Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
As a religious person, I would respond to this by claiming that when religious doctrine becomes a hinderance to advancement, or when it becomes dangerous, this is not so much a problem with "religion" as it is with people who wield power in the name of that religion.
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i think you nailed it here. religion in itself is not bad. the religious institution provides a place for people from all walks of life to feel accepted and try to find answers in their life. the fact that religion occasionally preys on the fears of the less fortunate and then takes advantage of them is another discussion (ie. religion is the opiate of the masses - Marx)
it is the men who use religion as a means to further their place in society or any other variant of abusing ones power. Especially when dealing with religion because of the human nature to want to know what our place in the universe is or what the meaning of life is. i think these two aspects make religion a very dangersous institution to abuse because our questions about the meaning of life and a greater power make us very succeptible to do things we might not normally do for an institition that we are a part of like say PETA.
now to answer the original discusion about the ark and creationism i think the problem is that moderate christians (or religious people) tend to get offended when agnostics (not atheist, i don't deny god, i just don't know if he exists) like me say "holy **** people who believe the earth is only 6000 years old/believe in noahs ark are ****ing crazy"
then the moderates proceed to call us a bunch of ignorent jerks and tell us that it is possible to believe that god gave the 1st spark of life or to examine the bible metaphorically in some places and literally in others.
the point i think a lot of moderate christians seem to be missing, and not necessarily just in this thread, is that the argument that many of the anti-creationists and atheists have made is that the fundamentalist views are dangerous, ignorant and in some instances just plaiin stupid.
you may say you are a catholic (talking to no one imparticular here) but by saying you are catholic means you believe what the pope believes which is that there is no such thing as evolution and that noah did in fact build an ark to the exact specifications laid out in the bible, when science has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that evolution is real and there was no ark.
if you do not adhere to the official church position then technically you should be part of a different religion. even though catholocism may be the closest one to your particular belief pattern. you cannot (according to the church) just pick and choose which parts of the doctrine you are going to believe.
a note about noahs ark, in case no one has mentioned it yet, is that most of the cultures in the area of the middle east where noah is thought to have originated have some mention of a great flood at the time that the christians claim that the great flood took place.
fact is much like many true historical events someone recorded history of a giant flood and took the story to a fantastical level and infused the story with religion.
a really big flood did happen in noahs time this is a fact. however, there was no noahs ark this is very likely a fact. if there was an ark they would have found at least some evidence by now.
is it possible that some guy really quickly built a boat and survived the flood because of it? sure but he did not gather two of each animal while the rest of the earth perished because of gods wrath.
for the record i personally feel that many stories in the bible are great to use for their message or to be analyzed metaphorically. (and many stories were intentionally written to be metaphorically like the story of abraham sacrificing his son was actually a protest to cultures that did sacrifice...its true!)