Posted on 02/25/2023 7:58:10 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Could two highly intelligent men with two entirely different perspectives possibly help you come to your own personal conclusion concerning the central figure of history? Perhaps. Let’s find out.
History’s central figure, of course, is Jesus Christ. And the two men I have in mind are American New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman and Canadian astrophysicist Hugh Ross.
Ehrman professed faith in Christ as a teenager but is now an atheist; whereas Ross grew up in a non-religious home but is now a Christian. One man abandoned Christianity, while the other embraced it.
Ross said, “I didn’t know any Christians or serious followers of any religion while growing up.” Ehrman, on the other hand, said, “For most of my life I was a devout and committed Christian.”
At age 17, Hugh Ross became the youngest person yet to serve as director of observations for Vancouver’s Royal Astronomical Society. And Bart Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ross came to faith in Christ after first investigating the world’s major religions. Ross said, “I reasoned that if man invented a religion, it would reflect human error. But, if God communicated, His message would be error free and as consistent as the facts of nature. So, I used the facts of history and science to test each of the ‘holy’ books.”
He stated, “One by one each book failed the factuality test, and I gained confidence that my initial skepticism would be affirmed — until I picked up a Bible.” He found that the Bible “described the 4 fundamental features of big bang cosmology."
After much personal Bible study, Ross said, “I clearly understood that Jesus Christ was the Creator of the universe, that He paid the price only a sinless person could pay for all of my offenses against God, and that eternal life would be mine if I received his pardon and gave Him His rightful place of authority over my life.”
Bart Ehrman, on the other hand, reversed course from his earlier profession of faith. Ehrman said, “I had solid Christian credentials and knew about the Christian faith from the inside out … but then … I started to lose my faith. I now have lost it altogether. I no longer go to church, no longer believe, no longer consider myself a Christian.”
In my recent CP op-ed titled, “When Textual Variants are a Convenient Excuse,” I quoted Bart Ehrman in explaining what led him to walk away from Christ: “It wasn’t problems in the Bible I was wrestling with. It was why is there so much suffering in the world? That’s why I left the faith.”
Ehrman’s attitude toward Jesus became darkened, separating him from the One who said: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).
Ehrman thinks the Bible misquoted Jesus. Hugh Ross disagrees, and says, “The fact that there is no historical record of called-out mistakes or corrections to the four Gospels by contemporaries of the gospel writers testifies to the accuracy of Jesus’ quotes within them.”
Bart Ehrman no longer believes Christ rose from the dead. Hugh Ross said, “Ehrman is also wrong about the evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus being based on visions alone. There is the empty tomb. The powerful enemies of the emergent Christian faith, the Jewish religious leaders and the Romans, were unable to produce the body of Jesus. Also, it would take more than visions to persuade the 10,000+ Jews living in Jerusalem at that time — more than a third of the total population — to become Christians in the few days that followed Jesus’ death on the cross.”
Bart Ehrman's unanswered questions about suffering in the world spawned his atheism, whereas Hugh Ross discovered that God’s book of nature is in alignment with God’s revelation in Scripture. This remarkable realization led Ross straight into the arms of our Creator.
Dr. John Lennox is a Northern Irish mathematician, bioethicist, and Christian apologist. Lennox said, “Faith is not a leap in the dark; it’s the exact opposite. It’s a commitment based on evidence … It is irrational to reduce all faith to blind faith and then subject it to ridicule. That provides a very anti-intellectual and convenient way of avoiding intelligent discussion.”
English theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking said, “Heaven is a fairy tale for people who are afraid of the dark.” John Lennox responded, “Atheism is a fairy story for those who are afraid of the light."
Hugh Ross has witnessed time and time again how the evidence in nature is fully consistent with the message of the Bible. Dr. Ross established Reasons to Believe in 1986. This ministry helps people “discover how scientific research and clear thinking consistently affirm the truth of the Bible and of the Good News it reveals.”
Bart Ehrman and Hugh Ross are heading in opposite directions. Jesus identified the wide road to Hell and the narrow road to Heaven in Matthew 7:14,13. You can either believe what Jesus said about these eternal destinations, or what Bart Ehrman says about them.
But know this: Your personal beliefs will not change God’s book of nature, Scripture, the good news of the Gospel, reality, truth, Heaven, Hell, etc. Your beliefs will only change your heart and your eternal destiny.
Bart Ehrman and Hugh Ross provide some context as you investigate the book of nature, the message of Scripture, and the historical facts of Christianity. Thankfully, there is still time for you to base your faith upon the breathtaking evidence God has graciously provided.
(In addition to Dr. Ross’s website, you could explore even more reasons to believe in Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell.)
Dan Delzell is the pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Papillion, Nebraska.
Does Hugh Ross believe in the global flood?
Does he believe that there were humanoids who buried their dead and created cave paintings before the time of Adam?
Hugh Ross once told me in person that he didn’t believe in the literal reality of the cubical eternal city of Jerusalem (described in Revelation). I asked him why and he said it was because gravity wouldn’t allow it to remain intact. I’m a PhD engineer at a federal defense contractor, and it was at our onsite location where he said this. It was a strange conversation, because Ross seemed to think that the Creator of the Universe is constrained in his power by the forces of nature.
https://creation.com/search?q=hugh+ross#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=hugh%20ross&gsc.page=1
https://answersingenesis.org/search/?q=hugh%20ross
I’ve heard Hugh discuss the New Jerusalem multiple times, and he has not mentioned anything like your assertion. Instead, he merely points out there are no known objects that large in our universe with cubic shapes, because gravity rounds off their corners.
Therefore, Hugh says, when God does introduce that gigantic cube, it will be evidence that God no longer is using gravity. In His new heaven and new earth, Hugh says, God will introduce new laws of physics. Gravity will not be part of it. Nor, apparently, says Hugh, will electromagnetism, judging by the fact that our light source will be God Himself (Rev.22:5).
I’ll leave the flood and hominids for another time, because it is bedtime.
Carl Sagan was in a conversation with a peer and said to the peer, “Since you are so smart, how can you believe in God?” His peer responded, “If you are so smart, how can you not?”
You have to also wonder how all matter, existing compressed in a tiny single molecule suddenly exploded. Why? With no additional matter and no additional change, why explode? Why not just remain? Also, the anti-theists need to explain where that matter originated.
Sure, 538 million years if we accept the figures as we measure linear time now, but it was not necessarily how time was flowing when the light of God switched on over the face of the waters of the formless void of Earth. His(Jesus) was the source of light and dark until until the end of day three and into day four when the sun and moon took over. What was going on with the earth and space time from Genesis 1:1 to genesis 1: 2 is another matter as There may have been a great deal of time from Genesis 1:1 to genesis1: 2. Some scriptural scholars versed in science have suggested the Earth has had other destructions and makeovers particularly at the times before men when Satan warred against God and the Earth may have suffered terrible damage...but I’m not wedded to that particular view.
God dwells in his eternal Now, he is alpha and Omega all at once. The Earth looks old because it is old but the events from Genesis1:2 onward don’t need to have happened over 538 million years ago. God’s nowness in his presence can still time as he acts. Think of the “genesis” device from Wrath of Khan. Yes sounds hokey, but a lot of Christians took notice when the video bit of a greatly speeded up process of planetary formation was shown in the movie.(I had to wonder if God himself had inserted himself in that bit of film history in a way a thief will slip in in the middle of the night). God’s commands are interesting...mostly, “ let there be”....or “let the Earth bring forth”. Only man appears to be a direct making by Gods hand and then the woman that came from his rib bone.
So I’m a pre-old Earth/young Earth present era(12000 years or less) sort of adherent.
As to where it comes from, I don't have to explain anything because theists don't explain it. ("God did it" isn't an explanation.) But I did listen once to a Canadian astrophysicist named Lawrence M. Krauss who gave a talk called "A Universe from Nothing." It was on YouTube. It made sense to me, although I didn't retain much, because I'm not really that interested. I think most of this debate is pretty pointless.
Suit yourself. I could refute your argument, but I don’t sense that you are interested.
You could only try to refute me using what you can only observe and measure in the here and now and then extrapolate from, not by what was going on when God acted from the times of old. But since you are not a time traveler and neither am I, we are going to have to trust that Christ will reveal all and we will all probably be amazed at how wrong we both were!
Nothing that you or I may agree on or disagree on concerning this matter refutes the need for the cross and our need for God’s salvation.
There is a school of Christian thought called old earth creationism/old universe and the other, a school of new earth/young universe creationism. Yet agreements or differences between the schools of thought are not of salvational importance; though some from both sides feel that the need to convey a rational sense of coherence between observed science and the bible is necessary so that the gospel can be taken seriously by a world presupposed to reject it.
Paul has a message for those who would reject the notion of a God created universe, not matter how old or young it is.Romans 1:19For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.…
Also Psalm 19:1The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
2Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3Without speech or language,
without a sound to be heard,a
4their voice has gone out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
The rest of the Psalm goes into the glories of the laws and commandments of God being as light for darkened minds. I find the phrase “without speech or language, without a sound, their voice has gone out onto the world”(meaning the declarations of the heavens) very fascinating as it points directly at Romans 1:20. Thus Psalm 19 is the perfect antecedent piece for Romans 1:19 and 20.
You can state your refutation, I will read it...I might even come to agree with it or parts of it anyway...but you can’t prove it, until we stand where Jesus stands now, in our new incorruptible bodies in a place where time is always NOW!
Aside from your suppositions about my refutation (which I can prove, by the way, because it is based in Scripture), I am in full agreement with your excellent essay. In my initial response to you I nearly made the same point, that salvation dies not depend on dating.
Clearly, you have deep understanding of God’s economy and a fine mind. More is the pity, therefore, that your conclusions about these other matters remain so confused.
I’ve seen proofs from pro old creationists and new “recent’ creationists and all of them get their ‘proofs’ from scripture as well as make a lot of suppositions from what i call “white space” doctrine(the white spaces between black letters of the bible).
I recognize a Gap between Genesis 1:1 and genesis 1:2. So I’ve decided that I have a mindset based on the fourth commandment that speaks of “in 6 days God created the heavens and the Earth and on the 7th day he rested” and is an anchoring truth that I could not reject. Since Jesus often spoke of Moses and the law and that Christ, who was the fullfillment of the law, after all having “created all things” and was that Word, which existed before all things, that was made flesh, I find myself in agreement to a seven day creation cycle concerning this era of creation we live in now.
Still at some point there was an Earth created in the times of Genesis 1:1 that God in Genesis 1:2 found water covered and empty and darkened. Some Bible scholars of differing sorts claim...”from the bible” mind you that they have found evidence that Earth may have had life and civilizations before and that the initial war against Satan may have brought vast destruction upon a pre genesis 1:2 earth. Your Precambrian explosion as fashioned by God may very well have occurred 585 million years of our current earth years ago, but it may have had no direct connections to what God did on Earth in Genesis verse 2 and thereafter.
So I’m open to both camps old and ancient and new... I am aware of the Bible passage speaking of the ancient sea creatures found on the mountain tops that would date older than Noah’s flood...using modern dating methods. An ocean covered Earth pre-verse 2 would explain such life at least until the earth became darkened.(if we can trust modern dating methods to measure past eons accurately based on current laws of physics and how they are operating presently.) It all points to a far older Earth than some Christians would be comfortable with accepting. As for me I believe the Earth has a history we know little about prior to Genesis 1:2 but what is important for us is the 7 day Earth Re-terraforming event, started in Gen 1:2 That God/Jesus did, that started the current cycle of God’s dealings with the Earth that we are in today, which included, of course his creation of Man by his direct hand and means, being made in his Image and Likeness.
With all due respect, already having praised your mind, I leave you with this: your lips work much harder than do your ears.
No you weren’t hearing me....I won’t abandon the literal 7 day creation! Genesis 1 mentions it and Exodus 20 reconfirms it in the 4th commandment to keep the Sabbath day Holy. Otherwise all else about how the universe was created by God remains an open question and it may well involve aspects of Old Creationism. Whatever else is true about the Creation process for me will also involve the 7 day literal creation.
That’s where my “fine mind” ends and my faith begins! As for the glory of God as revealed in the heavens....let the knowledge of that glory “fill the earth in silence without language” as Psalm 19 states and let the “working of my lips and yours” cease as we gaze at God’s wonders!
My sense of the creation story is still in flux as I’ve had new scripture and thoughts to consider, so it’s not like I would reject anything you might state out of hand. The Spirit would have to confirm it if it even deems it necessary for me. Please at least consider that point with fairness. If you think you really know that you really know, then you could always pray that I would grasp it.
Always looking for a way out? Conceding a universe of billions of suns and billions of orbital bodies in defined orbits due to gravity and momentum (billions of a patterns), and in the light of which order collisions are manifest as an aberration (yet even though these bodies are also in a pattern) rather than your slo-mo explosion, and yet now you are looking for a sophisticated design, as if a highway system is an explosion since accidents and trash happens. If you want to see patterns, you'll see them, just like people looking up at the stars saw constellations, or clouds that look like bunny rabbits.
Amazing: as shown you, far greater researchers and far greater intellects - even secular no less - affirm that The order of the universe is not an assumption; it’s an observed fact...This fact cannot but elicit feelings of reverence and awe,” ( Sagan) "We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly," (Einstein), the fact that the universe is able to support life depends delicately on various of its fundamental characteristics, notably on the form of the laws of nature, on the values of some constants of nature, and on aspects of the universe’s conditions in its very early stages." (stanford.edu), _ The Universe Really Is Fine-Tuned, And Our Existence Is The Proof ,
but some unbeliever on a pro-God forum relegates such as being like those who see clouds that look like bunny rabbits.
“I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.” - Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy) Willford, J.N. March 12, 1991. Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest. New York Times, p. B9.
“Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.” - George Ellis (British astrophysicist) Ellis, G.F.R. 1993. The Anthropic Principle: Laws and Environments. The Anthropic Principle, F. Bertola and U.Curi, ed. New York, Cambridge University Press, p. 30
“We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.” - John O’Keefe (astronomer at NASA) Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 200.
“As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.” - Professor Freeman J. of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton
“The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.” - Ilya Prigogine (Chemist-Physicist) Recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry in, "Physics Today" 25, pp. 23-28
“The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly. - - Dr. Paul Davies, esteemed author and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Adelaide University.
“...how surprising it is that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe should allow for the existence of beings who could observe it. Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values.” - Professor Steven Weinberg (Nobel Laureate in High Energy Physics [a field of science that deals with the very early universe], writing in the journal “Scientific American”.)
16O has exactly the right nuclear energy level either to prevent all the carbon from turning into oxygen or to facilitate sufficient production of 16O for life. Fred Hoyle, who discovered these coincidences in 1953, concluded that “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.” - Hoyle, Fred. “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20. (1982), p.16 (for more of these coincidences click here)
“If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one… Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe.” - Christian de Duve. “A Guided Tour of the Living Cell” (Nobel laureate and organic chemist)
“...The capacity of DNA to store information vastly exceeds that of any other known system: it is so efficient that all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand millionths of a gram. The information necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet…could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written…” - Dr. Michael Denton (Australian microbiologist)More (from this Jewish collection).
But if all you see is some patterns then you are no better off then those who see clouds that look like bunny rabbits.
True...not that aspect of Genesis with me anyway. But I didn’t say argue...If you think God has really shown you the truth in a Holy Spirit confirmed sort of way, you could always pray that he would show it to me. And not over 13 billion years....LOL!
Of course a thought occurs to me that in the day of resurrection when we finally both of us get to ask him questions, our Lord just might smile and say to both of us....”I won’t answer it all right away, but you’ve got all eternity to figure it out for yourselves” Then we find out he gave the answers to a soul who had died as a baby but the person smiles and says...”Nope he told me everything but he told me not to tell you...you see he wants you both to become eternal friends so he wants you both to work together on the problem! You’ll get the answers...in about 1 billion years...but what’s a billion years compared to eternity!”
Yeah not plausible but it tickles me thinking about it!
Note also that as said (as a YEC myself), that "6 days" were not all days of sunlight, since there was none until sometime during the 4th day which began at nightfall at the termination of day 3. And of course, nightfall on one side of a rotating earth meant daylight on the other, while the creation of vegetation on day 3 would naturally preclude a long nights, thus only days 1+2 could be offered as excessively long.
Yet such is not needed to reconcile a 6 day creation with known science (in which most is unknown, and what is know leaves much to be settled) - not that we must. But if the gap hypothesis is correct thenm it offers some reconciliation. And if matter itself is millions of years old, then could not fossils being made from earth text a they do? Yet due to the tremendous effects of the Fall, which is when the cycle of death began, then would is not be possible that a organic matter that God just created suddenly change so that it would text as very old?
Just thinking.
...and I immediately thought of this:
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Job 38:1-2
And to say that this cosmic splatter of matter "follows laws" has it backward. They don't follow laws. They behave as they do, and humans describe it, identify the pattern, and call it a law. Then comes the awe-and-majesty language, but it sounds very much like someone marveling that our hands seem made to fit our gloves.
How many times did LIFE evolve from stuff, just to die shortly later.
It got REALLY lucky when something happened that allowed LIFE to finally replicate/reproduce, thereby jumping past that inconvenient DEATH thing.
Wouldn't ETERNAL life have been a LOT easier to achieve??
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