Quote:
Originally Posted by sperry
But at least the Catholics are willing to recognize the Bible is outdated, at least scientifically, and are willing to slowly make concessions to the fact. Which makes plenty of sense to me, since IMO none of the errors in the Bible detract from the Bible's message. If all churches accepted the Bible as the writings of religious scholars instead of god himself, the Bible would be a much more useful tool. But it'll probably take the Catholic church another 2000 years before admitting that... and the chance of the church still being around 2000 years from now is pretty slim since the world seems to be going either atheist or Islam.
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My post may have sounded like I was asking the question from a highly fundamentalist viewpoint, when in fact I am leaning in the opposite direction - as you have laid out, Scott. I was posing the question from a devil's advocate viewpoint. (Although in this discussion, I wish I could have found a different phrase to describe it, haha.)
Does the Catholic Church believe the entire Bible is outdated, or is it only some writings? And are the concessions based wholly on scientific findings, or divine inspiration, or possibly something else? Or a combination of these things? From the outside looking in, it is hard to understand or trust why these teachings are the one and only truth.
I believe the messages in the Bible are God's word, put in writing by those who had divine inspiration. But with various interpretations completed by imperfect humans (including decisions on what books and writings to keep, and what to discard in both New and Old Testaments), I can understand why so many questions and doubts exist about it.
I feel very fortunate to be living in a time and place, where I won't be persecuted for questioning religious teachings; and in a time where we are seeing examples where science is backing up religious teachings (Noah's Ark and the story of the Flood), as well as where religion is acknowledging science (story of creation).