Why can't religions stick to an opinion and stop adapting there religion every time science proves them wrong?

Question

In the 10-12th century christians in europe burned scientists or murdered them for hearsay yet there future couterparts use the very technology that there previous generations fought against.

Again religion is a contriditory in terms changing it's values to try and cling onto it's lessening influence.

Christianity seems very adept at completely altering it's stance to suit the times over the ages.

So which word of the lord is the correct one the
10th centuary
11th
12th
etc
20th
Because each one has a different teaching

Answer that then!

i'm not angry and it is historic fact ,religious doctorine has changed to suit

It's odd you use the very technology your predessesors fought against to answer this question

So what is gods word.

What I say today will completely change tomorrow but if any one asks say well thats gods way we are 2000yr old brain washed lemons

Answer 1

The 'God of the Gaps' fallacy... also known as the 'Divine Fallacy'. A 'fallacy' is a flaw in thinking.

God of the Gaps is the method of claiming God (or gods) exists by pointing to gaps in our present knowledge of how things work. For example, ancient Scandinavians who did not know what caused thunder and lightning chose to see them as evidence for their own deity, Thor, driving his chariot through the sky and hammering with Miolnir.

Present-day creationists and IDists employ the same method by claiming that our gaps in the knowledge of abiogenesis and evolution mean that an intelligent designer must have been involved.

The weakness of "God of the Gaps" methodology is that the existence of God is, of course, endangered every time scientists filled the gaps with knowledge. Howard J Van Till, a theistic evolutionist, warns against this risk, and proposes instead to see the whole of the evolutionary saga as a pointer to a creative and generous God, no gaps needed. Also, when science fills a gap in knowledge with observed facts, science is satisfied. Creationists, on the other hand, generally declare that, rather than filling a gap, a new piece of information simply generates two gaps, one on either side of the newly-established fact -- meaning that additional information is understood to diminish the observational base from which the theory of evolution derives, rather than to reinforce it, as more insightful commentators argue.

The God of the Gaps argument indicates enormous conceit because, by implication, a believer indicates that understanding of all there is, except those things God did, and therefore declares that a miracle is necessary to make him fail to understand. It needs hardly to be said that this belief system has little do to with observation, and much to do with blind belief in the unknown.

Some creationists (for example Werner Gitt, in Schuf Gott durch Evolution) try to refute this refutation of their arguments by saying that for them, God is not just a gap filler. But that is beside the point. For anyone switching to creationism because of the God of the Gaps argument, God would be. This is why the argument does not work.

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Early in history Gods could be found everywhere. There were gods of the sea, gods of storms, gods of forests, gods of rivers, gods of cities, and probably gods of that place under the stairs where you can't quite reach, even though there's a really useful Hoover attachment back there somewhere. When monotheistic religions appeared, they attempted to congeal these diverse gods into a single, all-powerful God Of The Universe, like so many plastic soldiers melting into one lump under a magnifying glass on a sunny day. In the case of Judeo-Christianity, this God is Jehovah. [1]

Unfortunately, Jehovah seems to be shrinking. Melting, like the Wicked Witch after being brutally attacked with a bucketful of water. God, who once shook the planet, created stars, filled oceans and populated continents and coral reefs with everything from starfish to starfruit, seems to be suffering from a case of erosion that would put the ice-worn mountains of the North to shame.

Cosmology, geology and biology are the sciences that cover pretty much everything there is. (Okay, so physicists and chemists may pull rank, but the first three divide things up into handy packages.) God was once held responsible for creating the stars in their crystal sphere, for moving the sun around the Earth, for opening and closing the windows in the sky to let the rain and snow in. For placing comets, planets and supernovae as signs, portents and landing-lights for Wise Men on camels. For the perfect order and majesty of the clean and neatly-arranged Heavens.

Sadly, God had to relinquish his control when the telescope was invented. To hide his tracks He was careful to dirty up the cosmos with great clouds of alcohol and laughing gas, dirt, bits of broken rock, and all sorts of other untidy, disordered muck. To look at it now, you'd hardly know a guiding intelligence had any hand in it at all, so good a job was done of making it appear natural. Right down to leftover radiation from the (ho ho) Big Bang.

A similarly woeful tale can be told of biology. With the theory of evolution, the gradual piecing together of the fossil record and the discovery of DNA, the Lord no longer was able to carefully direct each individual sperm to its divinely-chosen eggs, to maintain control of the flow of genes each and every time anything reproduced. There was nothing left for him to do, which probably came as a relief, what with the slimy, messy, icky nature of... well, nature.

And so it went on. God was not getting further away - just smaller and smaller. The effect can be the same, in the right light. But old Jehovah was fading away, like one of those little chalky feeding blocks you drop in the fishtank before you go on holiday. ( Of course, God was not being nibbled by fish - that would be silly! )

Geology too. When nosey geologists started digging the ground up and peering too closely at what they found, God had no choice but to call it a day and fake a load of strata, fossils, ancient coastlines, coal deposits, drifted continents and all the other paraphernalia to make it look like the Earth was an extra few billion years old. Like a pile of sweets surrounded by four-year-olds, the Lord just kept getting smaller.

And that is where we find Him today. In the cracks and gaps in our scientific knowledge. Unlike God, scientists are not omniscient, and so there are still plenty of gaps for God to hide in, and be invoked as an ideal explanation at a moments notice. The inexorable progress of science, like a bulldozer on autopilot, is slowly filling in the gaps, making poor old Jehovah vacate them and find some even more obscure hiding place.

Science cannot explain THIS, they cry, That is sure proof of God's existence and cleverness. Look what we've found, they shout, the only possible explanation is our God (as defined in edition 27a of this particular translation of the Bible). How could anyone possibly argue with such damning evidence?!?

And yet the bulldozer grinds forward, pushing heaps of fresh knowledge and understanding into the hidey-holes where gods are to be found lurking like trolls under bridges.

Strangely enough, the people who espouse this sort of deity invariably fail to acknowledge that they are insulting the very omnipotent being whose existence they try to convince us of. To say that the world works perfectly well without divine intervention, except here, here, here and over there, is to say that God is a pretty shoddy builder. He is, it seems, unable to put together something without using magic god-glue to stop it falling to pieces. My son can do better than that with his Lego! By saying that God exists because of the cracks in the universe, what does that tell us about this God? That he is incompetent; he cannot finish the job he started; he’s a cowboy builder?

To use the God-Of-The-Gaps argument is to open up your poor old deity to scientific scrutiny. If you say that proof of your God can be shown by a particular unexplained phenomenon, you’re going to be in trouble when science gets round to examining and explaining that phenomenon. Does your God vanish or die, or just scuttle over to the next Gap, like some giant cockroach when the light is switched on?

Sometime, someday, most of the important gaps will be closed, and those remaining believers who rely on this form of argument will be heard saying "Ah, but what about the mating ritual of the Venezuelan Accordion Beetle, eh? You can't explain that with your stupid test tubes, can you? Bow down and praise the Lord in apology!” The remaining believers will have to fall back on good old ignorance ("Continental drift? What's that then?"), denial ("I wouldn't believe it even if you proved it to me!") or old-fashioned faith ("The world is really as I feel it ought to be, not as it is").

Far and few, far and few, are the gaps where the deities live.

© Adrian Barnett 1999

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/WhyAtheism.htm
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/gaps.html
http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/God_of_the_Gaps

Answer 2

There has indeed been a variety of "teaching" over the centuries. However, and this is an important point, the actual WORD of God has never changed. Various "church" policies and practices have been vastly changed, warped, and altered to suit the ruling powers goals. This unfortunately reflects badly on God's true people.

Take for example, the catholics...for years, supported a variety of military campaigns and endorsed the slaughter of thousands of people. During WWII, the pope actually called Hitler the "great defender of Christianity" NOW...was he? Of course not. He had nothing to do with the Word, or the Spirit of God.

I suggest you read the Bible for yourself....and discover what God actually says, and not what some in history have done in His name without reflecting His nature. But to answer your original question, that's why things have seemed to change over the years. In reality, God's word has always be unchanging. And science hasn't proved anything about Christianity wrong, in fact, just the opposite.

Hope that helps...

Answer 3

If they did that then they would have to still hold that the sun revolved around the earth as it says in the bible.

Psalm
19:4 Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,

Ecclesiastes 1
1:5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

this last verse was taken literally by virtually all Christians until the Copernican revolution, and was used by the Church to condemn Galileo for teaching the heliocentric heresy.


According to the bible the earth is flat:

Isaiah 40
40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

According to the bible the moon produces its own light and the earth does not move.

Isaiah 13
13:10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.

Isaiah 30
30:26 Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the LORD bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.

Answer 4

When you speak of "religion" you have to realize that this term as you are using it is not referring to God's revealed truth to mankind but to flawed human beings, many of who were corrupt men who hid behind the name of God in order to advance their own personal agendas.

One of the benefits of modern technology is that people can no longer operate on a large scale in secrecy and use brute force and intimidation without their actions coming under world wide scrutiny.

Science has never proved one statement in the Bible to be wrong. Instead scientists have had to eat crow over and over again as they have made claims that civilizations mentioned in the Bible never existed because there was no evidence to support that claim. Then 25, 30, 50 years later someone was digging in the dirt and the evidence that the Bible was right all along came to life.

Check out the Answers button @ http://web.express56.com/~bromar/ and you will find many scholarly articles that address questions like the one you are asking.

Answer 5

The Bible still says what it always has. Just because people misread it in centuries past doesn't mean that it is wrong.

Do you think that instead, we should hold fast to unchanging science? The same "unchanging" science that once said that the earth was flat, that black people were underevolved and therefore should be enslaved, that women were inferior and couldn't handle holding jobs, that people would die from suffocation if they ever travelled faster than 40 mph, that people would be poisoned if ground was plowed with iron plows, or that doctors shouldn't wash their hands between patients?

Answer 6

Maybe you would look here for something interesting.

www.reasons.org

PhD Scientists that see the Bible literally describes the world that science has discovered.

Because SOME Christians make claims that are proven wrong doesn't mean all Christians are wrong about everything. I think they call that faulty reasoning

Answer 7

Christianity isn't about the side issues. We really don't care if the world was created in 6 days or 6 billion years. Those are issues of Doctrine, which changes not only year to year, but from church to church. You see, Christians aren't like you. We can actually think, and revise incorrect ideas. Our only real core beliefs are in regard to Jesus.

Answer 8

You are right, man has changed religion to suit his needs and SHAME ON HIM!

However, Gods word has never changed and never will. Anyone who follows His word will never find discrepancies or amendments.

Man has done awful things in the name of God (as you mentioned above) and is still doing so (look at the middle east) but there are those of us who truly believe God's word as it is written in the holy bible today and thousands of years ago. Please don't generalize all Christians to be mindless sheep, we are people that look to Gods word to help us to understand how we are to live, work and worship, not to change it to accommodate our desires.

Answer 9

I'm not sure. They claim they have all the facts (almost all religions claim that, that I have seen)... yet end up either admitting they were wrong... or ignoring it all together. I doubt they will ever claim to be just opinion. But I think religions should evolve with society. When they don't, you end up with fanatical groups who believe that the only way to get thru to everyone is to kill them.

Answer 10

because if they didnt adapt and change people would stop believing them. Do you think Christianity would still be around if they stuck to the belief that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the sun rotates around it?

Answer 11

You need to go back to school and study a little before you ask questions in front of adults again-your question is stupid-like you. Ask a coherent question and you will get an answer.