Posted on 09/20/2005 5:35:52 PM PDT by curiosity
Most adult Sunday school classes don't raise eyebrows, but my church is planning to hold one that's sure to. It's called "Evolution for Christians," and it will be taught this winter by David Bush, a member of the church I lead, Fairfax Presbyterian. David is an articulate government retiree who has been interested in this topic for nearly two decades, teaches a class on theories of the origins of life every five years or so, and once again has really done his homework. His view is that science and religion answer two different sets of questions about creation, with science answering the "how" questions, and religion answering the "why" ones. "With a little bit of wisdom and tolerance on each side," he tells me, "I think they can complement rather than contradict each other."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Martin Luther thought it did. Are you saying he was too stupid to read the words of the Bible?
"Is Jesus a liar??"
That certainly is the $10,000 question, isn't it?
If he didn't walk out of that tomb alive, yes.
If he did, no.
I assume that he did walk out of that tomb, alive, and I think that the Edessa Shroud and Sundarium cloth are the burial garments of Jesus, and give us powerful forensic evidence that (a) the man was really dead, and (b) ceased to be in contact with the cloths after about 30 hours, and (c) was not dragged off the cloth (there is no chemical smearing of the image, nor of the blood on the Shroud).
Given this sign, left by God for us, I think we have good empirical basis to accept the story of the Resurrection, and therefore Jesus was not a liar. And therefore he was divine.
When I read the accounts of his life given in the Gospels, I do not see Jesus dwelling much in books.
Yes, he recounts various passages and stories from Jewish Scriptures. Of course, he includes in those references, as does Paul and Peter, about 117 references to words and acts in those books of the Jewish Scriptures of the First Century that are called "apocryphal" by some Christians today, and which were excluded from the Scripture on the authority of various men who established a new Biblical tradition in the 16th Century. Those books were good enough for Jesus to quote, but apparently not good enough for Luther's tradition of the canon of Scripture. This is an aside point, however, speaking to the problem of WHAT IS SCRIPTURE. You referred to references Jesus and the apostles made. They did indeed make such references, including to books you refuse to acknowledge are Scripture. The one thing that Jesus and the apostles didn't do was give a list to tell us what is Scripture and what isn't. So, we rely on our traditions. Your tradition excludes 9 books that my tradition includes. Jesus cited from those 9 books. Applying your hermeneutic, I would think you would admit them as Scripture. But your tradition says their not, and you almost certainly choose to follow your tradition over the citations of Jesus, in that instance.
Likewise, the Epistle of Jude cites explicitly to the Book of Enoch. Now, this is no lost book. I have a copy of the book of Enoch. It is referenced in Scripture, but our traditions, yours and mine, neither include them in the Bible. If we are going to use the hermeneutic that you propose, which is that reference somewhere in Scripture to another book makes something Scripture, then you are forced to admit all 9 books of the "Apocrypha", and you are forced to admit the book of Enoch. Since you will do neither, you are not following your hermeneutic of reading the words of the Bible, but are substituting your preference for the traditions of men, in the case of Enoch dating from Papal decisions and councils of the 400s AD; in the case of the so-called "Apocrypha", to the traditions of men dating from the 1550s and Martin Luther.
You are free to do this, of course, but I would expect that focusing on the fact that you are doing it, and thinking a bit about what Jesus had to say about the traditions of men, might give you pause.
If Jesus cited it, it's Scripture.
I'll accept that as a rule.
Jesus cited the "Apocrypha", indeed, the language he used refers to the Septuagint Greek version of the OT, not the Hebrew Massoretic text version (there are some obvious differences). That would make the Greek Septuagint Scripture, and every other version of the OT, such as the Jewish Massoretic Text, NOT Scripture where they differ from what Jesus cited, wouldn't it?
But let's move to the direct quote you made of Jesus saying that God made them, male and female. There is, of course, nothing in this to say that God didn't make them male and female through what we would call evolution. To us, that seems like a billion years, but recall "A thousands ages in your sight are like an evening gone..."
Evolutionary periods to God would be slow in coming.
I note too that Jesus, who was God incarnate, didn't content himself with "Poof, you're healed!" Frequently, he undertook a physical gesture, such as spitting on clay and rubbing it on eyes, for example. The woman with the hemorrage was healed when she physically touched Jesus' cloak, not before. When He walked the Earth, God sometimes did what He did not with "poof", but through a step of a physical process. Clearly he didn't need to (he simply called forth Lazarus), but equally clearly, sometimes he preferred to. Genesis 2 tells us that God didn't make Adam "poof", but formed him of clay. Obviously God didn't have to take the step of forming clay. He could simply have done it "poof". But the Bible doesn't say He did it that way. Why, then, would God bother to manipulate physical material he made, in order to make something new, such as he did to make Adam (or, with the removal of the rib, Eve, according to the Biblical story)? Why would he spit on clay and rub it to heal eyes instead of simply ordering it done? You'd have to ask him. Who can say, other than BECAUSE HE WANTED TO. Given that the Bible leaves us a "record" of God being pleased to use physical process to do things, instead of "poof", there's no objection in principle to the thought that He made us out of clay by building us up from the primates. Why not? He obviously liked the primates enough to make them out of clay too.
Coming back to those words about Jesus and "made them male and female", there's no objection in that phrase to Evolution as a scientific principle. But if we read a clause further, there IS an objection from Jesus to men and women ever getting divorced (except for lewd conduct, whose rule he does not provide explicitly). Jesus does a couple of important things in this passage, which is why it is serendepitous that you should bring it up.
One thing he does is lay out a strict no divorce rule. He calls the rule of divorce a part of the human tradition of the Mosaic Law, but says that it was not part of God's law: God's law was that the two shall become as one, and that those who divorce and remarry are adulterers. Pretty strong talk.
Does the human tradition of YOUR church allow men and women to divorce, ever (other than for the lewd conduct/adultery of the other party)? Yes? Does it ever allow divorced people to remarry? Yes? Does it not worry you that your church has a tradition of man that Jesus explicitly, directly and sternly condemned?
The more important thing that Jesus did in that passage, Scripturally, is say that another part of the Bible was wrong. Read what he said: he said that it was allowed by Moses because of the hardness of the hearts of the Hebrews, but that it was not that way with the law of God. But wait! If I page back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy, well, bless me! But isn't it GOD who is laying out the rules of divorce here?
In this passage, Jesus directly cites a law of Moses that is written twice in the Bible as part of what "God said", in the "Word of God" (according to the human tradition). But Jesus said that it's NOT the will of God.
By contradicting the Bible and overruling an earlier part of it, Jesus does many dramatic things here. The most important one is that He puts us all on notice that we'd better not just read the Torah and assert that THIS is ALL the Word of God, every letter of it. Because Jesus, who IS God, says that the divorce parts of the Torah aren't the law of God but the tradition of men. If two parts of the Torah are the traditions of men and not the Word of God, then what other parts might be?
About the Scriptures, Jesus actually says at one point that WE claim to find authority there. He preaches from his own. And on the very occasion you cited to prove the literal 7-days-truth of Genesis, were you to continue on with the rest of the clause, you would discover that Jesus tells you that your church's permission of divorce and remarriage is a defiance of God, and that where the Pentateuch, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, lay down God's law of divorce, that that's mere human tradition, of Moses, and is not and never was the law of God from the beginning.
Jesus punches a hole in the Bible here.
And a hole in the traditional practices of virtually all Christian religions. The only one I know of that doesn't permit divorce at all, per Jesus, is Catholicism. Not because of Catholic "tradition", but because of what Jesus actually said. He walked out of that tomb, so He was God. And he ought to know.
CMB:
The Cosmic Microwave Background.
The Physics of Microwave Background Anisotropies.
The Cosmic Microwave Background.
Lyman alpha forest:
Lyman Alpha Forest.
Gravitational lensing:
Gravitational Lensing.
Boomerang data:
Boomerang Collaboration.
Boomerang Data, Analyzed at NERSC, Reveals Flat Universe.
Nuclear decay and half-life:
Radioactive Half-Life.
Phylogeny:
Phylogeny of Life.
The Tree of Life Web Project.
Geological column:
Geological Time Machine.
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and stellar evolution:
Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram.
Gene Smith's Astronomy Tutorial.
Galactic formation:
Galaxy Formation and the Intergalactic Medium Research Group.
Stellar nurseries:
Introduction to Starbirth.
Earth/ Moon tides and lunar recession:
The Recession of the Moon and the Age of the Earth-Moon System.
Dating rocks:
Dating rocks by radioactive decay.
Continental drift:
Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics.
Galactic rotation:
Galactic Structure, Galactic Rotation Curve and Measurements on the M31 galaxy.
Colliding galaxies:
Colliding Galaxies.
Supernova and SN1987A:
The Distance to Supernova SN1987A and the Speed of Light.
Population I and Population II type stars:
Stellar Populations.
Stellar population (Answers.com).
Fine-structure constant:
Introduction to the constants for nonexperts.
Galaxy observations show no change in fundamental physical constant.
And lastly here is a good overall site:
Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial
You seem to have argued these things before. I admit my limited ability to argue as it isn't something I argue about. You may have noticed that on most EVO/ID threads, I have remained out. I have tried to in the past, but never convinced anyone, so I decided to let those better equipped than I to do it.
The Bible says that the world was cursed because of sin. Because of sin, death passed to all men.
Animals were not a special creation with a spirit, like man, so there death may have occurred. If no death of any sort took place, then what happened to the plants that Adam tended in the Garden? If they grew in a perfect location, then no doubt Adam had to trim them, and the trimmings would die.
Thus, not all death was a problem. This is supposition on my part and not authoritative. But, that would make your last 6000 years arguement a non-arguement.
As far as a second creation, I said that is only one hypthysis. There is evidence in the Scriptures that suggests it. It is an idea that has been around longer than Darwin's Theory, but never got much attention until after Darwin. Part of it supported by the fact that Satan was in the Garden in the form of a snake, deceiving Eve so obviously his fall from being an angel happened before this. This means that sin existed before Adam and Eve.
I erred in my first post in stating God created the earth in seven days. It was six. He rested on the seventh.
So, to be clear, tyrannosaurus rex and all other dinosaurs, along with lions, etc., were all created and living when man was created and placed on the Earth, on the sixth day. Despite those fangs, etc., they were all plant eaters***
***but they ate plants in such a way that they did not KILL the plants, or the cells of plants are not alive, because death did not enter the world until the fall of Adam.
Until the Fall.
Then man was excluded from the garden, animals became carnivorous, and the eating of plants killed the plants and their cells for the first time. Because only with the fall of Adam and Eve did death enter the world.
According to Genesis.
Query: did man and woman come into a world that was already peopled by plants and animals, per Genesis 1?
Or was the world barren and without plants or animals when God made Adam first then the rest, per Genesis 2?
Never mind the fossil record, or the difficulty of eating plants without killing them (and thereby bringing death into the world before its appointed time with the fall of man): how do we reconcile the Bible record of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 without making up a whole lot of speculative traditions that are not based on the Bible at all? Two timelines are presented within a handful of paragraphs of each other, in the first two books of Genesis. They conflict, badly, such they they cannot both be simultaneously true. Which is? And how do we know?
YOu are in error. Sin existed prior to Adam and Eve sinning. Satan enticed Eve to sin.
Death came to man after he sinned. The earth was CURSED because of Adam's sin.
You are correct that before sin, there was no death. However, Satan is the first sinner.
Not every living thing falls into those categories. The overwhelming number of living things do not. That would include single celled organisms, many plants, many fish that switch back and forth, and quite a few humans, who are born with mixed sexual organs and/or chromosomes.
A friend of mine, who was going for his PhD in antropology and happened to be a Christian who knew Hebrew...
Embarassingly, I am a Jew, who does not understand the meaning of Hebrew (though I can sound out the words in the synagogue.)
"He said that there is a change in tense between the 1st and 2nd verses of chapter one. The first verse indicates creation and the second verse indicates that the Earth BECAME void, as if something happened to it to change its original form."
in my Bible, which includes Hebrew, English, and a huge amount of footnotes, it is translated thusly:
"In the beginning of God's creating the heavens and the earth---when the earth was astonishingly empty with darkness upon the face of the deep and the Divine Presence hovered upon the surface of the waters---God said, "Let there be light," and there was light..."
So, these very careful translators from Hebrew do show a tense change, from "ing" form (participle?) to past tense.
"As an aside, I also don't see why a 6 day creation is inconsistent with the laws of physics, etc."
you're right of course, but the fact is, there is detailed evidence for hundreds of millions of years of history buried in the earth, including geological evidence, millions of fossils (showing the gradual development of various species, most of which are no longer alive) that have been found, etc. All point to essentially the same story. Granting that God could have created this, doesn't it seem odd that he would have? Why would he? Just a fool everybody?
If you say so.
I do not mean to be too argumentative.
I do end up having to argue this issue a lot, with various members of my family, because of their impudence.
They are quite strict Biblicists, some of them, which is fine. I have no problem with the moral code they learn and practice thereby. However, they cannot live and let live, and therefore presume to start citing the Bible to me, chapter and verse, to demonstrate how my Catholic belief is wrong, evil, and that I am in error when I express a belief that science and religion do not conflict, and that evolution is not a religious issue.
I call the sort of vexatious pestering of someone using the text of the Bible they do impudence, because it all starts to come apart when one turns and bears down on them using the Bible.
WHERE does the Bible say what's in the Bible?
Above, someone is arguing with me the "every word" doctrine.
Fine. But Jesus says that parts of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are traditions of Moses and men, and were not of God. Not EVERY word, apparently.
The Bible doesn't say itself alone, anywhere.
Nor does the Bible define the Bible.
Citing to what Jesus cited is good.
That also brings in all of the Apocrypha.
And the apocrypha contain explicit references to prayers for the dead, to atone for their sins, which is why Martin Luther wanted to get rid of them.
That's why Catholics pray for the dead. To Catholics, it's BIBLICAL. To Protestants, it isn't. But on what authority did Luther exclude the "apocrypha" from the Bible? His own opinion, which is now human tradition.
I have heard many times, from my impudent relatives, what Jesus thinks about human tradition. They are referring to the traditions of the Catholic Church, to which I wheel and say "Back at ya! Jesus cited to the apocrypha. But they're not good enough for YOUR tradition. JESUS said no divorce. But that's not good enough for YOUR tradition which, just like Moses', allows divorce."
My purpose is not to be vexatious at all.
It is to blow a torpedo under the keel of smugness which doesn't stand up under scrutiny.
If we are going to play "Scripture Alone" then, by God, we will play Scripture ALONE.
And that means dealing with the ugly contradictions in the Scripture, like it being impossible for God to lie in Hebrews, but God sending delusions over men in Philippians. Which is it?
Or man coming after the animals in Genesis 1, but before the animals in Genesis 2. Which is it?
Or God prescribing the rules for divorce in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but Jesus saying that's just the tradition of Moses, and not God's way, in the Gospels. Which is it?
My religion rejects Sola Scriptura, and so do I.
But if I am forced to argue only that way, only from the texts of the Bible, as I have been by my impudent relatives who will neither listen to any other form of reason, nor agree to live and let live, well, I can read the Bible too, and when I do, the very contradictions of it blow to pieces the smugness of the arguments of the God-botherers.
I do not mean to be vexatious to you, but I will challenge things that don't work.
For example, you have argued, in good faith, that maybe death only came to MAN with the fall of Adam. That's a nice interpretive tradition. But it is not in the Bible.
Romans 5:12:
"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."
That says that sin entered the WORLD by one man, and that DEATH entered the world because of sin - a general concept.
It follows on to include the death of men as the natural part of death entering the world because of the sin that entered the world. Of course, then it gets more confused, because it says "because all have sinned".
Wait. Does this mean that someone who HAS NOT SINNED does not die? That is what it implies. Three problems: (1) Jesus died, and he didn't sin. Elijah, and perhaps Enoch, were taken up into heaven and didn't die. Was this because they did not sin? If they did not sin, then ALL have not sinned, and the Bible is wrong. If they did sin, because ALL have sinned, they nevertheless didn't die, because God made some exceptions. In either case, the Bible literally contradicts itself.
This is no problem for ME, because my faith is not based on the Bible. The Bible is a valuable part of the sacred Tradition, but that is what it is: written tradition. To elevate it beyond that is, well, idolatry.
It will also get people into absurd positions, like having to argue too hard against the evidence of science. The Catholic Church made an ass out of itself doing that with Galileo. At least the Catholics learned something from that. Why others would want to charge down that same path is a mystery.
Oh, ok, it's not a mystery. It is because they very sincerely misvalue the authority of things. The Bible is not the final authority in Christendom any more than it ever was in Judaism (it isn't, and wasn't). It doesn't pretend to say it is. The reason otherwise well meaning people get balled around the axle over evolution is because they have bought into a purely human tradition that says that the Bible is the primary source of God's inspiration on Earth. Since that is not true, all of that which follows from that ends up being built on an unsteady foundation. The Bible is good, sacred, holy. But it is not a scientific text, and it certainly should not be made into an idol.
The Bible tells us why God did what he did.
Science can give us an idea of how and when.
This is not a religious issue for me, at all.
And I submit that it really should not be an issue for you, either.
Romans tells us that DEATH entered the world because of sin. It doesn't mention flesh.
Plants are ALIVE. Do you dispute it?
Cells are ALIVE. Do you dispute it?
If they were killed by being eaten before death entered the world because of sin, the Romans is not literally true.
You are ignoring the question. On what basis do you believe the Bible is being figurative when it speaks of the sun moving around the earth?
No. I am not.
Don't tell me, you're one of those guys who thinks that the Lubavitcher Rebbe was Mosiach.
"YOu are in error. Sin existed prior to Adam and Eve sinning. Satan enticed Eve to sin.
Death came to man after he sinned. The earth was CURSED because of Adam's sin.
You are correct that before sin, there was no death. However, Satan is the first sinner."
Am I?
Romans says that because of a MAN (not Satan) sin ENTERED THE WORLD.
My assertion was based on Romans.
Is Romans in error?
Or is it not to be taken literally?
Or are Romans and I correct, and you are in error?
Further, if Romans is not in error, and sin did not enter the world before the fall of man, what, then, was the serpent doing? The serpent was doing something pretty nasty and evil, enticing Eve like that. And that was before the fall of either Adam or Eve. So apparently sin was in the world already, at least in the serpent, BEFORE the fall of man, and Romans is in error.
Also, Romans says that it was through ONE MAN that sin entered the world. Was that man Eve? She ate the apple first. Why all of the focus on Adam? Eve was the first human sinner, after all, Biblically speaking in Genesis, that is. In other sections of the Bible, everyone keys on Adam. Eve gets a pass. Perhaps the sins of the first woman don't count?
"YOu are in error. Sin existed prior to Adam and Eve sinning. Satan enticed Eve to sin.
Death came to man after he sinned. The earth was CURSED because of Adam's sin.
You are correct that before sin, there was no death. However, Satan is the first sinner."
Am I?
Romans says that because of a MAN (not Satan) sin ENTERED THE WORLD.
My assertion was based on Romans.
Is Romans in error?
Or is it not to be taken literally?
Or are Romans and I correct, and you are in error?
Further, if Romans is not in error, and sin did not enter the world before the fall of man, what, then, was the serpent doing? The serpent was doing something pretty nasty and evil, enticing Eve like that. And that was before the fall of either Adam or Eve. So apparently sin was in the world already, at least in the serpent, BEFORE the fall of man, and Romans is in error.
Also, Romans says that it was through ONE MAN that sin entered the world. Was that man Eve? She ate the apple first. Why all of the focus on Adam? Eve was the first human sinner, after all, Biblically speaking in Genesis, that is. In other sections of the Bible, everyone keys on Adam. Eve gets a pass. Perhaps the sins of the first woman don't count?
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