Is Religion incompatible with history?

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Dinosaurs may very well have both lived and died out millions of years before man first walked the earth. That’s fine per Church teaching, per what I said in my first post.

As for whether any other intelligent species existed on Earth… Not sure I’ve heard it addressed. I assume it’s similar to aliens. Basically, we don’t know what their relationship to God was or is, should they exist, or whether they had a Fall, or anything. But they could exist. The Church has not declared they can’t.
 
Usagi said:
If God was going to choose one culture out of which the Savior of the world would arise (the primary purpose of the Jews’ chosen status in Christian thinking), then He by necessity would be leaving all the rest out. There may be no answer to “Why not China” other than “I picked these guys.”

Though, if you do want a concrete answer, I seem to recall the Bible states at one point that God deliberately chose a weak and unimportant people (in terms of ancient global politics) so that they would always recognize their accomplishments as the result of His blessing rather than their own greatness. That would disqualify any already advanced and powerful cultures,
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The LORD your God has chosen you to be pa people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

If you’re going to ask why Yhwh did not choose more powerful, more developed, more ancient civilizations and instead set His sights on a (then) relatively insignificant ethnicity in a small corner of the Near East, then you might as well ask why God did not choose more powerful, more influential men to do His will, opting instead to choose the weak and the powerless.

I mean, God chose David, the youngest of seven brothers, to be anointed out of his older, more stronger brothers. It’s a pattern you see repeated time and again within the Bible: it is the little people that inherit the earth.
 
The chosenness of the Jewish people is not exclusionary.
Read the CCC here:
vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p2.htm

God chose the Jewish people in a unique way* for the good of all people*. The fact that a people is chosen in a unique way is not a deprivation of others.
By analogy, I am chosen (called) to be a husband and father. Is my vocation a deprivation to someone else? Of course not.
 
Tomdstone said:
To say so ignores the fact that man has free will and can choose to be married or celibate.
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No, it doesn’t ignore free will. Why would you say it ignores free will?
Can you explain?

And also, you missed the whole point of the analogy, which is that my chosen-ness to be husband and father is not a deprivation for a celibate person or any other person.
 
goout said:
By analogy, I am chosen (called) to be a husband and father. Is my vocation a deprivation to someone else? Of course not.
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No, it can be a deprivation. One man is chosen to marry a beauty queen who is a good cook, healthy and optimistic, kind, charitable and gentle throughout the marriage. The second man marries someone who doesn’t know how to cook, who is pessimistic, unhappy, sickly and always complaining and nagging. Then the second man is deprived of what the first man has.
 
Tomdstone said:
No, it can be a deprivation. One man is chosen to marry a beauty queen who is a good cook, healthy and optimistic, kind, charitable and gentle throughout the marriage. The second man marries someone who doesn’t know how to cook, who is pessimistic, unhappy, sickly and always complaining and nagging. Then the second man is deprived of what the first man has.
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And so the Israelites stumble around the desert for decades, miss the Messiah for the most part, and then endure centuries of persecution, and you are bemoaning the fact that God chose them in this way?

Think about this please:
A vocation is a call. Marriage, for instance, is a vocation. God does not pick and choose a beauty queen for one man and a slug for another. That is a juvenile conception of what vocation is.

A call. A person is chosen in a unique way, and the person responds to this call in a unique way. God doesn’t force the details on us the way you are imagining.

And in regard to the Israelites, they were chosen in a unique way to bring salvation to all the world’s peoples, who are also chosen, but in their own unique way.

And they did not marry the beauty queen did they?
Do you see how your conception fails?
 
goout said:
And so the Israelites stumble around the desert for decades, miss the Messiah for the most part, and then endure centuries of persecution, and you are bemoaning the fact that God chose them in this way?

Think about this please:
A vocation is a call. Marriage, for instance, is a vocation. God does not pick and choose a beauty queen for one man and a slug for another. That is a juvenile conception of what vocation is.

A call. A person is chosen in a unique way, and the person responds to this call in a unique way. God doesn’t force the details on us the way you are imagining.

And in regard to the Israelites, they were chosen in a unique way to bring salvation to all the world’s peoples, who are also chosen, but in their own unique way.

And they did not marry the beauty queen did they?
Do you see how your conception fails?
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It is your analogy of marriage which is failing. Many are called but few are chosen.
 
I study history. There are some who will say those things are incompatible, and there some who say it isn’t.

But believing in a 6,000 year old earth and history are certainly not compatible.
 
goout said:
Not sure what you mean.
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goout said:
You;ll have to connect the dots there.
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You are equating being chosen with being called.
goout said:
By analogy, I am chosen (called) to be a husband and father. Is my vocation a deprivation to someone else?
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goout said:
A vocation is a call…
A call. A person is chosen in a unique way, and the person responds to this call in a unique way.
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However, being called is not equivalent to being chosen because Many are called but few are chosen.
 
If there are two men on the street, and I choose to give the first a twenty and the second a one, is the second man deprived of nineteen dollars?
 
Re: the original post

Actually, the Bible itself says there were civilizations before Abraham, so that shouldn’t be any sort of surprise or problem. How the heck could Abraham’s family have moved from the city of Ur, to the city of Haran, if there weren’t any cities yet?

Heck, the Bible lists at least ten cities before we get to Abraham, and a lot of countries too. And Abraham and Lot are nomads, but they find all sorts of cities already existing in the land where they move. Genesis is continually talking about them going to this city and that city. (Probably to bring the sheep and goats to market.)

The whole point of Abraham’s move from Haran is that he was raised as a citydweller, and only moved out of his urban setting and became a nomad because God called him to do so.

I don’t think your buddy has actually read the Bible, or even the Book of Genesis. Otherwise he would have known this.
 
Re: called vs. chosen:

God called (summoned) everyone to be holy. But He also chose out a people for Himself, and He dedicated them to Himself, just like He chose the priests and Levites of Israel to do special service to Himself. Not all of the people He called out of Egypt actually went; and not all of the people He called to Mount Sinai actually stayed His people.

But He still called all the Gentiles to find out about Him, and eventually He gave them enough knowledge for many of them to become Christians. Those Gentiles who obeyed Him were chosen to be His servants, just as He had said at Isaiah 66:21 –

"And some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites," says the LORD.

That is the original distinction between called and chosen.

Now, in the passage of Matthew that you are quoting, Jesus gives this saying His own twist. He says that the King invites large numbers of people to His Son’s wedding feast, but that most of His guests refuse to come and even kill his servants. He dispatches his armies to “kill those murderers and destroy their cities.” So he invites random people that his servants find on the roads.

But one of the beggars who comes refuses to get wedding garments before coming. (It was common for poor people or relatives to borrow wedding garments from those more prosperous, and often rural synagogues had a sort of common store of wedding garments for everybody to use. So a guest not wearing a wedding garment was a rude lack of preparedness, not a sign of poverty.) So the King throws out the rude guy, and the moral of the story is that “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

Jesus’ twist is that any of the Chosen who don’t answer the call will find out that they are not Chosen at all (or that being Chosen doesn’t benefit them). Responding to the call in the right way, the faithful way, is what makes one really Chosen.

The same thing is true for Christians. Becoming one of the Chosen through baptism will do us no good, unless we answer the King’s invitation in a positive way, a faithful way.

The other usage of this moral of the story is the parable of the vineyard workers, where those who come late get the same wage as those who come early.

Matthew 20:13-16 –
""Friend, I do you no wrong. Didn’t you agree with me to be paid a penny? Take what is yours and go your way. I will also give to the last ones even as to you.
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"“Or is it not lawful for me to do what I want? Is your eye evil, because I am good?”
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“So shall the last be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen.”
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Jesus’ twist is that some of the Chosen People will find out that they are no more and no less Chosen than the Gentiles who answered late. And if they do, they have no right to complain and no reason to. God can Choose whomever He feels like, whenever He feels like. And He feels like calling everyone. When the time is right, He makes that call louder.
 
Wesrock said:
If there are two men on the street, and I choose to give the first a twenty and the second a one, is the second man deprived of nineteen dollars?
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Why did you discriminate against the second man and give him only one dollar, whereas you favored the first man and gave him twenty dollars. Was it because of his race that you decided that he was Asian and had to pass a higher test than anyone else to receive the same amount? Americans discriminate against Asians in setting higher standards for them for college admission than any other race. It is done on the basis of their Asian race. Asians have to score higher on the SAT than anyone else to be admitted to the college or university of their choice. Is it right to discriminate against a man because he is Chinese or Japanese and give him only one dollar, whereas you give the man of another race twenty dollars?
 
Tomdstone said:
Why did you discriminate against the second man and give him only one dollar, whereas you favored the first man and gave him twenty dollars. Was it because of his race that you decided that he was Asian and had to pass a higher test than anyone else to receive the same amount? Americans discriminate against Asians in setting higher standards for them for college admission than any other race. It is done on the basis of their Asian race. Asians have to score higher on the SAT than anyone else to be admitted to the college or university of their choice. Is it right to discriminate against a man because he is Chinese or Japanese and give him only one dollar, whereas you give the man of another race twenty dollars?
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No. I’m sorry, but don’t do this. It’s a strawman and you’re avoiding the issue. Race has nothing to do with this.

I give one man a twenty. I give another man a one. Freely given. Has the second man been deprived of nineteen dollars? Has he been cheated?
 
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