I don’t speak of Not Sure alone. I speak of the actual argument. In fact, yours aren’t that much different.
If this is all new to you, then it won’t be surprising that you’ve never really grasped the fallacies in common atheistic objections to our faith. These objections are rooted in strawmen based on fundamentalist and literalist thinking.
Better. I just gave you pictures. points up
It sounds to me like you are saying that you would prefer to live in a fantasy world, and that you are equating the world described in the OT with other fantasy worlds–is that right?
OK.
there is a sense of contradiction here, if you consider those who believe the OT to be literally true as losers, how could they give you false hope? I mean, that sounds like a recovering alcoholic talking with some drunks in the gutter assuring him their life is great and the recovering alcoholic getting false hopes from this conversation!
So there are similarities… and this means that they are somehow equivalent?
Well, I believe that the stories in the OT are true, and yet I don’t think that God is like those other gods *at all. *And many other Catholics throughout the past 2000+years have also believed them and not equated God with those made-up gods of other peoples.
Call me “not convinced”.
Your understanding is still incomplete.
Wrong again. The better picture would be the recovering alcoholic who wishes the drunks in the gutter were in jail for telling the world to accept their lifestyle. Why? Because they do so by making light of the recovering alchoholic’s struggle, saying recovery is all for naught, and drunkenness is justified. That there lies the false hope. I know it is false but yet these people persist in a fantasy that’s not gonna happen.
If you understand them literally instead of reading these stories in light of Church teaching. Church teaching doesn’t support that pagan view of God tormenting mortals for offenses against them. However, literalism does.
That’s the irony. You don’t think God is like those other gods. However, the reasoning of literalists behind that belief is that God is ‘better’ than Zeus, Ra, or Baal because events in the OT show His miracles triumph over the pagan religions.
Yeah well I’m not convinced ‘dinosaur’ blood can give me invulnerability. (Never heard of Fafnir have you?Call me “not convinced”.
)Is it possible they can be conflated? If not, why not?Yeah well I’m not convinced ‘dinosaur’ blood can give me invulnerability. (Never heard of Fafnir have you?
You need background knowledge on mythology, not paleontology, if you want to talk dragons.
That’s easy. I said before you’re either a literalist or you’re not. If you’re not a literalist then you must be willing to be on the slope of allowing science be science (not when it just suits you).
Catholics understand Scripture to be literal, that is, what the author intended to convey. There are truths that the authors intended to convey that intersect into science areas. Science must be properly conducted and reasoned. The problem is human reasoning is flawed by its very nature so we must be suspect of its declarations.
Intention doesn’t automatically mean we take the literary devices used at face value though. You’re forgetting that the first books of the Bible are in fact simply written stories that have previously been passed down in the form of oral tradition. But that’s the sad thing about oral tradition: it is heavily riddled with myth and superstition. There’s value in myth to be sure but that value is just not scientific.
The toledoths say that Moses had the source tablets. In addition, oral tradition can be very accurate. It cannot be discounted out of hand.
It can be once you pile up thousands of years and your people make contact with other cultures. You’re putting too much faith in the Ancient Hebrews. You say human reasoning is flawed, the same goes for human memory and not to mention, our tendency to use metaphors, make exaggerations, plus lack of scientific knowledge during those eras.
Scripture is not conflated. It is of a different level from myth.
“pretty much” because Adam and Eve lived longer, were stronger, probably taller, more resistant to disease, and maybe better looking than today’s humanity.
In Romans 5:12-21, St. Paul affirms that Adam is the one original human person, while current eovlution theories are suggesting that humans evoloved from a group of breeding pairs.
You’ll have to back up your claim about literalist creationism. I’m more concerned about literalist evolutionists who have closed their minds to the possibility that they could be wrong, but who insist everything is carved in stone right now.
It is my observation that it is no longer possible to talk about just evolution as a whole.That’s true. A skeptic of evolution in general may be able to look at [non-human] animal evolution more objectively (with an open mind I mean) than looking at human evolution bc it is not tangled up with all that theology.
This brought to my mind an interesting question: I wonder how the poll results would differ if it wasn’t specifically about human origins but just evolution as a whole. I seriously doubt 46% of people believe all animals were created in their current form. But I could be wrong, considering I don’t even know a single person who denies human evolution (that I know of).
I do believe that human nature has a grand purpose simply because it is peerless among earthly creatures. Even though a grand purpose, in my opinion, presupposes a transcendent pure spirit Who is God, I feel it is important to consider that there is more to life than natural science. There are non-theists who consider that there is more to life than natural science.
The problem is not with science. We all trust authentic science. It’s adherents of the anti-God evolutionary religion, posing as scientists, whom I distrust. Nobody has all the answers. To claim that one has the truth to the exclusion of all other viewpoints is arrogant and forcibly excluding these equally-valid creationist models is tyrrannical.
