You seem to be equating faith with interpretation. But interpretational disputes take place all the time within the same religion and the same sect. That happens when you’re dealing with a document translated into several different languages over several centuries. A passage could mean one of 4 things or all of them at once. Two pastors with the same amount of authority disagree. Which of them is right?
As for disagreeing with one’s pastor…that can happen to, and will probably happen a lot more in the future. The average parishoner is more educated than they once were. They are able to read and study the bible (something that, once upon a time, only priests were able to do) and draw their own conclusions based on what they read.
Faith isn’t dependent on what you’re told. It’s dependent only on you and what you believe. Many Catholics disagree with several points of Catholic teaching; how does that read as a diminishing of faith? They still have their belief and love of God, and that isn’t going to change just because they point out that Gallileo was right.
Galileo was only partly right.
The RCC has recognized the part that he got right for nearly 300 years longer than period following one small group of judges saying he was wrong.
The RCC has formally recognized even the judicial errors in the trial where Galileo was condemned.
I know of no Christian group (aside from a few splinter groups such as run by Fred Phelps) where a pastor may determine dogma.
Groups that claim to have dogma tend to rely on councils to define it.
Groups that rely on personal interpretaion have no dogma.
No but let’s just say that I can see the black car from where I am
GargoyleWB, just because I disagree with Steven Harper on some issues does not make me a communist. It is possible to have disagreements while still remaining on the same side.
When you say “rejects”, does he claim that the dating methods give accurate answers but that the Earth is still only 6000 years old - in other words, the Omphalos argument - or does he claim that the dating methods are inaccurate?
If the latter, there are plenty of resources to refer him to…
No. I’m one of the most churchified people on this board, and I can’t tell you the number of knuckleheads in leadership in the church. Many of them are great people as people, and would give you the shirt off their backs, but people are complicated. Many of these same people just don’t understand that they don’t have the expertise to sound off on things like evolution or geopolitics, and given a pulpit (literally), some of them just can’t stop.
There’s no way to reasonably argue that Christians have automatically signed up to go along with anything said by anyone who has managed to get a few people to show up on Sunday mornings. I have a brain, and I intend to use it.
I mean this in the most non-sarcastic way: you seem to have a very skewed view of the authority of the Protestant pastor. It is actually a point of pride among many of them to say, “Don’t just believe me, read the Bible for yourself. Find out for yourself what’s in there.” I know that some of them actually mean it more than others, but there is a big attitude hold-over from the Reformation, very similar to the American attitude toward government intrusion, remaining from being born by violent revolution against an impersonal and controlling king.
Of course, if he is among those who hate and fear papists and who think of the Orthodox as just extreme papists without a pope, this won’t work, but you might point out that Theodosius Dobzhansky who examined Darwin’s theory in light of the genetic research of the Catholic priest, Gregor Mendel, to create the synthesis now known as neo-Darwinism was extremely devout.
I’m sure I’m not the only person who has picked a church by denomination, geographical convience, music that fits my preferences, who else attends there, and programming offered . . . and only later found out that the pastor’s stance on something like how literally the Bible should be interpreted is not the same as mine.
I didn’t stop attending the church in question. Afterall, the only thing that changed was the level of respect I had for the pastor. I would never have considered joining that church after I made that discovery but I didn’t want to give up the things that I liked just to listen to sermons from someone whose beliefs more closely matched mine.
For what its worth, I tend to interpret scripture more literally than many people attending churches in my denomination. But the reason I didn’t join the church is that I was only living in the area for two years–which would have been plenty of time to change memberships, except that I didn’t want to . . . If I haven’t been a member of a church I attend in the last decade, why start now?
So while I can understand why one might think it silly to attend a church where one expected to disagree with the preacher’s viewpoint on a regular basis, I find it easy to see why one might actually do so. If the preacher “Majors on the Majors” and doesn’t “Major on the Minors” minor differences of opionion with the pastor are not terribly important.
To clarify what Majors and Minors are in this instance: Belief that God created the heavens and the earth and man in his own image. Major.
Belief that God did this creation in six literal days six thousand years ago. Minor. Very Minor.
Belief that all should be baptized-Major.
Belief that all should be baptized by sprinkling vs. immersion, etc. Minor.
So, Jesus wasn’t, in fact, dead. There was no resurection and thus all claims to him being the son of god are false? I though Jesus’ coming back from the dead was a core tenant of the Christian faith.
Bah! I’d make a fine brain surgeon. I’ve got a band saw for the major stuff, a drill press with some forstner bits for the fine work, a screwdriver, and an ice-cream scoop. Use a battery and some wires to make him twitch. If there is no twitch use the ice-cream scoop to remove this unecessary bit. Once done, put the lid back on and seal with duct tape. Easy.
The argument that people having been declared dead only to be found alive after all as evidence that Jesis could have come back to life is a poor one. If it were a simple medical mistake then it’s no proof of a miracle or that the Son of God is any part of the event. Or perhaps those others, such as our high school football coach who had is death certificate framed and hanging on his office wall, were also gods.
Uzi, I was being a bit snarky and attacking the one part of your original post that seemed easiest to refute. You seemed to be claiming that someone who believed that “people came back from the dead” was a sign of credulity on the part of Greenback. I’m not trying to speak pro or con about Christ rising from the dead, simply pointing out that simply having a belief that a person has come back from the dead is not evidence that they lack reasoning ability.
I’ll confess, it is a somewhat unfair debating technique to imply that all your arguments must be false by showing that one part of them is demonstrably false. It can still be fun, though.
My comment was refering to Christ himself. If you believe he was well and truly dead after being severely beaten, tacked on a cross, and stabbed with a spear, then arose again a few days later none the worse for wear, then I question why you’d then have a problem with a 6000 year old earth. I’m not talking about people mistakenly pronounced dead when they really aren’t.
Don’t worry about it, I didn’t think this was the case. If everyone took every single point a person made and countered each one, posts would be endless. If I thought you were ignoring something relevant then I probably would have pointed it out.
The thing is, christians believe Christ was the son of God. We don’t have any evidence about what abilities a son of God has. There’s lots to evidence for the Earth being creat further back than 6000 years. There’s no evidence that suggests a son of God can’t come back from the dead, beyond Christ (if you believe that); that’s the only occurence of that situation, and he did come back. If you believe he was the son of God, and that he died, the logical assumption is that “a son of God is capable of coming back from the dead at least once”.
Of course, you have to believe his parentage first - but to debate whether there’s any evidence for God is to start a whole new debate, so I won’t do that.
Honestly, Uzi, I have far less of a problem with Christ rising from the dead than I do with Lazarus rising from the dead. IIRC my John correctly, when Christ first comes to Lazarus’ grave he’s told by Lazarus’ sisters that the body had begun to rot pretty spectacularly. Christ is divine, and as such I don’t expect to make normal rules apply. Lazarus, on the other hand was human. I’m certainly not arguing that Christ wasn’t dead, and thus rose for completely scientific reasons. I was arguing what you said, not what you meant. Even though I had a pretty good idea what you had meant.
As for the reason I don’t accept a 6000 year old earth, while I do believe in Christ: Basically it comes down to having sufficient evidence that the one is not true. The other lacks evidence either way.
I’m not a fundamentalist. There are enough errors in the Bible that I believe that while it is divinely inspired, it’s not infallible. (Pi does not equal three, dammit.) The reason this is important when looking at the Bible, in my mind, is that any conception of the true history of the universe had to be filtered through the understanding of a stone age culture. With that as a starting point, I find that Genesis is a reasonably accurate description of what we know of the universe: It wasn’t created whole and perfect in one act, but in a process. And one that took time.
That’s actually kind of how I’m thinking about Genesis, but WHERE does the pi thing come from?
Ah, Google has my answer. I had never heard of that teapot tempest. No, pi isn’t three. I think I’m back to something like “it’s right on the things that really matter.” And no, the exact process of creation doesn’t really matter. You’re here either way. Man, the time spent on this Bible geekery could be so much better applied to, well, thousands of things. Go pick up trash in a vacant lot and you’d probably do more for God. Sheeesh.
Thanks for the even-keeled responses. I confess I have a bit of a “Little House on the Prairie” view of church, in that the pastor is there to be the scriptural authority for the uncertain or less theologically-educated flock.
