Hello
For some reason my post and your response never appeared in my digest
mail. After some digging from the tipsmeister, I received confirmation that
the post did appear, and there were two responses to it.
For whatever it's worth, I felt compelled to respond. Since you did so publically, I
will do the
same. I apologize for misusing the list, and you can delete as you see fit. I
will agree to drop the subject unless we wish to discuss using psychology to
understand the religious individual, community, and beliefs therein.
> James Guinee wrote:
>
> > One day I’d be curious to hear from the atheists on their personal theories
> > of how everything came to be. If not God, then what?
>
> It must be Monday.
Meaning what? I like to know what people think, regardless of whether they
believe what I believe or not.
> As an atheist, I don't know what!
Good of you to admit that.
>But, I'm not willing to make up an answer or,
> worse yet, be content with a fable that I happened to hear because I was born in a
> society where it exists.
I wonder why these biblical simpletons made this stuff up. You would think
they would have made it a lot more logical, especially all that sin stuff.
If you're gonna make stuff up, I say make it easy on us. Let up on those
restrictions, by crackey
> On the other hand, there would seem to be more evidence for the Big Bang than the
> Big Shazam.
Depends on what you look at
> > By the way, did you know that in the book of Isaiah he describes God as
> > sitting above the circle that is the earth? Can you imagine this religious nut
> > teaching something like that? He claimed his knowledge came from God.
> > Now we all know that in 500BC the world was flat...
>
> Circle flat. Sphere not flat.
I wouldn't know what it says in the original Hebrew.
Even if the word is "circle" does not automatically suggest the
writer was dumb enough to believe a flat circle. That would suggest
the earth was completely flat, without any depth to it, and even this guy
would've known the oceans and mountains clearly violate the concept of
flatness.
Why would he mean a flat circle when he clearly could see for himself this
was not true?
> For a discussion of this and other tract-crap, check out this link:
If you disbelieve something, fine. I don't understand your need to be pedantic
about it.
> http://www.skepticfriends.org/dawnflatearth.asp
Sigh. No Christian advocates a strict literal interpretation of the bible. That
doesn't make any sense. There are clearly lots of examples where a
teaching (e.g., parables) uses not literal but figurative language.
No one in mainstream Christendom advocates a simpleton's approach of
"take it exactly as it is in all verses."
Ex: Jesus said if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Met any
mutilated Christians lately?
> I have reproduced the section relevant to Isaiah's vision here.
See above.
Didn't find Job in the "tract-crap," by the way
> As for relevance to teaching, students often argue that science can't be applied to
> humans as readily as it can to other creatures.
Do you disagree?
Or do you view humans as no more complex than rats?
> Not simply because humans are more
> complex, but because the complexity ultimately comes from the Creator--so we better
> turn to His word (i.e., the Bible) for knowledge. As this example illustrates,
> they typically don't know what it actually says. (Can anyone find, "Spare the rod,
> spoil the child?" Translations of the Bible from last week don't count.)
You had me then you lost me.
Do most Christians teach that we should read the bible and know
what God says in order to better understand human behavior? Yes.
Do I agree? Yes.
Does that mean this is done consistently and cogently? No, and your
example is a good one.
Corporal punishment is supported by *some* biblical verses, and yet the
majority of verses dealing with discipline talk about instruction, kindness,
love. SO, you could argue any parent whose primary method of discipline is
"beating the devil out of him" may be adhering to the letter and violating the
s(S)pirit.
Jim
I don't expect to make much of an impact, but I at least feel the necessity of
clarifying at times what seems to be thought of as the consensus in
Christendom, or religion, in general.
C.S. Lewis, perhaps the greatest Christian thelogian of the 20th century,
welcomed the advances of science, as should all Christians. If nothing else,
not all truths are in the bible, and science has clearly revealed many things
that we would not have known otherwise, or might have misinterpreted
(heliocentrism) through scripture.
Curiously the advances of science will likely cause atheists to say "See,
God didn't do this, physics did" while the theistic ones will say "Wow, God is
even more brilliant that we imagined."
************************************************************************
Jim Guinee, Ph.D.
Director of Training & Adjunct Professor
President, Arkansas College Counselor Association
University of Central Arkansas Counseling Center
313 Bernard Hall Conway, AR 72035 USA
(501) 450-3138 (office) (501) 450-3248 (fax)
"Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its
essence, to accomodate it to the prejudices of the world."
-- William Hazlitt
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