Religious

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by hcap

My stats on out of wedlock births do not go back hundreds of years. So the current stats over the last 10 years are still quite eye opening.

They are eye opening. But you basically found the point in time where out of wedlock births more or less peaked in the US and are now claiming that liberal thought did not have an impact on the growth because one study suggests that things have been getting better for some minorities over the last few years.

That's not a valid interpretation.

It's like watching the stock market go down 75% from it's peak, rally 10%, and claiming these are the good times again.

The reality is that liberal thought lead to a sexual revolution that lead to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases relative to where they would have been (all despite modern medical prevention and treatment options). Had more conservative values remained dominant, we wouldn't have had a spike and we'd be in even better shape now.

The reality is that liberal thought lead to an increase in out of wedlock children and the accompanying economic disadvantages which in turn lead to greater poverty, crime etc... Had more conservative values remained dominant, we wouldn't have had that rise and we'd be in even better shape now.

(abortions are part of this also)

To the extent things may be getting better now it's because it has become so obvious to everyone that we have a major problem even the uneducated and people in denial are figuring it out. Hopefully, it's not a blip. Perhaps the culture is changing and efforts to limit disease and out of wedlock children are working. But we'd never be in this position if more conservative values had prevailed.

[TJDave]

My suspicions are that declining out of wedlock births have more to do with welfare reform. The purpose of the legislation was to reduce welfare rolls.

Out of sight, out of mind.

[HalvOnHorseracing]

Originally Posted by boxcar

No, the Old is "totally out"! The term "flesh" in the NT translated from the GR. "sarka" often means human nature. And the term is often set against the Spirit. So, for example, in Rom 8:13 where Paul says, "if you live according to the flesh, you must die...", he's not talking about a physical death. He's talking about a spiritual death. For then he goes on to say, "but if by the Spirit you are putting to death (mortifying) the deeds of the body, you will live -- again, spiritually.



Mr. Smugness, sir, if God is not omnipotent, then why are we even having this conversation? Is anyone even worth the appellation if he is not? If God cannot create ex nihilo, part the Red Sea, then part the Jordan, or make the sun stand still, make the lame walk, give sight to the blind, make the dumb to talk or raise the dead then...what are talking about? Not possible is it that you are so deep in the anti-God, anti-supernatural forest that you can't see the trees? But you would much rather believe that the universe itself is all-powerful, wouldn't you? You'd much prefer to believe that 300 gazillion years ago Time and Chance somehow found one another in the vast Nothingness and then sudddenly -- BAZOOOM - the universe celebrated it's first 4th of July! Nothing gave birth to Something. Sounds pretty miraculous to me.

1Corinthians 1-5. Paul calls for the physical destruction of the man in order to destroy his relationship. I realize you and your ilk have identified all the contradictions and come up with, in some cases comical, explanations. What I find fascinating is that you won't acknowledge allegory or metaphor in the stories, but then you will say a word is metaphor. Death only means physical death when we say it means physical death.

You miss the essential point. I said it once and you ignored it because you want to believe everyone who doesn't believe exactly as you do must be atheistic. It is not that God cannot create from nothing. It is that HE DID IT, then the Big Bang occurred and everything unfolded as we can prove it did. You completely miss that God created an order to the universe, and things happened as he intended. The 10 million year old rocks are in fact 10 million years old. The part of that that doesn't work for you is that it removes the literalness from parts of the Bible. It makes the Adam and Eve story, or the flood allegory as opposed to fact. You cannot believe God would create the universe in a way that is physically provable because it conflicts with what you believe is a literal truth. But again I say to you, you have diminished God by assuming he did not allow the universe he created to evolve and exist as it has.

Many of the physical miracles referenced in the Bible have actual scientific explanations. Some are a reflection of the fact that people of the time had an incorrect understanding of basic science. The believed the sun revolved around the earth. The sun is essentially still in the sky at all times. That is because it is the earth moving. We know that if the earth stops spinning on it's axis the results would be disastrous. Now you would believe God just kept the disasters from happening because he wanted Josua to kill more people, and given his omnipotence it is the simplest Christian explanation. Of course, the other interesting thing is that if the sun stopped in one place, it must mean it never rose in another, wherever that was. And ostensibly it was light an extra day in the whole time zone north to south, although apparently accounts are lacking. In any case, we'll never know, but it isn't unlikely that this could have been an exaggeration (he fought with the strength of 10 men) or that some of the scientific explanations work. Your belief system doesn't allow you to believe other than what you read in the Bible, but mine suggests God kept the universe ordered at all times, not because the book is wrong, but because it was meant as a teaching tool as much as an infallible eyewitness account. There is no reaching agreement if you believe the stories are literal, much like someone might believe Paul Bunyan was a giant of a man with a big blue ox is a fact. You are completely co-opted to the point where you only see one point of view and reject all others despite the sense they may make. We cannot reach resolution when there is no way to prove the story is allegory - if you believe it all actually happened as it is written, nothing I can say changes your mind. The sun stopped and God made sure all the bad stuff that should have happened didn't happen and that is that. I personally find it far more comforting to believe the storyteller was making a point - you mess with God's people and you've bought more trouble than you ever could have imagined. He'll stop the damn sun if it means smiling the enemies of his people. The embellished story accomplishes exactly what it accomplishes if it was literal, but it doesn't have to involve a violation of the physical laws that God created.

The hardest part of discussing anything with you is that you attribute things I never said. I didn't say time and chance found each other. I said God created whatever Big Banged, let the bang happen, and watched the magnificence of his creation. You can't consider that for the same reason Ken Ham is certain the earth is only 6,000 years old. He cannot see past the literalness of the book. He cannot believe the stories are stories to make a point, but may be embellished. The book prevents too many people from enjoying the real magnificence of God's work because they cannot see the difference between a story to illustrate the essence of God and the literal truth. As I said it seems quite foolish to look at the universe and not give him the credit for what we know happened because he gave us the ability to scientifically prove it, instead choosing to substitute an allegory.

Old joke. Man is trapped on the roof of his house by a rising flood. A boat comes by to rescue him but the man says, I have faith that God will save me. The water continues to rise but a while later a helicopter comes along. The man refuses rescue again, saying he has faith that God will save him. The water eventually rises above the roof and the man drowns. He gets to heaven and says to God, why didn't you save me. God says, I sent you a boat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?

I think you get the point of the STORY.

Imagine David Copperfield existed at the time of Jesus, and imagine the stories that would have been told about him. He could pull dinars out of people's ears, make elephants disappear, saw women in half, and levitate things. The stories told orally 8 or 9 times would have been far more fantastical. Of course 1,700 years later he'd have been burned at the stake, as would have Jesus. This is not to say Jesus couldn't have done all the things that he did. Of course he could have. And the suspension of natural law would have been trivial enough that even I could have bought it if all we were talking about was turning water into wine. But you have to tell the difference between an illusion, real magic and an exaggeration.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

Many of the physical miracles referenced in the Bible have actual scientific explanations.

Name one.

[hcap]

Originally Posted by CH

They are eye opening. But you basically found the point in time where out of wedlock births more or less peaked in the US and are now claiming that liberal thought did not have an impact on the growth because one study suggests that things have been getting better for some minorities over the last few years.

Exactly what you have done with your provincial short term aggrandizement of your childhood's "Leave It to Beaver" good ole' time. For some reason you are zeroing in on only one indication, out of wedlock births, of the devil's reign (assisted by liberals of course ) and are avoiding long term, way before your "absolute morality" of "Father Knows Best", HUNDREDS OF YEARS of worldwide violent crimes and murders declining as religion also declined and modernity developed.


Why?.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by hcap

Exactly what you have done with your provincial short term aggrandizement of your childhood's "Leave It to Beaver" good ole' time. For some reason you are zeroing in on only one indication, out of wedlock births, of the devil's reign (assisted by liberals of course ) and are avoiding long term, way before your "absolute morality" of "Father Knows Best", HUNDREDS OF YEARS of worldwide violent crimes and murders declining as religion also declined and modernity developed.


Why?.

If the data is correct, I would guess that murders are declining because we've made absolutely incredible and mind boggling economic and educational progress over time. Poverty and education are key components of crime.

In this snapshot of time, we are a lot better at catching and locking up criminals that we used to be, we are going through a positive demographic change as the baby boomers got old, and we are at the tail end of a business cycle where employment is higher than it was 7-8 years ago.

To the extent we keep making long term economic and educational progress, I'd expect murder to keep declining.

To the extent that we have short term changes in economic activity (booms and recessions), changing demographics, and varying attitudes on law enforcement, I'd expect fluctuations up and down in murder rates within the long term trend of fewer murders.

But you keep making the same statistical by focusing on aggregate data.

Another component of crime is the values we are raised with. It is an advantage to have two parents, a strong family, a strong community etc.... So if we did a better job with "values", it would have declined even more.

[HalvOnHorseracing]

Originally Posted by Actor

Name one.

Parting of the Red Sea.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...sea-in-exodus/

Here's an interesting look at the literalness of the sun stopping in the sky.
http://biologos.org/blogs/archive/bi...t-really-claim

The point is that there are alternate explanations. If you'd like to rest on the idea that God just decided to part the sea or stop the sun, that's fine. It's simply the case that there are explanations that don't rely on a miracle. The idea of a literal bible, in my view, detracts from the real message and diminishes the amazing order of the physical laws.

Now you could argue it is an amazing coincidence that a footbridge occurred at exactly the same time Moses needed it, but it is consistent with my argument that even if "miracles" occurred they happened consistent with the physical laws of the universe. The visual that everyone has of Charlton Heston parting a deep body of water with high walls of water existing on the sides of a path along the bottom of the sea is really dramatic exaggeration.

Perhaps you have a particular miracle in mind that needs explanation?

[hcap]

Originally Posted by CH

I would guess that murders are declining because we've made absolutely incredible and mind boggling economic and educational progress over time. Poverty and education are key components of crime.

We have thankfully made "incredible and mind boggling" impprovements in objective thinking, science and technology and almost every other significant feature of western civilization. Since the middle ages religion and their earthly puppets, monarchs and kings grew weaker and failed to stop the growth of knowledge, democracy and the advancement of all of western culture.

And as my other posts show today throughout the world the more religious countries fare much worse in terms of violence than the less religions and basically socialistic and liberal counties, and also repeats the same clear cut pattern internally within the US, among the more religious (and coincidentally less educated and poorer right wing red states

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed...101-story.html

[hcap]

More moral absolutes ruin amuck.

Here is a glimpse of the life of women dfuring the good old days. I defy anyone to claim this was a better life for woman than the sexual revolution of today? I don't think so. The good old days were not Father Knows Best and not that good

The Church and medieval society which was controlled by the Church treated woman like shit.

http://www.badnewsaboutchristianity.com/gaf_women.htm

Women were until recent times not permitted to speak in church, and they are still expected to cover their heads in traditional churches. Under Christian emperors and bishops the rights that women had enjoyed under the Roman Empire were gradually pared away. As early as the fourth century it was decreed by a synod that women should neither send nor receive letters in their own name (Synod of Elvira, canon 81 ). They were also confined to minor Orders and forbidden to sing in church. Later they would be deprived of Holy Orders altogether. By 581 a Church Council at Mâcon was debating whether or not women had souls . Church law followed the bible

...The great Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas taught that women were defective men, imperfect in both body and soul. They were conceived either because of defective sperm or because a damp wind was blowing at the time of conception*. Leading scholars accepted Aquinas's teaching that women had a higher water content than men and that this made them sexually incontinent*. Since they were so watery, weak and unreliable it became a fundamental premise of canon law that they were inferior beings. Following Aquinas*, canon law decreed that women could not witness a will. Neither could they testify in disputes over wills, nor in criminal proceedings Generally women suffered the same sort of legal disabilities as children and imbeciles. They could not practice medicine, law or any other profession, nor could they hold any public office. Here is a piece of reasoning from two famous Roman Catholic scholars: after saying that women are intellectually like children, they explain why women are given to the practice of witchcraft:

But the natural reason is that she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations. And it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives*.

Women, as inferiors to and possessions of men, were not free to choose their own marriage partners:

Only those who have authority over a woman, and from whose custody she is sought as wife, can make a lawful marriage.
(Decretum gratiani, Case 30, q V, C1)


If a husband catches his wife in the very act of adultery, he may kill both the adulterer and his wife, but without any further delay.

The Liber Augustalis, or Constitutions of Melfi, Promulgated by the Emperor Frederick II for the Kingdom of Sicily in 1231, tr. James M. Powell, Laws of Sicily (1231) (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1971). Title LXXXI: About the penalty for a wife caught in the act of adultery

[classhandicapper]

HCP,

You are entitled to misunderstand stats, deny the positive role that objective morals and standards would have on society if they were stressed, and even hate the Catholic church for its historic and current faults.

I have no problem with that or the progress science has made.

I'm just smart enough to know that Magic Johnson increased his chances of getting an STD when he slept with all those women and that my unemployed cousin's children are not getting the advantages that many other kids are getting and will probably run into problems later in life that we (including you) will all pay for.

Of course, if they had listened to their priest/preacher instead of Hollywood, MTV, and their deepest lustful desires, neither would be in their current position.

Many of us seem to have that weakness. The difference between us is that I understand and acknowledge the downside risks of going against the superior life choices kids were taught in Catholic school when I was young (even when I go against them). I don't pretend they don't exist or that they aren't superior when they measurably are.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

1Corinthians 1-5. Paul calls for the physical destruction of the man in order to destroy his relationship. I realize you and your ilk have identified all the contradictions and come up with, in some cases comical, explanations. What I find fascinating is that you won't acknowledge allegory or metaphor in the stories, but then you will say a word is metaphor. Death only means physical death when we say it means physical death.

You miss the essential point. I said it once and you ignored it because you want to believe everyone who doesn't believe exactly as you do must be atheistic. It is not that God cannot create from nothing. It is that HE DID IT, then the Big Bang occurred and everything unfolded as we can prove it did. You completely miss that God created an order to the universe, and things happened as he intended. The 10 million year old rocks are in fact 10 million years old. The part of that that doesn't work for you is that it removes the literalness from parts of the Bible. It makes the Adam and Eve story, or the flood allegory as opposed to fact. You cannot believe God would create the universe in a way that is physically provable because it conflicts with what you believe is a literal truth. But again I say to you, you have diminished God by assuming he did not allow the universe he created to evolve and exist as it has.

Many of the physical miracles referenced in the Bible have actual scientific explanations. Some are a reflection of the fact that people of the time had an incorrect understanding of basic science. The believed the sun revolved around the earth. The sun is essentially still in the sky at all times. That is because it is the earth moving. We know that if the earth stops spinning on it's axis the results would be disastrous. Now you would believe God just kept the disasters from happening because he wanted Josua to kill more people, and given his omnipotence it is the simplest Christian explanation. Of course, the other interesting thing is that if the sun stopped in one place, it must mean it never rose in another, wherever that was. And ostensibly it was light an extra day in the whole time zone north to south, although apparently accounts are lacking. In any case, we'll never know, but it isn't unlikely that this could have been an exaggeration (he fought with the strength of 10 men) or that some of the scientific explanations work. Your belief system doesn't allow you to believe other than what you read in the Bible, but mine suggests God kept the universe ordered at all times, not because the book is wrong, but because it was meant as a teaching tool as much as an infallible eyewitness account. There is no reaching agreement if you believe the stories are literal, much like someone might believe Paul Bunyan was a giant of a man with a big blue ox is a fact. You are completely co-opted to the point where you only see one point of view and reject all others despite the sense they may make. We cannot reach resolution when there is no way to prove the story is allegory - if you believe it all actually happened as it is written, nothing I can say changes your mind. The sun stopped and God made sure all the bad stuff that should have happened didn't happen and that is that. I personally find it far more comforting to believe the storyteller was making a point - you mess with God's people and you've bought more trouble than you ever could have imagined. He'll stop the damn sun if it means smiling the enemies of his people. The embellished story accomplishes exactly what it accomplishes if it was literal, but it doesn't have to involve a violation of the physical laws that God created.

The hardest part of discussing anything with you is that you attribute things I never said. I didn't say time and chance found each other. I said God created whatever Big Banged, let the bang happen, and watched the magnificence of his creation. You can't consider that for the same reason Ken Ham is certain the earth is only 6,000 years old. He cannot see past the literalness of the book. He cannot believe the stories are stories to make a point, but may be embellished. The book prevents too many people from enjoying the real magnificence of God's work because they cannot see the difference between a story to illustrate the essence of God and the literal truth. As I said it seems quite foolish to look at the universe and not give him the credit for what we know happened because he gave us the ability to scientifically prove it, instead choosing to substitute an allegory.

Old joke. Man is trapped on the roof of his house by a rising flood. A boat comes by to rescue him but the man says, I have faith that God will save me. The water continues to rise but a while later a helicopter comes along. The man refuses rescue again, saying he has faith that God will save him. The water eventually rises above the roof and the man drowns. He gets to heaven and says to God, why didn't you save me. God says, I sent you a boat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?

I think you get the point of the STORY.

Imagine David Copperfield existed at the time of Jesus, and imagine the stories that would have been told about him. He could pull dinars out of people's ears, make elephants disappear, saw women in half, and levitate things. The stories told orally 8 or 9 times would have been far more fantastical. Of course 1,700 years later he'd have been burned at the stake, as would have Jesus. This is not to say Jesus couldn't have done all the things that he did. Of course he could have. And the suspension of natural law would have been trivial enough that even I could have bought it if all we were talking about was turning water into wine. But you have to tell the difference between an illusion, real magic and an exaggeration.

And you didn't read what I said. Even if God lit the big firecracker in the Big Nothingness and set evolution in motion, this would irrevocably undermine the central theme in all scripture since in your theory DEATH would have existed long before the advent of mankind.

Secondly, Paul is not calling for the physical destruction of anyone in 1 Corinthians. You're misinterpreting the passage.

Also, death means physical death when the bible says it does -- not when we arbitrarily decide that it does! The bible, sir, is self-interpretative. It is a self-contained book that comes with its own rules of interpretation. This principle of interpretation is known as the Analogy of Faith. If you want to learn a few things about the half dozen or so fundamental hermeneutical principles taught in the bible itself, I would heartily recommend the primer [Interpreting the Bible] Not Like Any Other Book by Dr. Peter Masters. Once you master these principles, you can move on to more advanced material and then maybe, if God wills it and you bring the proper humble attitude to His Word, God will impart understanding so that you'll begin to know what bible is really saying.

Regarding Joshua and "the sun standing still", I have discussed this previously. In fact, there are legends out there in different places around the world of a Lost Day -- just like there are legends about a Great Flood. Use of a search engine will prove this.

Miracles, by definition, have no natural explanation. And by the way, God doesn't "violate" his own natural laws. He suspends them. Pretty much the way governments can suspend their laws of the land for a season to impose martial law under special circumstances, for instance. Before the canon of scripture was closed and made complete miracles were a very significant way for God to validate his existence and his message. Ditto for when Jesus came unto the world stage 2,000 years ago. Jesus, with his miracles, validated his identity and his gospel of the kingdom message.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by hcap

More moral absolutes ruin amuck.

Here is a glimpse of the life of women dfuring the good old days. I defy anyone to claim this was a better life for woman than the sexual revolution of today? I don't think so. The good old days were not Father Knows Best and not that good

The Church and medieval society which was controlled by the Church treated woman like shit.

Yeah, while the above is the bad news, you have omitted the really Good News: The bible doesn't sanction that kind of treatment of women.

Half truths don't cut it, 'cap!

[HalvOnHorseracing]

Originally Posted by boxcar

And you didn't read what I said. Even if God lit the big firecracker in the Big Nothingness and set evolution in motion, this would irrevocably undermine the central theme in all scripture since in your theory DEATH would have existed long before the advent of mankind.

Secondly, Paul is not calling for the physical destruction of anyone in 1 Corinthians. You're misinterpreting the passage.

Also, death means physical death when the bible says it does -- not when we arbitrarily decide that it does! The bible, sir, is self-interpretative. It is a self-contained book that comes with its own rules of interpretation. This principle of interpretation is known as the Analogy of Faith. If you want to learn a few things about the half dozen or so fundamental hermeneutical principles taught in the bible itself, I would heartily recommend the primer [Interpreting the Bible] Not Like Any Other Book by Dr. Peter Masters. Once you master these principles, you can move on to more advanced material and then maybe, if God wills it and you bring the proper humble attitude to His Word, God will impart understanding so that you'll begin to know what bible is really saying.

Regarding Joshua and "the sun standing still", I have discussed this previously. In fact, there are legends out there in different places around the world of a Lost Day -- just like there are legends about a Great Flood. Use of a search engine will prove this.

Miracles, by definition, have no natural explanation. And by the way, God doesn't "violate" his own natural laws. He suspends them. Pretty much the way governments can suspend their laws of the land for a season to impose martial law under special circumstances, for instance. Before the canon of scripture was closed and made complete miracles were a very significant way for God to validate his existence and his message. Ditto for when Jesus came unto the world stage 2,000 years ago. Jesus, with his miracles, validated his identity and his gospel of the kingdom message.

Death did exist before humans existed. It just wasn't human death. That hardly undermines scripture. That had to be the most puzzling statement I've ever seen. Nothing died before Abel died? It simply points out that scripture is not always literal. We know without any equivocation that dinosaurs existed and they did not exist simultaneous with humans. That is unless you believe that the earth is only as old as a calculation using Genesis, in which case either dinosaurs and men existed simultaneously, and there is no evidence of that, or God made the earth complete with oil deposits and fossils of said dinosaurs.

You are always going to be impenetrable about this. The explanation that God thought all this through and gave us a ready made sun and earth, is seen by the literalists as all the explanation necessary. Even small things, like the knowledge that the light we see from stars is millions of years old, apparently undermines the young earth theory. Unless of course God suspended that one. Don't you find it incredible that God hasn't suspended any laws since the days of people who used the supernatural to explain those things they couldn't understand, which was most things?

I figure at some point both of us can stand before God and he gets to point out which one of us is off base. I'm sure we're both looking forward to that.

In 1Corinthians5 Paul says, "I hand him over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord." How in the world can anyone able to read misinterpret destruction of the flesh as something other than physical death? Especially when he makes it clear it is not a metaphor for the destruction of the spirit.

At the time of Christ most of the people in the world spent their entire lives within a few miles of the place of their birth. That looked like the entire world to them. Remember 1,500 years ago people still believed you'd fall off the edge of the horizon. In fact, if you are standing in a flat area and are about 6 feet tall the horizon is only about 3 miles away. Science, baby. It's not just for heathens anymore. The fact that there were incredible floods - again, most people lived near water for obvious reasons - is certainly obvious. There are incredible floods today. However, they are not worldwide floods. They are confined to a specific geographic area (or river flood plain) unless your entire "world" was flooded; i.e., the area that consistituted the enitrety of your existence. A great flood is perfectly plausible, great being relative, but a worldwide flood falls down on a number of counts. If nothing else, if everyone in the world was destroyed by the flood, where did the different races come from? In a couple of thousand years they all happened (without evolution mind you)? Did God just have the Noah's pop out an African, or an Asian, or an Inuit and send them to their respective geographic areas?

The literal stories fall down on so many levels, especially considering there are logical explanations for them. I understand your belief system disallows you from considering alternatives, which is why I have said that an argument with you is a waste of energy. The explanation that God just suspends natural law and interjects whatever, is perfectly easy to understand. It's also not provable either way - that it happened or it didn't. But taking all of the evidence - not just one book - leads to the conclusion the stories are not literal. And I would maintain God led us in that direction for a reason.

I get the essence of the evangelical sects of Christianity. You believe the improbable and the impossible because you believe that is what you have been instructed by God. No way any human overturns that decision. But understand that the evangelicals came to the conclusion and then backed in all the "evidence." The interpretations of words and other things fit the belief because they had to. And anyone who reads plain language in a way that doesn't fit gets rebuked as incapable of understanding.

If you haven't already watched it, the NOVA program on the Dover School District trial on the teaching of intelligent design as science is very interesting. Not because it concludes it is not science - we all knew that. But because it shows details on evolution that most of us haven't seen because the evangelicals fear it will undermine the literal interpretation of Genesis. Ignorance was the great advantage the writers of the Old Testament had, and it still works. Those who think, unless it is in defense of the literal Bible, are still the enemy.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x2xyrel-2vI

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

Death did exist before humans existed. It just wasn't human death. That hardly undermines scripture. That had to be the most puzzling statement I've ever seen. Nothing died before Abel died? It simply points out that scripture is not always literal.

What part of Rom 5:12-21 didn't you understand!? Death came into this world by the sin of one man (incidentally, his name was Adam). So, yes all of scripture is undercut if Adam's sin was not responsible for the entrance of death into this world with all its attendant miseries! (cf. the curse teachings in Gen 3:15ff; Rom 8:18-23; Gal 3:13; Rev 22:3) And also if we don't take God's covenant solemn promise of death to Adam for disobedience literally in the Garden, then surely we shouldn't take Adam's sin literally either. And if Adam didn't literally sin, then surely we can't take anyone else's sin in scripture literally either, etc, etc. And most of all, if no one on this planet has literally sinned, then who the heck needs the Last Adam (Christ) as a supposed remedy for non-existent sin? And if you want to confirmation that my logic is sound, just ask any unbeliever why he doesn't need's Christ's salvation! (You could start with yourself, sir!)

So yes...I stick by my thesis: If the theory of evolution is true, then the entire redemptive story that runs from Genesis to Revelation is undermined. You see...contrary to popular belief, the bible isn't a book of rules and laws -- do's and don'ts in order to control ancient societies. The bible is all about the Person and work of Christ's redemption of all societies' and nations' from sin.

[boxcar]

http://creation.com/10-dangers-of-theistic-evolution

Talk about an oxymoron!

And if all these are true of religious evolution, then how much more of the agnostic or atheistic type? Theistic Evolution is akin to "soft" pornography, whereas atheistic evolution is analogous to hard porn. At least to the credit of the irreligious, they're a little bit more honest in their disdain for the creator they deny by denying his existence; whereas the religious porn folks are entirely self-deceived, believing they can boast of their "faith" in God while simultaneously finding favor with the secular evolutionists. This latter group thinks they can have their cake while eating it too!

If I were a betting man, I'd bet my last dollar that the head honcho in the Church of Rome subscribes to theistic evolution. Can any of you Catholics out there confirm this?