This is a poll.


Do you believe the Bible is historically accurate?

Does your church teach that the Bible is true and historically accurate?

Are all the stories set out and told in the Bible true or are they fiction or a mixture of both?

there is nothing inconsistent between pantheism and christianity
it is just how you view God

see for example: http://www.wku.edu/~jan.garrett/panthesm.htm

Pantheism and Western Monotheism
How does pantheism relate to traditional Judaeo-Christian conceptions of God? As Paul Harrison ("Defining the Cosmic Divinity," SP website) points out, traditional (Western) religion describes a God who is ultimately a mystery, beyond human comprehension; awe-inspiring; overwhelmingly powerful; creator of the universe; eternal and infinite; and transcendent. The divine universe fits some of these descriptions without modification and it fits others if we allow ourselves to interpret the terms flexibly.

The divine universe is mysterious. Though we can understand the universe more adequately as scientific research proceeds, there will always be questions to which we will not yet have answers; and explanations of ultimate origins will always remain speculative (they are too far in the past for us to decipher clearly).

The divine universe is awe-inspiring. Would a creator behind it be any more awe-inspiring than the universe itself?

The universe is clearly very powerful. It creates and it destroys on a vast scale.

So far as we know, the universe created all that exists; which is to say that, the universe as it is now was created by the universe as it was a moment ago, and that universe by the universe that existed a moment before that, and so on. If we view universe in this way, we can keep the idea of creator and creation and yet have no need to imagine a being apart from the universe who created it. The divine being is indeed a creator, in the pantheist view. Indeed, the creativity of the natural universe is probably the best evidence for its divinity.

Is the universe eternal? Well, it depends on how you understand eternity. Traditional Western theology understands eternity as a quality of a God that exists altogether outside time. Yet the dynamic and changing universe is very much bound up with time, so it is not eternal in the theological sense. Possibly it is everlasting, maybe it had no first moment and will never cease to exist. Scientific evidence does point to a Big Bang several billion years ago, from which our universe in roughly its current form originated, but if we accept the time-honored precept that nothing comes from nothing, we cannot rule out the existence of a material universe before this Big Bang.

Is the universe transcendent? In Western theology transcendence is a term often paired with eternity. A transcendent being is essentially outside and independent of the universe. Of course, the divinity which pantheists revere is not transcendent in that way. However, in ordinary language, to transcend is to surpass. Well, the universe which includes us also certainly surpasses us, as it surpasses everything we are capable of knowing or observing.
Differences with Western Monotheism

Pantheism has clear differences with the traditional description of God. It departs from the picture of God given in the Old Testament to the extent that the Old Testament attributes human attributes to the divine being, such as a willingness to make deals (You worship me and I'll make you my Chosen People) and anger (for example, Yahweh's anger at the Israelites' worship of the Golden Calf).

Pantheism also avoids some features of the theological conception of God which arises from a mix of Greek philosophical influences and Judaeo-Christian thought. For example, pantheism does not hold that the divinity we revere is a first cause wholly independent of matter, or that the divine being freely creates the physical universe from nothing but its own will.

Pantheism is the view that the natural universe is divine, the proper object of reverence; or the view that the natural universe is pervaded with divinity. Negatively, it is the idea that we do not need to look beyond the universe for the proper object of ultimate respect.

I believe it to be historically accurate

my church never taught that it WASNT historically accurate, but never specifically taught that it was,, it just was a given that we would be learning what was 'accurate'

ITs a mix of

1. no
2. no
3. mix/both

You're not allowed to make a thread that elicits responses from only a single religious group

So in order for your vote to be counted, (in the poll) you have to be a Christian, and that includes anyone who claims to be Christian.

But all opinions are welcome!

Thank you for your vote.

But
I'm confused about your second answer.

Did your church assume that you would assume the Bible is historically accurate? I'm going to take that as a yes answer. They taught that it was "true" or "accurate."

Otherwise that seems very ambiguous.

I cant assume what others assumptions were,,lol

I just think of explicit lessons when I hear the phrase 'does the church teach', and there was never any explicit mention of accuracy anymore than there was a mention of accuracy in my american history class

I trusted that someone would not spend time and energy to study with me something that was 'inaccurate', the fact that they were teaching it led to a conclusion that it was an 'accurate' lesson,,,,

That's sort of how we get the lies we have though msharmony. Because people assume that if someone is teaching it from a position of authority, than it must be true. We must not do that, we cannot be afraid to question.

to an extent, questioning serves a purpose

questioning just for questioning sake or distrusting for the sake of distrusting, is not something that works for me

Yes, but what I mean is......if something you are told doesn't sound right, you should be free to ask why, not just accept it cause someone above you says it's true you know what I mean?

This is the problem with religion and Christianity, when you try to question truths you are presented with that don't make any good sense, it's always you that doesn't understand, never that maybe what you are being told is false. It creates a closed mind in that sense to anything that may go against what you have been told.

well then this is also the problem with education of any type. THere has to be a foundation that is counted on to build upon. THat foundation has to be assumed to be accurate for any of what is built upon it to be accurate. IF I am being taught, by someone who has already studied something(anything) and I dont understand it,,, of course I have the capacity to ask for clarification

but the problem becomes, IF I question the validity of the information I am being given to start with, how should the answer to my questions about that information satisfy my curiousity any more than the original answer?

its one thing to ask for clarification, its another to demand proof and convincing,,,,


why would any teacher ever teach from a place of falsehood and why would such a teacher ever admit that?

if I understand something and my student doesnt, even after I try to clarify it,, it is very probably going to seem to me that they 'dont understand it',,,,,and need to study it further