[joea]

Originally Posted by Kurushio

Erhermm...I am a Catholic. Or they say I am. No...though listen mate. Where was the diplodocus on the ark? What about all the thousands of other dinosaurs? It wasn't...you see...and isn't mentioned once. So..according to the bible, what happened to the dinosaurs?

Listen mate, say all you want, but true belivers of God deny the existance of dinosaurs and say scientists made dinosaur bones out of chicken bones. Now, you can either believe that tripe, or believe in dinosaurs. I personally believe in dinosaurs and science.

Though next time you're ill, don;t go to a hospital...put your faith in God...he'll heal you.

Thanks for the presumptions and the insults I believe in both, now since you are ignorant of what other Christian churches say read up a bit, though I will add one point, Catholics like Orthodox don't believe all Christian truth is contained in the Bible unlike Protestants:
http://orthodoxcanada.org/sciandorth/scienceNfaith.htm

http://orthodoxcanada.org/sciandorth...sOFreality.htm

Some points:

It is my proposal to demonstrate that almost all the apparent conflicts between science and faith arise from models of reality and not from reality itself. The resolution to such conflict may arise from a re-examination of the models of reality we hold, which are based on obsolete information.
...
AN OUTLINE OF THE MAIN POINTS OF OUR CONSIDERATION

1. Metaphor is integral to language, and the language of Scripture is rich in metaphor.
2. There are serious problems and loss of meaning when one literalises metaphor. 3. All tribes and societies throughout history have used stories to transmit their understanding of the meaning of life. It is a singular curiosity of our modern era that these stories are often presented, not as landscapes of meaning, but as concrete fact, history and science.
4. Challenging models of reality formed by the literalisation of metaphor and simple narratives is inevitable, and sincerely believing persons need to be clear about the language of meaning that constitute the purpose of a story, and not become party to the reduction of that story to history or science. We should also be open to changes in our models of reality.
5. Testing models of reality with regards to cosmology, the creation narrative and man's history:

a. Science: the scientific method.
b. Religious: consistency of meaning, rather than concreteness of facts.

6. Theoria: a shared concept between physics and Orthodox Christian theology.
7. Science and Christianity: The challenge of living harmoniously with one another.


Simple stories told for simple people are intended to convey meaning. They are not concerned with scientific facts or chronological accuracy. They will often contain sophisticated psychology in narrative that appears naive on the surface. Although the stories appear simple, the meaning they convey may be complex and surprising in its depth.
Metaphor, which is very rich in older languages, conveys meaning by means of interlocking imagery. It is not "concrete" language. It has a fluidity that can convey textures of meaning which more concrete language cannot. Metaphor also contains an internal dissonance that warns one not to literalise it.*
At the very least, literalising a simple narrative story or a metaphor creates a false model of reality. In relation to scripture and theology, when we literalize a metaphor, we create idolatry.
Let us look at the creation narrative in the book of Genesis, for example. The details and processes of the creation of the universe, our solar system and our earth are extremely complex. Indeed these matters are so complex and difficult to comprehend that the best scientific minds in history with the finest technology are only now unfolding the details, though with difficulty.
Why would the scripture attempt to explain all this vast complexity - so complex in many details that it exceeds human language and requires mathematical formulae to express it - to a wandering tribe of Hebrews who were not yet literate? * Instead the narrative presents a simple story, but one filled with meaning and revelation. Moses had to come down from Sinai with the Ten Commandments; it would have been of no value for him to have returned with the Periodic Table of the Elements.

*My bold

And here:




http://orthodoxcanada.org/qa_archives/question7.html

The earth is about four billion years old, and the process of creation lasted many billions of years more than that. Scripture is not concerned with giving us the fine details of the process of creation, but with explaining to us in clear terms the meaning of it so that we can understand the nature of our relationship with God, Who did the creating.

...

Scripture is inerrant, our understanding of it is not always so. Contradiction which appear to occur in Scripture are often the result of the natural dissonance of metaphorical language. This must be born in mind when understanding the meaning of the inerrancy of Scripture.

The point, and I don't care if you accept this or believe it or not I am stating the Eastern Orthodox view on things, there is a "sacred tradition" in Orthodoxy kept by the Church (the whole Church not just the Pope as in Catholicism) the bible is only a collection of books by different authors, written at different stages of the Revelation and history, that leave many details not important at the time out.