Dinosaurs and the Flood

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Lucy_1 said:
My husband lost his faith and is now an atheist because the bible speaks clearly about the fall/original sin being an event, and he can’t reconcile that with evolution.
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This is one of the many problems with fundamentalist belief. Fundamentalists think it makes their faith strong, but what it does it make it brittle.
Lucy_1 said:
If it’s completely incompatible with evolution, where does that leave us? It’s one of the foundations of the faith-- without it, why do we need baptism, etc., etc.,
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Original sin is not incompatible with evolution, which should be obvious from the fact that the Church accepts evolution. Original sin is also not necessarily incompatible with polygenesis. As I said earlier, some of the Pope Emeritus’s writings on original sin give some insight into that.
 
According to original sin we inherit guilt? Is that correct? And if it is does that mean that I’m guilty of what my german ancestors did during the holocaust? Because if that’s true I’m certainly in big trouble.
 
davidharper said:
have you researched the source document hypothesis concerning the synoptic gospels?
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If you are referring to secular scholarship on the NT, yes. Very much so. I don’t recall it being called the Document hypothesis for the NT, though. Because the NT is written in different genres, it can’t really be broken down the same…but the same historical “rules” tend to apply to both!
 
No. You are not guilty of what your ancestors did. That’s not how we understand original sin. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (and a majority of Protestants would agree) original sin is:
416 By his sin Adam, as the first man, lost the original holiness and justice he had received from God, not only for himself but for all human beings.
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417 Adam and Eve transmitted to their descendants human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice; this deprivation is called “original sin”.
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418 As a result of original sin, human nature is weakened in its powers, subject to ignorance, suffering and the domination of death, and inclined to sin (this inclination is called “concupiscence”).
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I have suspected that the reason why the idea of original sin was created was actually that christianity was inventing the reason for its own existence. We need it for salvation.
Without Jesus (and, by extension, the church), we are all lost. We are all guilty.
It’s really quite remarkably clever if you think about it.
But I realize this is a very cynical and self-serving way to look at it.
And, worst of all, I could be wrong.
 
davidharper said:
And, worst of all, I could be wrong.
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But that’s the most important thing, when questioning things like this – to know we could be wrong.

Personally, I think 99% of wisdom (at a minimum) is knowing that we don’t know everything.
 
Well, even if original sin didn’t exist there’s still plenty of immorality around to warrant a savior, unless you don’t believe in the concepts of right and wrong, and if that’s the case I can pretty much guarantee that’s not how you live. 😁
 
Except that it does not mention dinosaurs… 😂

The Church does not teach that the Bible narrates history as we understand the term in the 21st century; just as it does not narrate science.
 
Well, if you ever came across a whale or an elephant, the term would certainly apply.

I disagree with your presumption.
 
Other than the dating aspect, do you think our analysis of dinosaur species themselves is correct?
 
It’s a bad idea to believe that the Bible would disagree with true science or true history. The Bible contains the truth about life, and therefore contains the truth about historical things and scientific things. But God is greater than both science and history, so His truth has the primacy and supremacy. It is disappointing that Christians, and particularly Catholics, nowadays do not believe the Bible holds the truth about science. For instance, that mankind did not evolve from primates, but was created separately from the animals. Science does not give recognition enough (if at all) to the spiritual, but the Bible does. So how could something that is correct about spiritual matters be incorrect about scientific or historical matters? The answer is that it can’t.
 
When paleontologists describe the slate of dinosaur species that existed on Earth, are they speaking truth?
 
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