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SecretMethod70 · 10-01-2004, 11:08 AM

It seems, perhaps, adysav, that you are misinformed. You're letting your thoughts regarding religion be shaped by the proclaimed followers of the religion as opposed to what the religion actually says about itself. For example, there's the debate over how Christians could claim to know how long a day was when the earth came into being. This is a fair question, but the problem with it lies in the fact that many Christians DON'T claim to know that, and even less leaders of faith do. That's right - if you compare clergy and their church leaders side by side, many times church leaders are MORE likely to accept evolution and big bang (guided by God of course) than the clergy themselves. Of course, even more accept it than it seems because many people are misguided by the wording of the question. To many people, saying simply "yes" to " do you believe in evolution" is tantamount to saying they believe God had no part in creation, so they say no when, in fact, they DO believe in evolution but do not believe that God had no part in it.

The Bible is not and was not intended to be a history book. Very few Christians read it as such. So, debating over whether or not it's proper to "believe" in the bible using arguments based on its literal interpretation and use as a source of historical information as opposed to strictly spiritual information is simply misguided at best.

As a side note, the poetry that we attribute to "Homer" was passed on - accurately, with the exception of a few meaningless word changes - through nearly 1000 years of Greek history in which the Greeks were simply incapable of writing it down. They had no written language; no alphabet whatsoever. Yet, Homer survived, intact, over nearly 1000 years because of its poetic nature. Likewise, the same person who theorized and then later proved how this happened made the very same conjecture after analysis of the Bible. The point being that, even if I were not pointing out that the Bible was never intended to be a literal history, it is entirely feasable that it was passed down over such great lengths of time with little variation to its contents.

10-01-2004, 11:08 AM	#125 (permalink)
SecretMethod70 Human Administrator Location: Chicago	It seems, perhaps, adysav, that you are misinformed. You're letting your thoughts regarding religion be shaped by the proclaimed followers of the religion as opposed to what the religion actually says about itself. For example, there's the debate over how Christians could claim to know how long a day was when the earth came into being. This is a fair question, but the problem with it lies in the fact that many Christians DON'T claim to know that, and even less leaders of faith do. That's right - if you compare clergy and their church leaders side by side, many times church leaders are MORE likely to accept evolution and big bang (guided by God of course) than the clergy themselves. Of course, even more accept it than it seems because many people are misguided by the wording of the question. To many people, saying simply "yes" to " do you believe in evolution" is tantamount to saying they believe God had no part in creation, so they say no when, in fact, they DO believe in evolution but do not believe that God had no part in it. The Bible is not and was not intended to be a history book. Very few Christians read it as such. So, debating over whether or not it's proper to "believe" in the bible using arguments based on its literal interpretation and use as a source of historical information as opposed to strictly spiritual information is simply misguided at best. As a side note, the poetry that we attribute to "Homer" was passed on - accurately, with the exception of a few meaningless word changes - through nearly 1000 years of Greek history in which the Greeks were simply incapable of writing it down. They had no written language; no alphabet whatsoever. Yet, Homer survived, intact, over nearly 1000 years because of its poetic nature. Likewise, the same person who theorized and then later proved how this happened made the very same conjecture after analysis of the Bible. The point being that, even if I were not pointing out that the Bible was never intended to be a literal history, it is entirely feasable that it was passed down over such great lengths of time with little variation to its contents. __________________ Le temps détruit tout "Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling