Nark
It's interesting also to see how the early Kierkegaardian Karl Barth, a resolute adversary of "natural theology," dealt with Romans 1, reducing its actual cognitive possibilities to zero, and making it wholly unsuitable for apologetics...
With Barth the whole bible is effectively "unsuitable for apologetics". Barth probably would have preferred to use the phone book.
I guess I'm just a Van Tillian at heart.
Burn
I'd like to take a step back.
I asked you about: Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
I would suggest that hillary_step's words, along with a few others actually make my point for me.
Yes, what do we do with it.
1) We have a few choices. The first and most obvious one is to conclude that this is a statement of a religious mind, written in an unenlightened age, in a country full of religious fanatics, without the benefit of science to help the statement on its way by a person who truly believed that he was being used as a mouthpiece of some unseen being.
2) Another option is to take the words as true and conclude that God is a brutal and sociopathic liar. I state this against a backdrop of the fact that everything he 'designed' depended on the killing of other creatures, from microbe to blue whale in order to to survive. In order to facilitate such a Universal Killing Field, God introduces the idea of camouflage so that some are cunningly deceived into death, poisons so that some are brutally injected with toxic chemicals before being eaten, brute force so that some, like the Praying Mantis grabs its prey and eats it head-first, while it is alive. The thing this all has in common is a violence far removed from puffy clouds and gorgeous sunsets.
3) Conclude that in order for life to survive the process of evolution finds its own common level, unaffected by human emotion or Sky Gods and does what it must to ensure survival of the species, including our own.
I am sure that you wil have other options to add. ;)
You're right HS lets add another
4) We could conclude that the words of Romans 1 are true and that "knowing God, they didn't glorify him as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and traded the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things."