Hey Goodthief,

“I just can’t attach to empathy the kind of significance you do."

And I’m happy that you don't since in reality for you to now think the way I do would mean I may have dented your faith and that was never my intention. Hopefully though in conceding we may enjoy similar morals you might be a little less dismissive of those who profess a different narrative for explaining those morals. Indeed be a little more empathetic if you like :).

“I asked why humanity should have peace and harmony. You answer, “Because we are humans and we think we deserve it.” That’s the problem. I’m not concerned with what we think we deserve, but with what is right.”

I would have thought peace and harmony for the human race was the ‘right’ thing to wish for. (Sorry, being cheeky again)

“Still, I think we’ve exhausted the topic. Good doing business with you.”

And we have both managed it while keeping the big guns holstered so indeed it has been good. Thankyou.

Now if you could just block those ears one last time.

Hey runner,

“Of course God did not expect him to go through with it.”

Tsk, tsk.

While I don’t accept the authority of your ‘creator’, you certainly do. So how on earth can you justify claiming to know the mind of your God. I mean I personally would find that incredibly presumptuous, I can’t imagine what he would be thinking as we speak. I feel it might be okay to circumspectly assume something about God’s will but how could you state as fact what God was thinking at that precise moment he ordered Abraham to murder Isaac? Genesis gives no indication either way. After all God certainly repents from other instances of evil he planned to commit elsewhere in the bible.

A little repenting here from yourself might not go astray me-thinks.

csteelte,

You were a bit quick in your criticism of my interpretation of the story of Abraham.

When I said that Abraham believed God could raise the dead, this was not a just a ‘Christian’ interpretation, nor a modern, nor Western interpretation. And I didn’t make it up. It comes from the Bible (Hebrews ch. 11). And all of the Bible, New Testament and Old, was written by Jews, people that saw themselves as 100% Jewish.

However, I would thoroughly agree with you that we in the West are privileged to have been able to adopt it (the Scriptures).

When I consider that list of men above, all who thoroughly believed the Scripture, I think of what a different place the Western world might be without our having been profoundly influenced by its teaching and logic.

As for the question, should Galileo be on that list? By all means, definitely, he should be. For he also was a man of logic who believed the Scriptures from cover to cover. He even defended his position Scripturally before the Pope.

There is a common misconception which interprets the ‘Galileo Affair’ as a case of the church standing in the way of progress. However, scratch the surface of history a little and see what comes to light.

The scientific community itself was pretty slow (even slower than most of the church) to accept Galileo’s findings as they were so radical. The stoush that Galileo had with the Pope was more a personal clash of two dominant personalities. The church had no reason to hold to geocentrism, as this was Greek philosophy and had no real connection with the Bible.

Dan S,

You said: “You were a bit quick in your criticism of my interpretation of the story of Abraham.”

Sorry I don’t agree. The bottom line was not that the boy Isaac was saved from death but that his father was willing to murder him in the first place. This is where the story’s power is derived.

You said: “When I said that Abraham believed God could raise the dead, this was not a just a ‘Christian’ interpretation, nor a modern, nor Western interpretation. And I didn’t make it up. It comes from the Bible (Hebrews ch. 11). And all of the Bible, New Testament and Old, was written by Jews, people that saw themselves as 100% Jewish.”

Again I don’t agree. I only have a fairly basic grasp of biblical history but even I know the authorship of Hebrews is inconclusive. To quote the great biblical scholar Edgar Goodspeed writing in 1908...

“The letter as we have it is anonymous, and of its author little can be said. We cannot even be sure he was of Jewish blood. If he knew Hebrew at all, he preferred to use the Septuagint Greek version of the Jewish scriptures”

And

“the writer's Judaism is not actual and objective, but literary and academic, manifestly gained from the reading of the Septuagint Greek version of the Jewish scriptures, and his polished Greek style would be a strange vehicle for a message to Aramaic-speaking Jews or Christians of Jewish blood.”

Therefore I would say it is certainly modern with respect to Genesis, certainly christian, and has a good claim to being a western interpretation or at the very least a midrashic one.

I’ll stand by the criticism for now thank you.

As for Galileo, the church taking 360 years to admit it had wronged him is not what I would call speedy.

Dan I'm aware there are qualified scientists who are also creationists. To me science and creationism are mutually exclusive, and such people are fine examples of how humans can rationalise virtually anything.

Thier argument rests solely on the OT. Without this there would be no suggestion creationism took place. There is nothing else. No proof, no evidence, no inference from anything you care to look at.

The great minds you cite were creationists in spite of, not because of, their success in their respective fields. And how dare you mention Copernicus! The finest example of the church hobbling knowledge, which is what I had in mind the previous post.

In the view of science the theory evolution is as valid as that of gravity. If you're a creationist Dan just say so and I'll leave the thread. You make me look the bigger fool for persisting.

this thread seems to have little to do with Darwin, his theories, science, or even the sociology or silliness of Yanks.

csteelte,
Like you, my knowledge of Biblical history is not deep. But I’m pretty sure that lots of Jews were quite comfortable using the Greek version of the Scriptures. Otherwise, why did they bother having them? In the first century, for anyone writing something to a wide intended readership, Greek might well be the choice language.

You say you stand by your criticism. Fair enough, but I’ll stand by the book of Hebrews. Even accepting what you say about it, it was still most likely written by a first century Jewish disciple of Jesus.

Though again, I agree with you that we are only on the periphery of this intense love story. We ‘gentiles’ are privileged to have been given insight into the history and blessings of the book of Genesis.

Bennie: “If you're a creationist Dan just say so and I'll leave the thread.”

If you take that attitude to people that you disagree with, I’m not sure why you’d bother clicking on a website like this. OLO I thought was about opinions, and listening to the other guy’s point of view, and maybe even daring to interact with it.

But each to their own.

You say that the creationists’ argument rests solely on the OT, with no other proof. This couldn’t be more wrong.

It’s true that creationists (for argument’s sake) find their starting presuppositions in the Bible. But everyone has to start somewhere. Evolutionists have a philosophical base of atheism or materialism.

After that, the empirical evidence is pretty much shared. We all live in the same world, and are looking at the same available evidence. Creationists try and deal with all the evidence, be it in whatever their specialist field: genetics, astronomy, geology, microbiology, palaeontology, etc.

Then the scientists’ tools are the same, logic and observation. Finally we aim to arrive at a conclusion.

Are matter and energy and the processes we see present in the natural world sufficient to have created life as we see it? The creationist says they are not.