Religion II

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by dnlgfnk

I started a reply, but you continually put words in my mouth, intentionally or no, in order to set up your devastating replies, or else backtrack by broadening your initial questions...

I also pointed out that whenever numbered days appear anywhere in scripture, they're always literal days....

Gen 2:4 = yowm="day", "1", same Hebrew word, so numbered day standing for the 6 days equals symbol.

Are you serious with this question? Gen 2:4-24 is simply an expansion, an elaboration of the creation of man -- God's crowning achievement.

You define day with exacting language in order to support the literalist view, the whole structure of your argument regarding "day". I show specific evidence, a few passages later that yown does not meet your specified criteria, allowing, at least on this point, for "day" as symbolic. You switch gears from the specific to 2:4ff being an "expansion" (i.e., using "day" to describe the whole process), in order for me to become more narrow in my interpretation of "day".

Don't have the desire for such games.

Oh...why do I feel a big migraine coming on? You're not comparing apples with apples in Gen 2:4; for there is no numbered day in the verse!

Secondly, God did create the heavens and earth in one day (in fact on day 1) per 1:1-5; therefore, when 2:4 says "in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven". Moses sums up the the entire creation account with the foundational day of creation -- day one in which the heavens and earth were created -- just not in their final form. Perfectly logical and reasonable. The verse is simply a brief, concise summary statement. Nothing more. Nothing less. What follows 2:4 is essentially and substantially a more detailed elaboration (or expansion or digression) of the creation of man. Moses focuses on Adam and Eve, primarily.

And, yes, I define "day" with exacting language because that is what Genesis 1 does, via explicitly numbered days and the formula "and there was evening and there was morning...". And there would have been no reasonable explanation to drive this point of a "literal day" home with such forceful anguage, unless God really meant that he created all in six literal days. God could have used other language to denote much longer periods.

In fact, this is the whole point behind repetitiveness. Very often in scripture, God drives an important point home by repeating himself! And the more times he repeats himself, the more he intends for us to understand what he's saying in the sensible sense of the passage.

Appealing to 2:4, which is a summary statement of all that went before, shows a lot of desperation on your part, most especially since the heavens and earth were created on day 1 -- again, just not in their final form. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to say that the heavens and earth themselves were not formed per se on day 1, but appeared in a rough-hewn condition, in a manner of speaking. All the refinements came after day 1.

[Show Me the Wire]

Originally Posted by Actor

I was referring to the opening card of the movie Conan the Barbarian.

The movie about a kingdom being saved through the suffering of their future king?

[Actor]

Originally Posted by Show Me the Wire

The movie about a kingdom being saved through the suffering of their future king?

YouTube

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Oh...why do I feel a big migraine coming on?

See a doctor. One that does not subscribe to the miasma theory.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

See a doctor. One that does not subscribe to the miasma theory.

The Great Physician has already healed me.

But have a great New Year!

[Buckeye]

Originally Posted by Show Me the Wire

Does suffering have a purpose?

According to Dostoevsky it does and I'm in no position to argue.

[Actor]

#9112

Allow me a small digression from my main discourse. In elementary school (second grade if memory serves) the teacher read to us daily from a book of Bible Stories. The following year another teacher did the same with The Sugar Creek Gang, a series of children’s books promoting Christianity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Creek_Gang

One day in high school a recording was played over the public address system. It was about a fictitious football game where the star player on one team was “the devil” and the star player on the other team was “Average Christian.”

All of these were in direct violation of the Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education(1947). The teacher or the school authorities were either unaware of that decision or else simply ignored it and were never held to account. I think the latter is the more likely.

The final incident was not so egregious. The teacher in our world history class showed the movie Martin Luther in class. Before starting the film he told us that he was showing the film only for the history and that he was not trying to change anyone’s religious beliefs. It took two days to show the film. On the second day the priest from the local Catholic Church was in attendance.

End of digression.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

#9112

Allow me a small digression from my main discourse. In elementary school (second grade if memory serves) the teacher read to us daily from a book of Bible Stories. The following year another teacher did the same with The Sugar Creek Gang, a series of children’s books promoting Christianity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Creek_Gang

One day in high school a recording was played over the public address system. It was about a fictitious football game where the star player on one team was “the devil” and the star player on the other team was “Average Christian.”

All of these were in direct violation of the Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education(1947). The teacher or the school authorities were either unaware of that decision or else simply ignored it and were never held to account. I think the latter is the more likely.

The final incident was not so egregious. The teacher in our world history class showed the movie Martin Luther in class. Before starting the film he told us that he was showing the film only for the history and that he was not trying to change anyone’s religious beliefs. It took two days to show the film. On the second day the priest from the local Catholic Church was in attendance.

End of digression.

Did the priest sell or auction off indulgences?

[dnlgfnk]

It was within my first month of college. I was quite late in attending due to the trauma resulting from my mother's sudden death on the first day. The secular university thought I had dropped out.

I can still picture the biology professor addressing a negative response, partially through the lecture, to his essential statement that "it is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going", because Laws of Physics. That was the professor's meaning, but I borrowed the words of Hawking. The professor responded cryptically and dogmatically to the student. Case closed. I responded emotionally and intuitively, waited until he turned his back to the board, and briskly walked out, never to return to the class.

I personally do not question the religious sensibility I intuited at the time, having later in life been exposed to Popper's falsification theory (there is no way to apply the Scientific Method to the professor's claim). Also, that gravity and the Laws of physics were something, as well as the the number "0" or an empty box, vs. the phrase "ex nihilo".

I wish that the professor, in a secular university with a responsibility to all students, had realized he was teaching a science class, rather than a philosophy of science class.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Did the priest sell or auction off indulgences?

How would I know? All I know is that he was there for part 2 of the movie.

[Buckeye]

The Left is not interested in knowing anything or asking any questions about things beyond their comprehension or understanding, it's only interested in control and power.

[dnlgfnk]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Did the priest sell or auction off indulgences?

Without referring to their misuse by fallen humans, indulgences are coherent with the understanding of infused grace, the real issue behind the Reformation.

You're still smarting over my refusal to discuss further what God does with matter once he creates it, even when I allow for you're interpretation.

[dnlgfnk]

Originally Posted by Actor

#9112

Allow me a small digression from my main discourse. In elementary school (second grade if memory serves) the teacher read to us daily from a book of Bible Stories. The following year another teacher did the same with The Sugar Creek Gang, a series of children’s books promoting Christianity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Creek_Gang

One day in high school a recording was played over the public address system. It was about a fictitious football game where the star player on one team was “the devil” and the star player on the other team was “Average Christian.”

All of these were in direct violation of the Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education(1947). The teacher or the school authorities were either unaware of that decision or else simply ignored it and were never held to account. I think the latter is the more likely.

The final incident was not so egregious. The teacher in our world history class showed the movie Martin Luther in class. Before starting the film he told us that he was showing the film only for the history and that he was not trying to change anyone’s religious beliefs. It took two days to show the film. On the second day the priest from the local Catholic Church was in attendance.

End of digression.

It may be egotistical of me, but I think Box was trying to draw me out into the street at high noon.

[Buckeye]

Here's the thing, as long as you can point shoot no problem, but there are no issues when it comes to what we don't know.

I'd call it a tie if I were the referee.

I'm inclined to error on the side of discretion the better part of valor.

I read that somewhere I think.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by dnlgfnk

Without referring to their misuse by fallen humans, indulgences are coherent with the understanding of infused grace, the real issue behind the Reformation.

Oh...okay. Geesh and all these years I thought the RCC invented that heresy. But hey...as long as indulgences are coherent, who cares if they're biblically-sanctioned.

You're still smarting over my refusal to discuss further what God does with matter once he creates it, even when I allow for you're interpretation.

I'm not smarting over anything; for you have not made an exegetical case for evolution.

Also, you never answered my question about Adam and Eve. Did they exist or are they part of the Genesis fiction? And was there an actual, historical fall of the human race (as in the entire human race)?