Posted on 06/23/2014 6:28:02 AM PDT by spirited irish
It's no longer easy to be a faithful Christian in America, says Dr. Robert P. George, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Our culture increasingly condemns Christian beliefs as bigoted and hateful:
“They despise us if we refuse to call good evil and evil good.” (American Christians Should Prepare to Be Despised, Official Tells National Prayer Breakfast, Rob Kerby, ChristianHeadlines.com, May 15, 2014)
The Princeton University professor and author told Washington, D.C.’s 10th annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast that American culture no longer favors faithful Christians. For example, he asked attendees to consider,
“....the derision that comes from being pro-life and pro-traditional marriage (they) threaten us with consequences if we refuse to call what is good, evil, and what is evil, good. They demand us to conform our thinking to their orthodoxy, or else say nothing at all…"
Dr. George told the prayer breakfast:
"The intimidation to remain silent is insidious and growing...what American Christians are facing is the 21st century version of the question, ‘Am I ashamed of the Gospel?"
If anything, some evolutionary theologians and their gullible Christian flocks, both evolutionary theist and progressive creationist, are at least as hostile if not more so toward faithful defenders of the miracle of Special Creation than are their evolutionary atheist and occult pantheist counterparts: Luciferians, god-men, goddesses, shaman, Satanists, witches, necromancers, and astrologers.
The usual diatribe thrown against altogether despised creationists goes something like this:
Since Darwin introduced the theory of evolution some Christians have been uncomfortable with the idea that all species (i.e., reptiles, birds, bugs, dogs, apes, humans) share a common ancestry moving from primordial matter to creeping things, crawling things, swimming things, knuckle-dragging things to man under the direction of the God of evolution. Thus the Earth was not created instantaneously as St. Augustine held or created in six days as most early Church Fathers affirmed. Nor was Adam created by the One God in three Persons as a living soul embodied in flesh, fully person, fully man right from the beginning. Adam and Eve, if they even existed were emergent products of evolution, their closest relative soulless hominids. Thus the events described in Genesis are not meant to convey the miraculous creation ex nihilo but the scientific 'reality' that the universe has an impotent creator that made and ignited a Cosmic Egg (Big Bang) which generated matter and energy. Then after billions of years of God-directed evolution eventuating in the suffering and death of millions of life-forms (God's fault, btw) man inexplicably fell from grace even though God is the guilty party, the real cause of death and suffering.
According to this counter-intuitive Gnostic-laced tale of nonsense, evolutionary science, not God's Revelation, is a reality in nature explainable by reason and empirical observation and faithful Christians who deny this are in denial of reality. Faithful Christians who actually affirm the Revelation of God and Special Creation are guilty of defending the backwards, anti-scientific, anti-evolution 'fundamentalist' interpretation of the book of Genesis thus are not only a cause of embarrassment to fashionably-correct, scientifically enlightened Christians, but are also guilty of harming Christianity. (Creationism Harms Christianity, sacerdotus.wordpress.com)
However, it isn't faithful Christians who are ‘embarrassments’ but rather intellectually arrogant evolution-obsessed theologians. These wolves in sheep clothing mesmerize and persuade susceptible Christian sheep to uncritically accept dangerous esoteric ideas like evolution.
With respect to Darwin’s theory, Darwin is not its’ inventor. He received the idea from his nature-worshipping pagan grandfather Erasmus Darwin, an important name in European Masonic anti-Christian Church organizations engaged in destructive revolutionary activism. Erasmus mentored his grandson Charles:
"Dr. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was the first man in England to suggest those ideas which were later to be embodied in the Darwinian theory by his grandson, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) who wrote in 1859 Origin of Species." (Scarlet and the Beast, Vol. II, John Daniel, p. 34)
According to anthropologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, longtime director of the American Museum of Natural History, ancient pagans are the inventers of modern evolutionism. In the introduction to his history of evolutionism Osborn wrote:
"When I began the search for anticipations of the evolutionary theory....I was led back to the Greek natural philosophers and I was astonished to find how many of the pronounced and basic features of the Darwinian theory were anticipated even as far back as the seventh century B.C." (Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, p. xi)
By its’ nature evolutionism belongs to the category of naturalism (all that exists is nature or cosmos), making it antithetical, or in fierce opposition to the infinite Triune God, the supernatural dimension and special creation. The personal Triune God is outside of His creation---the natural dimension of space, time, matter and energy---thus He is not subject to the laws of science:
"....science has no satisfactory answer to the question of the origin of life on the earth. Perhaps the appearance of life on the earth is a miracle. Scientists are reluctant to accept that view, but their choices are limited: either life was created on the earth by the will of a being outside the grasp of scientific understanding, or it evolved on our planet spontaneously, through chemical reactions occurring in nonliving matter lying on the surface of the planet. The first theory places the question of the origin of life beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. It is a statement of faith in the power of a Supreme Being not subject to the laws of science. The second theory is also an act of faith. The act of faith consists in assuming that the scientific view of the origin of life is correct, without having concrete evidence to support that belief." (Until the Sun Dies, Robert Jastrow, Ph.D. Theoretical Physics, pp. 62-63, 1977)
Only by conceptually murdering the supernatural Triune God and replacing Him with a ‘god’ within the natural dimension (naturalism), thus subject to scientific inquiry, can intellectually arrogant theologians presume to speak for god, claiming that he made and exploded a Cosmic Egg and directs evolutionary transformism together with the rest of their twisted theology dressed in Christian clothing.
As an idea evolution is like an onion consisting of multitudinous layers of esoteric meaning. Darwin's theory occupies two or three layers. The many other layers already existed prior to Erasmus going back to the Renaissance and before that to ancient Chaldea and India thence to ancient Greece and Rome where evolution is always and everywhere connected to reincarnation and spiritual evolution (transformism).
On ancient pagan conceptions of reincarnation and spiritual evolution early Church Father Gregory of Nyssa said:
"[I]f one should search carefully, he will find that their doctrine is of necessity brought down to this. They tell us that one of their sages said that he, being one and the same person, was born a man, and afterward assumed the form of a woman, and flew about with the birds, and grew as a bush, and obtained the life of an aquatic creature—and he who said these things of himself did not, so far as I can judge, go far from the truth, for such doctrines as this—of saying that one should pass through many changes—are really fitting for the chatter of frogs or jackdaws or the stupidity of fishes or the insensibility of trees" (The Making of Man 28:3; A.D. 379).
Evolution appeared in Christendom during the Renaissance when certain Christian theologians, mystics and scholars such as Emanuel Swedenborg had discovered Chaldean astrology, Hermetic magic, occult Jewish Kabbalah, Eastern mystical traditions and the ancient ways of ‘going within’ (contacting spirits). All of this was accompanied by conceptions of reincarnation and spiritual evolution. They studied these ancient occult traditions which they translated resulting in Hermetic Kabbalah. Then like Pico della Mirandola, they argued that occult hermetic science – the divine technology or Magic Way of reaching divine status and powers through ritual procedures and spiritual evolution is the best proof of the divinity of Christ. (God and the Knowledge of Reality, Thomas Molnar, pp. 78-79)
Father Richard John Neuhaus pulls all of these occult traditions together in his analysis of modern evolutionary scientism as a revitalization of ancient spiritual traditions closely connected to elemental spirits. In his book, “American Babylon,” Neuhaus argues that astrological elemental spirits (powers and principalities) have been recast as,
"...evolutionary dynamics, life forces, or laws of nature." Though described as laws rather than spirits, these elemental "forces".... work their inexorable ways in cold indifference to reason, to will, to love, and to hope. In short, it is suggested that the elemental spirits are in charge and that human freedom is a delusion." (p. 226)
Despite that modern evolutionary theologians validate their esoteric projects as empirical or observational science in reality observational science is their enemy. For instance, evolutionary theology alleges that hominids are supposed to be our ancestors, the so-called transitional life-forms linking modern humans to the common ancestor of all life. However, the hominid claim has fallen flat on its’ face, said Carl Wieland. In "Making Sense of Apeman Claims," Wieland reports that a consistent pattern has emerged in direct opposition to the evolutionary story. Over the decades, each new fossil find has been falling quite naturally into one of only three major groups. And two of these, Neanderthal and Homo erectus turn out to be strikingly similar in fact, Neanderthals are "clearly human descendants of Adam." (Creation, Vol. 36, No. 3, 2014, p. 38)
Although the third category generates the most excitement among evolution-worshippers it turns out to be an extinct non-human primate group, anatomically not between apes and humans.
Sequencing of Neanderthal DNA clearly shows interbreeding with modern populations, particularly those from Eastern Europe, meaning that Neanderthals are not a separate species, despite evolutionary claims that they split off from the human lineage 500,000 years ago. This evidence is a major blow to evolutionary theist and "progressive" or "old-earth creationist notions." (p. 38).
It is because evolutionary 'old-earth' theologians reject what God said in favor of what man said, their starting point is fallible secular dating, hence they,
"....must regard Neanderthals as pre-Adamic soulless nonhumans despite all the archaeological evidences of their humanity. But DNA now makes this completely dead in the water, having children together means they must be the same created kind." (pp. 38-39)
Among the scientifically affirmed finds showing that Neanderthals were human are:
1. Stone tools and specialized bone tools for leatherworking.
2. The controlled use of fire, including heating birch bark peelings to make special pitch to haft wooden shafts onto stone tools.
3. Perfectly balanced, finely crafted wooden hunting javelins.
4. Jewelry
5. Evidence of body decorations and cosmetics.
6. Burying their dead with ornaments.
7. Cooking utensils and the use of herbs in food.
8. Symbolic thinking
9. High-tech 'superglue'
10. A complex structure built 1 mile underground where no daylight penetrates suggests the technology and know-how to transport sustained fire as a source of light that far down.
11. Evidence of dwellings made of timber draped with animal skins
12. Recent detailed analysis of hyoid bone (associated with the voice box) indicates they could speak, as does recent genetic evidence. (ibid, Wieland)
"For he spoke and they were made: he commanded and they were created.” Psalm 33:9
Either the infinite personal One God in three Persons spoke or He did not. If He did, then Jesus is God in the flesh, the Creator and Living Word (John 1: 1-5) the Light that came into the world (John 3: 1-9) who perfectly fulfills all prophecy from the antediluvian world to the post-flood world:
"And he said: I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Moses hid his face: for he durst not look at God." Exodus 3:6
If the One God in three Persons spoke then what He revealed to Moses with respect to the miracle of creation is thesis (True Truth), making evolution antithesis (the lie). The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic elements of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed 'mouth to mouth' by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ.
The Return of an Ancient Heresy
The primary tactic employed by defiant, intellectually proud theologians eager to accommodate Scripture and the Church to modern science and pagan evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when Genesis, especially the first three chapters, is viewed in its entirety in a non-literal, non-historical context.
This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of apostate Jewish Cabbalists, Origenists and Gnostic pagans such as Simon Magus. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,
“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)
As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic elements of Genesis as Revealed by God and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)
In agreement, Vishal Mangalwadi (1949- ), founder-president of BOMI/Revelation Movement observes that the Revelation of God is the only available foundation for truth, freedom and faith in God's gift of reason. But Western theologians and intellectuals have closed their minds to Revelation, hence Truth, reason and Special Creation. Because “intelligent” Americans no longer believe in “True Truth” (Francis Schaeffer) they invent stories and use empty god words as substitutes for the infinite, personal Triune God. Thus Gospel Truth is now 'Gospel Story' and history a series of unfolding stories such as the physical science story (Big Bang) which may or may not include the use of a god-word; the biological science story (evolutionary transformism), the climate science story (global warming or change), and the social science story (gay marriage):
“Doing science” increasingly means peddling politically correct dogma – that is, stories that have evolved into myths. No one really knows if there was only one Big Bang or other bigger bangs as well; whether we live in a universe or multi-verse; whether life evolved on this planet or came from outer space . . . but if you want a tenured position in a university, and if you want your research projects funded, you have to toe politically correct storyline – champion dogma." (How Did the West's 'Rational Animal' Become Incapable of Using Reason? Mangalwadi)
The abandonment of God's Revelation in favor of story-telling
Christendom and Protestant America did not emerge from the darkness of story-telling and god-words but arose to illustrious heights on the awe-inspiring wings of the Revelation of God, hence the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo, the uniquely Christian definition of man as a person because created in the spiritual image of the infinite One God in three Persons, God's unchanging Moral Law and the Biblical view of man's sinful condition. Their subsequent fall was traced by Richard Weaver in his book, "Ideas Have Consequences" (1945).
Weaver writes that 14th century Western man had made an "evil decision" to abandon his belief in the transcendent Triune God, His Revelation and unchanging universals, thus the position that "there is a source of truth higher than and independent of man..." The consequence of this ‘evil decision’ is a still unfolding catastrophe reaching fullness in our own time:
"The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably...the denial of truth. With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relativism of 'man is the measure of all things." (The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, George H. Nash, pp. 32-33)
The substance of 'man is the measure of all things' is idolatry. The beginning of idolatry is pride (narcissism), which together with selfishness demonstrates preference for one's self instead of the Triune God, His Revelation (hence 'True Truth') and neighbor (and unwanted, inconvenient human life, i.e., babies). Just as no violation of the Law can occur without one first being an idolater, envy/covetousness and murder are its' final results, for where 'self' is primary then 'self' deserves everything it can get, no matter the cost to other people.
The fall of the West and America is due to the idolatry of darkened souls turned by choice toward evil. From the antediluvians to our own age, the truth as to this evil said Athanasius,
"....is that it originates, and resides, in the perverted choice of the darkened soul" which, "materialized by forgetting God" and engrossed in lower things, "makes them into gods," and thereby "descends into a hopeless depth of delusion and superstition," whereby "they ceased to think that anything existed beyond what is seen, or that anything was good save things temporal and bodily; so turning away and forgetting that she was in the image of the good God, she no longer... sees God the Word after whose likeness she is made; but having departed from herself, imagines and feigns what is not (and then) advancing further in evil, they came to celebrate as gods the elements and the principles of which bodies are composed...."(Against the Heathen, New Advent)
Having descended into delusion and superstition darkened souls imagined that "all that exists" is the natural dimension, meaning the universe of matter, animated powers, forces, and deterministic laws, all of which they celebrated and attributed miraculous powers to just as modern evolution worshippers do, whether secular or theological:
"There is an energy in the world, a spark, an electricity that everything is plugged into. The Greeks called it zoe, the mystics call it 'Spirit,' and Obi-Wan called it 'the Force'.....This energy, spark, and electricity that pulses through all of creation sustains it, fuels it, and keeps it growing. Growing, evolving, reproducing..." (Love Wins, Rob Bell, pgs. 144-145)
Evolutionary scientism is not observational science in search of how things really work in this world but rather a disastrous occult science tradition whose taproot stretches back to Babylon and before that the pre-flood world. The 'Christian' teachers and defenders of this demonic heresy are guilty of leading unwitting sheep astray, possibly to their doom, and of besmirching and defaming faithful defenders of special creation as backwards, anti-science, anti-evolution destroyers of the faith. However, in reality creationists are the defenders of thesis (True Truth) against the damnable incursion of antithesis (occultism) into the good news, the Gospel of Christ.
In this light, what are vicious attacks against Special Creation as well as those against the sanctity of human life, and traditional one man one woman marriage but evil wills offended by and resentful of Higher Authority, True Truth, 'other' (unwanted, inconvenient human life) and moral restrictions and limitations?
"For whoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy angels." Luke 9:26
Who are the intolerant ones, the highly offended because ashamed of our Lord and his words? Who are the selfish, intellectually arrogant story-tellers whose embarrassing doctrine of change (evolution) is "really fitting for the chatter of frogs or jackdaws or the stupidity of fishes or the insensibility of trees"'?
Hint: Not Creationists or any of the faithful.
ping
A couple of great books that deal with this subject I’ve read are
The Long War Against God:The history and impact of the creation/evolution conflict by Dr. Henry Morris 2000
and
Does God Believe In Atheists? by John Blanchard 2000
Good article that is sure to elicit plenty of comments that macro evolutionary deniers are well-meaning fools or worse.
Neither Creationists nor Evolutionists have it quite right.
Intelligent Design does. It is uncompromisingly supportive of the Biblical account of creation in Genesis, yet it encompasses all the correct aspects of objective science. In fact, science leads one to the One True God.
Read “I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist” by Dr. Norman Geisler.
Here is my question:
Does God believe in God? Or is He waiting for us to prove Him? We need help here, the world is run by the evil, and the evil prosper while the good suffer.
“The overwhelming evidence at trial established that Intelligent Design is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory. “
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District/3:Disclaimer#Page_43_of_139
” Perhaps the appearance of life on the earth is a miracle. Scientists are reluctant to accept that view”
By definition, science is understanding how things happen. Miracles, by definition have no understanding .... they are miracles.
Ping - of probable interest to you.
Good read. Thanks for posting.
"Darwin's bulldog" Thomas Henry Huxley (did I get the right one?) was at least consistent. He thought evolution would put an end to a belief in miracles. Our "theistic evolutionists" will defend every miracle that comes down the pike so long as it takes place in a fully-created universe where the laws of nature have "gelled." But they insist that the creation of everything out of nothing could only have been accomplished by the use of natural, physical laws (which didn't even exist at the time).
I realize that you may find the Torah codes problematic, but my point was that one researcher has found Darwin's name in a very unflattering context. So much for "only rednecks don't believe in evolution!"
Still trying to drag your religious disagreements into News and Activism, I see.
Oh, don’t you know that modern minds are incomparably brilliant and modern science is so advanced that there are simply no mysteries left? Refreshing to read the unvarnished truth of special creation and a strong argument for its superiority over the absurdity of evolution. “For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Phil. 2:10 - 11;
Isaiah 45:23; Rom. 14:11;
As Keith Green sang, “When He returns all the foolish will learn that they waited much too long to decide.”
I am unfamiliar with "Torah codes", but if they're anything like evangelical-pop-culture's "Bible codes" then yes I would find them problematic. I don't believe in "proving" one's position via "hidden messages" contained in Scripture, before one is completely conversant with the plain text itself.
Note: evolution is as religious a view as ID. Adherents to both look at the same evidence and draw different conclusions.
No one saw the designer create, and no one saw an amoeba become a fish....
““The overwhelming evidence at trial established that Intelligent Design is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory. “
Spirited: Evolutionary theory is not ‘scientific’ except in the sense of esotericism. It is occult science bespeaking unseen energies, change-making forces, and yes——reincarnation. After all, after the miraculous production of prima material from nothing (Big Bang) and the even more miraculous emergence of life from prima material through an alchemical process, ‘life’ incarnates over and over and over and over, supposedly for billions of years moving from one kind of lower body (slime mold) to a different and higher kind of body until it finally incarnates within pre-human hominids.
Science would disagree with you.
Science is not a living, breathing entity. It cannot disagree.
Very well. I just thought it was interesting.
You should know, however, that the purpose of the Torah codes is not to "prove" the veracity and Divine authorship of the Torah (since that is already well known). Also that no one is more familiar with the plain text than Orthodox Jews, since they have to be able to read it without vowel marks or punctuation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.