I know the Bible is not a Science Text But

[TimothyH]

In my opinion the priest is giving a false teaching, which will make the miracles in the Bible …false.

I cannot remain silent & have error preached to me or my fellow Catholics. :tsktsk:

The priest will be held accountable for his own teaching. You will be held accountable for yelling at a priest in the middle of Mass and storming out, and for bragging about it in public.

You can hear God speak to you all day long if you can sit in silence and stillness. Tree bark can speak to you. Storming out in anger isn’t the answer.

-Tim-

 

[DaveBj]

I believe in early humans, of course.
But I just don’t understand why the poster said they have “perfect” DNA and where the/she is getting that info from.
A humanist is a person who cares about and believes in the value of human beings.

Aren’t most Catholics humanists?

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“The poster” was me. What I was passing on was not “information,” but rather my personal belief that the original human pair had perfect DNA. I base that on another belief – that they had been directly created by God, and that everything He created was “very good.”

There is a humanism in Catholicism, based on the belief that humanity is created in the image and likeness of God, and therefore is deserving of extreme respect. However, the kind of humanism that is largely practiced in so-called Western civilization these days has been divorced from its Christian roots and has become “secular humanism.” Practitioners of this kind of humanism aptly fit St. Paul’s description: they have “exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25).”

 

[truetofaith]

But TTF…you have to be a bit flexible, too.
Just because you learned some of the stories one way, does not mean that the interpretation from 2000 years ago cannot/should not be re-interpreted to a more realistic version today since we know more now about all the variables…and it can still be considered a “miracle”.

Don’t you think your priest has given this a lot of thought before saying it to his congregation? And most likely discussed it with other priests and bishops? He’s not going to say something like that “willy-nilly”.

There was a certain way stories were told back then that we are understanding in recent centuries was more metaphorical–it was the genre and style of that era.
There are other stories written at that time about other gods who performed miracles and rose from the dead…Apollonius of Tyana, for example…and I am guessing you are not believing those ones to be true.

But even if some of these miracles are re-interpreted…
I don’t think you are going to find a Catholic priest who is going to say Jesus’ resurrection is a metaphor.
And that’s the most important one for Christianity, methinks.

(Tho in answer to your question, we don’t know that Jesus died on Easter Sunday for sure. The John gospel says he died at noon on the day before the Passover meal was eaten; the Mark gospel says he died at 9am the day after the Passover meal was eaten. So which one is accurate?)

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I didn’t say Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday to start another controversy…I just meant became alive again, period!

I cannot believe it would take the Son Of God to tell the people …‘share your lunch with your neighbors & everyone will have something to eat.’ One of the apostles could have figured that out!
That being said… The Bible says it was late in the day & the people had nothing to eat. Jesus took the five loaves & 2 fish that one boy had, blessed them, & told the apostles to distribute it. Everyone ate & the leftover fragments filled 12 baskets!

If this wasn’t an out & out miracle, showing Jesus to be God…then why make a big deal of it?

I don’t buy the new ways of reading the scriptures that you are talking about.

 

[Hans_W]

Two groups of people have it easy with Bible interpretation:

One lot thinks that the Bible is all nonsense, concocted by a bunch of goat herders from the bronze age.
The other group insists that every word must be taken literally.

The challenge is learning how to read the Bible properly in order to discover the underlying truth.
I think there is also a sharp distinction between the Old and the New Testament.

 

[truetofaith]

That sounds very disrespectful.

Many scholars and theologians and priests believe what your priest told you about the loaves/fishes story to be true.

.

You keep calling the loaves & fishes event, a “story.” The parables of Jesus were stories told by Him as an example. Some of them may not be literal.

The miracle of the loaves & fishes is an eyewitness account of what Jesus did that day. It is not a story or a parable…it is a biblical fact that made quite an impression on the people.
It shows the miraculous power of Jesus. It cannot be minimized by saying they all "shared the food they had with them…it doesn’t jive with the biblical account!

 

[phil19034]

You keep calling the loaves & fishes event, a “story.” The parables of Jesus were stories told by Him as an example. Some of them may not be literal.

The miracle of the loaves & fishes is an eyewitness account of what Jesus did that day. It is not a story or a parable…it is a biblical fact that made quite an impression on the people.
It shows the miraculous power of Jesus. It cannot be minimized by saying they all "shared the food they had with them…it doesn’t jive with the biblical account!

I do not disagree with you here. However, I would like to point out that the Bible says that “they all ate and were satisfied”

It doesn’t say Christ broke them into 5000 pieces. He could have broken them into 50 pieces, or 500 or 1000 or 5000… We don’t know. What we do know is that they all ate from the small loafs of bread and fish that the apostles had and they were all satisfied.

Everyone ate because of Christ. Whether he personally broke the bread into 5000 pieces or broke it into several and had people “share” and break off the own pieces AFTER iHe initially broke it into several is debate-able.

However, I personally feel (like you) that Christ broke the bread into 5000 directly Himself, and not indirectly via “sharing”

God Bless

 

[phil19034]

So…do you mean in the “mythic” past or in the “real” past…that people had lifespans of 1000 years?

When did the world become more depraved?
It seems like its been pretty much the same for thousands of years–in fact, it has improved in the morality department.

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I’ve been giving this some thought… Some scientists now believe that aging is caused by the Mitochondria in our cells filling up with “junk” and dying. Similar to liver failure.

Mitochondria clean up the cell from foreign objects

 

[phil19034]

So…do you mean in the “mythic” past or in the “real” past…that people had lifespans of 1000 years?

When did the world become more depraved?
It seems like its been pretty much the same for thousands of years–in fact, it has improved in the morality department.

.

My post cut off again, so I’m reposting and completing it.

I’ve been giving this some thought… Some scientists now hypothesize that aging is caused by the Mitochondria in our cells filling up stuff it cannot process to create the energy required by our cells.

For example: when we eat, our food is digested in our stomachs and the nutrients are extracted. Those nutrients are eventually broken down to the point where they are used by the mitochondria our cells to create energy for the cell. However, anything the mitochondria cannot burn or “digest” to create energy simply remains inside the mitochondria.

Humans age because between 50 and 70 billion cells die each day due to apoptosis in the average human adult. For an average child between the ages of 8 and 14, approximately 20 billion to 30 billion cells die a day.

Some scientists are studying a potential way to “cleanse” our mitochondria in an attempt to limit the apoptosis happening in our bodies. If the process can reduce the number of cells dying each day, then in theory we would live longer.

Now: what if this hypothesis is true? And what if, long ago, the environment and our diets were “more pure,” limiting the amount of junk in our mitochondria, hence limiting the daily amount of apoptosis? Then, according to the hypothesis, we would live longer. Now, what if the number of number of cells dying each day was low enough that we could live 10 times longer? Then living to 1000 would be possible. And since women only have a limited number of eggs in their body, Sarah (despite being relatively young at 90) would still be past normal child barring years.

So, it turns out that it MIGHT be possible for humans to live to be several hundred years old and it’s possible that it may have happened in the past, especially before the flood. Who knows, perhaps pre-flood earth had better food for us and less foreign bodies attacking our mitochondria.

Food for thought & God Bless.

*my source: an episode of **Beyond the Wormhole *on Science Channel.

 

[truetofaith]

I do not disagree with you here. However, I would like to point out that the Bible says that “they all ate and were satisfied”

It doesn’t say Christ broke them into 5000 pieces. He could have broken them into 50 pieces, or 500 or 1000 or 5000… We don’t know. What we do know is that they all ate from the small loafs of bread and fish that the apostles had and they were all satisfied.

Everyone ate because of Christ. Whether he personally broke the bread into 5000 pieces or broke it into several and had people “share” and break off the own pieces AFTER iHe initially broke it into several is debate-able.

However, I personally feel (like you) that Christ broke the bread into 5000 directly Himself, and not indirectly via “sharing”

God Bless

Phil…I don’t think you read what the problem with “sharing” the loaves is. The priest said in his homily that Jesus broke those 5 loaves & 2 fish and gave it to the apostles to distribute…the rest of the 5000 people had a little food with them and kept adding their own small amount to what was handed to them and it kept going on until everyone ate( and were satisfied ).

This no miracle, & is not what the Bible says, and therefore it is what angered me !

 

[edwest2]

I believe in early humans, of course.
But I just don’t understand why the poster said they have “perfect” DNA and where the/she is getting that info from.

A humanist is a person who cares about and believes in the value of human beings.

Aren’t most Catholics humanists?

.

Official humanism does not recognize God, only man. We can work together, but humanism, has its own worldview that does not include anything supernatural.

Ed

 

[JamalChristophr]

Official humanism does not recognize God, only man. We can work together, but humanism, has its own worldview that does not include anything supernatural.

Ed

Yes, Ed’s definition is the prevalent one. I’d have to look in the dictionary to see if DG’s definition is valid according to Mr. Merriam or Webster

 

[phil19034]

Phil…I don’t think you read what the problem with “sharing” the loaves is. The priest said in his homily that Jesus broke those 5 loaves & 2 fish and gave it to the apostles to distribute…the rest of the 5000 people had a little food with them and kept adding their own small amount to what was handed to them and it kept going on until everyone ate( and were satisfied ).

This no miracle, & is not what the Bible says, and therefore it is what angered me !

Oh… That’s not good