by opusdei1972 64 Replies latest watchtower bible
I should not call those christians who believe that Adam and Eve existed as fundamentalist, because they are simply believing in what the Genesis account says, and in what Paul also read therefrom. Nothing else!.
This is why I insist in this: If they did not exist, the doctrine of original sin is a lie, and we die because it is our mortal nature, so we don't need Jesus.
opus, what's happened is that many modern Christians have re-purposed Jesus as a man who gave us some nice principles to live by. He's been re-purposed before.
If Jesus existed at all, he was seemingly a Messiah claimant, and he was killed for being a threat to the Roman state. Then Paul re-purposed him as a sacrificial being who redeemed Jews from the need for the Law.
He was also re-purposed from being a man who was possibly son of God to being God Himself. This is the dynamic nature of Christianity. So to focus on just the Christ-as-redemption angle and label is Christianity is unfairly limiting.
Since science is cornering the brand of believers who are now labeled fundamentalists, we can expect to see the new "nice sayings" Jesus to continue to replace the "died for your sins" Jesus. Christianity is adapting to its new environment before our eyes like an evolving species of animal.
The same happened with Adam, before the scientific proofs against his existence, the churches said that he was a literal man, but now their best scholars say : "no, he is the symbol of human being". The same happened with the parouxia, Jesus said it would happen in his generation, but this prophecy failed, then the preterists say now that he truly came back in 70 AD, but invisible. Also, we currently know that the global flood was imposible in 2300 BCE, so christian scholars now have to say that it was local or we must take it as an allegory. Therefore, what I see is that we must allegorize everything to save the Bible.
jhine, if you are going to search for the original, unadulterated gospels (let's stick with the gospels as a test case) you have a job ahead of you. Because the scraps and letters that were handed about in the first and second century did not follow the same scrupulous rules for accuracy that we live with today.
We are used to accuracy in our modern society because that is what makes our machine age run. Standard screws are all the same and function the way we expect. Printers run thousands of copies of the same book, identical to each other. Heck, take apart your cell phone and marvel at the intricacy, and that they are all made the same.
The selection of the gospels and approved texts came much later. They were picked for their fit to orthodoxy, not for their proximity to early Christianity.
opusedei, not all Christian scholars are trying to justify the flood. If you called them apologists, that might work. And there's still the fringe fundamentalists that insist it must have been global because the bible says so.
Heck, the jews have been treating the Adam and Eve tale as an allegory for a very long time.
It seems that today's fundamentalists are really just yesterday's orthodox Christians.
P.S.: My previous post was supposed to read "and label it Christianity".
If there is scientific proof that Adam was not the first man,
I guess we are all screwed.
I am enjoying myself either way.
I know there is an argument, I just don't totally buy it at this time.
Maybe never.
I have no incentive to buy it.
If there is no god.
Then I have no problem believing the earth is old.
If there is a God and the bible can be argued true,
Then I have trouble believing an old earth.
I have read a lot of things discrediting the bible.
But then I do further research and find things discrediting those discrediting the bible.
Like Terry says each person believes what he wants to believe.
At some point you have to make your mind up to believe in God and the bible or not to believe in it.
Or maybe you can go through life undecided
or unknowing.
If your unknowing or unable to know that is one deffinition of an agnostic.
A lot of people like to belong to a herd and like to label themselves and others.
I don't suffer from that need very much.
I like to observe and comment.
Atheisam is a non prophet organisation.
Atheisam is a non prophet organisation
Like everything else you have to take it on a case by case basis.
Follow the money.
If they are publishing books and running web pages I would suspec they are making a prohet.
If they are commenting on a board like this trying to work out their own thinking/salvatiion.
I can believe it is non prophet.
People like Dawkins, Hawking, Hitchens, Harris, the people educating the future atheist of the world
are all in it for the money, with an obvious money trail.
People on this board ex Jw's tend to be followers.
not leaders.
The leaders make the money.
opusdei1972 - "...it was clear to me that if Adam and Eve were not two literal persons who disobeyed God, the christian doctrine that states that the human being needs a redeemer would go to the trash."
The fundamental overarching reason the WTS can never budge on evolution.
