• Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.

  • CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.

dr. dino's point of view

Status
Not open for further replies.

archaeologist

Well-Known Member
Jun 16, 2007
1,051
23
✟23,813.00
Faith
Non-Denom
Marital Status
Private
No, it is not that simple. In human communication we normally take for granted that people say what they mean and mean what they say unless we have reason to believe otherwise. Without that axiom, communication would be impossible

and thatis why your are wrong so often. none of you were there at the time of their living so you assume based upon your own limited research and fail to allow other options to be a part of what these peopel say.

until you can provide credible proof thatis whatthese people believed, you are just reading into their words, what you want them to believe.

find credible proof.
 
Upvote 0

gluadys

Legend
Mar 2, 2004
12,958
682
Toronto
✟39,020.00
Faith
Protestant
Politics
CA-NDP

No, you do not have to provide a reason or evidence that people mean/believe what they say. That is the starting point of all communication. It is a given that people mean/believe what they say.

So, when you decide that they don't, you need a reason to doubt them.

Maybe they are joking or teasing. Maybe they are being ironic or sarcastic. Maybe they are being manipulative and deceitful.

In many cases, especially when people are joking or being sarcastic, there are signs in the way things are worded or in a tone of voice, or in factual circumstances, that people do not mean what they say. When someone stares out the window at the pouring rain and says "What a beautiful day for a picnic!" we know enough not to accept that as a serious statement.

But without such signs, we normally expect people to mean/believe what they say unless we suspect deceit. But deceit needs a motive. Generally speaking, people do not deceive unless there is some benefit in it for them.

So alleging deceit requires evidence of a motive or belief in how the deceit will benefit the speaker.

This is the evidence you must provide to show that there is credibility in thinking the Church Fathers did not believe straightforwardly in what they were writing.

1. How could we know they believed differently?
2. Why would they express themselves geocentrically if they did not believe geocentrism?
3. What would be their motive in keeping their readers in the dark about the actual structure of the universe?

Unless these questions can be answered, the default position is that they communicated what they believed to be accurate fact.
 
Upvote 0

archaeologist

Well-Known Member
Jun 16, 2007
1,051
23
✟23,813.00
Faith
Non-Denom
Marital Status
Private
It is a given that people mean/believe what they say.

that idea is foolish for it opens one up to all sorts of misleading information and they pass that misinformation on to others. one has to be cautious and make sure the other person is using the words as one perceives.

ball is still in yor court
 
Upvote 0

Rudolph Hucker

Senior Member
Jun 26, 2007
1,540
332
Canberra ACT
✟26,803.00
Country
Australia
Gender
Male
Faith
Anglican
Marital Status
Married
Politics
UK-Conservative
that idea is foolish for it opens one up to all sorts of misleading information and they pass that misinformation on to others. one has to be cautious and make sure the other person is using the words as one perceives.

ball is still in yor court
Nonsense. You have postulated that the church(es) did not hold the view that the sun orbited the earth. Please show us how you came to believe this.

If this were not so, why was the reaction to this 16th century scientific revelation so similar to the more modern reaction to the 19th century scientific revelation of evolution?
 
Upvote 0

gluadys

Legend
Mar 2, 2004
12,958
682
Toronto
✟39,020.00
Faith
Protestant
Politics
CA-NDP
that idea is foolish for it opens one up to all sorts of misleading information and they pass that misinformation on to others. one has to be cautious and make sure the other person is using the words as one perceives.

ball is still in yor court

Of course one has to be cautious. That is why I said "unless we have a reason to think otherwise".

But we could not function if we always assumed that we must verify that someone believes what they say before we act on it.

When the sportscast says Team X won the game, we don't stop to ask if the reporter believes what he is saying. We assume he does unless we hear a different report that gives a different result.

If we find our child crying and moaning and saying "I don't feel well" we assume that she is telling the truth and prepare to excuse her from going to school, unless we notice that it is exam day for a subject she does not do well in.

We are always cautious with a sales pitch, because we know the other party will make money on the deal, so we know there is a motivation to mislead.

In every instance where we get suspicious, it is for a reason.

So we need a reason to be suspicious of the sincerity of the Church Fathers. If we have no reason to doubt their sincerity, that is sufficient grounds for thinking they meant what they said and said what they did because they assumed the accuracy of geocentrism.

So, give me a reason to doubt their sincerity.
 
Upvote 0

Rudolph Hucker

Senior Member
Jun 26, 2007
1,540
332
Canberra ACT
✟26,803.00
Country
Australia
Gender
Male
Faith
Anglican
Marital Status
Married
Politics
UK-Conservative
NO! it just means you refuse to provide proof to back your claims and there is no point in continuing the discussion.
Not quite right Archie: many, including myself, have suggested that you show evidence of the church(es) believeing that the sun orbited the earth before the 1540's.

That you have failed is answer enough.
 
Upvote 0

theFijian

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Oct 30, 2003
8,898
476
West of Scotland
Visit site
✟86,155.00
Faith
Calvinist
Marital Status
Married
archaeologist said:
NO! it just means you refuse to provide proof to back your claims and there is no point in continuing the discussion.
You mean like proof that Jerome was a liar? Yes until you provide proof for your claims you really shouldn't take part in the discussion
 
Upvote 0

KEPLER

Crux sola est nostra theologia
Mar 23, 2005
3,513
223
3rd Rock from the Sun
✟27,398.00
Faith
Lutheran
Marital Status
Married
that idea is foolish for it opens one up to all sorts of misleading information and they pass that misinformation on to others. one has to be cautious and make sure the other person is using the words as one perceives.

ball is still in yor court
Stanley Fish? Phone call for Stanley Fish!
 
Upvote 0

busterdog

Senior Veteran
Jun 20, 2006
3,359
183
Visit site
✟26,929.00
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Married
Heliocentrism was known in many cultures prior to the time of Jesus.

So, why do we arbitrarily yoke the BIble to Ptolemy?

Why should I care what St. Jerome thinks? The Church father had many things wrong.

The Bible itself has almost nothing to say about the subject except to say the sun rises in one place, sets in another and appears in the place where it rose in the first place. Is that cosmology? No. It is tendentious hermeneutics.
 
Upvote 0

gluadys

Legend
Mar 2, 2004
12,958
682
Toronto
✟39,020.00
Faith
Protestant
Politics
CA-NDP
Heliocentrism was known in many cultures prior to the time of Jesus.

So what? It was not widely known in the Christian culture of Western Europe and the few who were aware of ancient Greek heliocentrism followed Aristotle in thinking it foolish.

So, why do we arbitrarily yoke the BIble to Ptolemy?

Because the Church did. The Church saw Ptolemy's system as representative of the biblical witness. And even those who broke with Ptolemy did not break with geocentrism.

The Bible itself has almost nothing to say about the subject except to say the sun rises in one place, sets in another and appears in the place where it rose in the first place. Is that cosmology? No. It is tendentious hermeneutics.

It has even less to say on the age of the earth and is even more ambiguous in terms of whether what it says is to be understood literally.

So we get back to the inconsistency of the YEC hermeneutic. Why the blithe willingness to overlook the geocentrism of the bible, considered literal truth for 1500 years, yet staunch refusal to treat in a similar way the timing of creation despite the fact that non-literal interpretations go back to the Church Fathers and even earlier in rabbinic writings?

To me, such a hermeneutic simply does not make any rational sense. I can't use it to guide my understanding of scripture in any meaningful way.
 
Upvote 0

busterdog

Senior Veteran
Jun 20, 2006
3,359
183
Visit site
✟26,929.00
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Married
Well, I guess that's that.

Summary of ancient heliocentrist viewpoints:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliocentrism

Galileo was incarcerated for his belief. Does that suggest that the Church authorities of his day were being Biblical? Obviously the Church had made an ENORMOUS botch of the Biblical theology of the day (assuming the Bible was even read, which largely was forbidden anyway).

Yet they are supposed to speak for the Bible when it suits the TE perspective?

Everyone understands the geocentrism argument. But how is it supposed to be convincing in this form?
 
Upvote 0

Assyrian

Basically pulling an Obama (Thanks Calminian!)
Mar 31, 2006
14,868
991
Wales
✟42,286.00
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Married
Ad Hom. The church had the authority to incarcerate Galileo because it was both a religious and secular authority. The is was a serious mistake, but I don't think American Christians should suggest a church's theology and exegesis be judged solely on the basis of their political mistakes...

But the Catholic church in the time of Galileo was not only looking at their own understanding of these scriptures. They also realise that the church fathers, men of God from long before the church became the political and civil institution you dislike here, men who stood for God in the face of persecution from pagan Rome, these church fathers read the geocentric passages the very same way, not one of them raised a question about other interpretations.


(assuming the Bible was even read, which largely was forbidden anyway).
It was only the translation into the vernacular that was forbidden. Any scholar worth his salt could and did read the scriptures in Latin.

Yet they are supposed to speak for the Bible when it suits the TE perspective?
They show what an unbiased literal interpretation of these passages say.

Everyone understands the geocentrism argument. But how is it supposed to be convincing in this form?[/quote]They also show how the literal interpretation can be wrong and that when science shows a literal interpretation to be wrong, we need to look for other ways to read these passages.
 
Upvote 0
Status
Not open for further replies.