Evidence for atheist claims

[Wryetui]

"The Church has known for over 500 years that the creation story in the bible bears not the slightest resemblance to the universe we live in. If you don’t have a problem with the biblical claim that god created the grass and trees before he created the sun and moon, then there’s nothing that I can say to you." you are talking about my field of work and I am interested. First of all I need to know on what do you rely for saying that "The Church has known for over 500 years that the creation story in the bible bears not the slightest resemblance to the universe we live in" since I haven't heard it from anyone in the Church, really, where did you get this from?

No, you wouldn't hear about this is Church today, but a little over 500 years ago, there was a surge in knowledge about the universe. We call this the age of exploration. the age of enlightenment, the age of reason or some such. But it was an age when people discovered that the Earth and the universe are not anything like what the Church had us believing. At first the Church reacted to this by burning the scientists who dared question what was written.   You can't openly execute heretics today. But you can ignore the facts in the vain hope that they will be forgotten.

"If you don’t have a problem with the biblical claim that god created the grass and trees before he created the sun and moon, then there’s nothing that I can say to you.", this kind of problems appear when a person reads the Sacred Scriptures without any theological support and are no interested in knowing what they actually say. Look at what explanation gives St. Basil the Great in his famous "Hexaemeron" (Homily 5.1) to exactly the question you asked: "Let the earth bring forth green grass. Let the earth bring forth by itself without having any need of help from without. Some consider the sun as the source of all productiveness on the earth. It is, they say, the action of the sun's heat which attracts the vital force from the centre of the earth to the surface. The reason why the adornment of the earth was before the sun is the following; that those who worship the sun, as the source of life, may renounce their error. If they be well persuaded that the earth was adorned before the genesis of the sun, they will retract their unbounded admiration for it, because they see grass and plants vegetate before it rose. If then the food for the flocks was prepared, did our race appear less worthy of a like solicitude? He, who provided pasture for horses and cattle, thought before all of your riches and pleasures. If he fed your cattle, it was to provide for all the needs of your life. And what object was there in the bringing forth of grain, if not for your subsistence? Moreover, many grasses and vegetables serve for the food of man."

The scriptures will always make sense if you give yourself the liberty to add anything you want to it.  Why do Christians insist that we look at scripture in its context if they are going to turn around and superimpose whatever they want?

"No, you wouldn't hear about this is Church today, but a little over 500 years ago, there was a surge in knowledge about the universe. We call this the age of exploration. the age of enlightenment, the age of reason or some such. But it was an age when people discovered that the Earth and the universe are not anything like what the Church had us believing. At first the Church reacted to this by burning the scientists who dared question what was written.   You can't openly execute heretics today. But you can ignore the facts in the vain hope that they will be forgotten.", I am sorry but you did not understand correctly. I am part of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Church you are mentioning is the Roman Church, that hasn't been united to us since 1054, so those things you are saying are not at all directed to me, neither they are anyhow part of my Church's history. The philosopher Ivan Kireyevsky has an answer in his book "On the Necessity and Possibility of New Principles in Philosophy (1856)" that adress what you mentioned about people getting burned because they said the earth is flat: "In the  Orthodox Church, the relationship between reason and faith is completely different from their relationship in the Latin and Protestant confessions. The difference is this: in the Church, Divine Revelation and human thought are not confused. The boundaries between the Divine and the human are transgressed neither by science nor by Church teaching. However much believing reason strives to reconcile reason and faith, it would never mistake any dogma of Revelation for a simple conclusion of reason and would never attribute the authority of revealed dogma to a conclusion of reason. The boundaries stand firm and inviolable. No patriarch, no synod of bishops, no profound consideration of the scholar, no authority, no impulse of so-called public opinion at any time could add a new dogma or alter an existing one, or ascribe to it the authority of Divine Revelation — representing in this manner the explanation of man’s reason as the sacred teaching of the Church or projecting the authority of eternal and steadfast truths of Revelation into the realm of systematic knowledge subject to development, change, errors, and the separate conscience of each individual. Every extension of Church teaching beyond the limits of Holy Tradition leaves the realm of Church authority and becomes a private opinion — more or less respectable, but still subject to the verdict of reason. No matter whose this new opinion might be, if it is not recognised by former ages — even the opinion of a whole people or of the greater part of all Christians at a given time — if it attempts to pass for a Church dogma, by this very claim excludes itself from the Church. For the Church does not limit its self-consciousness to any particular epoch, however much this epoch might consider itself more rational than any former. The sum total of all Christians of all ages, past and present, comprises one indivisible, eternal, living assembly of the faithful, held together just as much by the unity of consciousness as through the communion of prayer.

This inviolability of the limits of Divine Revelation is an assurance of the purity and firmness of faith in the Church. It guards its teaching from incorrect reinterpretations of natural reason on the one hand, and, on the other, guards against illegitimate intervention by Church authority. Thus, for the Orthodox Christian it will forever remain equally incomprehensible how it was possible to burn Galileo [Kireyevsky apparently confused Galileo with Giordano Bruno] for holding opinions differing from the opinions of the Latin hierarchy, and how it was possible to reject the credibility of an apostolic epistle on the ground that the truths it expressed were not in accord with the notions of some person or some epoch [a reference to Luther’s rejection of the Epistle of James]."