Satanism is the ONLY Rational Religion

[Sword of Christ]

Here's what I'm saying: you never once see the interpretations you give about scientific discoveries until after those discoveries have been made.

I think you would have to make the scientific discoveries first before you can fit them into the overall theological context?

The factual accuracy of the bible seems more determined by the age in which you live than it does the actual content of the book

I'm not convinced that anyone originally believed in a literal tree of knowledge of good and evil, talking snakes and all that business, or at any rate there was a level of understanding below that of the outer story those in the know would understand. It seems reasonable to suggest that the story was intentionally spiritual teachings in the form of a myth with all kinds of symbolism regarding the human condition and their relationship to God. If it wasn't intended to be a factual scientific account from the start then it hasn't become particularly outdated the same message is going to apply regardless of the era in which you live. Young Earth Creationism as we know it today which uses the Bible as the basis for a scientific explanation of the world only began life in the modern era it isn't an ancient understanding of the text. If you really wanted to follow through on that you would need to believe that the Earth is flat and centre of the universe and there is a water above a crystal dome firmament above our heads. That's how people saw the world back then so that's how they represented it.

: before we learned so much about evolution, obviously the creation account was literally true.

I don't think it particularly was if you take into account the dreamlike quality and imagery of the story. It was revealing some kind of truth in a way that the human mind can understand. Also note that God commands his creation to "bring forth" this that and other so what you have is a natural order of self generation, evolution fits into that context just fine as that's exactly what it is.

Before we found out the world was round, the bible clearly said it was flat, and only now do we see all these supposed predictions of a round earth.

That's what people thought the world was at the time so that's how they depicted it. How else would they depict it?

The scriptures have no predictive power bar that which you add in later.

They didn't predict anything of a scientific nature at all they revealed mans relationship to God and creation. That's still going to apply regardless of any scientific knowledge you could ever attain about anything.

Given this, how can you possibly say that this stuff is what the bible meant to say all along?

The Bible says that the universe is the purpose made creation of a single supreme intelligence. So if you can explain what we have discovered through science that would render this supposition null and void I would be interested to see it. The process of creation described in Genesis fits with an orderly sequence of natural formation over time from a starting point in time, time itself had a beginning.

And if this is so, why recourse the the vague, incorrect language that it did, if in fact it was a book full of true information?

If what they said about the nature of God was true back then then it's still going to be equally true today. The only thing that has changed is our understanding of the physical processes and natural laws of the universe and the people who wrote the Bible were fully aware that there was such a natural order. They didn't know very much about it due to their lack of science but they understood the gist. It could be we only have advanced science today because we understood the universe to be something understandable and rational. Science has it's origins in magic, alchemy and all that kind of thing so it could be seen as an extension if humanities spiritual impulse rather than divorced from it as an entirely different alternative to God.

If we found out tomorrow that evolution was false and the earth really was six thousand years old (hypothetically!) would you not completely reverse your evolution accepting, old earth stance, and be claiming that the bible knew these things all along?

A literal reading of Genesis and the 6000 year old Earth only goes back to the 17th century so that's something relatively new that was introduced at a much later date not something that was an article of faith originally that science did away with. It's not to say that people knew about evolution or that forms of life generate themselves from other forms though there were some precursors to evolutionary theory that go right back to ancient times. There's a good book about it here.



The main thing Darwin discovered was the process of natural selection forms of life generating themselves from other forms over the ages was an idea that was in circulation for a very long time. Or at any rate they hypothesized some kind of processes that generated new forms of life over consecutive ages. But what you're doing is saying "These people lived in the past, so they would believe anything! aren't they stupid?!" which is called chronological snobbery.