I would love to belive BUT.....

I can relate to the New Testament but i find the old testament a bit of a tall story to belive. Where are the Dinosaurs, we know man did not walk with dinosaurs yet there is no mention of them. I would love to belive in God but 40 years of non beliving it is hard to change. However, i did read an article on Revelations expalined and it scared the crap out of me as it ring's so true at the moment what with Russian invasion of Georgia and all that.

Can anyone help me om my quest to start beliving. I find the Baptist movment very tempting at the moment

 

i honestly dont believe the old testament was supposed to be taken literally. i think most of the stories were to teach people lessons about morals and stuff and the new testament was supposed to be taken as historical fact.

 

I'm sorry but I just don't believe the bible. People back in those days were also crucifying people because they were convinced witches cursed their families.

It's all just fabled stories. And also, about Revelations, everytime a major political event happens, Christians scurry about trying to connect it with the book. Well it's been 2000 years and of course over that time something is going to coincidentially match up. Kind of like how Nostradomus does his "predictions" And from what I believe, the form of Nazism and their invasion of Poland was a prime example of end times but nothing happened there. And I doubt something of that magnitude will happen again in this age of warfare

 

c/s

 

So, do most christians follow the new testament ignoring the old then ?

 

no, you shouldn't ignore the old, but rather, recognize it for what it is, parable's and metaphors that are attempting to express a greater meaning than a literal interpretation could ever hope to acheive.

 

Cheers neodude. So do you except that dinosaurs exsisted and if so does this mean that you do not belive in the creation story.

 

why do you feel that dinosaurs and the creation story must be exclusive of each other?

 

Because in the creation story god just pops animals and people on the earth at the same time, where as we know this not correct for a fact. But then again i suppose that when the bible was written man had no knowledge of Dinosaurs or what had gone before

 

I think if the Bible was written again today with what we know it would tell a different story

 

We would call it On the Origin of Species

 

Aye, but that takes me back to my original thoughts for the last 40 years

 

Well, technology changes, times change, empires rise and fall, but none of this really affects who we are as a whole, and what it means to be human.

The authors of the bible were concerned with the nature of reality, their relationship to God, and a pursuit of spiritual truth. None of these things change, regardless of the times. And yes, the bible is indeed seeded with representations of the era in which it was written, often times showing assumptions and social indignities that we as a species have come to outgrow. However, the real goal of reading the bible is to see past these things, for they are not WHY the bible was written.

It's sort of like reading in between the lines, so to speak. That's where the meaning is.

 

In other words, what I'm getting at is that dinosaurs have nothing to do with any spiritual truths that may be presented in the bible.

 

I do not wish to patronise you neodude but for someone so young you speak with mature thought

 

jesus shared with us simple ways
of peace and sharing and healing .

simple is good .

in only the good , simple ways
am i a christian . god did not let
me join the religion . i wept for the
loneliness of that
just once .

 

I can't speak for neodude, but I consider myself to be a Christian and, like many other non-fundies, I also don't believe that the Bible, especially Genesis, is to be taken literally. In fact, there are two creation stories in Genesis, side by side, and they tell different stories with different sequences of what was created when. How did that happen? Many Bible scholars believe that they were written during different periods, by different people, with different messages to convey. The first creation story, emphasizing a six day creation, is a product of the Babylonian exile or post-exile period, when the Jews were struggling to preserve their national existence, identity, and customs. On each day, God creates a different thing, each of which was worshiped as divine by various neighboring pagans--the point being, our God is better than their gods. On the Seventh day, God rested, reinforcing the importance of the Sabbath, that even God observes! The second story was actually written first, and presents a much more primitive, but more human-like, less Hollywood, kind of God, who lovingly molds the first man out of dust and animates him with His own breath. This story--a new understanding of it--is responsible for my "born again" experience in which I came to view reality, especially other people, in a completely different way. And do I believe the creation actually happened the way Genesis says? Hell no! Even in the early days of Christianity, some of the leading Church fathers, like St. Augustine and Origen, said it would be ridiculous to take Genesis as literal truth, and feared that if Christians did that, non-Christians would regard them as fools. Obviously, they never anticipated Southern Baptists. Like millions of Christians, I believe in Darwin-style evolution, dinosaurs and all. Render unto scientists the things that are science, and unto religion the things that are God's.
As for the New Testament, there are parts of that that I take with a grain of salt. For example, in Matthew, when Jesus dies, all kinds of cataclysmic events happen, including dead people getting out of their graves and visiting their friends. If that really happened, one would think somebody else, like maybe one of the other Gospel writers, would have noticed and reported it. I don't think it's virtuous to take stuff like that literally. It's just dumb.

 

neonude knows whats goin on. i'm glad someone out there feels the same way i do. i hate it when ppl take the bible too literally, because sometimes they really miss the true point of the story. and thats just sad.

 

As for the dinosaurs, Creationists tend to equate them with the Behemoth (land monster) and Leviathan (reptilian sea monster) mentioned in the Bible, and possibly the Ziz (giant air creature) of Jewish tradition. Biblical literalists believe these creatures were alive when humans were. Most scientists believe they weren't (if they were dinosaurs and really ever existed).

 

Even the Catholic church now says that some stories in the bible you need to take as metaphors people