Evolutionism vs creationism

[fazisi]

I feel the temptation to make a Bible study thread... but something tells me it would quickly degrade into a brutal flame war.

[JellySlayer]

I feel the temptation to make a Bible study thread... but something tells me it would quickly degrade into a brutal flame war.

I'm not sure why you'd think so. This forum is very polite and civil. I don't know if we could have a flame war here if we tried.

[Silfir]

JellySlayer is a stupid n00b faggot!

[Theym]

NO!!! He's -THE- JellySlayer!! He has intrinsic Jelly Slaying. Therefore, NOT a n00b.

[gut]

I'm staying away from any thread with the word 'study' in it.

[Dorten]

@ JellySlayer:

I'll skip the whole "Dorten is moral and God is not" thing, since, I'm not sure how to explain my point to you, and you do not understand it (yet). Maybe later I'll come up with exact wording.

As a follow-up to this: What other traditions did you look in to before choosing Christianity? Did you rule out Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. for moral reasons?

Hinduism - no. Islam, Buddhism - yes.

Works like this. I found the Bible to be immoral and untrue. If A is false, then A + B is false regardless of the truth value of B. The specific traditions of every possible denomination are irrelevant if the common element is faulty.

Again. You found JST+Bible to be immoral and untrue. Not the Bible itself. If A+B is false that does not imply, that B is false.

I'm sure you'd be happy to explain how the various genocides, murders, rapes, child sacrifices, etc. that I mentioned earlier are consistent with a loving God who wants the best for all of his children.

Come on, read the books. Learn. That's not an easy task to explain such a big part of orthodox theological learnings to you in a couple of forum posts. I can try, of course, but I doubt that I will convince you.

Let me just make sure that I understand what you're saying here. You are saying that whatever God does, whatever God says, is, by definition, moral?

Well, yes, actually.
Take Abraham, for example. He had enough faith to believe, that whatever God says is good, regardless of how evil it seems to be. And he was right after all.

[JellySlayer]

Again. You found JST+Bible to be immoral and untrue. Not the Bible itself. If A+B is false that does not imply, that B is false.

No, I found the Bible is immoral and untrue. I've illustrated this before, but I'll elaborate for your benefit:

We can judge the truth of the Bible directly by looking at the claims that it makes about things that are testable. If the Bible makes a claim about, say, there being a global flood, and we can determine, with a fairly high precision, that no such flood could have happened, then that makes the Bible less reliable. If we can look at a very large number of claims and find that there is no evidence for any of them (eg. lack of historical evidence for virtually any of the first six books of the Bible; lack of historical evidence for Jesus himself); look at a significant number of prophetic claims that have failed (eg. Jesus' return within the lifetime of his disciples); trace the nature and influences of the writers of the various texts (see: "A History of God"; "Who Wrote the Bible"; "Who Wrote the New Testament"; "Misquoting Jesus"), then regardless of our tradition, we can assert that two other major claims by the Bible are false, namely that it is infallable, and that it was written by perfect, omniscient the creator of the Universe. If you aren't willing to go that far, you can certainly assert that the Bible is so unreliable about claims that we can test, that we have no reason to believe any of the claims that it makes that we can't.

As for morality, well, the Bible sets such low standards that it's hard to know where to begin. The Bible condones murder, slavery, rape, genocide, child sacrifice, wars of aggression, lying, thieving, thought crimes... the list goes on. It encourages its followers to support dictators and tyrants. It encourages the subjugation of women. It encourages the persecution of homosexuals. It advocates violence against people of other faiths. It completely undermines the idea personal responsibility for our own actions. It encourages people to treat their own lives as worthless and depraved. It encourages all kinds of evil under the notion that any suffering now is tolerable in exchange for a better afterlife. It says that it is okay if an innocent person is punished in the place of a guilty one. It is to the credit of Christians that they recognize the inherent evil of these doctrines and generally don't to practice any of them anymore (with a few exceptions). But they do so to a significant extent simply by ignoring or whitewashing huge portions of the text.

[edit]On a general level, I'll add one thing about the absurdity of this proposition that you make. Christianity has on the order of 3-4000 denominations. Now, were I to spend one Sunday per week investigating the individual claims of each faith tradition, then I'd be over eighty before I'd have finished them all, and could not, by any reasonable measure, have done the due diligence you seem to feel is required. And that still assumes that Christianity itself is correct. If it turns out Islam is correct, then I'd have been wasting all of my time investigating Christian traditions and still be wrong. Clearly, the only rational approach is to investigate the claims common to all (or at least most) Christian denominations, and evaluate those claims directly. This can be done most easily simply be looking at the Bible itself, which is the foundation for all Christian traditions.

Come on, read the books. Learn. That's not an easy task to explain such a big part of orthodox theological learnings to you in a couple of forum posts. I can try, of course, but I doubt that I will convince you.

I don't see it as being terribly promising if you need to reference a dozen books to explain the (im)morality or murder, rape, or genocide, but suit yourself.

Well, yes, actually.

Are you familiar with Euthyphro's dilemma?

[edit]

Hinduism - no. Islam, Buddhism - yes.

On what grounds did you reject Islam and Buddhism? Did you investigate all of the major philosophical schools within each religion and reject those individually?

[Silfir]

we can assert that two other major claims by the Bible are false, namely that it is infallable, and that it was written by perfect, omniscient the creator of the Universe.

And this is somehow news?

[JellySlayer]

And this is somehow news?

You obviously haven't met that many fundamentalists.

[tapi]

The bible is inerrant.

But not in the way the idolatry of fundamentalism and many protestant sects understand it.

Here's the word from ret. Archbishop Lazar of Ottawa, abbot of the Canadian Orthodox monastery:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RBjkHBEfqE