Expert: Michael Clark, Ph.D. - 12/6/2005

Question
Why is it so difficult for any church, e.g. the catholic church to simply drop certain parts of the Bible (e.g. the murder of Egyptian innocents)? In today's physics' class the professor neither starts with the theory of the 7 heavens of Aristoteles. Chemistry courses also do no longer refer to alchemy, and doctors do not learn the theories of Galenus (famous Roman doctor). All human thinking changes continuously and uses the latest findings in their discipline. Why is this not the case in religion?
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Followup To
Question -
Terrorism harms and kills innocent people because the terrorist is unable to attack directly the actual enemy of whatsoever might be his/her cause.
Examples in these days are called Beslan, Sebrenitza, 9/11, Madrid, London, Israel, Iraq, ...

What is the difference between the acts above and the killing of the (also innocent) first-born children in Egypt to put pressure on the pharao to let the Jews go?
Answer -
Bernie... a fundamental aspect of Catholicism is to not get stuck on any part of the Old Testament as if it were the entire Christian Bible. In fact, Catholics stress that getting God's message means looking at (1) the entire Bible and (2) Catholic Tradition.

If you need more explanation as to what Catholic Tradition means, please feel free to follow up here and I'll provide some links.

Answer
Bernie… after I answered this I remembered that I'd partially addressed it at one of my web pages. To sum the Catholic position, sacred scripture isn't dropped because it's believed that (a) it's divinely inspired and (b) that it contains (or points to) spiritual instead of scientific truths. There's a whole body of literature, in both Catholic and Protestant circles, about how reading the Bible facilitates the experience of supernatural Grace. There's another line of reasoning that suggests that sacred scripture is like the roots of a tree. If you cut out the roots, the tree would perish. In psychological terms, many people obtain benefit from antiquated modes of expression. It taps into the “collective unconscious” (to borrow from the depth psychologist C. G. Jung), grounding people in a common heritage. And even in science, scientists often cling to certain paradigms and conventions, probably for much the same reason. You might check out T.S. Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/

And if you go to this link and scroll down to the very bottom of the page, you'll see a relevant quote from a Catholic study Bible:

http://ca.geocities.com/earthpages5@rogers.com/articles_sci_fi.html

Keep thinking!

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They keep the scripture but certainly look at it in new ways with new scientific and, one would hope, philosophical developments. For instance, medieval Catholic writers took Adam and Eve literally. Today Adam and Eve are often regarded by Catholics (and in Catholic study Bibles) as generic references for "mankind." Granted, there remains some ambiguity in the RC Church here. I think this is because it's a Church admittedly on a journey through history and, in many ways, not yet fully realized. Within that journey there are conservative and liberal movements. For example, some feel that women should be ordained as priests while others use New Testament scripture to “prove” that only men can be ordained. Contraception and homosexuality are other issues where the Church is divided. If not always officially, perhaps unofficially.

Yours are interesting questions!