RELIGION....(part 2)

[mannyamador]

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II don't need to quote verses, there are a plethora of them that oppose the teachings of the RCC.

So far you haven't been able to cite a single one and support it. We've always shown that your interpretations of any verses you quoted were in error.

That's why God wrote for us His laws and commands (Deut. 29: 29 ) in a book that is complete (Isaiah 34: 16)

What book existed when Isaiah declared it to be complete? Not the Bible. And complete for what? You're engaging in PERSONAL MISINTERPRETATIONS AGAIN.

While NOT everything is chronicled in The Books we can PROFESS it (Jn 20: 35, 1 Jn 5: 13 )

So it's NOT complete. You just shot yourself in the foot again.

The church through whom He speaks? it existed then, it's around today.

Yes. The Catholic Church. That's the ONLY Church that was around then and is around now. I challenge you to show me another one. You can't huh? I thought so. All talk, no evidence.

As for the Word, the very "Books" you cite explicitly state that we must hold on to what we were told by word of mouth (from the Apostles and their assigned teachers), NOT just what was written in the Bible. Your own Bible contradicts you!

[mannyamador]

When someone says he can be SURE of his salvation I think he is laboring on a wrong premise.
If thats the case even if I am a criminal a murderer like Hitler as long as I believe that Jesus is
my PERSONAL savior then I can be sure of salvation. Never mind if I kill millions of people like
the Jews.

Thats a ripoff.

YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!! Sola fide (justification by faith alone) is pure garbage. It is thoroughly unscriptiural and irrational.

[Cardinal Bunal]

So it's NOT complete. You just shot yourself in the foot again.

What?? It is COMPLETE enough and contains enough information for us to know if we have eternal life (1 Jn 5: 13 )

You can PROFESS salvation but can you assure yourself you won't backslide into sin? No. Is a person who is persisting in sin born of God? No.... but we receive forgivness of sins through His name (Acts 10: 43, Acts 26: 18 ) because we are all sinners. And we are only made perfect through Christ.

Otherwise salvation can be professed when one has it (1 Jn 5: 13, Rom 10: 9, Jn 3: 16 ), it has to be WORKED OUT with fear and trembling (Philippians 2: 12 - 13 ) work out, NOT worked for (Rom 11: 6) but as hard as it is toÂ* one can ACCEPT that he doesn't have it if he disobeys (Jn 3: 36 ).

Mosimos is referring to "Once saved always saved" which is indeed Unscriptural. But being able to KNOW about one's current state as to whether he has LIFE or not is Biblical. It has been written, for any event that hasn't been chronicled in the Scriptures, these things on the other hand (regarding our salvation) aren't left out.... ergo, the Scriptures are all-sufficient.

[bad donkey!]

some people just take the bible too literally...tsk.tsk.tsk..

[Cardinal Bunal]

some people just take the bible too literally...tsk.tsk.tsk..

This is ambiguous there are books where figurative language is used and we should be open to our spiritual eyes and ears, otherwise if it is portraying an event as it is it should be taken literally - save for some of the figurative language spoken by the characters in those events.

For example, Jn 6: 56 is often taken literally......Â* but in context of Ezekiel 3: 1-3 or Rev. 10: 9 what is it? Also see Jn 6: 63 and Luke 8: 10............

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Another example if you check 1 John 5: 3 - 5 where John reveals what is tantamount to unbelief and what IT MEANS to genuinely BELIEVE (the rewards of truly turning to Him)Â* would you profess John 3: 16? Or not?

Why? Or why not?

some people just take the bible too literally...tsk.tsk.tsk..

I don't think you like the Bible at all..... but maybe you pretend to favor it only if it's quoted by Catholics? You hate this whole "quoting verses" thing don't you? If you don't, try seeing Jeremiah 6: 10

[KS Stanilavsky]

If there are good fruits attributed to the Eucharist or to the rosary why is it I know people who practice those 2 sacramentals love to NAG and NAG and RANT more than people who don't? Or worse, they do those bad things more than people who don't have a religion at all....

Are people like Padre Pio and Mother Teresa more "elite" in grace since they, practitioners of those 2 have good fruits?

And why is it in the University of San Carlos, there is the mantra: Witness to the Word when a LOT of the students get turned off by just the thought of reading the Bible?

*Take note the "Word" being referred to by the priests in this mantra is the Bible...

[h00ters]

The Vatican is in support of evolution!

PARIS (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church has restated its support for evolution with an article praising a U.S. court decision that rejects the "intelligent design" theory as non-scientific.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060119/...BhBHNlYwM5NjQ-

[dacs]

If there are good fruits attributed to the Eucharist or to the rosary why is it I know people who practice those 2 sacramentals love to NAG and NAG and RANT more than people who don't? Or worse, they do those bad things more than people who don't have a religion at all....

What a nice testimony to man's free will! Catholics are still subject to concupiscence even if they participate in the sacraments regularly. The graces received through them aid them in pursuing the real good and the order of reason; yet, sacramental graces do not 'imprison' the human will. It is still free.

Each person must willfully desire to be good and work on that desire. Doing bad even when participating in the sacraments does not negate the object of the sacraments. There are far greater number of people who are aided and sanctified by their participation in the sacraments than those who made no use of its promise.

Think about a family. The parent do their functions to the best of their ability. They tried to bring up good and law-abiding children. Chances are that these children will grow up worthy of their parents. Yet, it is not impossible that a child will choose a different life and will not listen to the counsel of his parents. He lives in the same house and hears the same things being taught to his siblings - and, yet, he still chooses to be different in a negative way. Will you blame it on the parents?

NOTE: In its widest acceptation, concupiscence is any yearning of the soul for good; in its strict and specific acceptation, a desire of the lower appetite contrary to reason. To understand how the sensuous and the rational appetite can be opposed, it should be borne in mind that their natural objects are altogether different. The object of the former is the gratification of the senses; the object of the latter is the good of the entire human nature and consists in the subordination of reason to God, its supreme good and ultimate end. But the lower appetite is of itself unrestrained, so as to pursue sensuous gratifications independently of the understanding and without regard to the good of the higher faculties. Hence desires contrary to the real good and order of reason may, and often do, rise in it, previous to the attention of the mind, and once risen, dispose the bodily organs to the pursuit and solicit the will to consent, while they more or less hinder reason from considering their lawfulness or unlawfulness. This is concupiscence in its strict and specific sense. As long, however, as deliberation is not completely impeded, the rational will is able to resist such desires and withhold consent, though it be not capable of crushing the effects they produce in the body, and though its freedom and dominion be to some extent diminished. If, in fact, the will resists, a struggle ensues, the sensuous appetite rebelliously demanding its gratification, reason, on the contrary, clinging to its own spiritual interests and asserting it control. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh."

Are people like Padre Pio and Mother Teresa more "elite" in grace since they, practitioners of those 2 have good fruits?

No.

And why is it in the University of San Carlos, there is the mantra: Witness to the Word when a LOT of the students get turned off by just the thought of reading the Bible?

So, these are the kind of people you know. Well, I have been in the University of San Carlos for about 16 years and these are not the type of most people I know. What does it mean when a LOT of students get turned off by just the thought of reading the Bible? Is the University remiss of its duties or is the family of the students remiss on theirs? Was it a requirement of the university that students should like to read the Bible? Was it the fault of the University if a LOT of the students get turned off by just the thought of reading the Bible?

*Take note the "Word" being referred to by the priests in this mantra is the Bible...

Wrong. The 'Word' referred to is the Jesus Christ, the 'Word of God'. Incidentally, the Word of God ('Dei Verbum) is transmitted both in written and oral form.

[dacs]

The Vatican is in support of evolution!

PARIS (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church has restated its support for evolution with an article praising a U.S. court decision that rejects the "intelligent design" theory as non-scientific.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060119/...BhBHNlYwM5NjQ-

Not so.

ROME, 1 SEPT. 2005 (ZENIT)
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn's July 7 editorial in the New York Times entitled "Finding Design in Nature" provoked a flurry of reactions, both supportive and critical.

Requests have begun to arrive in Rome for Benedict XVI to make some sort of clarification on the Church's stand regarding evolution.

The following text, delivered in 1999 as part of a lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Benedict XVI) and subsequently published in the 2004 book "Truth and Tolerance" (Ignatius), can give some clue as to the Holy Father's thoughts on the question. The length of the paragraphs was adapted here slightly for easier reading.

* * *

The separation of physics from metaphysics achieved by Christian thinking is being steadily canceled. Everything is to become "physics" again. The theory of evolution has increasingly emerged as the way to make metaphysics disappear, to make "the hypothesis of God" (Laplace) superfluous, and to formulate a strictly "scientific" explanation of the world. A comprehensive theory of evolution, intended to explain the whole of reality, has become a kind of "first philosophy," which represents, as it were, the true foundation for an enlightened understanding of the world. Any attempt to involve any basic elements other than those worked out within the terms of such a "positive" theory, any attempt at "metaphysics," necessarily appears as a relapse from the standards of enlightenment, as abandoning the universal claims of science.

Thus the Christian idea of God is necessarily regarded as unscientific. There is no longer any "theologia physica" that corresponds to it: in this view, the doctrine of evolution is the only "theologia naturalis," and that knows of no God, either a creator in the Christian (or Jewish or Islamic) sense or a world-soul or moving spirit in the Stoic sense. One could, at any rate, regard this whole world as mere appearance and nothingness as the true reality and, thus, justify some forms of mystical religion, which are at least not in direct competition with enlightenment.

Has the last word been spoken? Have Christianity and reason permanently parted company? There is at any rate no getting around the dispute about the extent of the claims of the doctrine of evolution as a fundamental philosophy and about the exclusive validity of the positive method as the sole indicator of systematic knowledge and of rationality. This dispute has therefore to be approached objectively and with a willingness to listen, by both sides — something that has hitherto been undertaken only to a limited extent. No one will be able to cast serious doubt upon the scientific evidence for micro-evolutionary processes. R. Junker and S. Scherer, in their "critical reader" on evolution, have this to say: "Many examples of such developmental steps [microevolutionary processes] are known to us from natural processes of variation and development. The research done on them by evolutionary biologists produced significant knowledge of the adaptive capacity of living systems, which seems marvelous."

They tell us, accordingly, that one would therefore be quite justified in describing the research of early development as the reigning monarch among biological disciplines. It is not toward that point, therefore, that a believer will direct the questions he puts to modern rationality but rather toward the development of evolutionary theory into a generalized "philosophia universalis," which claims to constitute a universal explanation of reality and is unwilling to allow the continuing existence of any other level of thinking. Within the teaching about evolution itself, the problem emerges at the point of transition from micro to macro-evolution, on which point Szathmary and Maynard Smith, both convinced supporters of an all-embracing theory of evolution, nonetheless declare that: "There is no theoretical basis for believing that evolutionary lines become more complex with time; and there is also no empirical evidence that this happens."

The question that has now to be put certainly delves deeper: it is whether the theory of evolution can be presented as a universal theory concerning all reality, beyond which further questions about the origin and the nature of things are no longer admissible and indeed no longer necessary, or whether such ultimate questions do not after all go beyond the realm of what can be entirely the object of research and knowledge by natural science. I should like to put the question in still more concrete form. Has everything been said with the kind of answer that we find thus formulated by Popper: "Life as we know it consists of physical 'bodies' (more precisely, structures) which are problem solving. This the various species have 'learned' by natural selection, that is to say by the method of reproduction plus variation, which itself has been learned by the same method. This regress is not necessarily infinite." I do not think so. In the end this concerns a choice that can no longer be made on purely scientific grounds or basically on philosophical grounds.

The question is whether reason, or rationality, stands at the beginning of all things and is grounded in the basis of all things or not. The question is whether reality originated on the basis of chance and necessity (or, as Popper says, in agreement with Butler, on the basis of luck and cunning) and, thus, from what is irrational; that is, whether reason, being a chance by-product of irrationality and floating in an ocean of irrationality, is ultimately just as meaningless; or whether the principle that represents the fundamental conviction of Christian faith and of its philosophy remains true: "In principio erat Verbum" — at the beginning of all things stands the creative power of reason. Now as then, Christian faith represents the choice in favor of the priority of reason and of rationality. This ultimate question, as we have already said, can no longer be decided by arguments from natural science, and even philosophical thought reaches its limits here. In that sense, there is no ultimate demonstration that the basic choice involved in Christianity is correct. Yet, can reason really renounce its claim to the priority of what is rational over the irrational, the claim that the Logos is at the ultimate origin of things, without abolishing itself?

The explanatory model presented by Popper, which reappears in different variations in the various accounts of the "basic philosophy," shows that reason cannot do other than to think of irrationality according to its own standards, that is, those of reason (solving problems, learning methods!), so that it implicitly reintroduces nonetheless the primacy of reason, which has just been denied. Even today, by reason of its choosing to assert the primacy of reason, Christianity remains "enlightened," and I think that any enlightenment that cancels this choice must, contrary to all appearances, mean, not an evolution, but an involution, a shrinking, of enlightenment.

We saw before that in the way early Christianity saw things, the concepts of nature, man, God, ethics and religion were indissolubly linked together and that this very interlinking contributed to make Christianity appear the obvious choice in the crisis concerning the gods and in the crisis concerning the enlightenment of the ancient world. The orientation of religion toward a rational view of reality as a whole, ethics as a part of this vision, and its concrete application under the primacy of love became closely associated. The primacy of the Logos and the primacy of love proved to be identical. The Logos was seen to be, not merely a mathematical reason at the basis of all things, but a creative love taken to the point of becoming sympathy, suffering with the creature. The cosmic aspect of religion, which reverences the Creator in the power of being, and its existential aspect, the question of redemption, merged together and became one.

Every explanation of reality that cannot at the same time provide a meaningful and comprehensible basis for ethics necessarily remains inadequate. Now the theory of evolution, in the cases where people have tried to extend it to a "philosophia universalis," has in fact been used for an attempt at a new ethos based on evolution. Yet this evolutionary ethic that inevitably takes as its key concept the model of selectivity, that is, the struggle for survival, the victory of the fittest, successful adaptation, has little comfort to offer. Even when people try to make it more attractive in various ways, it ultimately remains a bloodthirsty ethic. Here, the attempt to distill rationality out of what is in itself irrational quite visibly fails. All this is of very little use for an ethic of universal peace, of practical love of one's neighbor, and of the necessary overcoming of oneself, which is what we need. ZE05090123


This article has been selected from the ZENIT Daily Dispatch
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[king_mark]

some people just take the bible too literally...tsk.tsk.tsk..

RIGHT!! i think the bible is not something that we should follow, literally. it is just merely a guide, or probably and eye-opener for what is righteous. just for an example, is was said in the bible that God told abraham to kill his son. does that mean that all of us has to kill all our siblings too? its stupid right? what was meant is being obedient to God, live in righteousness and a moral life.

God gave us minds, we should use it