Posted on 01/16/2011 4:09:10 PM PST by balch3
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) -- A Southern Baptist seminary president and evolution opponent has turned sights on "theistic evolution," the idea that evolutionary forces are somehow guided by God. Albert Mohler
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote an article in the Winter 2011 issue of the seminary magazine labeling attempts by Christians to accommodate Darwinism "a biblical and theological disaster."
Mohler said being able to find middle ground between a young-earth creationism that believes God created the world in six 24-hour days and naturalism that regards evolution the product of random chance "would resolve a great cultural and intellectual conflict."
The problem, however, is that it is not evolutionary theory that gives way, but rather the Bible and Christian theology.
Mohler said acceptance of evolutionary theory requires reading the first two chapters of Genesis as a literary rendering and not historical fact, but it doesn't end there. It also requires rethinking the claim that sin and death entered the human race through the Fall of Adam. That in turn, Mohler contended, raises questions about New Testament passages like First Corinthians 15:22, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."
"The New Testament clearly establishes the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon the foundation of the Bible's account of creation," Mohler wrote. "If there was no historical Adam and no historical Fall, the Gospel is no longer understood in biblical terms."
Mohler said that after trying to reconcile their reading of Genesis with science, proponents of theistic evolution are now publicly rejecting biblical inerrancy, the doctrine that the Bible is totally free from error.
"We now face the undeniable truth that the most basic and fundamental questions of biblical authority and Gospel integrity are at stake," Mohler concluded. "Are you ready for this debate?"
In a separate article in the same issue, Gregory Wills, professor of church history at Southern Seminary, said attempts to affirm both creation and evolution in the 19th and 20th century produced Christian liberalism, which attracted large numbers of Americans, including the clerical and academic leadership of most denominations.
After establishing the concept that Genesis is true from a religious but not a historical standpoint, Wills said, liberalism went on to apply naturalistic criteria to accounts of miracles and prophecy as well. The result, he says, was a Bible "with little functional authority."
"Liberalism in America began with the rejection of the Bible's creation account," Wills wrote. "It culminated with a broad rejection of the beliefs of historic Christianity. Yet many Christians today wish to repeat the experiment. We should not expect different results."
Mohler, who in the last year became involved in public debate about evolution with the BioLogos Foundation, a conservative evangelical group that promotes integrating faith and science, has long maintained the most natural reading of the Bible is that God created the world in six 24-hour days just a few thousand years ago.
Writing in Time magazine in 2005, Mohler rejected the idea of human "descent."
"Evangelicals must absolutely affirm the special creation of humans in God's image, with no physical evolution from any nonhuman species," he wrote. "Just as important, the Bible clearly teaches that God is involved in every aspect and moment in the life of His creation and the universe. That rules out the image of a kind of divine watchmaker."
One of the other major problems of theistic evolution is that it demands a literary reading for part of Genesis and a historical reading for the rest.
And the criteria for deciding on when to switch is based on the secular humanist interpretation of what fits with its world view.
So, when the Flood is over, and life span of mankind shortens to the present day span, then we can start interpreting it historically.
What happens is that then allows the secular humanist to dictate how Scripture is to be interpreted, within the framework of secular humanism.
But since Scripture is not a secular work it’s the wrong method of interpretation and will always result in a faulty one.
Consistency is important. Either interpret it all as historical, or all as literary. But by choosing the literary, you run into problems when it can be historically verified. It demands a literary interpretation of Jewish history all the way through the death of Jacob, one of the patriarchs of Judaism.
It undercuts the foundation of Jewish history and the promises of God to mankind through Abraham.
Life from non-life.
but I wonder how he would have felt about parthenogenesis in humans?
That's never happened in humans, but Pasteur certainly believed in one virgin birth, since he was a life-long devout Catholic.
It is quite simple, Science deals with the natural world not the supernatural. The Evolutionary theory explains how life has changed since it inception but makes no speculation as to the origin of life To say other wise is simply untrue.
I have no problem with this since I am able to separate my faith, or my belief in the supernatural from the literal mountains of empirical evidence that supports Evolution.
Does it bother you that your Lord is descended from a fictional character?
Thanks for the ping... I ran across the thread a few minutes ago.
Evolution is a fairy ‘tail’ mislabeled as ‘science’, the TOE would wither on the ‘vine’ if its funding were to be shut off. All this pretend TOE demonstrates only the ‘fittest’ survive is chaff blowing in the proverbial wind.
>> “The Second Law of Thermodynamics, for application, requires the condition that the there exist a containment of energy within the system.” <<
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That is utterly false.
Containment was assumed for the sake of developing a logical proof, but it was in no way a requirement of the proof. Nevertheless, containment truly exists, since the universe, by all observable properties, is bounded, much to the chagrin of the “copernicans.”
Mankind has a pitifully egocentric notion of time.
A young earth creationist will say that the universe is approximately 6,000 years old. But he doesn't finish the sentence. It should be "the universe is approximately 6,000 years from the inception space/time coordinates."
Likewise, the theistic evolutionist will say that the universe is approximately 15 billion years old. But he doesn't finish the sentence either. It should be "the universe is approximately 15 billion years old from my present space/time coordinates."
Of a truth, when we consider relativity and the inflationary theory both statements are true. For more, I recommend Jewish physicist Gerald Schroeder's article on The Age of the Universe.
so it don’t reflect well on evolutionists.
if most mathematicians were bank robbers, I would still be interested in the Cauchy integral theorem.
the bad actors don’t scare me.
Genesis 1:2 says there was deep ... water... a flood of all things, long long before Noah ever breathed life. Well wonder WHY most on either side of the debate willingly ignore a flooded earth before it was made 'good'?
ping
LOL! :)
>> “biopoesis is the study of how life on Earth arose from inanimate matter” <<
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No, that’s the raving of the Dream Club, parent organization of the Evolution Club.
My faith is strong enough to accept what the empirical evidence clearly shows without resorting to misrepresentations and deliberate distortions.
I do not believe The Lord would want us to break the 9th Commandment for any reason no matter how well intentioned.
>> He started re-creating and reforming the “world that then was” that had been destroyed. <<
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That is the absurd prevarication that is used to jump-start the lies of “thiestic evolution,” but it doesn’t hold up to either an examination of the Masoretic text, or the words of Christ recorded in the New Testiment.
In short, theistic evolution is a hiding place for unbelievers that have yet to be honest with themselves, let alone the rest of the world.
And they even let him on the platform for the celebration!
next thing, you’ll be claimin’ that our blasted planet is moving! Moving? Balderdash!
1 Chronicles 16:30: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable.”
Psalm 93:1: “Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm ...”
Psalm 96:10: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable ...”
Psalm 104:5: “Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken.”
Isaiah 45:18: “...who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast...”
>>That is the absurd prevarication that is used to jump-start the lies of “thiestic evolution,<<
Wow! You would have to explain to me how the existence of a world that God made that was destroyed after Genesis 1:1 leads somehow to thiestic evolution.(whatever that means) It would take some convoluted thinking to make that leap.
Hmmm...give me a rough estimate: How many processes, events or life forms do you think are mentioned in the Bible that are also spoken of in clear-cut scientific theory?
I'd say there would have to be hundreds at least. For example, take this verse, Amos 5:8--
He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns midnight into dawn and darkens day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land— the LORD is his name.
Science will tell you much about the Pleiades and why constellations appear as they do. We know how and at what time the sun will rise and set each day due to the fruits of science. We also know how tides work and how the cycle of evaporation and precipitation draws water from the sea and puts it on the land.
God says he does these things...science says how they are done. As far as I can tell, there's only one thing in the natural world God claims as His work that science won't theorize about and that's how life came about in the first place: How life arose in the first place.
So we're still left with the question: Why the bizarre omission? Why only one natural event in the entire universe outside the realm of science? After all, it's not as if science stays out of other religious stuff. When someone has a near-death experience and thinks they went to Heaven, do scientists say "We can't comment on whether that happened, it's religion?" While not part of Christian theology, belief in ghosts is a spiritual belief for some people. Do scientists say, "Sorry, no opinion on that?"
Oh, and please don't waste time by saying the stuff in Amos 5:8 is metaphor or some other literary device, so scientists aren't getting into religion if they hold forth on it. Unless six day creation is true, the Genesis account is a literary device, too.
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