David I asked you to leave. If you are not willing to have an adult intelligent discussion, then please take your madness elsewhere and stop derailing my thread.

~Lady~:

No it doesn't mean that only Christian can reason, but it does mean that to set things in proper light one has to include faith with their reasoning.
The reasoning you're speaking of is the flawed reasoning that one can do without God. But the reasoning spoken of in this encyclical is the reasoning that is set in the correct perspective in light of faith.

Sorry but no such reasoning exists in the bible and it is probably more starkly evident by the fact that neither the author of the encyclical nor you can back this up with scripture. If it is there pls i'd be more than willing to learn a new thing.

Help me reason this out . . . how does a man stuff all the animals on the planet in one boat for 40 days? How did he feed them?

~Lady~:

What does this have to do with the price of beans. The article speaks of A and you're here speaking of B.
Why don't you read the encyclical first before you continue to make a fool of yourself.
I swear David I give you way too much credit and I doubt you have a degree in anything.

Again the baseless and overly emotional personal attacks. And you're talking about someone else missing the point? I'm sorry but if you missed the point i was bringing out there its not because i lack a degree but because you are just being obstinate.

You said again and i make bold to quote you - [size=15pt]Example. Why is the Christian faith the true faith? Because it is the only one that makes sense.
In a world where there are different faith how can one know which one is telling the truth? The one that makes sense of things.[/size]

If we are to solely determine the "true faith" by how well it can "make sense of things" then we are all better off as atheists. How do you make sense of someone dying on the cross for the sins of people born 2000 yrs away? What is a miracle? Have you seen one? Did Christ really exist? where is your archeological proof? How did Jonah survive in the belly of a whale for 3 days without oxygen?

I'm sure the bahai religion makes more sense than the book of Jonah.

Which was why i reiterated that point - if logic/reason was all faith took then i wonder why Paul, with all his degrees, went about killing the apostles while ordinary uneducated fishermen preached salvation to the jews and gentiles.

~Lady~:

WHAT THE HELL? I'm sorry who said anything about reason alone. Can you point me to the part of the article that speaks of reason alone or did you happen to miss the title of the thread that says FAITH AND REASON

Did you come here to just start something or did you actually come here to have an intelligent discussion?

If your purpose is to derail the thread let me know so I can completely ignore you or ask that your posts be deleted because this is nonsense.

Again emotional garbage . . . you didnt even bother to take a minute to digest the point and you're going off the rails.

What is "faith and reason"? where in your bible do you see it?

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

err . . . how does reason come into play there? Is it reasonable to believe in the "evidence" of something you havent seen? How can evidence and "not seen" be placed together in the same sentence?

~Lady~:

Ok you know what get the hell outta here. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and decided to have an intelligent discission but I see you don't know what an intelligent discussion entails. Please leave.

What a minute all of a sudden you need your brain to believe in faith?
Dude are you even paying attention to anything that has been said or not?

1) This thread is not about having reason alone, if anything it was written to debunk atheists who make the claim that one doesn't need faith. This encyclical shows that it is with faith that one can properly reason and understand humanity.

Instead of bringing your hatred here, how about you actually read through.

Why should I listen to you when you have no intention of listening to me?

The mama wey born u better pass de one wey born me?

make i listen to u but u no wan listen to me, comon GET LOST.

you have used every single one of your posts to insult my person and you claim all you wanted was an intelligent discussion?  

May God help us with these godless and incorrigible souls.

~Lady~:

David I asked you to leave. If you are not willing to have an adult intelligent discussion, then please take your madness elsewhere and stop derailing my thread.

NOT a single one of my posts referenced anything personal about you . . . i solely focused on the points of discussion. You on the other hand have insulted my person and status for no reason at all . . . and you're talking of an "adult intelligent discussion"? Pls save the lies and deception for someone else pls.

I have consistently brought scriptural verses to discuss the issue, all you have done is rave and rant based on your emotions. I doubt you understand what i placed in highlights above.

Sorry, this is not your personal blog so you cant order me to leave. As long as this is a public forum . . . people will not be allowed to get away with distorting the TRUTH of the SCRIPTURES.

You and your pope can open your encyclical elsewhere and go on deceiving urselves.

WAIT WAIT WAIT, i didnt really quite get that part

davidylan:

One more thing . . .


Why do you think the atheist are still lost? Most of them know more of the bible than those of us who call ourselves christians.

2. Do you understand the bible merely by reasoning? No! John 14:26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you

1 Corinthians 2:10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

wht should God that made us humans reason logically Choose sum people and give them the holy ghost in preference to others are u saying that he has his own chosen people or sumthing, and the rest of man kind, including that nice fella you knw on the street should go to hell just because he is non christian?, the bible says study to show thyself approved. well i have studied enough of the bible to preach to anyone from kid to top ranked pastors as the case may be. but i have not been convinced because of the adulterations, the ideological misunderstandings in interpretation, and down right psychological evidence to prove some miracles are acutally natural occurences, please i beg all of yall to study facts know the history of these things beforecommiting your whole lyf to it, i may be only 16, but the way adults are going about this whole religion thing im getting disturbed that if God actually exists and he ought to be perfect, then he or she would embrace mankind in their different approach in worshiping him, if ot then i think your picture of God has been affected by human prejudice against one another.thanks for listening, and im open for replies

22. In the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul helps us to appreciate better the depth of insight of the Wisdom literature's reflection. Developing a philosophical argument in popular language, the Apostle declares a profound truth: through all that is created the “eyes of the mind” can come to know God. Through the medium of creatures, God stirs in reason an intuition of his “power” and his “divinity” (cf. Rom 1:20). This is to concede to human reason a capacity which seems almost to surpass its natural limitations. Not only is it not restricted to sensory knowledge, from the moment that it can reflect critically upon the data of the senses, but, by discoursing on the data provided by the senses, reason can reach the cause which lies at the origin of all perceptible reality. In philosophical terms, we could say that this important Pauline text affirms the human capacity for metaphysical enquiry.
According to the Apostle, it was part of the original plan of the creation that reason should without difficulty reach beyond the sensory data to the origin of all things: the Creator. But because of the disobedience by which man and woman chose to set themselves in full and absolute autonomy in relation to the One who had created them, this ready access to God the Creator diminished.
This is the human condition vividly described by the Book of Genesis when it tells us that God placed the human being in the Garden of Eden, in the middle of which there stood “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (2:17). The symbol is clear: man was in no position to discern and decide for himself what was good and what was evil, but was constrained to appeal to a higher source. The blindness of pride deceived our first parents into thinking themselves sovereign and autonomous, and into thinking that they could ignore the knowledge which comes from God. All men and women were caught up in this primal disobedience, which so wounded reason that from then on its path to full truth would be strewn with obstacles. From that time onwards the human capacity to know the truth was impaired by an aversion to the One who is the source and origin of truth. It is again the Apostle who reveals just how far human thinking, because of sin, became “empty”, and human reasoning became distorted and inclined to falsehood (cf. Rom 1:21-22). The eyes of the mind were no longer able to see clearly: reason became more and more a prisoner to itself. The coming of Christ was the saving event which redeemed reason from its weakness, setting it free from the shackles in which it had imprisoned itself.

thisnigga:

WAIT WAIT WAIT, i didnt really quite get that partwht should God that made us humans reason logically Choose sum people and give them the holy ghost in preference to others are u saying that he has his own chosen people or sumthing, and the rest of man kind, including that nice fella you knw on the street should go to hell just because he is non christian?, the bible says study to show thyself approved. well i have studied enough of the bible to preach to anyone from kid to top ranked pastors as the case may be. but i have not been convinced because of the adulterations, the ideological misunderstandings in interpretation, and down right psychological evidence to prove some miracles are acutally natural occurences, please i beg all of yall to study facts know the history of these things beforecommiting your whole lyf to it,  i may be only 16, but the way adults are going about this whole religion thing im getting disturbed that if God actually exists and he ought to be perfect, then he or she would embrace mankind in their different approach in worshiping him, if ot then i think your picture of God has been affected by human prejudice against one another.thanks for listening, and im open for replies

I doubt you're "open for replies". I've seen atheists use this false approach once too many times . . . infact see here for your usual modus operandi.

That being said . . . i could hardly get the gist of your question - God didnt give some people the Holy Ghost preferentially. Only those who heard the word and CHOSE of their own free will to surrender their lives to Christ.

davidylan:


I have consistently brought scriptural verses to discuss the issue, all you have done is rave and rant based on your emotions. I doubt you understand what i placed in highlights above.

i think dats the problem wif religious arguments. they hold on to sum beleifs dey have about something, and the castigate others , and then get emotional at some point and try to block out the truth, well as it is in their bible or sumfink, the truth can set you free, or jus make you angy, lol
davidylan i got ur back

23. This is why the Christian's relationship to philosophy requires thorough-going discernment. In the New Testament, especially in the Letters of Saint Paul, one thing emerges with great clarity: the opposition between “the wisdom of this world” and the wisdom of God revealed in Jesus Christ. The depth of revealed wisdom disrupts the cycle of our habitual patterns of thought, which are in no way able to express that wisdom in its fullness.
The beginning of the First Letter to the Corinthians poses the dilemma in a radical way. The crucified Son of God is the historic event upon which every attempt of the mind to construct an adequate explanation of the meaning of existence upon merely human argumentation comes to grief. The true key-point, which challenges every philosophy, is Jesus Christ's death on the Cross. It is here that every attempt to reduce the Father's saving plan to purely human logic is doomed to failure. “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the learned? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Cor 1:20), the Apostle asks emphatically. The wisdom of the wise is no longer enough for what God wants to accomplish; what is required is a decisive step towards welcoming something radically new: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, ; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not to reduce to nothing things that are” (1 Cor 1:27-28). Human wisdom refuses to see in its own weakness the possibility of its strength; yet Saint Paul is quick to affirm: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). Man cannot grasp how death could be the source of life and love; yet to reveal the mystery of his saving plan God has chosen precisely that which reason considers “foolishness” and a “scandal”. Adopting the language of the philosophers of his time, Paul comes to the summit of his teaching as he speaks the paradox: “God has chosen in the world, that which is nothing to reduce to nothing things that are” (cf. 1 Cor 1:28). In order to express the gratuitous nature of the love revealed in the Cross of Christ, the Apostle is not afraid to use the most radical language of the philosophers in their thinking about God. Reason cannot eliminate the mystery of love which the Cross represents, while the Cross can give to reason the ultimate answer which it seeks. It is not the wisdom of words, but the Word of Wisdom which Saint Paul offers as the criterion of both truth and salvation.
The wisdom of the Cross, therefore, breaks free of all cultural limitations which seek to contain it and insists upon an openness to the universality of the truth which it bears. What a challenge this is to our reason, and how great the gain for reason if it yields to this wisdom! Of itself, philosophy is able to recognize the human being's ceaselessly self-transcendent orientation towards the truth; and, with the assistance of faith, it is capable of accepting the “foolishness” of the Cross as the authentic critique of those who delude themselves that they possess the truth, when in fact they run it aground on the shoals of a system of their own devising. The preaching of Christ crucified and risen is the reef upon which the link between faith and philosophy can break up, but it is also the reef beyond which the two can set forth upon the boundless ocean of truth. Here we see not only the border between reason and faith, but also the space where the two may meet.

~Lady~:

22. In the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul helps us to appreciate better the depth of insight of the Wisdom literature's reflection. Developing a philosophical argument in popular language, the Apostle declares a profound truth: through all that is created the “eyes of the mind” can come to know God. Through the medium of creatures, God stirs in reason an intuition of his “power” and his “divinity” (cf. Rom 1:20). This is to concede to human reason a capacity which seems almost to surpass its natural limitations. Not only is it not restricted to sensory knowledge, from the moment that it can reflect critically upon the data of the senses, but, by discoursing on the data provided by the senses, reason can reach the cause which lies at the origin of all perceptible reality. In philosophical terms, we could say that this important Pauline text affirms the human capacity for metaphysical enquiry.
[size=15pt]According to the Apostle, it was part of the original plan of the creation that reason should without difficulty reach beyond the sensory data to the origin of all things: the Creator.[/size] But because of the disobedience by which man and woman chose to set themselves in full and absolute autonomy in relation to the One who had created them, this ready access to God the Creator diminished.
This is the human condition vividly described by the Book of Genesis when it tells us that God placed the human being in the Garden of Eden, in the middle of which there stood “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (2:17). The symbol is clear: man was in no position to discern and decide for himself what was good and what was evil, but was constrained to appeal to a higher source. The blindness of pride deceived our first parents into thinking themselves sovereign and autonomous, and into thinking that they could ignore the knowledge which comes from God. All men and women were caught up in this primal disobedience, which so wounded reason that from then on its path to full truth would be strewn with obstacles. From that time onwards the human capacity to know the truth was impaired by an aversion to the One who is the source and origin of truth. It is again the Apostle who reveals just how far human thinking, because of sin, became “empty”, and human reasoning became distorted and inclined to falsehood (cf. Rom 1:21-22). The eyes of the mind were no longer able to see clearly: reason became more and more a prisoner to itself. The coming of Christ was the saving event which redeemed reason from its weakness, setting it free from the shackles in which it had imprisoned itself.

Oh Lord have mercy . . . what is this? Was that God's original intention from the begining? To create man to "without difficulty reach beyond the sensory data to the origin of all things: the Creator"?

But Adam and Eve didnt need reason or "sensory data" top reach God . . . God practically CAME DOWN TO THE GARDEN TO HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH ADAM AND EVE! Its in the bible! Genesis 3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.

1. the fact that they were able to hear the voice of the Lord meant this was not a one-off thing . . . they were probably used to this type of fellowship with God.

2. Why would they need to use their "sensory data" to reach God when He was right there with them in the flesh?  

Enoch walked with God, Abraham walked with God, Elijah did same . . . what "sensory data" do we need again?

the author of this encyclical justifies his heresy by invoking romans 1 . . . but verse 22 says this - Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

Wow!

if dats ur definition of atheist, then i wouldnt call ma self one. maybe realist would be a more acceptable term. attacking other peoples beliefs aint takin me nowhere,cuz basically im kinda new in this REALIST thing and i am not willing to win arguments and stuff just to make me some standard atheist and ignore the truth, the truth is wht im after.so dnt get the wrong pix bout me. and i still insist that im open for replies.

thisnigga:

if dats ur definition of atheist, then i wouldnt call ma self one. maybe realist would be a more acceptable term. attacking other peoples beliefs aint takin me nowhere,cuz basically im kinda new in this REALIST thing and i am not willing to win arguments and stuff just to make me some standard atheist and ignore the truth, the truth is wht im after.so dnt get the wrong pix bout me. and i still insist that im open for replies.

actually that's a false term. Realist in terms of what? You disbelief the "myths" in the bible but cling to other "myths" such as evolution and the big bang? Read the link i sent to you again especially number 27.

okay, i get ur point. first, what religion are you in anyway,

i have other questions to ask you but first please answer my first question,

i have no religion . . . a relationship with Christ is how i call it.

CHAPTER III
INTELLEGO UT CREDAM
Journeying in search of truth
24. In the Acts of the Apostles, the Evangelist Luke tells of Paul's coming to Athens on one of his missionary journeys. The city of philosophers was full of statues of various idols. One altar in particular caught his eye, and he took this as a convenient starting-point to establish a common base for the proclamation of the kerygma. “Athenians,” he said, “I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god'. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:22-23). From this starting-point, Saint Paul speaks of God as Creator, as the One who transcends all things and gives life to all. He then continues his speech in these terms: “From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27).
The Apostle accentuates a truth which the Church has always treasured: in the far reaches of the human heart there is a seed of desire and nostalgia for God. The Liturgy of Good Friday recalls this powerfully when, in praying for those who do not believe, we say: “Almighty and eternal God, you created mankind so that all might long to find you and have peace when you are found”.(22) There is therefore a path which the human being may choose to take, a path which begins with reason's capacity to rise beyond what is contingent and set out towards the infinite.
In different ways and at different times, men and women have shown that they can articulate this intimate desire of theirs. Through literature, music, painting, sculpture, architecture and every other work of their creative intelligence they have declared the urgency of their quest. In a special way philosophy has made this search its own and, with its specific tools and scholarly methods, has articulated this universal human desire.

thisnigga:

i have other questions to ask you but first please answer my first question,

I am asking this of you because I am sure you are person of sound mind. Can you please take the discussion about him to his personal page, message him or e-mail him please and not derail the thread. Thanks

aiite id do that,

thisnigga:

aiite id do that,

thanks luv

You need look no further than this - Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Seriously . . . the bible is not that hard . . . read it.

I repeat again - if faith and reason went hand in hand . . . NONE of the scientists today would be atheists.

When it comes to faith and human reasoning . . . the bible has this to say - 1 Cor 1:19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. 22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: 23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;

I guess she studies too much catechisms instead of the bible, because if she did that would never have been an issue. That is exactly why she is where she is now. All those nice-sounding words that spring from the lips of the Holy Father, so-called, and his priests, are blurring her vision to the simple truth of God's sacred scriptures.

Job once asked, "Can man by reasoning find out God?"

Bobbyaf:

I guess she studies too much catechisms instead of the bible, because if she did that would never have been an issue. That is exactly why she is where she is now. All those nice-sounding words that spring from the lips of the Holy Father, so-called, and his priests, are blurring her vision to the simple truth of God's sacred scriptures.

Job once asked, "Can man by reasoning find out God?"

Its not a surprise . . . 1 and half pages quoting the catechism . . . she never made any attempt to crosscheck any part of it with the scriptures. the Berean christians would be thoroughly ashamed.