Do you believe Jesus is literally a gate, or do you think it was a metaphor?
Believing what Moses wrote does not entail believing it was meant literally.
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"For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me." - John 5:46
"For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day." - Exodus 20:11
Do you believe that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, before He became incarnate? If so, do you believe that which Moses has written about Him?
My friend, I don't need to debate with you. I have great respect for science, except when its conclusions contradict that which Christ has already revealed.
My friend, I don't need to debate with you. I have great respect for science, except when its conclusions contradict that which Christ has already revealed.
"For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me." - John 5:46
"For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day." - Exodus 20:11
Do you believe that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, before He became incarnate? If so, do you believe that which Moses has written about Him?
My friend, I don't need to debate with you. I have great respect for science, except when its conclusions contradict that which Christ has already revealed.
*timidly sneaks up*
B-b-bump?
Got another one for Evidence vs ObservationLets try another angle. Why does it matter if there is direct human observation of the events or not? Humans are fallible. Which would you regard as being more accurate at indicating truth:
Bob's bloody fingerprints on the bloody handle of the knife still stuck in the corpse.
Or Joe's eyewitness testimony that Bob never touched the knife.
Hmmm. I know which one I'd go with. Evidence > mere observation.
Too late. Reality dictates what I believe.This is the last thread that I want to start for Great Lent. I believe that our understanding of Genesis is the bedrock for our understanding of the faith. Our Lord stated that unless you believe Moses, you will not believe in Him. I want you to please consider the implications of compromising your faith to appease secular science.
As long as theology doesn't make claims about the world, there isn't a problem.One must understand that natural science and Orthodox theology follow two radically different epistemologies. Theology seeks to understand that which has been revealed in the Scripture. Natural science seeks to find natural explanations for what we observe in the natural world.
Science and Religion: Non-Overlapping Magisteria
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html
How about when it does both (like evolution). It ties together all of biology, is used in the design of pharmaceuticals, in agriculture, phylogenetics, the creation of enzymes, along with others I don't feel like listing. sourceAs the holy fathers have taught us, we should appreciate science when it benefits mankind, but whenever science reaches conclusions which contradict what the Church has already revealed, we are not to follow it.
Genesis and Early Man
I thought you just said that science and theology don't overlapThe Orthodox Patristic Understanding http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/phronema/evolution_frseraphim_kalomiros.aspx
Then explain forensics to me (by the way, our knowledge of DNA comes from the understanding of evolution).Since the scientific method is limited to what we are able to observe in the present, Darwin's theory is not even good science. It is speculation of prehistory, contradicting what Christ has already revealed to us.
*youtube snip*
I'm not Christian, but I'll answer anywaysHere are some important questions every Orthodox Christian should ask:
Demonstrate that souls exist.If we are the descendants of pre-human forms, did H. erectus and H. Neandertal have souls?
Is the soul something which evolved over time?
We are still fully ape, just as we are still fully mammal, fully animal, fully vertebrate, and fully eukaryote.Is there anything inherent to the purported fossil ancestors themselves which would suggest that they were not fully ape or fully human?
[/SIZE]Reflections on Human Origins
I somehow expected more, for example "Consider, first, that because
I don't see why not, we are still apes.If we are evolved apes, is it an ape that died on the cross?
There was death in your Eden. They ate fruit, which shows they have metabolism and need energy. Plants are just as alive as animals. Not that I think it's anything more than mythology.Why do we believe that Christ died to save us from death if death entered the world before the sin of Adam?
I don't think our bodies are corrupt.If Christ's death was to save our souls and our bodies, when did our bodies become corrupt under an evolutionary perspective?
I don't see a priest about a engine trouble, I'm not going to see a priest to learn about science.An Interview with Father Damascene on Evolution
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/enarticles/060222155510
Science can deal with prehistory. In fact, we can literally see into the past. Granted, those things have to be light years away, but it is still possible. For example SN 1987A.Why do you believe natural science's explanations of prehistory, when prehistory is beyond the realm of science? Please do not accuse me of being an ignorant man for understanding that science cannot reach beyond science to discredit Orthodox Tradition.
For what?May God have mercy upon us.
True, though I was specifically trying to find out if Spyridon accepts the validity of indirect observation in other cases. It looks like I'm invisible to the one I challenged, thoughLets try another angle. Why does it matter if there is direct human observation of the events or not? Humans are fallible. Which would you regard as being more accurate at indicating truth:
Bob's bloody fingerprints on the bloody handle of the knife still stuck in the corpse.
Or Joe's eyewitness testimony that Bob never touched the knife.
Hmmm. I know which one I'd go with. Evidence > mere observation.
Since the scientific method is limited to what we are able to observe in the present, Darwin's theory is not even good science. It is speculation of prehistory, contradicting what Christ has already revealed to us.
But when it does both?As the holy fathers have taught us, we should appreciate science when it benefits mankind, but whenever science reaches conclusions which contradict what the Church has already revealed, we are not to follow it.
Why would you ned to ask for mercy?May God have mercy upon us.
Oh dear.As you should already know, since no humans were present to witness the events themselves, all we can do is piece together the remnants of what occurred, using our presuppositions to interpret them. Your presuppositions in understanding prehistory aren't any more or less valid than my own.
If there is never a present time,then we only have the past.There is no evidence of macroevolution in the past. You can appeal to the future, but then, of course, empirical science gets left behind and it's the same old "just-so" stories that evolutionists love to dream about.I've spent the better part of twenty years now practising the science of chemistry, and yet I have never once observed an atom in the present, nor even a molecule comprised of tens of thousands of atoms. Am I likewise doing something which is "not even good science"? By your interpretation, that would seem to be the case, and yet experiment after experiment succeeds without ever once invoking a deity. It would seem that good science and good Christianity are not related.
I am constantly forced to speculate on the unobservable world of the atomic and molecular scale, does this contradict what Christ has already revealed to us about the nature of matter? What was it that Christ revealed about the nature of matter, again..?
There is no evidence of macroevolution in the past.
If there is never a present time,then we only have the past.There is no evidence of macroevolution in the past. You can appeal to the future, but then, of course, empirical science gets left behind and it's the same old "just-so" stories that evolutionists love to dream about.
Speciation listIf there is never a present time,then we only have the past.There is no evidence of macroevolution in the past. You can appeal to the future, but then, of course, empirical science gets left behind and it's the same old "just-so" stories that evolutionists love to dream about.
Why do you accept science when its conclusions and theories do not contradict Christ? You can discard an entire body of scientific knowledge just because it contradicts a world view, yet accept an equally well founded and explored body when it does not. Why are you so inconsistent about your handling of science? Would you rather accept it all equally or deny it all equally?My friend, I don't need to debate with you. I have great respect for science, except when its conclusions contradict that which Christ has already revealed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-HiHNhKuJM
May God have mercy upon us.
And it's not possible at all that you can believe something without taking it literally? If I do not believe that the parables Jesus taught literally happened, does that make them devoid of their moral lessons? Perhaps the writer of genesis did not know the exact processes by which God created the universe (how could he have?) and instead created a nice story that is meant to show that: God is omnipotent, God is loving, We seperated ourselves from God on our own accord etc... that wasn't necessary literally true? Just because something isn't literally true doesn't mean it's also false. Truth can be found in metaphor as well.
There is no such thing as "secular" science. Science is Science regardless of the beliefs of those doing it. Science is not a thing that is right or wrong, science is a process, a set of logical rules through which one can deduce things about the natural world.
You hit the nail on the head. Orthodox Theology makes the unprovable assumption that what is written in scripture is true, and goes from there, Science makes no assumption, and instead uses observable reality to build up our knowledge base. You can believe Orthodox Theology all you want, that doesn't change reality.
Your holy fathers have deluded you for their own benefit and to line their pockets with money they have bilked from you. It's really that simple. You have been taught to believe what you are told, likely from a very young age and have developed an emotional dependency on that belief to the point that YOU ARE WILLING TO IGNORE REALITY in order to maintain it. You have been brainwashed.
What you assume Christ has already revealed to you. Lets get one thing straight, you don't know that anything in the bible is true. You believe it is on faith, but you don't know. You couldn't possibly KNOW anything about the origins of the bible for the same reason we'll probably never KNOW the origins of the universe. However, what science allows us to do is to create theories to explain how something MIGHT have happened or how something is LIKELY to have happened. We do this by looking at the evidence, formulating hypotheses about how this evidence came to be, and then using those hypotheses to make predictions about future behavior and discoveries. If the predictions come true, we have a theory like evolution which is still tentative but simply supported by the evidence we have.
Orthodox Theology allows for none of that, it demands that you believe unprovable or supportable claims and inevitably devolves into people bickering about which SUBJECTIVE INTERPRETATION of the scripture really means and everyone being convinced that their way is the only right ways. It's delusional to the point of insanity.
If humanity in it's current for does have a soul, why does it matter what our precursors had? H. erectus and Neandertal man are not H. Sapien. Why would it be so damaging to your faith to believe that God is capable of using or directing the natural forces he supposedly created to his own will, then imbued his creation with a soul?
In my experience with this debate, the soul is something endowed to man by God, evolution does not way in on the subject of a soul, so I don't see how the theory of evolution would contradict this belief.
Yes, H. erectus is a perfect example of a transitional fossil between our ape like anscestors and anatomically modern humans.
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If a man named Jesus was crucified 2000 years ago then he would have definately been a Homo Sapien, homo sapiens have been around for tens of thousands of years.
I was always under the impression that Christ died to save you from a spiritual death rather then a physical death. If Christ died to save you from literal death, why do ALL Christians still die? If you believe Christ died to save you from literal biological death, then you are clearly wrong because guess what, EVERYONE STILL DIES.
[quote[If Christ's death was to save our souls and our bodies, when did our bodies become corrupt under an evolutionary perspective?
you dont see the territory god covers, you try to figure out "how" something works not "why" it works, if you can give a non supernatural explanation of how matter is created, then please do, science will never answer the question of where all the matter in the universe came from, so people can logically conclude,if they want to that god did it,without science saying no it didnt,I've spent the better part of twenty years now practising the science of chemistry, and yet I have never once observed an atom in the present, nor even a molecule comprised of tens of thousands of atoms. Am I likewise doing something which is "not even good science"? By your interpretation, that would seem to be the case, and yet experiment after experiment succeeds without ever once invoking a deity. It would seem that good science and good Christianity are not related.
I am constantly forced to speculate on the unobservable world of the atomic and molecular scale, does this contradict what Christ has already revealed to us about the nature of matter? What was it that Christ revealed about the nature of matter, again..?
Logically conclude based on what? Not knowing how something happened does not validate a different conclusion that is equally unsupported. If you don't know how something happened, the valid conclusion to draw is that you don't know how something happened. Nothing more, nothing less.you dont see the territory god covers, you try to figure out "how" something works not "why" it works, if you can give a non supernatural explanation of how matter is created, then please do, science will never answer the question of where all the matter in the universe came from, so people can logically conclude,if they want to that god did it,without science saying no it didnt,
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