Nice illustration of the idiocy of using a 4000 year old religious work as a scientific textbook. Fortunately, it is not a requirement of the Christian faith that you have to believe this twaddle. Dogmatic literalism is no friend of main-stream Christianity.
Macdoctor is correct. To its credit the bible account goes beyond the pagan beliefs of the time by making the sun, moon and stars just things out there rather than things to be worshiped, frightened of and sacrificed to. Even the Genesis creation accounts get the order of evolution correct although you'd not call it a scientific account.
It's never been part of mainstream Christian tradition to take the Bible as a literal scientific text. Both Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine, two of most celebrated Christian authors, said something along the lines of (I'm paraphrasing), "anyone who takes the Bible as a literal account of creation (i.e. a scientific text) will appear to all as a fool".
People are quite right to criticise the tradition, mainly originating in the United States southern states, of strict Bible literalism - originating en masse only in the last couple of centuries, and entrenched through the proliferation of many Southern missionaries and Protestant denominations - particularly in the third world. However many Atheists (and the sub set of Objectivists) do their own beliefs a disservice, when trying to influence Agnostics, or poorly read people of Christian faith, by trying to tar all Christians with the same unreasoned brush of strict Bible literalism and not accurately portraying the scope or breath of this tradition, when it in fact makes up a fraction of the Christians, within a fraction of period of Christian tradition.
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Nice illustration of the idiocy of using a 4000 year old religious work as a scientific textbook. Fortunately, it is not a requirement of the Christian faith that you have to believe this twaddle. Dogmatic literalism is no friend of main-stream Christianity.
I tried it. However ....
Houston, we have a problem.
Macdoctor is correct. To its credit the bible account goes beyond the pagan beliefs of the time by making the sun, moon and stars just things out there rather than things to be worshiped, frightened of and sacrificed to. Even the Genesis creation accounts get the order of evolution correct although you'd not call it a scientific account.
3:16
It's never been part of mainstream Christian tradition to take the Bible as a literal scientific text. Both Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine, two of most celebrated Christian authors, said something along the lines of (I'm paraphrasing), "anyone who takes the Bible as a literal account of creation (i.e. a scientific text) will appear to all as a fool".
People are quite right to criticise the tradition, mainly originating in the United States southern states, of strict Bible literalism - originating en masse only in the last couple of centuries, and entrenched through the proliferation of many Southern missionaries and Protestant denominations - particularly in the third world. However many Atheists (and the sub set of Objectivists) do their own beliefs a disservice, when trying to influence Agnostics, or poorly read people of Christian faith, by trying to tar all Christians with the same unreasoned brush of strict Bible literalism and not accurately portraying the scope or breath of this tradition, when it in fact makes up a fraction of the Christians, within a fraction of period of Christian tradition.
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