(May 3, 2016 at 5:53 pm)TheRealJoeFish Wrote:I don't know where did you get all of this from, but I was very clear. I asked atheist that they can tell me how their cosmology and their evidence contradicts God's truth since I knew is impossible and it was rather a matter of interpretation of scientific evidences and other things.(May 3, 2016 at 5:42 pm)Wryetui Wrote: "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]."
I am gonna reach into that wall of text and pull out one single quote, with important parts bolded:
Quote: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.
So, right there, you have told us, essentially, it is impossible for science to contradict your beliefs. Asking us for evidence, then, is a rhetorical device to allow you to tell us why atheists are wrong. You ask for evidence, but you don't want any; you just want to say "pfft, that? that's not evidence!" and feel smug. Essentially, you're engaging in theological masturbation.
We already knew this, but... at least now you admit it.
"Let us commit ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ, our God"
- Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
- Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom