Is Genesis to be taken literally Part II

We need to be saved from what WE do. We don't need the extra burden of Old Sin, we're quite capable of committing New Sin.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Hey I am with you on this one! I do not follow any particular preachers per say. I DO agree with much of what certain preachers preach. I believe that there is a remarkable synthesis of belief among the more enlightened Christians..(sorry..don't mean to sound arrogant) and yet I find myself disagreeing with the majority on several issues.I agree that Jesus is God. I have never understood the importance of Trinitarian belief and the rejection of oneness pentacostalism, but I am definitely a monotheist. I don't believe that Jesus was created by God. I believe that Jesus is Gods character...an impartation of the imagination of God. He was not created as He was always Gods character.I reject much of organized religion. I won't debate whether the Holy Spirit and Jesus were or were not in Genesis...if God was there, so were they as all three aspects of God are God.I DO think for myself, but I am also smart enough to realize that I am not only not perfect but am prone to raise up and be godlike rather than acknowledge God as my superior source. This is why I caution intellectual approaches to spirituality...they end up being whacked out like Bishop Shelby Spong. Professing some sort of pantheistic god in all all in god sort of gnosticism.Thats all.

Geez, you leave the screen for 24 hours and the conversation goes off in a million different ways...jar,In response to your link which I read carefully, there are two basic ideas I would like to comment on.When I am talking about the fall from grace I am reffering to 2 parallel aspects.The 1st being that the original sin as I put it, is a state of being imparted from Adam and Eve upon all generations that followed. This state is also referred to as the fall from grace. The article mentions this quite clearly... The fall from grace has clear effects on all of humanity and creation in general. We still suffer these effects today.(And in answer to your question...) Jesus died for our sins and removed the judgement upon us once we accept him as saviour, but he did not remove the effects themselves.That is why the world is still full of those injustices that make us ask where God is in all of this. We (all creation) are all still suffering due to the sin commited by Adam and Eve.The last point is this we ourselves can't commit the "original sin". Adam and Eve have that (dis)honour. Sin, from the start has always been a voluntary act but to differentiate it from the act that caused all these problems, we call it the original sin.The church in general does this to a degree even though it can be taken the wrong way. I'm sory for the cause of the misnomer.The point is that the church (any christian church) does not reject the original sin (fall from grace), but to many this can cause misinterpretations.As for this not being a christian belief, It is inherent to the belief that that is why Jesus died on the cross. Like I said it is a cornerstone of christian belief.crashfrog, Actually it is quite verifiable. If you read the testimonies of any christian worth his salt, you will see the difference in the life they had before they encountered Christ and the life they led afterward. All you have to do is listen. I'm an example of one of these even if I'm not the best example to be found.I tried to commit suicide and God saved me from that unfortunate incident. This was before I had ever read the bible. I became a christian due to what I read in the bible, and that made me the person I am today.I wouldn't want to bore you with the details but this just goes to show that the events related by me and by millions of others are quite verifiable if one cares to listen.Inherently all verifiable claims have to have a willing listener to be considered. To verify something is to subject it to an analysis and agree that there is proof of the existence of the claim. If you happen to know a person before and after the person has been changed by God you will find it difficult to say that they are dellusional or lying. The difference is profound.Now if its scientific proof you are after then the bible is not the subject to talk about, so maybe its best to start participating in quantum physics or astronomy forums, but even there you will find discord and heated debate on what is "verifiable". It isn't my intention to spout sermons and I hope you don't consider this to be one. I am simply trying to verify my previous statement

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We are the sum of all that is, and has been. We will be the sum of our choices.

but I don't see anywhere that says we must accept Jesus to have our sins forgiven. I know that it's possible to quotemine John on that and we have a thread where we're discussing just that issue, but the idea that you must accept jesus to be saved is IMHO most unChristian and would only be true if GOD were some bling-bling pimpdaddy hustling hookers on the corner.IMHO if John is read in context it does NOT say you need to accept Jesus, and Matthew definitely says that it is not necessary.I will agree that it is mandatory for Christians to accept Jesus, but that is only within the franchise.Back towards the topic though I believe that as a Christian it is totally impossible to take Genesis literally and see it as anything except allegory.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

As you said, within the franchise it is mandatory...
The franchise being the Christian Church.I agree that we are straying from the topic but it is difficult since all the books are interrelated in one way or another.As for the basic premise that Genisis is nothing but allegory, you know where I stand.(and we can all stamp our feet and say: from this ground and this land I will not move or stray) hehehe....

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We are the sum of all that is, and has been. We will be the sum of our choices.

i didn't say they weren't at the creation of the world, i said they aren't mentioned in genesis. yes, god uses the royal we (an easy enough assumption) but the entities (persons whatever) are not mentioned.why is it that god could speak to and directly lead people in the bible and yet we have to follow other people? why can't god lead me?

i read genesis very literally. i just think a lot of it is mistaken on history and accurate only in tradition (kinda like johnny appleseed).

I'll admit two things only in relation to Genesis and that is that their perception of time as well as their time keeping sucks in a major way.That a lot of the writing has personal perspective and bias is also absolutely admissable since it was written by people, but the essence of the book is based on factual accounts.We have to rely totally on the judgement of the writers and their descendents in this respect since we cannot travel back and verify things for ourselves.Shall we now call them liars and frauds just because we can't prove it to everybodys satisfaction that they spoke truthfully if somewhat in a biased and murky way about their history?

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We are the sum of all that is, and has been. We will be the sum of our choices.

No one calls them liars and frauds, particularly in Christian communities. What we say is that they were simply wrong in some areas and that even they did not expect anyone to take much of it literaly.What I'm saying, and what many other Christians here are saying, is that to understand Genesis you must first understand the people and culture of the time. While it might have been possible to believe either of the creation accounts given in Genesis from the knowledgebase of a stoneage herder, it is not possible to do so today. If you took the stoneage herder and gave him the evidence that has been gathered since then he too would say that both of the Genesis creation accounts are simply wrong. And that is, simply nonsense. There are perfectly good ways to determine what happened in the past. Time travel is not needed.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Then again, in this meeting with the "Herder", he may take a look around and proclaim that we have indeed become idolators and worshippers of human achievement. He may not change his mind but instead judge us by our vibes and not our knowledge. We may not impress him with our latest science, but we would scare him by our cultural acceptance of what we value.This message has been edited by Phatboy, 04-09-2005 08:15 AM

that is a matter of opinion.
i really doubt that a whole people group came from abraham's cousin sleeping with his daughters. they made up a story to excuse themselves from the responsibility of having warred with and completely annihalating those people.

Well I didn't say anything that was more than my opinion, I certainly implied as much. I certainly don't want it to be taken as a verifiable and absolute fact. (Which would be difficult to prove anyway)

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We are the sum of all that is, and has been. We will be the sum of our choices.

I'm certain that when they put forth these accounts, that they were not inventing anything in their minds. They were trying to be as accurate as possible taking into account their perspective of the world and their cultural heritage. It was not written as a scientific account as would be done by someone making a field report.That we today with our perspective and cultural heritage cannot picture the idea that they would honestly write like that, we take for granted that we weren't expected to take them literally.Tell an isolated tribesman the story of someone going to the moon and see if they are expected to take you literally or figuratively. Just as that tribesman will have difficulty believing you, you will have difficulty believing what they might have to say. Are they or you lying about your respective accounts?Sure, today we can say that this or that in Genisis is in all probability wrong because we have A and B evidence to suggest otherwise. But who can know for sure that they are absolutely wrong? Since we are expected to take what they said in a figurative sense.

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We are the sum of all that is, and has been. We will be the sum of our choices.

Well, we can say with a high degree of confidence that the world is older than 6000 years and that there was never a world-wide flood or someone who gathered all the critters into a boat to escape it. We can say that there was no Garden of Eden or Tree of Knowledge and that neither of the creation stories in Genesis are true.But there are also very good reasons to say even they meant things should be taken figuratively.If they thought the tales were literally true, why did they include two Creation Myths?If they thought the tales were literally true, why did they include two Flood Myths?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Earlier on I saw mentioned a story about 3 blind men trying to feel different parts of an elephant. Since each only felt a different part, their explanation of what an elephant was was totally different. Did the reality of the elephant change because each of their perspectives differed?I agree with you that the world is way older than 6000 years. You might check out the Topic on the Gap Theory that I've participated in. The Gap Theory ExaminedEven though there is major disagreement on the subject it does make a point or two worth considering.As for the flood, it needn't have been worldwide to have wiped out all of humanity, since the population was all concentrated in one general area at the time. (Personal opinion)Also how many times have you come across newscasts that speak about the same story but from different viewpoints and containing different even opposing information? (Regarding the Ark)Also remember that the works composing Genesis came from many different sources and an honest compiler of information would add without editing the most common of the stories to transmit a clearer message. We talked about a similar situation earlier on another topic when I mentioned the author of the Pentatauch, called the Documentary Hypothesis. Just because someone compiles the different stories into one book doesn't suddenly make any one of them less relevant or less genuine. Why shouldn't there have been a dozen or more stories that were lost in time because they weren't included in the book of Genesis. Documentary HypothesisJust because there are differences doesn't invalidate them, just the opposite. It indicates that a common idea was present in the different civilizations of the time, which also suggests a common origin to the stories.This message has been edited by Jor-el, 10-April-2005 12:06 AM

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We are the sum of all that is, and has been. We will be the sum of our choices.