This has a new significance with the Pope scandal

[jaycee]

Originally Posted by Ghost_Tracker

Because it's not original sin that's allegorical, it's the stories told in order to help early man understand it which are. Original sin is a concept (i.m.o.) which essentially means, "Man thinks he knows better than God but he doesn't, he doesn't have all the facts. ALL people have this fault, which inevitably - sooner or later - will lead to their destruction. This was true from the first man all the way to people of today." (I'm sure even hard-core evolutionists would agree that SOMEWHERE in there, there was a "first man" and "first woman.")
I really do feel that ALL of the leadership, up to and including the Pope, would agree that understanding that is MUCH more important than the details, because as you said, it's a VERY important concept in the whole theology.
Man is, by definition, imperfect. According to Christianity, that's why Jesus was sent. And so i.m.o. nothing falls apart logically whether or not Adam and Eve really existed. It's the take-home message which is important and that *is* Catholic Dogma.

Just to "qualify" what's hopefully obvious, all of this is of course my own personal opinion and perspective on it. I'm sure there's plenty who would claim something totally different. But "that's my story and I'm stickin' TO it!" lol!


In my opinion, what's much more central and important to Catholic teaching is a simple willingness to take "a leap of faith." In a way it's the same story over and over - for example Jesus in the boat during the storm - even with him right there WITH them, and after all they had already seen, they were freaking out. He was like, "Sigh! - - Okay, let's try it AGAIN!!! Have faith!" and then he calmed the waters. The take-home message, every single time, is "Man doesn't have the whole picture -
so take a leap of faith and trust God."

Here's a word from a "hard-core evolutionist" (please explain what that means - I've also heard the term Ultra-Darwinist thrown about) - it isn't very meaningful to talk of a "first" man or woman. If you were to line up a series of, say, all your female or male ancestors and look back starting from where you are today, you would observe an overall continuum of change such that there isn't a meaningful barrier/separation between ancestral species. We are able to give our fossilised ancestors species names, such as Homo habilis, because the overall common feature set of the fossils we find and study is sufficiently different from ours to deserve a different name. But if you had all the intermediates from H. h. to Homo sapiens before you, you would come across many ambiguous cases where you couldn't meaningfully class them as being in either one (in which case you'd probably invent a new class, but that will still create new intermediate ambiguities between those classes). These in fact do arise from time to time. Anyway, it's really a lot like mixing paint - how much black paint can you add to a bucket of white paint before it becomes gray?
As for faith... well, I could go on about this for a long time, but let's just say that "belief that x is true doesn't mean x is true". Sure, something can feel true to you, but that doesn't mean it has any correspondence with reality. You have to appeal to empirical evidence before you can begin to feel confident in any belief you may have, and still be prepared to have it overthrown (such overhauls are a property of good science over the past centuries). Faith isn't enough, as it's always a blind stab in the dark.
Also, to say that you're sticking to your story is to concede that no amount of evidence that may conflict with your preconceived beliefs will change your mind. Are you sure that's a stance you want to defend? Or do you not need to defend it anyway?
As for sins, well, Christians have a habit of being obsessed with sin, of which some don't even deserve to be categorised as such - homosexuality and masturbation being prime examples, of course.
Okay, I'm done for now...