Correct, I am a Christian and believer in the Bible, not a Gnostic, Neoplatonist, Zoroastrian, Hindu, or Buddhist or believer in any of their scriptures or teachings. I do not believe in reincarnation, transmigration of souls, or pre-existence. Nor do I believe in something inserted into or added to the body in order to make it alive or rational.
But obviously I am not Roman Catholic. I have read the Bible for myself without a guide telling me what it says or means, but making my own decisions with regards to all the theological issues. The result is that I am a 5 solas protestant evangelical but not fundamentalist or Calvinist (rejecting all 5 points of TULIP Calvinism) with a preference for some Orthodox positions on a few issues like atonement. I am not hostile to Roman Catholicism and even have a catechism on my shelf so I can look up their position on things. I like the RC better than the Eastern Orthodox because the latter are too conservative, though I would take their side in the Great Schism, not because of the filioque clause which I have no interest in, but because the Roman patriarch didn’t follow tradition and defer to an ecumenical council. One of the best things about RC in my view is its attempt to be an umbrella church embracing a wide diversity of thought… though not all of its membership seems to embrace this. One of the worst things about it is its opposition to birth control.
I am not a naturalist equating the scientific worldview with reality itself. I believe in a non-physical reality, including a spiritual God who created the physical universe. I do not believe a human is 100% physical, i.e. of the laws of nature. There is a spiritual dimension to our existence – to all living things. Paul said in 1 Cor 15, if there is a physical body then there is a spiritual body, describing the latter as growing from the former like a plant growing from a seed – but also says it doesn’t come to life until the physical body dies. This is certainly not puppet dualism.
Incorrect. It is demonstrable that the measurable reality studied by science is not causally closed. It is scientific procedure to accept what can be demonstrated.
God, Jesus, spirit, and the Bible are the baby. The premises adopted by Gnostics and the Neoplatonists are the bathwater, whether some church has bought into these things or not. Too often in their effort to justify their beliefs they have adopted premises to support arguments which have effectively replaced their faith in God with a faith in things which are false. That seems like idolatry to me. All done so that they can justify forcing their beliefs onto other people – that is a pursuit of power not faith.
This is a claim I frequently hear from creationists and others who refuse to give up religious beliefs which contradict the findings of science.