? Do you really think the heart of Catholic Christianity is, for some reason, not belief in the redemptive power of God The Son's incarnation, teaching, death and resurrection, as it is for other forms of Christianity? Why?
 
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