Father Barron on Bill Maher's "Religulous"

Another part of a video series from Wordonfire.org. Father Barron will be commenting on subjects from modern day culture.

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[wordonfirevideo]

@john5899 Gosh, I'm so glad that now that you've left the Catholic Church, you've found such a reasonable, balanced perspective! Let me see if I have your logic right: Catholics are "dangerous" because of their beliefs, and yet you want to see the Pope flogged in public!

[MaxxTheMerciless]

@losarman You didn't ask to be born, either, and if you don't like it you can always kill yourself like Nietzsche wanted to do. And who cares if the Church won't take you off their rolls? Isn't that their business, not yours? Pardon me for saying this, but you sound like a wimp. For some reason, you feel confined and constrained by the Church, right? Well, talk to a former Muslim sometime. He might clue you in on how it feels to have a death warrant out on you.

[manwithouthat44]

super rational ;') 

[UTLBify]

@jonpaulmayer If we can accept that all time is irrelevant when compared to eternity, and that God does not view time as we do (2 Peter 3:8), then can we not also accept that the "7 days" described in Genesis just might not be literally 7, 24 hr. days? And if we can accept that the 7 days may not be literal, then why can we not accept that the other measures or descriptions are also not literal, but figurative, described so that humans might comprehend the lessons in their own ignorant minds?

[UTLBify]

@jonpaulmayer Believing that humans evolved from the components of the Earth is a more precise understanding of what it means to be "formed from the dirt" as Genesis put it. And Adam and Eve could have very well represented the first humans of evolution. We get caught up on evolution being compatible with humans being made in the image and likeness of God, but it's possible that at whatever point God was done developing us, he instilled the "human soul" and we were then like him.

[UTLBify]

Genesis tells us that God created everything while science tells us some of HOW creation happened. If describing the Human Body requires large text books, how could the exact method of creation be described within one book of the Bible? Believing that we can understand, sum up, and dumb down all of God's techniques for creating the universe in one book, is an insult to God's mind and power and it takes away from our reverence for God and knowledge of our own mental limitations.

[UTLBify]

@john5899

What's really dangerous is viewing a person's religious freedom as dangerous - that leads to wanting to strip them of their rights and persecute them. As far as us believing in miracles and morality, it can only be understood through the eyes of faith. For an unbeliever it sounds like nonsense, but truth is not dependent on our ability to accept or understand it.

[jonpaulmayer]

1) While his premise is correct that you cannot approach every book of the Bible with the same lens of interpretation, he doesn't let the context dictate whether it is historical, poetic or theological. He assumes that science contradicts Genesis, therefore he labels it a "theological interpretation." But it is exactly because science and theology are not separate and incompatible entities that one cannot force a scientific explanation onto a Biblical text just to avoid the ridicule of atheists.

[jonpaulmayer]

2) Science cannot make positive statements about what cannot be observed. Who observed the creation? The Author of Scripture did. Genesis is written as a chronological, historical account, and it must be interpreted as such. Father Barron is looking in exactly the wrong place if he wants answers about the origins of the universe.

[jonpaulmayer]

3) Father Barron's above implication is that even if the universe and life on earth came about by evolution, that that is still somehow theologically compatible with the book of Genesis. That is completely false. It contradicts the idea that the universe was created in an orderly and perfect state. It also contradicts the essential idea that Original Sin was passed down from the first human couple. If you cast doubt on the existence of the first Adam, what does it do to the Second Adam, Christ?

[jonpaulmayer]

4) I really lose any respect for this Father when he calls fellow Christians "idiots" because they take literally the accounts of creation or of Jonah. And yet he says that the gospels purport to be historical reportage. If this is true, would he cast out the miracle of the Resurrection just because Bill Maher challenges him to explain it scientifically? And if not, why does he ridicule his brothers and sisters for not knowing how Jonah survived in the belly of a fish?