Demi, haven't you read any of the comments preceding this? We have discussed science vs the Bible at some length here. You might also look up a great thread I participated in many months ago called "Is Genesis scientific?"
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Demigod79 wrote
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Lily wrote
This is a literary account and not written by God. It reflects, I suppose, the mathematical understanding of the man/men who wrote it. Yaaawwwn!
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This is something that I have never understood. A particular section of the bible does not stand up to scientific scrutiny so you simply attribute it to the fallability of the human authors. What you don't seem to realize is that virtually no part of the bible stands up to scientific scrutiny. It should be very clear that the entire bible is the work of man. |
Yes. So? Is this supposed to be a revelation to me? (Pardon the pun.) And after all the gallons of cyber ink I have spilled? Of course, I think God guides history and men and so I find it no problem to accept the divine inspiration of the Bible.
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I think this nit-picking is what bothers me the most about modern-day Christians. Although I don't like evangelicals at least they have the guts to be more-or-less consistent in what they believe. Catholics and liberals on the other hand go all over the place, picking out what they like while rejecting what they don't like. God's laws my ass. What good are god's laws if you are just going to nit-pick them?
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:) Strawmen everywhere! I think some of this comes right out of your own background. You may think you have completely rejected your religious upbringing but I think you still conceive of the Bible as some sort of magic book. Evangelicals tend to read the scriptures more literally than is proper. Fundametalists really have a hard time accepting the historical development of the Bible. That is a real problem for Protestantism.
Catholics, on the other hand, have never worshipped the Bible but have always believed that it is one of the tools the Church has been given by God to transmit and teach the faith correctly and faithfully. Since the Church came into existence long before the Bible did, that should give you an indication of the priority.
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I have heard Lily and other Catholics saying that certain parts of the bible are historical, others are literal, others are only allegorical. And yet they have consistently failed to provide guidelines for deciding which is which.
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There is nothing mysterious about it. You likely acquired all the basic tools of literary analysis by the time you finished high school. So when a book starts "once upon a time" you should be alerted to the fact that a story is about to follow. Likewise, when you see words in the center of the page surrounded by large white margins, you probably have a poem in front of you (Ok, that is a gross definition but ...:rolleyes:)
Now, of course, it is true that there is a little more too it than that and the further back in time you go, the more likely you are to encounter less familiar genres. But, if you pick the Bible up, it ought to be possible to figure out the more obvious genres. That still leaves understanding the historical situation, the cultural practices etc. to be dealt with but that is inevitable.
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I guess it's based on whatever the prevailing concensus is at the time based on what people want to believe. Is this right Lily?
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Partly, I think. The part I cannot concede is that the decision was based on what the people
wanted to believe. But consensus was certainly part of the equation.
There were 4 properties or characteristics that a book had to have, in order to be included in the canon. 1). It had to be authoritatively asociated with an apostle; 2.) It had to teach true doctrine, 3) it had to be widely acknowledged (popular!) and it had to have been used in the liturgy (i.e. read aloud in worship). There were lots of books out there that exhibited one or two of these characteristics but the bar was set higher than that. There was a lot of backing and forthing over the validity of various books all during the opening centuries A.D. And, as you likely know, Luther rejected several books and kicked them out of the Protestant Bible.
Beyond all that history, your belief that the Bible does not stand up to scientific scrutiny is completely true but completely irrelevant. As a commenter on a blog I like wrote about this notion that we pick and choose what is real and what is allegorical to fit with the advance of science: "The Church Fathers certainly did not take the creation story literally so there is no basis to the idea that the Christian faith held to a literal Genesis until modern science made them change their story. One need look no further than St. Augustine in his "De Genesi ad Litteram" to discover that. St. Origen distinguished between the different senses of scripture whether literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical. Not only do adherents of scientism have to make all Christians into literalistic fundamentalists to prove their point, they have to rewrite history too."
This strikes me as a very perceptive summary of the case. Also, it is perfectly true that as we have learned more and more about history, culture, languages and approaches to studying them, our understanding of the Bible has evolved. If it were static, I suppose I would still be living at home with dear old dad waiting in vain for him to accumulate enough sheep and goats to tempt a husband into showing up ...
Edited to add comma, flesh out a sentence and add emphasis to a word. Nothing nefarious, Professor!