Catholic church says not to take Bible as truth

[Neo]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1811332,00.html


The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.

“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,”...

....the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be “historical”. At most, they say, they may contain “historical traces"


Ohhhhh......so you mean the Bible does contain contradictions and historical inaccuracies? Gee thanks, Bishop! And here I was trying to figure out which version of creation and which version of the flood I was supposed to believe! :rofl:

[GameMaster]

I have to tip my hat to them for acknowledging the possibility of inconsistencies or bits of fiction within their sacred scrolls.

[Acebot44]

Great, now that this issue is settled I won't have to hear any more crap on Intelligent Design.

[BlueFire]

Hmm..

I'm not one to speak for the Church, but..
I don't think they ever meant the Bible to be taken as complete and factual truth (especially Genesis, which is really Jewish folklore and was never meant to be taken word for word).

I'm not even Catholic and I knew that. :p

[Bond]

How is this news? Any dumbass should know the Bible is not taken as scientific fact by the vast majority of Catholics.

[Typhoid]

How is this news? Any dumbass should know the Bible is not taken as scientific fact by the vast majority of Catholics.


I.






I love you.

[Professor S]

The idea of taking the Bible literally is actually a recent idea in relative terms. The oldest versions of Christianity, represented most closely today by Russian Orthodox, always took the Bible a book of parables in most cases. They are lessons to learn to live by, and not to take every word literally.

To take Neo's example, creation or Intelligent Design as a parable would follow in this type of argument.

The world was created in 7 days. Yes, we know that is not accurate measured in today's terms. But how long is a day to God? Or an hour or a minute? The measurement of time is a human creation, and not necessarily the only measurement. A single day to God might be a billion of our years. The point to take from it is that God created the universe, not that Cristians are trying to say that it took 7 days. Do some Christians take the Bible literally? Yes, but thats their weakness, not their religions. I find that when any religious people take their books literally, they tend to miss the intended lesson and use the text the legitimize their pre-determined beliefs and/or biases.

FYI - I do not believe in Creationism or intelligent design. I am a believer that the universe is infinite in space and time, as is God. I am a Deist (sp?), not a Christian.

The idea that the Catholic church, or any other church for that matter, accepts the idea of the Bible as a parable does not invalidate Christianity or religion.

[Vampyr]

Yes, we know that is not accurate measured in today's terms.

We don't really know that.

And even when taking the Bible in the most unliteral and figurative of terms it is still highly unbelievable.

DISCLAIMER: I did read you're post and I am not calling you a Christian. That second part isn't directed at you.

[GiMpY-wAnNaBe]

i find it funny that the church had to clarify this to it's people. It does not take the thought process of a genius to realize that word of mouth and hand written copies tend to change over the course of hundreds of years.

[Professor S]

We don't really know that.

And even when taking the Bible in the most unliteral and figurative of terms it is still highly unbelievable.

Believability is relative, and dependent on your level of faith. What you find unbelievable, many feel is completely accurate and obvious. Just because you disblieve doesn't make you right, as well as their belief doesn't make them correct. Its about personal truth.

And Gimpy, the Bible has actually been purposefully changed multiple times over the years, with sections being added and removed over the centuries. The Catholic church has removed and changed a lot of the New and Old Testament, calling those section heretical, which is a contradiction in termsif you think about it.

Example, the Book of Enoch (yes, I've brought it up before) was once a part of the Bible. Check it out, its a fascinating and in depth read describing the events that caused The Biblical Flood. Very "wrathful" depictiuon of God, and it in fact QUOTES God of several occasions.

http://reluctant-messenger.com/1enoch01-60.htm

[Neo]

I grew up with people who did take it as the literal truth. They were very frightening.

What this really does is undercut the validity of the quotes the church does choose to regurgitate. They selectively pick which passages they think are true or that have some merit while ignoring all the rest. Admitting that your source material has problems doesn't serve to inspire the credibility of your teachings.

[Vampyr]

I grew up with people who did take it as the literal truth. They were very frightening.

What this really does is undercut the validity of the quotes the church does choose to regurgitate. They selectively pick which passages they think are true or that have some merit while ignoring all the rest. Admitting that your source material has problems doesn't serve to inspire the credibility of your teachings.

Same. I live in (and grew up in) a rural, conservative, religous sect of the nation. Around here it seems that the Bible is law. People consider every word and scripture of the Bible to be absolute truth, there are no metaphors or symbolism for them.

I do understand, however, that when read correctly the Bible is, especially the old Testament, a lot of metaphors. I still just choose not to believe it. I guess Faith and Spirituality just isn't my thing. I just can't accept the fact that there is some other realm (for lack of a better word) with an all knowing, all seeing, all powerful spirit guy that created everything from nothing. The mere notion is just laughable to me, personally.

Not just that, but I'm not so sure I want to go to the Heaven described in the Bible. Spending eternity worshipping God isn't appealing. And from what I get out of reading it, it's like you lose your identity in Heaven. I mean, if my mind or soul or whatever is altered to make me think an eternal state of worship is the shiz, I don't want that either. You aren't even you anymore. At least in Hell you know who you are.

And it may be very ironic, but the Bible is one of my favorite things to read. The stories are just interesting as Hell.

[gekko]

WTF is so funny? A tad bit of knowledge on the subject matter and you might realize this has been the Catholic church's teaching for years.

But it's not as fun attacking a subject you're educated on, is it?

[Professor S]

Not just that, but I'm not so sure I want to go to the Heaven described in the Bible. Spending eternity worshipping God isn't appealing. And from what I get out of reading it, it's like you lose your identity in Heaven. I mean, if my mind or soul or whatever is altered to make me think an eternal state of worship is the shiz, I don't want that either. You aren't even you anymore. At least in Hell you know who you are.

Worshipping God and losing your identity in your faith are two very different things. Yes, the Bible teaches you how to live your life, and in even secular cases it has succeeded in doing so. Our very sense of right and wrong is derived from the Bible whether you are religious or not.

But if you think the only way to establish an identity is through unrepentant sin, then I think you missed a lot of the message. I mean technically, if your Catholic at least, the Church has been giving out "get out of Hell free cards" for centuries. You can sin away, and still get through the pearly gates.

Personally, I think the world today would be absolutely frightening without the advent of Christianity. I may not believe that Jesus was our savior, but I do think he was a hell of a philosopher.

[Ginkasa]

I believe what he actually meant was they whend you do get to heaven (not necessarily while getting there) you're identity is taken away and you spend eternity just worshipping God unwillingly.

I think whether that's how heaven is like depends on belief...

But if heaven were like that, I think it would be more like you got there, see God, and have to worship His greatness because He's so great... You, yourself, would decide to worship Him for eternity because He's just that kind of guy...

But if you wouldn't choose to do that after seeing him, you probably wouldn't get into heaven, maybe, so...

That's how I would interpret it...

[Neo]

Your sense of self is derived from your seperation from others. I believe part of the reason we are here is that we are in love with the feeling of being an "I." We saw our own reflection in matter and started clinging to it. There are a few physical theories which suggest that eastern religions may be on the right track. There was some good discussion about what it means to have an identity in the clones thread I believe.

One thing I find interesting/amusing is Buddhism. Your goal as a Buddhist is the ceasation of desire since desire is the root cause of all suffering. You can't hurt if you don't want or long for something. They spend most of their time meditating and with the hopes of becoming as enlightened as is possible on this physical plane before rejoining what they consider God to be. In my opinion there's nothing wrong with doing this, but I figure that as long as we are on earth we might as well make use of our time. If we fell into matter because we wanted to know ourselves and to learn it seems like a waste to rush to get back where we started. Yes there will be suffering but pain is a part of life. Without pain and cruelty we wouldn't know joy and kindness.

And while I'm at it, I might as well mention that I think the ultimate purpose of existence is to experience joy. Some would say the purpose is to love. While loving may be the best way to obtain joy, it's still the joy itself we're after. Plus I feel like it's kind of a slap in the face to those who may have recently lost someone or gone through a bad break-up. Some suggest the purpose of life is to learn, but I ask why do we want to learn? We learn because it gives a different kind of joy. We wouldn't learn if it made us feel bad. Same thing with helping people. Helping people and sacrificing ourselves for them makes us feel good. This is really a type of egoism, but I could argue that all actions are selfishly motivated, even that of self-sacrifice. It just depends on your perspective.

I feel like christianity is kind of a jazzed-up version of spirituality. If religion is a book, then christianity is the flashy movie inspired by it. It has its players, heros, enemies, and a personified God which thinks, makes choices, and becomes wrathful. When you apply these qualities it necessarily generates philosophical problems which drive some people (me) up the wall.

[Professor S]

Your sense of self is derived from your seperation from others.

Wrong. Your personality is derived from both nature and nurture, the latter being far more powerful. You are who you are because of those that you have lived with and learned from. Without them, you would be a retarded sociopath (this is fact, not opinion). Religion is a path that preserves the need for family and the group dynamic, which in turn preserves the individual and develops it. Its a two way street. To say that the group destroys individuality is absurd because the individual would not exist without the group, in both physical and phychological terms.

And while I'm at it, I might as well mention that I think the ultimate purpose of existence is to experience joy. Some would say the purpose is to love. While loving may be the best way to obtain joy, it's still the joy itself we're after. Plus I feel like it's kind of a slap in the face to those who may have recently lost someone or gone through a bad break-up. Some suggest the purpose of life is to learn, but I ask why do we want to learn? We learn because it gives a different kind of joy. We wouldn't learn if it made us feel bad. Same thing with helping people. Helping people and sacrificing ourselves for them makes us feel good. This is really a type of egoism, but I could argue that all actions are selfishly motivated, even that of self-sacrifice. It just depends on your perspective.

I agree that the purpose of life is joy, but its how we reach that purpose that tells the story of our lives and determines our ultimate happiness. Mass Murderers find joy through murdering people. Our values, which are reflected by laws, tell us we cannot do that and protects the individual from harm. Some find joy through promiscuity. Our values, reflected by our taboos, tell us that you should not do that and in turn protects us from venerial disease, unwanted pregnancy, etc. Some find joy in a lifelong selfish pursuit of self indulgence. Our values tell us to be generous to one another, which in turn builds a benevolent society, that in turn looks out for the individual. Yes, many Christian and religious social values are in the end selfish, but it is in their unselfish nature that the individual is preserved , protected and in the end is able to find joy. These morals and taboos are not arbitrary, they are to benefit us all.

I feel like christianity is kind of a jazzed-up version of spirituality. If religion is a book, then christianity is the flashy movie inspired by it. It has its players, heros, enemies, and a personified God which thinks, makes choices, and becomes wrathful. When you apply these qualities it necessarily generates philosophical problems which drive some people (me) up the wall.

Well what kaind of Christianity are you talking about? Lutheran? Methodist? Baptist? Evangelical? Catholicism? Orthodox? Mormons? Protestant (Church of England)? There are whole lot of very different versions which you have lumped together.

[Neo]

To say that the group destroys individuality is absurd because the individual would not exist without the group, in both physical and phychological terms.

Sorry I didn't mean seperation from others as in literally locking yourself in a room, I just meant the fact that you are you and aren't someone else is what defines you. I probably could have worded that better.

That's basically what I said, the individual cannot exist without something to define itself against. That can be other people, or the world at large. And yes your personality is derived from nature and nurture, but that just proves you are separate from them to begin with. In order to be changed by something it has to be something in its own right.


I agree that the purpose of life is joy, but its how we reach that purpose that tells the story of our lives and determines our ultimate happiness. Mass Murderers find joy through murdering people.

That's true, and I would have to say the purpose of life being the experience of joy is an overall arc. Mass murders may increase their own levels of joy but they do great damage to the levels of others. And you can probably question how real this joy is when you consider underlying feelings of guilt. For those who do not have the mental capacity to experience guilt their behaviors are still destructive to their long-term abilities to experience joy, in this life or any other.



Well what kaind of Christianity are you talking about? Lutheran? Methodist? Baptist? Evangelical? Catholicism? Orthodox? Mormons? Protestant (Church of England)? There are whole lot of very different versions which you have lumped together.

Well they all have similar ideas when it comes to personifying God. They all talk about what God wants, thinks, and feels. They differ on the details but I don't believe the differences between them are that significant.

[GiMpY-wAnNaBe]

Well they all have similar ideas when it comes to personifying God. They all talk about what God wants, thinks, and feels. They differ on the details but I don't believe the differences between them are that significant.


nothing too significant, just a few wars :p.

[Neo]

More on the self...


Physicist John Wheeler believes that the universe should be viewed in terms of information with matter and energy as incidentals. Recent research in to black holes has yielded theoretical results which suggest that the universe may be a giant hologram. In other words the laws of our 3-dimensional universe (excluding time for the moment) may be painted onto a 2-dimensional surface. The information content of a black hole is dependent on its surface area, not its volume.

A hologram is created when a laser beam reflects off an object (like an apple) and then interfers with the incident beam on a film plate. If you shine a laser of the correct frequency through the plate you can re-create the image of the apple. The curious thing about these plates is that if you shatter them into several pieces and shine the laser through any one piece you can reproduce the entire apple. Any one piece contains the information of the whole apple.

This is important because it demonstrates that physical separation may be an illusion. Though we can measure the distance between the stem of the apple and the bottom, this distance does not exist on the holographic plate. All the information is condensed into a virtual point.

Also consider the phenomenon known as quantum nonlocality. A particle pair is created and its members are sent in opposite directions from one another. Each particle can have either spin up or spin down. The spins are always opposite in that if particle A is measured as spin up, then particle B has to be spin down. Because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle each particle exists in a superposition of spin up and spin down prior to being measured. It has been proven mathematically and experimentally that the degree of cooperation between the particles is such that the superposition is a real phenomenon and each particle simply doesn't have a definite spin until it is measured. The question of course is how does particle A "know" that particle B has been measured? As soon as particle B is measured then it instantaneously collapses the superposition of particle A, and vice versa.

Originally this was thought to violate relativity since the particles seem to instantaneously communicate with each other when we know that nothing can travel faster then the speed of light. What Einstein really said however was that no signal can travel faster than light. There are things that travel faster than light, such as the phase velocity of a radio wave, but as long as you are not transmitting information then you are fine.

And technically these particles cannot be used to send information. Even though we can choose to measure a particle and force it to pick a spin, we can't force it to choose spin up or down - the effect is random.

This is where psychics and mystics get totally tripped up. They use this experiment to "prove" how action at a distance is possible, but they don't understand this experiment simply doesn't allow that. The spins of the particles are correlated, nothing more. We are dealing with correlation not causation.

Still it is an interesting experiment and no real explanation has been put forth by mainstream science. The majority of physicists resort to the Copenhagen interpretation which isn't really an interpretation but more of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. They treat these events in statistical terms only and kinda ignore the philosophical implications.

If we look at the universe in holographic terms then this experiment makes sense. I believe that even though the particles are separated by a vast distance, this separation is an illusion. On a subquantum holographic reality the particles are right next to each other (overlapping in fact).

So when I say our separation from others gives us our identity, I'm referring to the projections of an interconnectedness which exists on a fundamental level. On a subquantum level our souls or experiences are overlapping and combining (this is another topic by itself), and it's only through our existence on this physical plane that we can separate our "self" from other "selves" in order to have the feeling of being a unique person. I definitely understand that we need others in order to develop our identities, but we have exist separately from them to have a "self" to begin with. But even on this physical plane we wonder what the self really is or what it encompasses. Your experiences? Neurons? The body that sustains them? The air you breath? Where does your self end and the external world begin?

This is a controversial point but there is evidence to suggest that your own brain operates on holographic principles. Patients who have portions of their brain removed don't report the loss of any specific memories, which is what you would expect if the brain stored information locally. Rather their memories overall become more fuzzy, which is right in line with the notion that your brain stores memories holographically. Kinda cool, huh?

[GiMpY-wAnNaBe]

wow....best....explanation of one line.....EVER.



and that's a lot to swallow all at once, its one theory that i actually have never heard until now. For your second last paragraph asking where the mind ends and body starts, i believe in Dualism, which states that the mind and body are completely different entities. The conciousness is always alone, and by this theory i can see how you say individualization and seperation gives identity.

[Neo]

I think it is through a process of self-referencing that consciousness arises. A crude example involves a photon trapped between two mirrors. The wave reflects onto itself so that the photon can "see" itself. I think there is a complex process of self-referencing occurring in the brain which gives rise to the feeling of being self-aware.

Notice when you are not thinking about anything, or are just "zoning out" staring off into space, that you don't feel quite as aware? Our sense of identity varies from time to time based on how we feel. As we look down the food chain we see creatures with decreasingly complex levels of intelligence, and consequently decreasingly levels of awareness. A dog is driven by instincts, but is still more self-aware then a cockroach for example.

[Professor S]

I think your overstepping the value of physics when it comes to human identity.

To me it seems like asking a mathematician to explain Shakespeare. Sure, he used iambic pentameter, other patterns, and you can break apart Shakespeare's writings through these mathematical processes, but your not really explaining or understanding Shakespeare, are you.

Humanity is more than the human brain and it's chemical reactions. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.