Falling Stars, Damnable Heresy, and the Spirit of Evolution

Renew America ^ | Sept. 19, 2013 | Linda Kimball

[GarySpFc]

GarySpFc: "First, I am not your friend." Reading comprehension is important on Free Republic, don't you know? The word "FRiend" is a term of respect from a fellow FReeper. We are, after all, on the same political team, this is a News/Activism thread, and that's what "FRiend" is intended to remind you of. If you reject such FRiendship, you also reject a large number of fellow FReepers, at which point the difficulty of winning in politics only grows.

Thank you, but serving the Lord is far more important to me than winning in politics. Do not call me friend.

GarySpFc: "Secondly, I disagree with almost everything you have written. That the Founding Fathers were in the main deeply committed Christians, and not Deists or theistic rationalists I have no doubt, after having spent many years studying their lives and collecting their quotes. That said, it is your views which we find to be anti-Christian, and the Funding Fathers are not on trial here. ***Posts several quotes to prove point*** "

And yet, since my views are quite similar to many Founders, all the condemnations you heap on yours truly, BroJoeK, also apply to them, and all the Christianity you've discovered in Founders' beliefs also applies to me.
That's why your Founding Father quotes confirm what I've been saying here all-along, and also reflect my personal beliefs.
And yet, our Founders -- in your mind -- are faithful Christians, while I -- in your mind -- am a "God Damned Heretic".
So, there seems to me a problem going on inside your mind, dear FRiend.

The Founding Fathers were not Deists, and certainly not atheists, skeptics, or Aryans. Benjamin Franklin, as but one example, might have been a Deist in his early life. He quotes from one Deist book, and said he agreed with it, however that was when Franklin was in his twenties. However, by the time of America's founding he clearly wasn't theist. I quote, "I have lived, sir, a longtime, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--God governs in the affairs of men, and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible that an empire can rise without his aid?" "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain to build it. I firmly believe this." Benjamin Franklin, June 28, 1787 Constitutional Convention. Clearly, Franklin was not a Christian. However, he clearly was not a Deist.

[BroJoeK]

redleghunter: "You only commented on the 2nd Great Awakening.
The 1st Great Awakening which I posted twice started in the 1730s and was the key element which caused the Enlightenment movement to be of little effect on colonial America."

Benjamin Franklin, the oldest of our Founders was in his late 20s to early 30s, during the 1730s -- so if any Founder was influenced by that Awakening, it would surely be Franklin.
And yet, Franklin went the other way -- he sponsored Deist Thomas Paine's move to America, was a high official amongst Freemasons, was notably impious and on his death bequeathed money to every church in Philadelphia, including its Synagogue.

Washington and Adams were both born in in 1730s, so it's hard to suppose what influence the Awakening had on them.
Both were considerably more religious than old Franklin, but Adams was Unitarian, and Freemason Washington never expressed an interest in Trinitarian doctrines.

But let me say, if I may, that you seem to have a very different, and more negative, view of the term "Enlightenment" than I do.
In America the sometimes anti-Christian "Enlightenment" was transformed into a tolerance for all religions, as expressed in our First Amendment.
That's why, in my view the term "Enlightenment" expresses the very best in our Founders, not as this thread intends their "Damnable Heresy".

[GarySpFc]

"All of those men are considered Christians, yet none (so far as I know) ever expressed a belief in full-blown Trinitarian theology."

On his third voyage, Columbus sailed south along the east coast of Africa and was caught in the doldrums, a notorious condition of no winds and intense heat. After drifting aimlessly for eight days, the winds returned, but now they were running low on water. Columbus promised to name the first new land he discovered in honor of the Trinity. Sighting an island off the coast of Venezuela this day, July 31, 1498, which coincidentally had three peaks, he gave it the name Trinidad. There they obtained fresh water and in the process were the first Europeans to see South America.

[BroJoeK]

CynicalBear: "And just who is it that you think is coming back to this earth?"

On this question, as on all others, I go by what the New Testament actually says about it.

[CynicalBear]

Why would you evade the question rather than identify who you have determined it to be from your reading of the New Testament?

[BroJoeK]

CynicalBear quoting: "1 John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

I'm sorry, but this is one of those places where, as they say, rubber meets the road, and we are forced to consider the fact that this particular verse appears in no Greek manuscript before the 14th century.
That's why most translations delete it, and so this verse correctly reads:

"7 For there are three that testify: 8 the[a] Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement."

Of course, you can decide which to believe, but would ask the question this way: is it easier to believe that Trinitarians added those words to the text beginning in the 1300s, or that anti-Trinitarians somehow deleted them in all previous versions?

[CynicalBear]

>> What I do hope for is simple acknowledgement from people like yourself that those words are inappropriate, especially here in a News/Activism thread.<<

It seems to me that truth is truth no matter where it is spoken. Falsehoods need to be exposed no matter the forum. If heretical beliefs are preached on the streets, in the churches, or in a internet forum they need to be condemned.

>>"Heresy" is simply a nasty way of saying "un-orthodox". Compare: the "N-word" versus "African American".<<

Using Alinsky tactics won’t work on scripture based believers.

[redleghunter]

All of those men are considered Christians, yet none (so far as I know) ever expressed a belief in full-blown Trinitarian theology.

No they just belonged to churches which confessed the Trinity. So again the issue of the secret life. I would quit using the Masons as an argument. You can't provide evidence any of those men were practicing Masons and could have just gone to the lodge for a nice meal and political connections.

[BroJoeK]

GarySpFc: "The Founding Fathers were not Deists."

Nor am I, and yet you happily accept the accusation that I am a "God Damned Heretic", while excusing even old Franklin of any similar charge.

What's wrong with this picture?

[BroJoeK]

GarySpFc: "On his third voyage, Columbus sailed south..."

I agree that Columbus was a Roman Catholic and Trinitarian.
He is not included in any list of United States' Founders.

[CynicalBear]

Directly from the Greek.

1 John 5:7 For three there are bearing testimony in heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Spirit and these three one are

Now if you are one of those who believes that God was unable to preserve His word as it was revealed to the writers of scripture I suppose you could do most anything with what you consider scripture to fit whatever scenario you like. 1 John 5:7 fits perfectly with the rest of scripture and is supported by it.

[redleghunter]

Benjamin Franklin, the oldest of our Founders was in his late 20s to early 30s, during the 1730s -- so if any Founder was influenced by that Awakening, it would surely be Franklin. And yet, Franklin went the other way --

Sure, why not add in there that Franklin was homosexual too...How much more revisionist history are you going to post here. From your studies of Franklin, did he ever opine on whether or not God governed in the affairs of men? If the answer is yes, he cannot be a deist.

The Fifty Five Delegates to the Constitutional Convention and church affiliation

[redleghunter]

I'm saying that your listing is incomplete.

Come again? 55 signers of the Declaration of Independence. I gave the math. 1 a deist, 1 maybe deist, two Unitarians. 51 from orthodox churches with Trinitarian confessions.

[tacticalogic]

If heretical beliefs are preached on the streets, in the churches, or in a internet forum they need to be condemned.

The condemnation isn't reserved for "preaching heretical beliefs", it's extended to include people who hold them and will not convert, or simply will not positively affirm they hold the correct beliefs.

[GarySpFc]

If you look up each individual in the "top tier" of our Founders -- Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamiltion -- you'll find that all of them were, as I've said here before, to a more-or-less degree influenced by Enlightenment Age ideas on theism/deism, Unitarian and/or Freemasonry.
All of those men are considered Christians, yet none (so far as I know) ever expressed a belief in full-blown Trinitarian theology.

Firstly, you argument from silence is invalid. Indeed, a mud puddle has more depth.

Secondly, maybe this will refresh your memory.

Franklin was responsible for bringing France into the Revolutionary War on the side of the Colonies, which proved to be of vital importance to cause of independence. He also went to Paris in August 1781 to negotiate the Treaty of Paris, which ended the War with the British on September 3, 1783. The terms of this treaty were described as “so advantageous to the Colonies that it has been called the greatest achievement in the history of American diplomacy.”500

In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, … and of the United States of America, to forget all past misunderstandings and differences.… Done at Paris, this third day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three.

D. Hartley
John Adams
B. Franklin
John Jay

[CynicalBear]

Satan has not restricted himself to just a few ways to draw people from the truth of scripture for sure.

[tacticalogic]

Satan has not restricted himself to just a few ways to draw people from the truth of scripture for sure.

Or drive them away.

[spirited irish]

BJK to betty: Your frequent claims to the contrary notwithstanding, my own views correspond closely with those of most "top tier" founders, including Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison & Hamilton. Spirited: Either BJK has the memory of a brick or something underhanded is going on. My vote is for the latter. BJK claims his views correspond closely to most "top tier" founders. Well unless their views were a hybrid-mixture of physical and psychic evolutionary naturalism as BJK's is, then his claim is completely bogus. In post# 360 BRK lays out his evolutionary cosmogony: 1.G*d creates the Universe ex nihilo according to His Grand Plan -- think of it as a computer program. 2.The Natural-Universe unfolds....according to G*d's plan. 3.G*d may or may not intervene at critical points to apply what we today might call "mid course corrections" -- aka "miracles". But we can't know what we weren't there to witness, and the whole idea is problematic because it implies that G*d's Universe was less than He intended from the Beginning. The Bible tells us unequivocally that G*d considers His Creation "good". It also clearly describes G*d as working to create the Earth, and resting when done. It tells us nothing about how He did it. 4.Life on Earth first arose by some process we don't (yet) understand. Nor do we know whether G*d intervened directly (miracle) to make it happen, or if His Plan was adequate from the Beginning to allow "interesting organic chemistry" to grow slowly, slowly more complex until it looked like "primitive life". 5.Once life exists on Earth, then evolution (descent with modifications and natural selection) can operate. But what science calls "random" is in no sense really random. Instead, the process is controlled by: ◦first, G*d's original Plan, ◦second, any "mid-course corrections" G*d made along the way, and ◦third, any day-to-day interventions G*d thinks necessary for His purposes. 6.....biologically modern man appeared in the fossil record many thousands of years before a Soul, as we understand it, was breathed into Adam. So, the Garden of Eden records the moment when our ancestors' new Souls first recognized their Creator G*d and their own fallen sinfulness. Spirited: BJK's cosmogony presents us with a "god" of his own invention---an obviously limited, impersonal deity incapable of thinking/speaking/creating simultaneously that bears a striking similarity to an impersonal divine creative substance, so it becomes necessary to set a computer program in motion according to which the universe of matter unfolds as a continuous process. As BJK rejects the Revealed Word perspective, it is not possible for us to know how life arose according to the computer program or if the impersonal creative force (psychic energy) intervened at any time or even if the computer program was adequate to allow for life to emerge from nonlife (#4) All of this arrogant pomposity is by the "Word" of BJK, of course. However, though it is impossible for the posters to this thread to know if life emerged from nonlife (#4) it turns out that it is “entirely possible” for the little 'g' god-man BJK to authoritatively assert that life did after all emerge from non-life since evolution (#5) has become operable----according to BJK's computer program of course. Moving on with BJK’s gnostic-pagan narrative, after thousands or maybe millions of years of evolution the computer program finally produces a biological man (Gollum) followed in due course by a Soul (capitalized because so very divine?)after many more millions of years? (only BJK knows). This strange Soul seemingly recognizes its’ “Creator G*d” according to BJK's script, though it would make more sense if it recognized the “computer program” instead.

[spirited irish]

Sorry that the previous post is a mess---my mistake! Let's try it again: BJK to betty: Your frequent claims to the contrary notwithstanding, my own views correspond closely with those of most "top tier" founders, including Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison & Hamilton.

Spirited: Either BJK has the memory of a brick or something underhanded is going on. My vote is for the latter.

BJK claims his views correspond closely to most "top tier" founders. Well unless their views were a hybrid-mixture of physical and psychic evolutionary naturalism as BJK's is, then his claim is completely bogus.

In post# 360 BRK lays out his evolutionary cosmogony:

1.G*d creates the Universe ex nihilo according to His Grand Plan -- think of it as a computer program.

2.The Natural-Universe unfolds....according to G*d's plan.

3.G*d may or may not intervene at critical points to apply what we today might call "mid course corrections" -- aka "miracles". But we can't know what we weren't there to witness, and the whole idea is problematic because it implies that G*d's Universe was less than He intended from the Beginning.

The Bible tells us unequivocally that G*d considers His Creation "good". It also clearly describes G*d as working to create the Earth, and resting when done. It tells us nothing about how He did it.

4.Life on Earth first arose by some process we don't (yet) understand.

Nor do we know whether G*d intervened directly (miracle) to make it happen, or if His Plan was adequate from the Beginning to allow "interesting organic chemistry" to grow slowly, slowly more complex until it looked like "primitive life".

5.Once life exists on Earth, then evolution (descent with modifications and natural selection) can operate.

But what science calls "random" is in no sense really random. Instead, the process is controlled by:

◦first, G*d's original Plan, ◦second, any "mid-course corrections" G*d made along the way, and ◦third, any day-to-day interventions G*d thinks necessary for His purposes.

6.....biologically modern man appeared in the fossil record many thousands of years before a Soul, as we understand it, was breathed into Adam. So, the Garden of Eden records the moment when our ancestors' new Souls first recognized their Creator G*d and their own fallen sinfulness.

Spirited: BJK's cosmogony presents us with a "god" of his own invention---an obviously limited, rather pathetic, impersonal deity incapable of thinking/speaking/creating simultaneously.

Since BJK's invention bears a striking similarity to an impersonal divine creative substance, it becomes necessary to set a computer program in motion according to which the universe of matter unfolds as a continuous process.

As BJK rejects the Revealed Word perspective, it is not possible for us to know how life arose according to the computer program or if the impersonal creative force (psychic energy) intervened at any time or even if the computer program was adequate to allow for life to emerge from nonlife (#4) All of this arrogant pomposity is by the "Word" of BJK, of course.

However, though it is impossible for the posters to this thread to know if life emerged from nonlife (#4) it turns out that it is “entirely possible” for the little 'g' god-man BJK to authoritatively assert that life did after all emerge from non-life since evolution (#5) has become operable----according to BJK's computer program of course.

Moving on with BJK’s gnostic-pagan narrative, after thousands or maybe millions of years of evolution the computer program finally produces a biological man (Gollum) followed in due course by a Soul (capitalized because so very divine?)after many more millions of years? (only BJK knows).

This strange Soul seemingly recognizes its’ “Creator G*d” according to BJK's script, though it would make more sense if it recognized the “computer program” instead.

[boatbums]

III. In the unity of the Godhead there be three Persons of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.

Thank you for posting that excerpt from the Westminster Confession. I believe it succinctly defines what ALL genuine Christians believe about who Jesus Christ truly is and what His relationship to the Godhead comprises. Those such as BroJoeK and those with whom he claims common ground (the 50 million worldwide compared to the BILLION+ Trinitarian Christians), deny this historical AND Biblical doctrine because they have determined to know God and Jesus Christ on their own terms, with their own ways of defining Him whether or not it comports with the Divinely revealed truth of God's word.

I liken this abstinence to the do-it-yourselfer (DIYer) who buys a car and summarily tosses out the owners manual. Instead of following the manufacturer's detailed instructions - designed to allow the consumer the ability to get the best benefits from his purchase - the DIYer ignores best practices and presumes he knows better and rejects being told what to do, anyway. Instead of using the correct weight oil, for example, he decides to use maple syrup. Instead of the right grade of gasoline, he uses cheap vodka. Instead of the proper PSI for the tires, he kinda likes the idea of helium. Now imagine what happens when he starts up his car?

Almighty God has revealed what is truth to His creation. He did so through creation (Romans 1) as well as through His prophets - speaking the words HE told them to write down. The truth is what God says is the truth. He demands obedience and promises judgment on those who reject the truth. Truth is not relative, but absolute. He designed us, He knows what is best for us, He rewards obedience and judges disobedience. He didn't just leave it up to us to figure it all out on our own - that's why He preserved His word. If someone chooses to go it alone (or with a group of other "loners") he/they will answer to God for it.

Christians didn't invent the Trinity - they saw it for themselves through the teachings of Jesus and His Apostles along with the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is a revealed truth and something God expects us to believe (have faith) whether or not we understand it. Don't expect Almighty God to honor or respect or forbear disobedience. He won't. He judges it AS error - else He wouldn't have bothered giving us the Owner's Manual.