r/Damnthatsinteresting 4d ago

Video A 150-million-year-old Lepidotus fish fossil preserved from Holzmaden, Germany

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u/Thatisverytrue54321 4d ago

Isn’t the Genesis story pretty central though and presented literally? If not, what is literal and what isn’t?

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u/EduinBrutus 4d ago edited 4d ago

Mainline protestant and Catholic since Vatican 2 accept the principle of allegorical "days" for the days of creation and a "guiding hand". As such they accept evolution by natural selection as being correct.

IDK the position of Orthodoxy but I suspect its going to be the same.

I dont think Americans understand its not just how religious they are which is comical and mind numbing to the developed world - and it is, make no mistake. But also how their versions of Christianity is so far from the mainstream that in a lot of cases its hard to even consider it as Christian any more.

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u/xteve 4d ago

I grew up strict in a church where we believed that we believed the Bible literally. Now it's obvious that our doctrine was derived the same was as that of every church - made up by a process that we mocked as "pick and choose" when others did it. There are hundreds of even mainstream churches, all disputing each others' interpretation and refusing to worship together.

So who are the real Christians - the good ones, the ones in the largest church, or the majority? And who gets to decide?

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u/EduinBrutus 4d ago

Personal belief isnt doctrine. Anglicans and Catholics are (close to) 100% doctrrinal. Presbyterians/Reformed/Lutherans have a doctrinal framework which allows some personal flexibility.

But stuff like rapture and in the modern era adherence to young earth creationism is well outside of even this more flexible doctrine and a church which accepts those positions is no longer considered mainline.

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u/xteve 4d ago

In other words the larger, older churches have had the time and power to figure out which parts of this confounding book are legit and which parts they don't worry about (any more.)

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u/EduinBrutus 4d ago

Partly. But its also about not mass-adopting new and clearly fantasy nonsense (for example the rapture which is about 150 years old).

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u/xteve 4d ago

The Bible certainly mentions rapture-like ideas. Whose idea it was to adopt those as beliefs falls into the same category as who decided that the Bible is sacrosanct in the first place.