Fact or Fiction !>

[edwest2]

Your logic escapes me. Even if one doesn’t belief in a personified force known as “the devil” it does not follow from this that there is no right and wrong, or no sin.

Of course it does. There is a popular TV program that has a teaching web site. It declares that everything is just shades of grey. Everyone must abandon moral absolutes. About 40 years ago, someone wrote: “It is forbidden to forbid” on a University in France.

A newspaper columnist wrote how something “used to be called sin.”

Pope Benedict recently had to declare that Hell is quite real.

Those who reduce the mind-brain function to chemical reactions to outside stimuli dehumanize man, reducing him to nothing more than animated chemicals. And once that occurs, one can apply religious or nonreligious labels to this thing that used to be called man but they are all equally meaningless.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Mea_Culpa]

Your logic escapes me. Even if one doesn’t belief in a personified force known as “the devil” it does not follow from this that there is no right and wrong, or no sin.

If there is no Evil One, where does evil then come from? Is it just a construct in our minds? If that’s the case, can’t my evil be different than your evil? Or your evil be my good? It’s all relative - moral relativity!

Also, if “one doesn’t belief (sic) in a personified force known as ‘the devil,’” then one doesn’t believe what the Catholic Church teaches.

 

[diggerdomer]

The Catholic Church does not teach that the devil is “symbolic.” The devil, Satan, is real and active, and has been since the beginning of human history (Genesis ch. 3). I don’t see how anyboy could look around at the state of affairs in Western society today and not see the devil working overtime.

Where does Genesis 3 mention the devil or Satan? What Bible are you referring to?

 

[diggerdomer]

If there is no Evil One, where does evil then come from? Is it just a construct in our minds? If that’s the case, can’t my evil be different than your evil? Or your evil be my good? It’s all relative - moral relativity!

Also, if “one doesn’t belief (sic) in a personified force known as ‘the devil,’” then one doesn’t believe what the Catholic Church teaches.

Evil comes from rejecting God.

 

[StAnastasia]

If there is no Evil One, where does evil then come from? Is it just a construct in our minds? !

Evil consists in turning away from good. You don’t need a guy in a red jump suit with a pitchfork telling you to do that!

 

[Mea_Culpa]

Where does Genesis 3 mention the devil or Satan? What Bible are you referring to?

I’m reading Sacred Scripture in light of the Sacred Tradition of the Church, which sees the serpent in Genesis ch. 3 as Satan. This is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about it:

391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church’s Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called “Satan” or the “devil”. The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: “The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.”

The question is not what Bible I’m referring to, it should be - how am I reading the Bible? Am I relying on Sacred Tradition to guide my understanding, or am I relying on personal interpretation - for example, if Genesis ch. 3 says “serpent,” and Church Tradition has consistently taught that this refers to Satan - do I ignore that Tradition?

Scripture doesn’t stand alone - we need to read Sacred Scripture in light of Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church.

 

[diggerdomer]

I’m reading Sacred Scripture in light of the Sacred Tradition of the Church, which sees the serpent in Genesis ch. 3 as Satan. This is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about it:

391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church’s Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called “Satan” or the “devil”. The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: “The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.”

The question is not what Bible I’m referring to, it should be - how am I reading the Bible? Am I relying on Sacred Tradition to guide my understanding, or am I relying on personal interpretation - for example, if Genesis ch. 3 says “serpent,” and Church Tradition has consistently taught that this refers to Satan - do I ignore that Tradition?

Scripture doesn’t stand alone - we need to read Sacred Scripture in light of Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church.

Ok, then, just be more complete and accurate when you’re citing Scripture and when you’re not.

 

[Mea_Culpa]

Evil consists in turning away from good. You don’t need a guy in a red jump suit with a pitchfork telling you to do that!

Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2851 In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The devil (dia-bolos) is the one who “throws himself across” God’s plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.

2854 When we ask to be delivered from the Evil One, we pray as well to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which he is the author or instigator.

I don’t think I’m smarter than the Catholic Church, so I just believe in what she teaches.

 

[rdscheirer]

I’m just saying that a catastrophic flood of the volume and area that Ballard documented could “possibly” seen as world wide in that time.