I was reading my daily comic strips when I came across this:
Which prompted me to find out who Ken Ham is. Turns out that he is a staunch fundamentalist and the CEO of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. An interesting belief he has is that if you don't believe Genesis then you shouldn't believe in the New Testament. He once put it this way:
[My father] was always very adamant about one thing - if you can't trust the Book of Genesis as literal history, then you can't trust the rest of the Bible. After all, every single doctrine of biblical theology is founded in the history of Genesis 1-11. My father had not developed his thinking in this area as much as we have today at Answers in Genesis, but he clearly understood that if Adam wasn't created from dust, and that if he didn't fall into sin as Genesis states, then the gospel message of the New Testament can't be true either.
I find these people interesting. My brother-in-law is one of them. he doesn't believe the Earth is much more than 6,000 years old. Doesn't believe carbon dating is valid. I once had a conversation about this with him. I find you have to tread lightly when discussing something as important as a person's religious beliefs. Let's just say it didn't go well but it was amiable. We basically agreed to disagree.
Of course he, as my late father-in-law did, thinks I am pretty much a heretic and beyond redemption.
The problem with a lot of religions is that their #1 priority is worshipping
ReplyDelete...when, actually, it should be meditating on and absorbing the underlying meanings and spiritual messages behind the metaphors and subtextual aspects of the scriptures
...which is far more significant than any ritualistic "mandated" perfunctorisms of the "worship" process.
Tal, ritual is what religion is all about. And comforting people in their grief and giving them hope. I agree with you that they should concentrate on the meaning of the teachings but there is much dogma and tradition involved that interferes.
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