Reconciling Science and Christianity

[Sylph]

Helping Christians Reconcile God With Science (https://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090502/us_time/08599189528400;_ylt=Aur93oiTXVzehz7L8.19niYPLBIF)
By AMY SULLIVAN Amy Sullivan – Sat May 2, 1:40 am ET

(excerpt)
For many young Christians, the moment they first notice discrepancies in the Biblical tales they've faithfully studied is a rite of passage: e.g., if Adam and Eve were the first humans, and they had two sons - where did Cain's wife come from? The revelation that everything in the Bible may not have happened exactly as written can be startling. And when the discovery comes along with scientific evidence of evolution and the actual age of planet Earth, it can prompt a full-blown spiritual crisis.

That's where Francis Collins would like to step in. A renowned geneticist and former director of the Human Genome Project, Collins is also an evangelical Christian who was the keynote speaker at the 2007 National Prayer Breakfast, and he has spent years establishing the compatibility between science and religious belief. And this week he unveiled a new initiative to guide Christians through scientific questions while holding firm to their faith. (Finding God on YouTube)

After his best-selling The Language of God came out three years ago, Collins began receiving thousands of e-mails - primarily from other Evangelicals - asking questions about how to reconcile scriptural teachings with scientific evidence. "Many of these Christians have been taught that evolution is wrong," Collins explains. "They go to college and get exposed to data, and then they're thrust into personal crises of great intensity. If the church was wrong about the origins of life, was it wrong about everything? Some of them walk away from science or faith - or both."

Collins, 59, who with his mustache and shock of gray hair looks like former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's cheerful twin, seems genuinely pained by the idea that science could be viewed as a threat to religion, or religion to science. And so he decided to gather a group of theologians and scientists to create the BioLogos Foundation in order to foster dialogue between the two sides. The name - combining bios (Greek for "life") and logos ("the word") - is also what Collins calls his blended theory of evolution and creation, an approach he hopes can replace intelligent design, which he derides as "not a scientific proposal" and "not good theology either."

[Braggi]

Helping Christians Reconcile God With Science

Well, Christianity doesn't reconcile very well with science. I'd like him to explain the talking donkey. Or men who float into space. Or come back from the dead. Please.

-Jeff

[MsTerry]

Butch says Jesus is perfect and therefore everything in the Bible is true!


Helping Christians Reconcile God With Science (https://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090502/us_time/08599189528400;_ylt=Aur93oiTXVzehz7L8.19niYPLBIF)

[Sylph]

Some of the 'unreal' stories in the Bible could be interpreted as parables, or a story to teach a certain truth, I suppose. Having to believe every story in the Bible, and not accepting that it's a flawed document is silly.

I have had recent contact with family members who do, indeed, take it all literally...6,000 year old earth, the flood, the whole thing. I had to bite my tongue. For five days, I just smiled and nodded. (It took so much self-control!) I didn't want to make waves or offend my hostess.

If parents want kids to be immersed in religion and/or a religious school environment, it would be preferable in my opinion, for them to be given a world view compatible with science. So many Christians experience disillusionment when they learn enough science to understand that the Bible can't be literally true.

[MsTerry]

I have had recent contact with family members who do, indeed, take it all literally...6,000 year old earth, the flood, the whole thing.


I think there is enough evidence that a flood did happen (Atlantis), in fact it seems that we are now awaiting another one. (global warming science)
Did your tongue heal sufficiently to put it back in use?

[Sylph]

I think there is enough evidence that a flood did happen (Atlantis), in fact it seems that we are now awaiting another one. (global warming science)
Did your tongue heal sufficiently to put it back in use?

My tongue is just about healed, thanks!
The flooding of the Black Sea is probably the basis for the Biblical flood story. I think Plato took creative liberties with the Atlantis story. And yes, I expect (gradual) flooding from global warming, too.
The real life basis for Noah's Flood (https://www.essortment.com/all/noahfloodepic_rmtq.htm)
Basis for the Biblical Flood Story: “When the Younger Dryas ended (about 9,400 b.c.), the landscape became more hospitable and people began to migrate away from such oases, carrying with them the newly developed skill of cultivating and harvesting plants for food—i.e., agriculture. Another brief ice age occurred about 6,200 b.c., once again causing dessication in southeast Europe, the Ukraine and southern Russia. And once again humans retreated to the edges of freshwater reservoirs, including the Black Sea, which was still an isolated freshwater lake.

About 5,800 b.c., another thaw brought back the rains and warmer weather, and people again moved into previously abandoned areas. This thaw also caused a rise in the world’s sea level, and by 5,600 b.c. the world ocean had risen to the point where the Sea of Marmara, backed by all the water in the connected oceans of the entire world, was at the brink of the Bosporus dam, ready to breach that natural barrier and flow with unimaginable force into the Bosporus valley and down to the Black Sea lake, about five hundred feet below.

The people of the Bosporus valley would have been aware of the rising waters on the other side of the Bosporus dam. At first, the ocean water would have lapped and trickled over the natural dam, but with so vast a quantity of water pressing against the earthen divide, the flow, once it began, would have quickly developed into a violent torrent, sweeping away the natural dam and raging down into the valley at a rate two hundred times greater than that of the water that flows over Niagara Falls. Even as the saltwater torrent roared down into the freshwater Black Sea lake, killing the freshwater species inhabiting the lake, the Black Sea itself began to rise six inches per day, rapidly inundating the entire valley.

As they fled, they would have heard the mighty roar of the torrent that raced like a gigantic, raging serpent, twisting its way through the valley and to the Black Sea lake below. Everything they once knew would have rapidly disappeared beneath the rising, expanding waters of the new saltwater sea. It must have seemed to them as if an angry god had opened the earth and released the raging waters of the deep. Such a cataclysmic flood would naturally give rise to stories of the sort found in Genesis, in “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” and in “The Deluge.” The peoples who produced these great flood epics were those who settled in areas where yearly floods—as of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—would have presented an occasion for the telling and retelling of the story of the Great Flood, fixing the tale forever in the oral tradition of the people.

[MsTerry]

Lost City Of Atlantis - Video (https://www.metacafe.com/watch/517811/lost_city_of_atlantis/)


My tongue is just about healed, thanks!
The flooding of the Black Sea is probably the basis for the Biblical flood story. I think Plato took creative liberties with the Atlantis story. And yes, I expect (gradual) flooding from global warming, too.
The real life basis for Noah's Flood (https://www.essortment.com/all/noahfloodepic_rmtq.htm)
Basis for the Biblical Flood Story: ...