/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>789686

Genesis 1

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

They were not immortal, only we are meant to be. I think the prehistoric beings were meant to be the first seeds that made the grounds fertile, the beings that groom the earth slowly but surely over a long time for us. Just my two-cents though.

Orthodox here. Literally don't care.

>>789696

Another Orthodox here. I can vouch for the fact that we find it irrelevant, because literal bible autism isn't what we do:

https://cjshayward.com/creation/

>>789686

Death before the fall is heretical.

>>789706

Which is why I'm trying to work out how pre-human species work.

>>789704

>"Leaving Western things behind"

>believes an English guy instead of the Bible

If you believe in Darwin over the Bible and the Church Fathers when it comes to creation and life I'm sorry for you Anon, even Thomists got you beat.

>>789686

I'm assuming you're looking at this from an old earth creation standpoint?

One explanation for this that I've heard is that animals were affected by the sin of the devil. If this is so, then it may be that God's making of man and giving dominion over the animals to him was supposed to have something of a redemptive effect for the animals. God's killing of the animal to demonstrate the effects of sin to Adam and Eve after their fall definitely implies that the animals would have been immortal if their stewards had been sinless, for death is itself the wage of sin.

>>789710

I don't believe in Darwin i just think that there're more important things in Christianity and life in general that dinosaurs.

>>789710

>>789712

Pardon my temporary anger, but Darwin overriding the Bible is the greatest Marketing trick of all time.

What do I mean with this? Darwin's book name, "The Origin of Species", says literally nothing about the Origin of Species.

It is extremely detailed in how species variate themselves among natural selection, and farmers knew this centuries before via their own artificial selection (or even hunter gatherer on domesticating wolves to have dogs).

However, the book "The Origin of Species", says literally nothing about the Origin of Species in itself. It just talks about Nature doing a selection on breeding features, as opposed to the already known farmer artificial selection done on Cattle since medieval times and before.

Nothing in Darwin refutes God being the Creator.

>>789710

>If you believe in Darwin

<*woosh*

https://cjshayward.com/evolution/

Once again, the point is that this nonsense is irrelevant, and you're intentionally missing that point.

>>789709

The mainstream science interpretation of earth's history was constructed under the presupposition that the Bible is false. Pitch it.

>>789686

Must you have this thread? Darwin literally doesn't matter to the faith. Anyone who brings this up doesn't understand Genesis, or Darwin. What is spiritually true is not necessarily scientifically true, science also refuses to acknowledge that humans are conscious, free agents, and instead postulates that everything we do is determined for us ahead of time.

If we allowed science to rule our lives entirely we wouldn't be able to find fault in murderers since they were "determined" to do as they did. Empiricism leads to total skepticism and it is generally impossible to reconcile its viewpoint with our day to day lives, Hume figured this out ages ago. But empiricism is just a theory, just don't let it rule your lives.

>>789762

Relativism.

>>789956

>Choose between Christ and dinosaurs

How about no? Does that make me a relativist? Explain how you get from A to B without being a faggot with memes

>>790009

>Choose between Christ and dinosaurs

You need to explain this dilemma more completely. Because I don't see the dilemma between scripture and the evidence of the earth all in a very literal and uncompromised context.

>>790014

It comes down to this; Christ looks us in the eye, that is to say that God acknowledges our person-hood. Science does not, science looks at my knee, and prods around in my brains, examines my circulatory system etc. This is good, I like being healthy, BUT science doesn't admit that I AM, it doesn't admit to my inherent dignity as a creature created by God, and it doesn't admit to the existence of the I AM that dwells in me.

So fine, there is a dilemma, ultimately, because empirical science rejects me the person, for the physical object; it does not look me in the eye, it looks at my eyeball and treats it like a camera lens, not as the window to the soul.

I don't mind the dilemma, because I don't think that I have to fit all reality into the shoe-box of science. I want to be treated as a whole person by my neighbours, and I want the doctor to treat the physical body.

So ultimately science has a view, religion has a view, neither are about one another. In short I don't believe in the "conflict thesis" that science and religion are competing. No science is explaining one thing, religion is explaining another. No relativism implied, Christ is the Truth, but He didn't come to preach science.

>>790022

>In short I don't believe in the "conflict thesis" that science and religion are competing.

I don't even see where science and Christianity disagree.

The word of God applies to physical fact equally as accurately and precisely as spiritual. The set of scientific knowledge meanwhile supports the physical, real, definite statements made by scripture in a literal sense. Certain people just have wrong theories that are popularly believed. This would be science falsely so-called. But the real evidence of fossils, ice, rocks and so forth matches perfectly well with all scripture and with Genesis in a literal sense, no need for relativism friend.

>>790014

The Christ versus dinosaurs thing, is because dinosaurs come from the objectifying viewpoint of science, just like medicine does.

I don't see a problem. Genesis is about our sinful nature, and how it made reality worse. When read in faith it reveals so much. Darwin on the other hand, is giving an account of nature; i.e. his fundamental axiom is that God has no place in the order of nature, which is only semi-true, since God is in us, His glory radiates through everything, and everything points upwards towards its origins. But Darwin didn't set out to tell that reality; science is a narrow way of viewing the world which is narrow for the sake of function, as a result it's heartless and worldly.

Science produced the atom bomb, Christ did not. Is it any wonder then, that science is so different from religion?

>>790033

>But the real evidence of fossils, ice, rocks and so forth matches perfectly well with all scripture and with Genesis in a literal sense

No, no and emphatically no.

See >>790042

As stated, science produced the atom bomb, Christ taught the gospels. I do not see any value in trying to make Jesus "fit in" with science, as if we need the world's approval. I prefer that Jesus and atom bombs have even less to do with one another than the suggestion that the Bible fits with the narrative of science.

I'm satisfied by the fact that Jesus and atom bombs have literally nothing in common, any less, and I would not be Christian.

>>790044

You're currently being a relativist who allegorizes the truth. I really feel sorry that you've been so thoroughly cornered through accepting the truth-claims and tenets of modern pop-sci culture and its talmudic core.

There's actually no contradiction to be found. So far you have shrunk continually away from even suggesting one. But it seems like reducing God's Word to an allegory that isn't literal or real is the true devaluation here.

>>790033

>I don't even see where science and Christianity disagree.

On whether a person dying of radiation burns counts as success for starters. Christianity says no, science says "it depends on whether that was intentional."

>>790050

>But it seems like reducing God's Word to an allegory that isn't literal or real is the true devaluation here.

No, I just understand what science is. I've read Hume, I've read Locke, and Karl Popper. Science is amoral, Christianity is moral. Never the twain shall meet.

However, wouldn't it be offensive to have Christ evaluated by the standards of the world? If those standards are "science" if science contradicted Christ's teaching, would you go along with it? This is what I get confused at with you literalists, because it seems to me, that science is your real god. You are only happy to follow Christ so far as science dictates.

So if I could show you an instance of science contradicting Christ, which would you follow? Food for thought.

>>790050

>There's actually no contradiction to be found. So far you have shrunk continually away from even suggesting one.

Yes there is; Christ said that those who can accept celibacy, should accept it. Science dictates that this is categorically false, one's purpose is to produce offspring according to science.

>>790064

>one's purpose is to produce offspring according to science.

You've been thoroughly cornered into accepting talmudic definitions.

You are absolutely and categorically wrong as is anyone else who agrees with this statement. But in the interest of you not further degrading God's word and belittling it, I am abstaining from further comment here.

Matthew 19:11 is not contradicted even in the very slightest bit.

>>790022

i disagree. Science is a tool, not an individual with a world view. Science cannot opinionate on metaphysical or supernatural things, because it's sole objetive is to study the natural world.

>>790137

I agree with you, funnily enough, that's what I was trying to get across, just more fulsomely

>>790137

The idea I was going for is that science's "worldview" for lack of a better term, doesn't include people, just objects.

>>790126

Read 1 Corinthians 7 and stop being autists. Celibacy is the vocation for those who are able to be celibate. However if you cannot do that you must take a wife.

If scientism dictated everything we did we would live in a dystopian society indeed.

Celibacy can be useful for a civilisation as medieval monks preserved a lot of important materials. So can marriage obviously be useful. Immorality and adultery however is only harmful and we have seen this in our modern world.

>>789686

This is what is dogmatically defined about the creation story:

- Adam and Eve existed, as real persons.

- Mortality did not exist before the original sin.

- The original sin is transmitted to Adam's descendant.

As to the rest… Some Orthodox believe the world was made 7527 years ago, and current scientific conclusions are wrong. Some Orthodox believe the creation story is a metaphor for the evolutionary history of the universe. Some Orthodox belive that the existence of the world as we observe it does not begin at the 6 days of creation, but begins at the Fall, and therefore although we observe evolution, a world that is billions of years old, and mortality before humankind, those observations are in a world that is already tained by the fall and so does not reflect the original design of the creation of God, which will be restored at the eschaton. But I would guess that most Orthodox simply do not think about it. I mean, we don't even read the Old Testament at the Divine Liturgy, except for the same 2 Psalms…

>>789686

Only two set of beings are immortal and meant to be immortal in creation: Humans and Angelic beings.

But mostly its irrelevant.

>>790145

*Mortality of humans

also

>I mean, we don't even read the Old Testament at the Divine Liturgy, except for the same 2 Psalms…

its read on Saturday services

>>789721

TENS has literally been disproven.

>>790518

what is TENS?

>>790145

>Some Orthodox belive that the existence of the world as we observe it does not begin at the 6 days of creation, but begins at the Fall, and therefore although we observe evolution, a world that is billions of years old, and mortality before humankind, those observations are in a world that is already tained by the fall

That's an interesting take on it.

>>>790145

>>790514

>Mortality did not exist before the original sin.

>*Mortality of humans

I mean this just makes it an idiotic statement to make, that somehow there were no Humans, and then two Humans were created and yeah there were going to be immortal - even though everything else on earth has been living and dying, but because they committed a sin now they are going to die too. Oh and childbirth and stuff, that must be a metaphor, cause all other animals, including the biological parents of these humans, all went through childbirth.

Theistic evolutionists basically hold that there was sin and suffering and cancer and birth defects and sexually transmitted diseases all before any sort of fall, and that God broke causality all throughout creation and actually used pain and suffering to actually create literally every living thing on earth. It's a bizarre position if you ask me when you think about it.

If Genesis can be taken to mean what any normal person reading it would take it to mean, then it's coherent. What on earth are the ages listed for all these people there for? We will literally never know according to theistic evolutionists. Why did God even put those in there? Literally all those ages have done then is simply to mislead the majority of the church for majority of her life. People have this 'theory' about them being less holy, but I mean, okay why come up with all this age business just to say that? And Cain was pretty bad, murdered his brother, and he still lived a long time too. If we are to really imply that they lived a 'normal' lifespan, then why say Cain lived a long time? No answer. God explicitly including all those details just made everything very very very misleading.

Or what about this - the doctrine of evolution and so else - what has it produced - Godlessness, people not believing scripture, the church, materialism, hedonism, and so on. Maybe, just maybe, this 'theory', which has basically produced no good fruit, is actually what's wrong and Satanic.

The same "scientific community" that's also telling us it's okay to be gay and you can be trans and this and that. The same scientific community that says there is dark matter - oh yeah literally our equations don't work, but lets just say that there is LOOOADS of matter, real heavy, somewhere, oh then our equations work. But it's not there and it's totally indetectable. Don't worry, this theory still makes sense.

When you totally rule out the possibility for God you come up with all sorts of nonsensical things like this.

God booted up the world like a VM. People should ideally live forever because our cells would duplicate correctly. Sin not only wrecks our soul but our body as well, since they are tied together. Sodomy is terrible for your health and so on. We can see godless people with high stress have several health issues. The more people sinned, the worse their DNA got. DNA doesn't advance, it degrades, it gets worse and worse. You get more mutations that are harmful to survival.

Look at all the genetic mutations out there right now, basically all of them make you worse off.

>>792423

>I mean this just makes it an idiotic statement to make, that somehow there were no Humans, and then two Humans were created and yeah there were going to be immortal - even though everything else on earth has been living and dying, but because they committed a sin now they are going to die too.

>Humans are average animals :^|

Animals arent made in image and likeness of God and so never meant to be immortal. Fudge off. Anyone who groups them together in theological or philosophical discussions should be stoned to death.

>>789686

>How does Christianity (in particular Orthodox and Catholic) handle the issue of species existing and going extinct before man existed?

By believing in the genesis. Darwinism is an old meme. I do not see any evolution of species. I see species dying out, sure. I also see human races devolving into the absolute abyss. I think people falling and species dying out is more logical than theory that cannot be proven, is used to reduce humans to mere "apes"

Evolution is a meme myth that will pass. It will still dominate however our times.

>>789686

"Scientists" change their mind every 100, 10 or even 5 years on everything so they simply can't be trusted, whoever says something that contradicts the Bible is either wrong or lying

>>789686

i dont know but the ice ages and the great flood are clearly connected somehow. maybe all the evolution happened and it got wiped out by the great flood and the species we have left today are the ones that survived on the ark