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Quote by: Flip Jackson Wow, I think I could cut the sarcasm with a knife here. Was an actual answer wanted, or is this a "burn the creationists" thread? Let's be nice. "The four corners of the earth" could easily be a literary device to mean "the whole earth," or it could have been a phrase used in that time. We have no idea that it was supposed to be taken as four literal corners. |
But there aren't four corners to the Earth. If other passages are intended to be taken literally, why is it that the ones that science is able to attempt to verify seem to turn out wrong? This implies a lack of credibility in the rest of it.
What about Noah and the flood? Where's the ark? It would have been impossible to carry all the animals that exist today in a boat built by a few people, but people back then had no way of knowing this and verifying it because they didn't have the perspective on natural diversity we have now. The bible seems to attempt to explain shells in the Earth as coming from a flood, whereas science says this occured by techtonic plates moving, which explains earthquakes as well. How did religions explain earthquakes before?
The problem was that religions couldn't both claim to know the will of God and then claim they didn't know much of how the universe operated, because God was all knowing. So they had to make up stories and it's proved to be a bad idea.
Science has explainations that can be touched and felt and have the power to predict future things.
I think religions would be better off if they concentrated less on the mystical and more on what makes societies better. I think there's value in many religious beliefs, religions need to take a scientific approach also and demonstrate the value of religious beliefs in tangible terms.
Religions were the initial attempts at government, from my view. What better law enforcement officer could there be than a guy who can see everything you do, including read your thoughts and had the power to make you burn in hell forever? It saves on a lot of enforcement manpower if enough people can operate under this view. That's a positive side, but the flip side is that it allows for tyranny if people aren't careful. The fact that these views survived for so long is a positive as well, as it indicates that it can be the basis for an enduring and peaceful system of beliefs, if people orient their interpretations along those lines.
But I seriously believe it's going to continually be a failed attempt to assume that religions have had some mystical insight into the universe beyond what most all of us already see and it will just leave a credibility gap to try to defend that position.