@T_aquaticus has reminded us, once again, that good Christians should not be neutral about foolish Christians sounding irrational about the natural world - - which would include museum exhibits of cave men riding dinosaurs, hyper-evolution after animals were released from the ark, and inescapable conclusion that if not a single large mammal can be found in the same rocks as dinosaurs, there is no way to argue that all these animals were alive together - - just 6,000 years ago!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Below is the Augustine quote via Mr. T, along with comments from me. . . .
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
St. Augustine (AD 354-430)
“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold[s] to as being certain from reason and experience.”
^ ^ St. Augustine’s initial premise is that there is natural knowledge that is, and that can be, “certain from reason and experience” !!!
.
“Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show … vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.”
^ ^ Here, Augustine thinks Christians should discourage letting Christians spout out in contradiction to the reality of natural knowledge - - because it leads to embarassment when a Christian starts spouting nonsense about the world.
.
“The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.”
^ ^ Augustine worries that non-Christians will likely think the founders of Christianity also held to such mocked positions regarding the natural world!
.
“If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?”
^ ^ Isn’t this exactly the situation that we here under the BioLogos umbrella encounter daily!
.
“Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.”
^ ^ St. Augustine describes the problem with letting Christians ignorant about science create an erroneous impression of what must be believed to accept the Gospel.
.
"For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7] "
^^Sounds just like what goes on when YEC’s arrive on these webpages, and start to propound that
God made days without the Sun, and that Evolution is impossible!"
.