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 ...
Which is why it is possible for Jews or Muslims or pagans to, ultimately, end up in heaven despite their theological errors concerning the person of Jesus.
Rom 1:20
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
The Old Testament Patriarchs and the author's of the Books believed what they were writing. Those things about the future Messiah were revealed to them by the Holy Spirit and they believed and recorded the inspirations. Some Jews in the Old Testament blasphemed the Holy Spirit rejecting the record God had handed down. God demonstrated sacrifice and covering in the Garden of Eden.
Gen 3:21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.
Cain submitted a non-blood sacrifice that he knew was unacceptable to God! Cain was the first blasphemer of the Holy Spirit by rejecting the type of the cross (blood sacrifice).
Gen 4:3-5
3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.
4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:
5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
The Holy Spirit inspired the authors regarding Messiah, and they believed and recorded them.
Gen 3:15
15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Gen 22:8
8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.
Isa 7:14
14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Psa 2:7
7 I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou [art] my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
Psa 110:1 [[A Psalm of David.]] The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
Jam 2:23
23 And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.
1 John 5:10
10 He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son.
Luke 16:22-31
22 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;
23 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
24 And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
25 But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
26 And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that [would come] from thence.
27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house:
28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
Here is a passage where Elijah is speaking with God, thinking that he is the only believer left in Israel.
1Ki 19:10 And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, [even] I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.
And God's response:
1Ki 19:18 Yet I have left [me] seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.
Only seven thousand believers in all of Israel. The other Jews faith was placed unto the wrong god by bowing their knees unto Baal.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ forever changed the history of our world. It is the only sign that Jesus would give an adulterous generation. That sign was recorded in the Bible, and reinforced by the Holy Spirit of God when it is read or spoken.
Mr. Darwin whacked down a straw man. The Bible doesn't claim to be a thing that was reconstructed by moderns from archeological digs.
Astounding logic -- so then, the Holocaust validated evolution? That may not be your intended conclusion but it follows your logic like night follows day.
Genocide is not validation of evolution, it is one of the consequences of it. No wonder that the most genocidal century in human history was the century dominated by Darwinism and the eugenics and racism it was used to support.
No wonder that the moral reprobation of a society correlates with the rise of Darwinism.
No wonder that a when people are taught they are nothing more than animals, they act like animals.
Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
Rom 1:19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
Rom 1:20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Rom 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Rom 1:22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
Rom 1:23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Rom 1:24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,
Rom 1:25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
Rom 1:26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;
Rom 1:27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Rom 1:28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
Rom 1:29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,
Rom 1:30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
Rom 1:31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Rom 1:32 Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
If you wish to read Darwin's observations on morality then read his observations on morality. If you wish to read what he thought would happen to "primitive" cultures then read what he thought would happen to them. He seems to have been more right than wrong in his predictions.
If you want to know what he thought about the morality of cruelty and slavery then read what he said about cruelty and slavery.
I used power in a physical sense.
The definition I used for God is a combination of attributes, none of which is synonymous with another: ominpotent, omnipresent, omni-temporal (eternal) and omniscient. It is this package of attributes that makes God "God" is the Christian sense.
I think that omni-temporal: eternal means the same thing as you said: "has always existed and has always been", or, as I put it myself in my posts "always was and always will be".
I don't think we're in disagreement here. I just think we're stumbling over our varying word usage for what amount to fundamental concepts.
We both appear to agree that there is a God controlling nature, and that God has an opinion of things, a mind, and communicates with men.
I think where we probably start to differ is in the what we consider to be the communications with man from God, and the utility of the Bible in that communication.
Unless we can agree on the attributes of GOd, we cannot discuss the Bible. Not out of spite, but rather, if we do not agree on Who God is, then we are not talking about the same God.
In my youth, I saw a Benny Hill skit where he was sitting at a table, talking to a stranger.
BH:"I like to do it."
S:"Huh?"
BH:"I like to do it. Everyday."
S:"Oh, uh..."
BH:"DO you like to do it?"
S:"Well, of course. Doesn't everybody?"
BH:"Well, not everybody. Some people just don't move that way, if you know what I mean."
S:"I suppose so..."
BH:"Not that there is anything wrong with that, if they don't like to go that way."
S:"No, of course not. Listen..."
BH:"I like to do it on my back. The feeling when it's over is like heaven."
S(agitated):"Listen, I don't care about your sex life and I wish we no longer discuss it."
BH:"WHAT? I was talking about swimming!"
My point is that if we are to discuss this with a proper understanding on both our parts, and hope to reach a genuine conclusion, rather than just improving our debate skills, we need to be talking about the same God. In all of the attributes I discussed about God, I have not brought into the discussion any reference from the Bible, other than when you asked about certain doctrine, such as how sin entered into the world.
Using the Bible to explain your beliefs would be as useless as using it to explain the beliefs of a muslim or a buddhist. Even though a Buddhist "god" and a muslim's "allah" can have similar attributes as the Judeo-Christian God, Jehovah, they are not the same god.
In order to establish the use of the Bible in talking about how God created everything, we need to agree on Who we understand God is. I believe God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. You have agreed that God is omnipresent, but your idea and my idea of omnipotent are different, and we disagree on the omniscience of God.
Although I am sure about my understanding of God, I am happy to discuss the attributes of God. I enjoy the dialog we are having and it is very enlightening, causing me to seek further my understanding of who God is. You have been very kind in talking with me, and I hope we continue.
It's not a matter of "giving up".
The problem is more fundamental than that.
You've given a bunch of quotes from the Bible, and you will no doubt give more. You truly, sincerely believe that these quotes build, one upon the other, to prove the argument you are making. I know them too, and I think they are saying something that is quite different. Now, I could take them, one at a time, and tell you what I think they are saying. It is not what you think they mean.
I have hesitated to do this for two reasons.
The one is that I don't like to bicker, and whoever is in second position in any such discussion appears to be bickering. The one who first advances an idea in a discussion presumptively occupies that ground unless he is removed from it by superior logic. All else being equal, the way the human mind works says that a draw goes to the first to occupy the field. In this case, because you have given the quotes first, and since I am morally certain that you will not change your views a jot or a tittle no matter what I write, what will end up happening is that you will have presented your faith robustly in quotes, and I will to all appearances be picking at your faith rather than frankly discussing my own. My own faith does not repose primarily on the Bible. Rather, were I the first mover in the conversation, I would state my faith and then show how the Bible corroborates it. That is a different thing than what you do. I don't want to bicker, so I am very hesitant to do a line-by-line response to the passages you have cited.
The second reason I hesitate is that, although I think that some of your beliefs are in error, those errors are not fatal to the overall good of believing as you do. You are a faithful Christian, whom (I presume) for the most part practices what he preaches. That is the important thing. The individual details of what you think about this passage or that of the Bible or similar traditions doesn't matter much in the overall scheme of things. What matters is the core of the faith and what you do with it. You've got that. So what I would be doing would, again, be bickering with you about details of how you believe what it is you believe. How does this help you on your spiritual quest? There is a danger, too. Your faith is so heavily rooted in the Bible, that if I push too hard, I might cause some cognitive dissonance in you as different parts of the Bible are shown to conflict. This doesn't bother me in the slightest because, as I've said, the Bible is merely an adjunct to my faith but not the source of it. The Bible is the source of your faith. For me to answer you line by line would be to subtly chop at the Bible. What would that serve? If I fail to convince you -which I am almost certain to do, we will have striven and become divided, to no good purpose. Christians have been fighting Christians over this sort of trivialities for centuries, and it has never done Christians any good. Were I to succeed, I doubt that you would come to see things from my own perspective. Rather, I would have just put cracks in the foundation of the basis of your Christianity. And that would simply be a bad thing, with no concomitant benefit.
Finally, there is a degree of laziness here. I know how much work it will take to go through the fully analysis of the passages you've written. I already know that the outcome won't convince you of anything. You are not going to become a Catholic, I am not going to become a Baptist. It seems like a great effort at strife to no good purpose.
Of course I am TEMPTED to respond, line for line, tack for tack, and to take each line and tell you PRECISELY what it means (and what it DOESN'T mean), to pitch over your applecart, tear up your arguments by the roots and leave the to dry out in the sun while I dance a victory dance.
I recognize this temptation for what it is: the sin of vainglory, the subtle temptation of the Devil to pick a public fight with a fellow Christian in order to exult in the WIN. I don't like to give the Devil an easy win.
So, I am at a loss as to what to do.
Perhaps I will take one line you cited, the first, from Romans: "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse"
What Paul is saying here is obvious: by looking straight at nature itself - the things that are made by God directly - that there is a divine law is self-evidently obvious, and that nature itself, without anything else, proves God. Therefore, given the obviousness of God, nobody has any excuse to deny God. This, I think, is true. Any natural scientist who thinks at all about the grander scope of what he sees becomes a theist. Indeed, he has to erect barriers of denial and obfuscation in order to avoid it.
However, what IS NOT "clearly seen" is the specific truth of the Christian story: that a man once lived who was God incarnate, who walked the earth, spoke the Truth about God, was killed, resurrected and saves souls unto Heaven, where he reposes. Jesus is not seen. The Resurrection is not seen. Heaven and Hell are not seen, except by a very few, and everyone else has to take THEIR word for it, including those accounts written down in the Bible. Most people don't have private revelations in order to be able to verify these unseen things for themselves.
The passage tells us the truth: God gives us eyes to see for ourselves the functioning of His laws in the majesty of his natural creation. That part is so obvious that nobody has any excuse for not acknowledging that there is some sort of Master Law, which is to say God.
But the identity of Jesus with God is not seen by looking at the stars, the sees and the rest of nature. For that knowledge, we have to rely on private revelation from God to us personally, and to the testimony of others who have seen things and revelations that we have not.
It does not take anything for us to trust our eyes: we all do automatically. And our eyes alone prove the God of Nature.
But for those who have not experienced a direct private revelation, to believe anything about Christ is not seen. That requires us to not trust our eyes, which God gave us and which don't lie, but to trust other people, whom we know (from our eyes) DO sometimes lie, or sometimes are sincere but mistaken.
You used Romans 1:20 as the foundation of an argument that Jesus is obviously God. But actually, what it says literally is that by looking at nature we see that there is some sort of God, we see the Godhead, and so there is no excuse to deny the existence of God. This does not say that looking at nature and knowing there is God makes it inexcusable to doubt the identity of Jesus of Nazareth with God. It doesn't say that, and looking at stars and trees do not actually DO that. You look at the heavens and you know there's God. That's what this passage refers to. But you don't know, from looking at the stars and knowing there's God, that you know that God's name is Jesus. That knowledge comes from elsewhere, and this passage from Romans is not a foundation for building the argument that Muslims go to Hell because they don't believe in Jesus.
Quite the opposite!
Muslims have a crescent moon on their banners. They look at the heavens, and are certain of God, and depict one of God's handiworks on their banners. They are following Romans 1:10 here and doing what Paul said: looking at God's handiwork and, from that alone, knowing that there's God. So, they MEET the standards of Romans 1:10. You would argue they don't, but that is because you are incorrectly reading Jesus into that line. It's not about Jesus, it's about seeing the obviousness of God in nature.
Why are you "sure" that God is omniscient?
Have you had a personal revelation in which you spoke directly with God or His angels?
I look at nature and I see immutable laws. Anything that holds the universe in its grip IS God, by definition. Natural Law is God. That is obvious from just open one's eyes and looking. Natural science is, for me, a devotional exercise. When I study the laws of physics or the biological processes that follow chemical principles, I am directly studying God, because I am directly studying the operation of omnipotent laws.
The interesting question for me is: is there is a thinking mind behind these laws? And I think there is.
Even if there isn't, and the natural laws are blind and utterly devoid of any consciousness, let along conscience, they are still God. But God is not, in that case, omniscient.
I think that God in fact IS omniscient, but the way I get to any acceptance that there is any God at all is by looking at nature and seeing the obvious God driving it. Natural Law does not vary or lie. Given the tangible proof of God in science, I then move to find evidence that God has a mind.
I find this demonstrated elsewhere.
And this, then, leads me to try and figure out what to do in order that God should be pleased with me.
It's when we are down at that level that I end up in the various human traditions, such as churches and bibles and the like. From my perspective, the Bible isn't interesting if there isn't a God. Since science and nature demonstrate God to my mind, the Bible becomes interesting as a way to look at what we think God wants of us.
This is not, from my perspective, an issue of sharpening debating skills. It's a matter of worldviews that are predicated on such radically different first premises that it is difficult to talk, I think. I am a Christian because there is strong scientific proof of God, and strong evidence that God is conscious, and that Jesus of Nazareth was a miracle man, and that natural-law-breaking or probability-twisting miracles keep occurring in that name, demonstrating the empirical truth of the whole thing.
Were you to evangelize, I don't know where you would start. Probably with the Bible.
I would start on a starry night and start discussing the mathematical order of it. Then I would drop things and show the order of that. I would show someone a microscope and show the order of that. I would unfurl the periodic table of the elements and show the order of that. I would show the primary forces, and fundamental disorder, and genetics and the evolution of species and the whole grand linkage of life and just how exacting well-done science can be.
Then having established the iron rule of natural law, I would talk about the place that human consciousness and mind play in it, what a mystery mind is, and intelligence. And I would bring out the four controlled peer-reviewed studies of death experiences of the revived, show how statistically they repeat each other's results. I would show what those recovered tell people tell us.
And I would present the scientific data of other natural-law bending things: the healing miracles of Lourdes, the uniqueness of the Shroud of Turin and the fact that the same rarest-of-all blood types appears not just on it, but extremely implausibly also on the Oviedo cloth, and in the preserved flesh from an 8th Century eucharistic miracle that remains preserved as a relic of the Catholic Church.
From there, a factual pattern emerges which drives one relentlessly towards the literal, physical truth of Catholic Christianity, and forces one to try and figure out what one is supposed to do, given the empirical reality of the Christian God. The Bible is a useful sourcebook for guidance in this regard.
I don't think that this is a Benny Hill skit at all.
I think that the a priori and initial assumptions from which our minds proceed come from different poles of experience and existence, and that this ends up contaminating even the words we use and what we mean by them.
When I say "God", I mean the Natural Law and whatever drives it, but at least the Natural Law, and I believe that modern science clearly reveals much of the Natural Law.
This is why I am not generally keen to start with the Bible. The Bible is a useless tool to get someone like me anywhere near Christianity. Absent the scientific underpinnings and empirical references to objective reality that give the stories of the New Testament a grounding in historical fact, there's no a priori reason for me to give the Jewish mythology and Christian mythology any greater credence than the Greek or Hindu.
It's the empirically tested truth of natural science, rooted in reality, rooted in observable things that are testable, that leads me squarely into the pews. Nothing else was ever going to do that.
I am well aware that others walk a different path, and think that's great. I don't spend time trying to force people to follow the particular path I have taken, because I don't think it's my business to do so. The point is to end up at the destination, and the path taken is less crucial for me.
In my experience, many folks who have taken the other paths are not similarly minded. For some, it is the sheer excitement of having come upon such a good thing that they bubble over with enthusiasm to share it. This I view kindly. But for others, there is an arrogance, a desire to impose one iron rule of how to get from A to B, their way, the way they look at it. I have encountered plenty of these people too; I'm even related to some. I restrain the impulse to fight with them., usually.
I thought you didn't want me to give up just yet.
So I continued.
Did you give up?
God has used individuals to share the Gospel with other individuals since John the Baptist began announcing Jesus Christ to the world.
Here is an event in my life that speaks volumes about how we are responsible as individuals to seek God's face:
I was chosen as a juror on a trial of Bank Robbery. The defendant was caught on video, had eyewitnesses testify he was the man, was captured with the same windbreaker he wore into the bank, had the marked bills in his trunk and had been prosecuted and convicted of bank robbery in the past. The defense attorney attempted to take each individual piece of evidence and demonstrate how it didn't prove guilt. By separating the data, confusion as to what a threshold of reasonable doubt is became an issue for some on our jury.
One of the jurors felt she could not overcome her understanding of "beyond a reasonable doubt", because she had not actually witnessed the Bank Robbery as it happened. After a couple of fruitless hours of trying to persuade the one dissenter, I presented the evidence one piece after another. We convicted based on the linking together of data which eliminated the doubt which had been placed there by the defense attorney.
God has gone to great lengths to inspire and preserve His Word. He has kept the enemy from perverting the text in a multitude of ways (extremely careful scribal practices, clay jars in dry caves, the faithfulness of devote monks, the invention of the printing press, the desire for those who wished to study the Word in their native tongue...). Through a vision He converted a future Emperor to make it legal to gather and study the Word as the Apostles demonstrated was right to do. He has motivated believers to disseminate Bibles in every language throughout the world. He has given faith to those who would travel to dangerous lands and plant churches amongst pagan witch doctors. He has commissioned us to step up to the cells containing those who are still slaves to sin, and present the pardon that is "beyond a reasonable doubt". Jesus Christ and Him Crucified, fulfilling the righteous requirement as a Kinsman Redeemer, to release His brethren from captivity. Love and Justice exhibited on a Cross in Judea 2,000 years ago!
I pray that your relationship with the Lord continues to grow in dependence on Jesus Christ.
God Bless you.
Any person alive is a potential missing link. If your offspring were separated from your brother's long enough, under different geographical conditions, they might end up as two populations which could no longer interbreed, hence two new species. And so on.
Then they'd have to move to Arkansas so they would fit in.
There is only one real world out there. To speak disparagingly of any effort to relate science and religion as "hybrid" is foolish. So too is the impression he gives that we should think about things one way in church and another way outside of church."
Exactly.
"...Truth holds no threat for the Christian. Truth in the scientific arena, which can be directly or indirectly tested, will always be consistent with truth in the spiritual arena. And, despite protestations from all sides, truth in nature must be connected with something, or Someone, beyond the natural realm - the something or Someone responsible for nature’s existence and characteristics.
...truth always points the truth-seeker to its Source, the one person in history who could make and back up the claim, “I am the truth.” That’s what makes science so fun and fascinating." ~ Hugh Ross
Exactly. There's only one truth. And what truth means, most fundamentally, is that which is.
No one who is a real Christian leaves his religion at the door of the church. The most basic definition of God is that which, or He Who, is most real. As He names Himself to Moses from the burning bush, "I AM that I AM." Or as Jesus says, "Before Abraham was, I AM."
Also, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life."
Aquinas is among those who make this point most persuasively. Also JP II's papal encyclical, Veritatis Splendor.
Yes. LOL. More precisely, I should have said that your offspring and your brother's, plus enough other people of both sexes to forestall genetic diseases, should go to colonize respective different islands, then breed in isolation for many generations. Genetic drift and selection would eventually bring about new races, then eventually species. (That's the Darwinian view, anyway). I suppose the "missing link" between the two new species might be the last common ancestor, which would be one of your parents.
Speaking of Arkansas, the identity of Bill Clinton's father is in some doubt, isn't it? With all the women he's been involved with, how does he know one of them ain't his cousin, sister, or somethin'? Maybe that's why he done switched to a form of sex which is non-procreative.
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