Neither; what ybbor linked to.
Theistic Evolution
- Thread starter Eran of Arcadia
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Neither; what ybbor linked to.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
Well Genesis 1 and Evolution do not mix. We have birds before land animals when the fossil record shows it to be the other way. We have earth being created before the rest of the stars. Also man was created on the same "day" as all the land animals, but we have some land animals that were millions of years before man and some right around man, so we have big discrepancy with this since if the process described is accurate as you say it is, then evolution is wrong Or the other option is that Gensis is wrong and the Evolution is right, but you cannot say that both are correct.
I am not saying that all of Genesis is wrong; I am well aware that Genesis 1 (and 2) cannot really be reconciled in a literal reading with what the fossil record shows. I am saying that that is not what I think we are supposed to get out of the creation account.
Archbob
Ancient CFC Guardian
The bible is not a science book, it is a book of spirituality and the truth in accordance to God. I have no problem reconciling my religious beliefs with science.
Sui Generis
Emperor
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Fitting Religion into Science and vice versa is like hammering a square peg into a round hole. You will eventually get it in, but not before bashing the peg beyond recognition, imho.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
I find they compliment eachother quite nicely.
Archbob
Ancient CFC Guardian
Your economic and ethical views, however...
God never said I had to be a bleeding-heart liberal or a socialist.
Archbob
Ancient CFC Guardian
Thats great, I'm not Catholic.
The biblical citations there are still valid.
And it's more than merely rejecting that the state help the poor; you have clearly shown that you don't care one iota about charity, view the worthiness of people through their material wealth, and find the ultimate goal in life to be that of amassing wealth. In christian terms, you are a [wiki]practical atheist[/wiki].
Archbob
Ancient CFC Guardian
Thats one church's interpretations and/or misinterpretation of biblical teachings. Alot of which I don't subscribe to. God also doesn't want people to be lazy like in the parable of the three servants.
Your guaranteed an eternity in heaven if you believe, but your not guaranteed a free lunch while your on earth, you still have to work for it. God guarantees an eternity in bliss with him after you die, he does not guarantee free healthcare, free food, free government handouts, and a guaranteed job while you are on earth. In fact, many times Jesus mentions that you must take up suffering on his behalf.
If people think the bible is an excuse that they can use to say that they deserve free crap while on earth, they are wrong.
I don't reject charity. I reject public subsidization, there's a different. I donate to both charity and ministry and I serve at my church. I utterly reject and denounce the liberal notion that the government is responsible for subsidizing someone personal mistakes in life. I also completely reject blaming the government for your own fears and failures. And I completely disagree the liberal teaching that regardless of the bad choices you make in life, the government should make up for it.
Consider the parable of the three servants.
The first is given 5 bags of gold
The second is given 2 bags
The third 1 bag
The first goes out and makes 5 more
The second goes out and makes two more
The third does nothing and hides the money under a rock
What happens?
The master praises the first and second and throws the third out into the cold where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth".
For "for those who have much, much will be given and those who have little, even what little they have will be taken away".
Now, it doesn't mean the rich deserve to get richer. It means if you are counting on living off welfare, then you deserve absolutely nothing because you are like that third servant that provides nothing to society.
Sui Generis
Emperor
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How so? (10Char)
This isn't a matter of a "church's interpretations". This is a matter of a 2000-year old tradition of charity as a virtue and the poor being blessed by God, and one in which people have a moral obligation to make sure that the least well-off in society are not treated miserably. This is biblical tradition. This isn't a matter of "one's interpretation", this is a matter of yours being patently false, perverted, unchristian, and heretical.
Except you explicitly said, as before, that one's monetary worth is directly proportional to their self-worth. And you find seeking billions in wealth to be a good thing. This concepts are antithetical to Christianity. And I doubt that you honestly care much about charity to the point where you desire the least well off to not be miserable - and yes, that includes "free lunches" like food pantries.
Archbob
Ancient CFC Guardian
No, just because you are poor does not mean you are automatically blessed by God. It you win the lottery, blow all your money on prostitution and drugs and end up in the poor house, it does not mean that God somehow endorses your actions.
If you are poor because of something you did for God, then you are blessed by God. But most of the poor today aren't poor because of something they did for God's Kingdom. They are poor simply because they have poor spending habits and they never ever learn from their mistakes.
Like the parable of the three servants, if you are lazy, and do nothing, then you deserve nothing. If you do a lot and accomplish a lot, then you will be given much.
Archbob
Ancient CFC Guardian
People peeception of a person on earth(whether right or wrong) is based on one person's accomplishment. I think I did mentioned that if you didn't believe in god that there's very little argument for inherent value.
And seeking wealth isn't evil, its what you do with the money.
I desire the least well off to be better -- but they, like everyone else, need to actually get a job and work for it. God does not like idleness.
...um, no. That's completely and utterly false. There's no asterisk to the biblical statement "Blessed are the poor, for they are the children of God" - it doesn't say that you are less worthy because you became poor because you did it through a noble way. It's entirely a matter of fortune for the weak. And there is absolutely nothing biblical suggesting that people who are poor are lazy. That is such a complete distortion.
And it sort of proves my point - you're perverting doctrine solely for the sake of your unchristian ethos.
Good thing you're not a philosopher and have no idea what you're talking about.
Seeking out extraordinary wealth is explicitly lust of money, aka greed.
It's not about merely desiring the least off to be better. It's about having to actively helping them to be better. The idea that "God helps those who help themselves" is, other than simply not being in the bible, explicitly unchristian in character.
MagisterCultuum
Great Sage
That is mostly because no such biblical statement exists.
I think you are confusing "Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven" and "Blessed are the the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of god."
I'm not sure the poor in spirit refers to those lacking in material possessions. Rather, it seems to refer to the humble. I believe this one is often considered very similar to "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." (The word "meek" used here doesn't mean weak, but rather tame or self controlled rather than rebellious)
Edit: On second thought, you're probably taking it from Luke's sermon on the plain instead of Matthew's sermon on the mount. "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of god" seems closer to what you meant. The Matthew version seems to deal with spiritual traits while the Luke one deals with physical circumstances.
Worthy of what? Certainly one's wealth doesn't change their intrinsic worth or make them less deserving of God's love. It doesn't make them worthy of the fruit of another's labor. Having all their needs and desires taken care of by others either.
There are some places that seem to indicate that many of the poor are poor because they are lazy, and certainly some saying that lazy people should become poor.
Obviously, we should not be quick to judge the cause of one's poverty. It is quite possible for the a righteous man to live in abject poverty at no fault of his own. The bible is full of cases where wicked wealthy people have oppressed and cheated more noble the poor.
"He who does not work, neither shall he eat" is in the bible. Of course, I think that whenever this is mentioned we need to keep in mind that it isn't really applicable when there is no work available. Society should be set up so that it is possible for the poor to work to support themselves. The statement fits much better in a society where landowners were required to leave a tenth of their fields unharvested for the poor and strangers to gleam from, and where any grain that was dropped could not be picked up and used or sold by the farmer but had to be left to gleaners too. After the enclosure movement applying this rule became rather unfair.
Seeking wealth for wealth's sake is wrong. Seeking to live a descent life and to support one's family is certainly not. Looking out for one's own self interest isn't wrong, but like everything it can be taken too far. One must be able to earn his own was though life in order to have the means to care for others. Money is but a means to an end, and treating it as and end unto itself is very sinful.
I believe that phrase appeared in Latin literature centuries before Christ, but not using a singular for the divinity. It isn't quite as far off as you seem to think, but still should not be a guiding principle.
There is a big difference between willing donations to charity and government forcibly taking from those who earned (or at least have) more wealth to give to the poor. The first has great spiritual value, while the second has none. Government involvement often makes us not see caring for the poor as less of a personal duty since there is some large non-personal entity to take care of them, and can lead to an increase of the type of views of the poor that you so dislike.
Creating a sense of entitlement in have-nots (or anyone for that matter) is not good for anyone. Wanting something is not the same as deserving it. Creating dependence on government is equally wrong. Government systems that supposedly help the poor have for millennia (especially in Rome) been abused by ambitious politicians to keep the populace dependent and gain power for themselves. It is quite Machiavellian actually. Systems like that outlined in the old testament are much better as they keep power decentralized and keep individuals aware of their personal responsibility to their fellow man.
Well, there are also the Bottom Billion, people who are trapped in poverty so endemic that they actually cannot do anything to improve their lives year-to-year, because their access to resources diminishes every year.
There are people who are completely, truely, utterly, endemically poor. And there's about a billion of them. They're called the "Bottom Billion", because unlike the rest of the world, we don't predict that their economies will improve on their own (unlike countries which have poor, but improving, economies).
So let us please realise that there's a desperate need for self-sacrificing individuals to buck up further, and there's a desperate need to get people who would pretend to be charitable to increase their charity.
