Products of Creation Science

That's a pretty bad professor. I wondered why he didn't answer the student's question about "evolving from monkeys" with a sound no, too. Although both sides were pretty arrogant, there's a huge difference between induction and blind faith, as was said.

The other part was when the professor said "What is night if it isn't darkness?" This doesn't sound like a professor to me. Besides being wrong, it also smacks of biblical language.

What bothers me is that stories like this serve two purposes to two different groups: to believers it's a way for them to feel comfortable that SOMEHOW science and faith can exist on top of each other, and for non-believers it's a way to say "Let's be apathetic and agnostic because no one knows!"

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Originally Posted by killerpineapple

These issues don't really affect my faith because I'm more focused on the getting-into-heaven thing. To me that takes precedence over whether or not the Old Testament is 100% factual."

Standard modern Christian argument.

If the Old Testament is not true, then Christianity loses all validity. You'll have to try better than that.

Originally Posted by Grail

I personally believe that even though they were completely uptight pricks, the gods of Greek mythology were pretty fucking simple.

So was the original Yahweh of the Jews. He was pretty damn human. It wasn't until the Prophets section of the Hebrew Bible that Yahweh God who cast plagues on people he thought might be worshiping other gods became "the Lord" who loves His people.

For the record.

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Originally Posted by niki

Jesus' sayings very clearly invalidate numerous things from the Old Testament, though. There again, it's more complex than that in both ways.

Jesus was most likely a Pharisee with major influence from the Essene sect. When we look at him from a non-Christian perspective, he never specifically went against the Law, but was a left-winger who struggled to fight against the status quo. (i.e. the Sadducees and the more right-wing Pharisees).

Still, I wasn't arguing about that, exactly, but the Christian interpretation. Anyone can read Jesus as a Jewish commentator in line with the other prophets; to convince people that he was the Messiah that had been predicted (not to mention warping other verses in the Old Testament to make him appear godly), it is necessary to accept the Old Testament as fact.

While I am all for reading the Old Testament (and the New Testament, for the record) with a figurative outlook, I'd question any Christian about which verses they choose to be figurative and which literal.

Case in point: Jews since before Jesus read the verse that predicts that the Messiah will hail from Bethlehem as meaning that he will be descended from King David (who was born there); the Christians created this entire story based on how a couple from Nazareth (Joseph and Mary) were somehow in Bethlehem when Mary gave birth. Clearly, they took the Old Testament a little more literally than the Jews, at that point.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Sassafrass

What does church have to do with what you believe? It's just a big building where a certain type of believer congregates to worship. Apparently, God hears you better if you're all praying at once in the same place?

Which seems a little weird to me.

If you want to worship your lord, you shouldn't need a building and an organization to do it.

You can commune with god (and I sincerely believe this of any religion) anywhere you go, no matter your company. At least that's what they say about god. And it's the nicest thing I can think of when it comes to a deity. I would love it if everyone for their own path to god, and found it without the "help" from a church or organization.

It is important to point out before anything else that, if you are a (sigh) "True Believer", it's nice to find places to congregate and pray together. Even if God hears no matter what, merely for the sake of the "saved" praying together has its benefits.

More technically, although you seem to have been speaking broadly, I know that the Church isn't exactly extra-biblical. After the Gospels, the New Testament is wrought with the history of the Church, or merely references.

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