They Sold Their Souls

[basics]

Of course your problem here is the firm believer in any other faith could type what amounts to the same thing.

conon394,

I don't have a problem because for some forty years I was not that particularly religious until that night God put me on my knees to reveal Jesus to me. From that moment onwards I have experienced enough to know that the Bible is the word of God and can therefore be relied on to strengthen me when I'm down and guide me where I need to go.

[Sir Adrian]

Using the Bible as a source for scientific hypotheses or benchmarks is common throughout Church history, and multiple examples have been given from early fathers to the present day.

This is not true.

[conon394]

I don't have a problem because for some forty years I was not that particularly religious until that night God put me on my knees to reveal Jesus to me. From that moment onwards I have experienced enough to know that the Bible is the word of God and can therefore be relied on to strengthen me when I'm down and guide me where I need to go.

I do not doubt your faith. My point is however there are other who are equality certain in their faith not based on Christianity and derive equal measure of strength and guidance. So I for example prefer to fence sit. If the Atheists are right well I loose nothing and we go to the same dirt nap. After that I guess well it really depends on who is right about god/goddess/gods etc. But I can see any particular reason to bet on any so far.

[Lord Thesaurian]

First Paul and now St Basil are filthy heretics? Let’s hope they got a good price for their souls.

[Cope]

The scientific method didn't really exist during the time of Paul and St Basil. Though, even if it had, any source (or indeed no source) can be used to form a hypothesis.

[Lord Thesaurian]

The claim was that the Church never considered Genesis to be a basis for the origin of the Earth. Even today, the Orthodox Church maintains God created everything ex nihilo based on Genesis 1. They simply leave the dogmatic details TBD for pragmatic reasons, much like the Vatican.

[Sir Adrian]

No the claim was the the church based it's vbiews on the Bible, which is false because Bible did not even exist at the time.

As for Genesis, unless you stop at cherry-picking Basil the Great, you will find that it was always seen as a metaphor, not something to be taken literally. People rolled with it because it was the best thing they had in a world where the indians believed they lived on a giant turtle, the japanese believed they were sword jizz, the greeks believed they lived inside an ongoing act of cosmic incest and the egyptians believed they were soemone's eye - but then was no point where the story of the 6 days was taken as hard fact, ever.

Biblical literalism is a heresy that first appeared in 19th century America.

First Paul and now St Basil are filthy heretics? Let’s hope they got a good price for their souls.

Nobody used the h word. Also, the Bible did not exist during the time of Paul and Basil is older than the the initial version of the Bible by 5 years and did not live to see the finalized version. I am extremely dissapointed by how often I have to point out to you that the Church predates the Bible by 300-350 years. For reference that's 50-100 years more than the US entire existence and 50-75% more than the time elapsed since Waterloo

[Lord Thesaurian]

I simply acknowledged what the Church teaches. Negating the latter in order to defend it is self-defeating. The book of Genesis (which is in the Bible and referenced by Paul, Basil and gazillions of other Church figures) predates the establishment of the Church in the late Roman Empire, and explicitly informs Church doctrine regarding the origins of the Earth and everything in it. Even today, many in the Orthodox Church continue to reject evolution in favor of the traditional view.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[basics]

Sir Adrian,

How can you say that? If the Bible didn't exist what then did the Jews study but the Scriptures which just happen to be our Bible minus the New Testament. In fact did Jesus not tell these so-called teachers that they didn't know the Scriptures that they rolled out daily in the synagogues. Indeed did He not say that, " man doesn't live by bread alone but by every word that cometh from the mouth of God " meaning that these Scriptures were the only words that did come from the mouth of God in writing? Paul was an expert in the Law self proclaiming that by calling himself a Pharisee of Pharisees. Getting to the New Testament are you saying that the words recorded by Jesus Christ are not the words of God? The Bible is the Gospel and is the power of God unto salvation and there is nowhere else on this earth that salvation can be found.

[ggggtotalwarrior]

basics,

If I was born Hindu am I going to hell? Please respond quick. I’m scared.

[Lord Thesaurian]

I’d wager deriving authority from the traditions of men allows greater flexibility for cognitive dissonance which the authority of Scripture cannot afford.

[basics]

basics,

If I was born Hindu am I going to hell? Please respond quick. I’m scared.

ggggtotalwar,

No matter what you were born into religiously or nonreligiously if you are not born again of the Spirit of God thus becoming a believer in Jesus you certainly are going to hell.

[ggggtotalwarrior]

So could I theoretically spend the first decades of my life being a total scumbag, as long as I repent and believe in Jesus as I am dying? Thank you for your almighty and wise words on this topic basics. I really appreciate your spiritual tutelage.

[Cope]

So could I theoretically spend the first decades of my life being a total scumbag, as long as I repent and believe in Jesus as I am dying? Thank you for your almighty and wise words on this topic basics. I really appreciate your spiritual tutelage.

Yes. God's love and mercy is infinite. Although the sort of genuine faith required for redemption is difficult to come by, even for people who practice Christianity their entire lives. I wouldn't bank on a soul saving epiphany at the end.

[razerbelkin]

So could I theoretically spend the first decades of my life being a total scumbag, as long as I repent and believe in Jesus as I am dying?

I want to tell you something about Helmut Hufschmid, who had a near death experience and claims to have seen heaven, the purgatory and hell. Only a small fraction of people is "clean" enough to go directly to heaven, many will go to the purgatory (happily so, as after your time there, you will enter heaven. If you enter the purgatory, you are basically saved), and many will go to hell unfortunately.
It´s not easy to enter heaven! I wouldnt count on God´s mercy alone, yes we cannot even imagine how big his love is, but God is also just. You will be shown your soul as God sees it, and this will be a shock for many according to Hufschmid.
Even if you lie about someone, if you tell the untruth about someone, you will land in the purgatory for that.
Hufschmid saw the Second Coming of Christ aswell, and describes, that when Jesus will appear in the sky for everyone to see, many would convert and He would accept those "last minute conversions".
But if I was in your place ggggtotalwarrior, I would go to the next priest and confess my sins, and try not to sin anymore.

[Prodromos]

Though a necessary framework for religious arguments, it’s usually unwise to attempt a critique of scientific evidence on philosophical grounds. It relies on a false equivalence between metaphysical conjecture or symbolism and physical evidence or observation, as discussed above. Even in the desired context, the idea that apparently counterintuitive scientific discoveries necessitate a supernatural resolution has become a meme, not a serious position.

I was neither making a critique of scientific evidence nor asserting that counterintuitive scientific discoveries necessitate a supernatural explanation. My criticism is aimed at naturalists who accept the reliability of science as a pure article of faith -- and then go on to attack all other articles of faith as irrational. They don't seem to realize that there are philosophical assumptions at the root of science which can't be proved scientifically, thus rendering scientism both irrational and self-refuting.

The necessity of faith as an ingredient in our mental attitude is strongly insisted on by the scientific philosophers of the present day; but by a singularly arbitrary caprice they say that it is only legitimate when used in the interests of one particular proposition,—the proposition, namely, that the course of nature is uniform. That nature will follow to-morrow the same laws that she follows to-day is, they all admit, a truth which no man can know; but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it. As Professor Bain urges: "Our only error is in proposing to give any reason or justification of the postulate, or to treat it as otherwise than begged at the very outset." With regard to all other possible truths, however, a number of our most influential contemporaries think that an attitude of faith is not only illogical but shameful.

[fkizz]

I feel like you're drawing a distinction between 20th-century YEC and pre-20th-century YEC when no such distinction is warranted. Theories of deep time and evolution weren't unknown to patristic, medieval and Reformation writers, and when you read their reasoning for rejecting these theories, it's explicitly religious and rooted in the Bible rather than personal prejudice or incredulity. They don't reject evolution and deep time because they're unsatisfied with the proposed mechanisms or explanations for them, but because they consider the ideas themselves to be contrary to the Word of God. For example, Augustine writes in The City of God:

Completly warranted. During Jesus time the Bible didn't exist, and the Church precedes the Bible in existance, as mentioned by others here. The scriptures interpretations were fertile and multiple. Would take a few centuries more until a more consensus based scripture would be sponsored by Council of Nicea.

St. Augustine is following the Bible, but in his time, there was no Geology as we have today, and how old was the Earth there was no real way to know. Fernand Magellan voyage hadn't been done either, and there was no way to prove the earth was round - you could at best show it mathematically to people who understood mathematics or trusted its conclusions.

A timeframe where Heliocentrism wasn't even a thing either. Even in Ancient Athens the idea that the Sun orbited around the Earth was fairly popular. There were claims of Heliocentrism but not well received (Aristarchus of Samos was faced with hostility for claiming the Sun didn't rotate around the Earth, Heliocentrism would have to wait until Copernicus to start having some consensus). The most well welcomed sentiment was that of Geocentrism.

So you're ignoring that a man is at least partially a product of his age. A soldier in times where gunpowder wasn't used in warfare will know different drills from a soldier born in generalized gunpowder weaponry time, even if both have soldier mindset, there will be some differences due to their Era.

I believe that the Jews can trace their lineage all the way back to Adam which amounts to 5,781 years so I have no beef with that. My faith is built on what the Bible says and what Jesus Christ did for me when my life was changed the day God put me on my knees to believe on Him.

What if hipothetically an older Bible, still in Hebrew/Aramaic/Koine Greek/Latin, had the claims where the it could say the Earth was 7000-8000 years old, all other things equal. Would it affect your faith?

[Lord Thesaurian]

It’s not true that the Bible didn’t exist until the Council of Nicea. If it were, there would be no Old Testament, which Jesus referenced repeatedly for dogmatic purposes. In fact that’s not even true for the New Testament. The latter was canonized at the Councils of Hippo and Carthage, some 70 years after Nicea. In any case, the latter pertained to dogmatic consensus on Christ’s divinity, not the historicity of Scripture.

I was neither making a critique of scientific evidence nor asserting that counterintuitive scientific discoveries necessitate a supernatural explanation. My criticism is aimed at naturalists who accept the reliability of science as a pure article of faith -- and then go on to attack all other articles of faith as irrational. They don't seem to realize that there are philosophical assumptions at the root of science which can't be proved scientifically, thus rendering scientism both irrational and self-refuting.

The assertion that scientific inquiry refutes itself is irrelevant even if it were anything more than rhetorical. There are mountains of scientific evidence supporting cosmology and evolutionary biology. The same can’t be said for creation myths, so the idea both are therefore a matter of faith is simply not true. Moreover, to describe the search for evidence about the origins of the universe or life on Earth as scientism - overly scientific or an inappropriate application of scientific inquiry - is more anti-intellectual than argumentative.

[basics]

The Old Covenant Scrolls of Judaism were Jesus' Bible and still remain the Bible of the Jews. After Pentecost letters or writings about Jesus were sent to the infant churches which were mainly of Jewish origin to emphasise and confirm that He was their Messiah. This did not happen hundreds of years later as some assess. Around ten to fifteen years later Paul arrives on the scene to also confirm Who Jesus was and to lay down ground rules for each church he visited, again not hundreds of years later. He added to the letters by writing his own and it is from all of them that our Bible came to be and a direct lineage to the Old Covenant Scrolls.

So, in every case we see that Jesus confirmed His Bible to be the word of God and in the New Testament Him confirming that, by every word He spoke. He is the " I AM " claiming it on several occasions meaning not only the Son of God but God Himself. That being the case why do men question what is written? Did He not die on a cross as predicted in the Old Covenant and did He not die and rise again as He Himself predicted to be seen by over four hundred? It is that act of Christ that is the Gospel and that alone upon which a new believer is given faith to believe. You can throw into the bin anything about purgatory as that's a load of nonsense alongside all the pomp and ceremony that goes with it. Unless a person is born again of the Spirit of God, not one will enter heaven added to the fact that Jesus also said inly the few get in.

[conon394]

So, in every case we see that Jesus confirmed His Bible to be the word of God and in the New Testament Him confirming that, by every word He spoke. He is the " I AM " claiming it on several occasions meaning not only the Son of God but God Himself. That being the case why do men question what is written?

For the simple reason that when have stenographic record or recording or what he said, but only second hand accounts of what other said he said and in many cases massively forced versions of trying to fit often assumed prophecy yes I have doubts.