Origins of Christianity

[basics]

" If you look at how Christianity was dealing with the same sorts of problems 1300 years after its rise you see that Islam is leaps and bounds in front of Christianity."

This statement was made by Scorch. If possible I would like him or Sher Khan to explain, to elaborate, the problems and also how Islam is leaps and bounds ahead of a faith that began at the beginning of time?

" Christianity dealth with problems in a 14th century fashion. Crude and brutally, as was the trend. Islam deals with its problems in a 14th century fashion, except we've moved 7 centuries on by now."

This was a reply from the Dude, so I would like him to explain to me how he comes to that belief? By that I mean, what is now called Christianity, was not so from the beginning of time. The adherents were called saints and or the elect, saved by God in the same fashion as we who are called by that name today and all in and by the faith of Jesus Christ the Lord. So when he talks of " Christianity " is it possible he means so-called Christianity or the religious adaptation of it?

Thread split from Sher Khan/The Dude thread. -Pontifex

[Ummon]

A question, Dude. Do you realise that Islam is about seven-hundred years younger than Christianity and other philosophies that predominantly influenced Western civilisation? If you look at how Christianity was dealing with the same sorts of problems 1300 years after its rise you see that Islam is leaps and bounds in front of Christianity.

On the other hand, one century after it was born, Christianity...

Sorry basics this thread isn't about christianity Sher Khan, I'll get back to you later.

Wrong assertions are wrong assertions.

[Scorch]

" If you look at how Christianity was dealing with the same sorts of problems 1300 years after its rise you see that Islam is leaps and bounds in front of Christianity."

This statement was made by Scorch. If possible I would like him or Sher Khan to explain, to elaborate, the problems and also how Islam is leaps and bounds ahead of a faith that began at the beginning of time?

Clearly you don't subscribe to the idea of history or fact, but could you try not to derail a thread with it? Christianity did not begin at the beginning of time, it 'began' perhaps around 30AD approximately 4.52 billion years after the Earth.

On the other hand, one century after it was born, Christianity...

Not entirely sure what you're trying to say here ...

edit: I'm actually going to recommend that the thread be split with these posts about Christianity being moved to a new thread, because this is worth discussing with basics.

[The Noble Lord]

Christianity did not begin at the beginning of time, it 'began' perhaps around 30AD approximately 4.52 billion years after the Earth.

According to the Christian belief world is not old 4.52 billion years, it's old "only" 6 thousand years.

[♔Jean-Luc Picard♔]

According to the Christian belief world is not old 4.52 billion years, it's old "only" 6 thousand years.

Fundamentalist Christian churches only. The Catholic church has embraced the scientific findings of the age of the Earth.

[Hiero of Syracuse]

Would you post the passage where it states that, I would do it myself but looking for it through this massive book is to long and boring.

[The Noble Lord]

Would you post the passage where it states that, I would do it myself but looking for it through this massive book is to long and boring.

Certainly, here it is:

1. The Bible clearly teaches that God created in six literal, 24-hour days a few thousand years ago. The Hebrew word for day in Genesis 1 is yom. In the vast majority of its uses in the Old Testament it means a literal day; and where it doesn’t, the context makes this clear.
2. The context of Genesis 1 clearly shows that the days of creation were literal days. First, yom is defined the first time it is used in the Bible (Genesis 1:4–5) in its two literal senses: the light portion of the light/dark cycle and the whole light/dark cycle. Second, yom is used with “evening” and “morning.” Everywhere these two words are used in the Old Testament, either together or separately and with or without yom in the context, they always mean a literal evening or morning of a literal day. Third, yom is modified with a number: one day, second day, third day, etc., which everywhere else in the Old Testament indicates literal days. Fourth, yom is defined literally in Genesis 1:14 in relation to the heavenly bodies.
3. The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 make it clear that the creation days happened only about 6,000 years ago. It is transparent from the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 (which give very detailed chronological information, unlike the clearly abbreviated genealogy in Matthew 1 and other chronological information in the Bible that the Creation Week took place only about 6,000 years ago.
4. Exodus 20:9–11 blocks all attempts to fit millions of years into Genesis 1. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy” (Exodus 20:9-11). This passage gives the reason for God’s command to Israel to work six days and then take a sabbath rest. Yom is used in both parts of the commandment. If God meant that the Jews were to work six days because He created over six long periods of time, He could have said that using one of three indefinite Hebrew time words. He chose the only word that means a literal day, and the Jews understood it literally (until the idea of millions of years developed in the early nineteenth century). For this reason, the day-age view or framework hypothesis must be rejected. The gap theory or any other attempt to put millions of years before the six days are also false because God says that in six days He made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. So He made everything in those six literal days and nothing before the first day.
5. Noah’s Flood washes away millions of years. The evidence in Genesis 6–9 for a global catastrophic flood is overwhelming. For example, the Flood was intended to destroy not only all sinful people but also all land animals and birds and the surface of the earth, which only a global flood could accomplish. The Ark’s purpose was to save two of every kind of land animal and bird (and seven of some) to repopulate the earth after the Flood. The Ark was totally unnecessary if the Flood was only local. People, animals, and birds could have migrated out of the flood zone before it occurred, or the zone could have been populated from creatures outside the area after the Flood. The catastrophic nature of the Flood is seen in the nonstop rain for at least 40 days, which would have produced massive erosion, mud slides, hurricanes, etc. The Hebrew words translated “the fountains of the great deep burst open” (Genesis 7:11) clearly point to tectonic rupturing of the earth’s surface in many places for 150 days, resulting in volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Noah’s Flood would produce exactly the kind of complex geological record we see worldwide today: thousands of feet of sediments clearly deposited by water and later hardened into rock and containing billions of fossils. If the year-long Flood is responsible for most of the rock layers and fossils, then those rocks and fossils cannot represent the history of the earth over millions of years, as evolutionists claim.
6. Jesus was a young-earth creationist. Jesus consistently treated the miracle accounts of the Old Testament as straightforward, truthful, historical accounts (e.g., creation of Adam, Noah and the Flood, Lot and his wife in Sodom, Moses and the manna, and Jonah in the fish). He continually affirmed the authority of Scripture over men’s ideas and traditions (Matthew 15:1–9). In Mark 10:6 we have the clearest (but not the only) statement showing that Jesus was a young-earth creationist. He teaches that Adam and Eve were made at the “beginning of creation,” not billions of years after the beginning, as would be the case if the universe were really billions of years old. So, if Jesus was a young-earth creationist, then how can His faithful followers have any other view?
7. Belief in millions of years undermines the Bible’s teaching on death and on the character of God. Genesis 1 says six times that God called the creation “good,” and when He finished creation on Day 6, He called everything “very good.” Man and animals and birds were originally vegetarian (Gen. 1:29–30, plants are not “living creatures,” as people and animals are, according to Scripture). But Adam and Eve sinned, resulting in the judgment of God on the whole creation. Instantly Adam and Eve died spiritually, and after God’s curse they began to die physically. The serpent and Eve were changed physically and the ground itself was cursed (Genesis 3:14–19). The whole creation now groans in bondage to corruption, waiting for the final redemption of Christians (Romans 8:19–25) when we will see the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21, Colossians 1:20) to a state similar to the pre-Fall world, when there will be no more carnivorous behavior (Isaiah11:6–9) and no disease, suffering, or death (Revelation 21:3–5) because there will be no more Curse (Revelation 22:3). To accept millions of years of animal death before the creation and Fall of man contradicts and destroys the Bible’s teaching on death and the full redemptive work of Christ. It also makes God into a bumbling, cruel creator who uses (or can’t prevent) disease, natural disasters, and extinctions to mar His creative work, without any moral cause, but still calls it all “very good.”
8. The idea of millions of years did not come from the scientific facts. This idea of long ages was developed by deistic and atheistic geologists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These men used antibiblical philosophical and religious assumptions to interpret the geological observations in a way that plainly contradicted the biblical account of creation, the Flood, and the age of the earth. Most church leaders and scholars quickly compromised using the gap theory, day-age view, local flood view, etc. to try to fit “deep time” into the Bible. But they did not understand the geological arguments, and they did not defend their views by careful Bible study. The “deep time” idea flows out of naturalistic assumptions, not scientific observations.
9. Radiometric dating methods do not prove millions of years. Radiometric dating was not developed until the early twentieth century, by which time virtually the whole world had already accepted the millions of years. For many years creation scientists have cited numerous examples in the published scientific literature of these dating methods clearly giving erroneous dates (e.g., a date of millions of years for lava flows that occurred in the past few hundred years or even decades). In recent years creationists in the RATE project have done experimental, theoretical, and field research to uncover more such evidence (e.g., diamonds and coal, which the evolutionists say are millions of years old, were dated by carbon-14 to be only thousands of years old) and to show that decay rates were orders of magnitude faster in the past, which shrinks the millions of years to thousands of years, confirming the Bible.1

[Hiero of Syracuse]

Thank you, and I for some reason found point number 7 to be worryingly hilarious.

[The Noble Lord]

Thank you, and I for some reason found point number 7 to be worryingly hilarious.

You welcome.

Fundamentalist Christian churches only. The Catholic church has embraced the scientific findings of the age of the Earth.

Are you sure of that?? Check the facts carefully and you will see that Catholic Church does not have different views on the issue.

[Theseus1234]

Are you sure of that?? Check the facts carefully and you will see that Catholic Church does not have different views on the issue.

I'm pretty sure the Pope accepted evolution as correct, meaning the process would have to ongoing millions of years before the "creation" of the earth

[Machiavelli25]

I'm pretty sure the Pope accepted evolution as correct, meaning the process would have to ongoing millions of years before the "creation" of the earth

Correct.

[Phier]

I'm pretty sure the Pope accepted evolution as correct, meaning the process would have to ongoing millions of years before the "creation" of the earth

If I recall it wasn't that evolution was correct, it was that you could believe in the theory and still be a good catholic.

Sort of a 'whatever' type of statement.

Basically what you're saying is that if you look at how Christianity was behaving when it was Islam's age, Islam isnt doing so bad? I've always thought that.

Such thinking is also ridiculous as we are not living in the early medieval period.

[Claudius Gothicus]

Are you sure of that?? Check the facts carefully and you will see that Catholic Church does not have different views on the issue.

I wonder why they're teaching me evolution and genetics in my school which ohh guess what it's a catholic one.
That post is BS, look up your facts and you'll see that the Church not only accepted the Big Bang theory but also the Evolution one.

[Ó Cathasaigh]

I often question myself, just who this guy is who makes the websites on the "horrible wrongness" of the Bible. I mean, I've rarely ever met an Atheist or non-Christian who has actually read the thing. How do I come to that conclusion? Well, everyone is always using websites to do their work for them. Not only do they get the passages from the sites, but they also let the site interpret it for them, hence the constant giggling I do when I read some of the stuff posted online.

But the question remains, who is this mystery man who actually reads the bible and posts his interpretation for people to copy and paste online?

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

I often question myself, just who this guy is who makes the websites on the "horrible wrongness" of the Bible. I mean, I've rarely ever met an Atheist or non-Christian who has actually read the thing.

Most of the people I know who know the Bible best are non-Christians and many of them are atheists. I've read the Bible cover to cover several times and have been over the NT with a fine toothed comb, often in the original Greek. You might have noticed that I always back up my discussions on the history of Christianity and the origins of that faith with detailed citations of the Bible, including those niggly little obscure bits that Christians seem to forget or not be aware of at all for some reason.

So Hicks, meet me - a Biblically literate atheist. There are many of us - you could almost say "our name is legion" (that's Mark 5:9 BTW).

How do I come to that conclusion? Well, everyone is always using websites to do their work for them.

Garbage. I use things called "books" written by people called "academic scholars" published by institutions called "peer reviewed academic presses". Which is more than the Christians and Kreationist Kiddie Klub members on this forum can say.


Post edited. Let's be nice. - Thanatos

[Phier]

I often question myself, just who this guy is who makes the websites on the "horrible wrongness" of the Bible. I mean, I've rarely ever met an Atheist or non-Christian who has actually read the thing. How do I come to that conclusion? Well, everyone is always using websites to do their work for them. Not only do they get the passages from the sites, but they also let the site interpret it for them, hence the constant giggling I do when I read some of the stuff posted online.

But the question remains, who is this mystery man who actually reads the bible and posts his interpretation for people to copy and paste online?

By this logic I don't think anyone went to school and only gets their info from wikipedia

I think you will find most atheists are well informed on the bible or whatever text they abandoned. One doesn't tell the almighty to bugger off without a bit of research first.

[Manoflooks]

" If you look at how Christianity was dealing with the same sorts of problems 1300 years after its rise you see that Islam is leaps and bounds in front of Christianity."

This statement was made by Scorch. If possible I would like him or Sher Khan to explain, to elaborate, the problems and also how Islam is leaps and bounds ahead of a faith that began at the beginning of time?

" Christianity dealth with problems in a 14th century fashion. Crude and brutally, as was the trend. Islam deals with its problems in a 14th century fashion, except we've moved 7 centuries on by now."

Basically what you're saying is that if you look at how Christianity was behaving when it was Islam's age, Islam isnt doing so bad? I've always thought that.

[Ludicus]

"Christianity dealth with problems in a 14th century fashion. Crude and brutally, as was the trend"

Crude, but not brutally:

[sephodwyrm]

Post edited. Let's be nice. - Thanatos

This guy jumps out for the defense of Christian sensitivity.
Wonder where he was for Chinese sensitivity.

often in the original Greek.

You know Greek??
Awesome....more respect for TG.

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

This guy jumps out for the defense of Christian sensitivity.
Wonder where he was for Chinese sensitivity.

Actually, he was jumping out for Hick's sensitivity.

You know Greek??
Awesome....more respect for TG.

Only enough to work my way through the literal sense of a passage, with the help of a good concordance. But since that's more than most Christians and virtually any fundies here bother to do, it makes Hick's ill-informed sneering about how we atheists simply crib from some "website" or other look pretty frigging feeble. Anyone who has followed my posts on this forum knows that I know the Bible very well and better than almost all if not all of the Christians here.