Posted on 09/20/2013 4:29:03 AM PDT by spirited irish
“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).
“And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1)
In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who,
"Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the powers of hell against the churches of Christ."
John identifies antichrists, in this case clergy who serve the devil rather than Christ, sequentially. First, like Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Funk, Paul Tillich, and John Shelby Spong, they specifically deny the living, personal Holy Trinity in favor of Gnostic pagan, immanent or Eastern pantheist conceptions. Though God the Father Almighty in three Persons upholds the souls of men and maintains life and creation, His substance is not within nature (space-time dimension) as pantheism maintains, but outside of it. Sinful men live within nature and are burdened by time and mortality; God is not.
Second, the specific denial of the Father logically negates Jesus the Christ, the Word who was in the beginning (John 1), was with God, and is God from the creation of all things (1 John 1). In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus is the Angel who spoke “mouth to mouth” to Moses (Num. 12:6-9; John 9:20) and at sundry times and in many ways “spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all…” (Hebrews 1:1) Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Son of God who is the life and light of men, who by His shed blood on the Cross died for the remission of all sins and bestowed the privilege of adoption on all who put their faith in Him.
Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,
“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).
According to Peter (2 Peter 2:1), falling stars will work among the faithful, teaching damnable heresies that deny the Lord, cause the fall of men into unbelief, and bring destruction upon themselves:
“The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief.” Many thinking people came at last “to realize that it was religion, not science or social change that gave birth to unbelief. Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man.” (James Turner of the University of Michigan in “American Babylon,” Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)
Falling Stars and Damnable Heresy
Almost thirty years ago, two well-respected social science scholars, William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark found themselves alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of irrationalism, superstition and occultism---channeling cults, spirit familiars, necromancers, Wiccans, Satanists, Luciferians, goddess worshippers, 'gay' shamans, Hermetic magicians and other occult madness at every level of society, particularly within the most influential--- Hollywood, academia and the highest corridors of political power.
Like many scientists, they were equally concerned by Christian opposition to naturalistic evolution. As is common in the science community, they assumed the cause of these social pathologies was somehow due to fundamentalism, their term for authentic Christian theism as opposed to liberalized Christianity. Yet to their credit, the research they undertook to discover the cause was conducted both scientifically and with great integrity. What they found was so startling it caused them to re-evaluate their attitude toward authentic Christian theism. Their findings led them to say:
"It would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists oppose all science (when in reality they but oppose) a single theory (that) directly contradicts the bible. But it would be an equally great mistake to conclude that religious liberals and the irreligious possess superior minds of great rationality, to see them as modern personalities who have no need of the supernatural or any propensity to believe unscientific superstitions. On the contrary...they are much more likely to accept the new superstitions. It is the fundamentalists who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today." ("Superstitions, Old and New," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IV, No. 4; summer, 1980)
In more detail they observed that authentic ‘born again’ Christians are far less likely to accept cults and pseudoscientific beliefs while the irreligious and liberalized Christians (i.e., progressive Catholics, Protestant emergent, NAR, word faith, prosperity gospel) are open to unscientific notions. In fact, these two groups are most disposed toward occultism.
As Bainbridge and Stark admitted, evolution directly contradicts the Bible, beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. This means that evolution is the antithesis of the Genesis account. For this reason, discerning Christians refuse to submit to the evolutionary thinking that has swept Western and American society. Nor do they accept the evolutionary theism brought into the whole body of the Church by weak, tepid, indecisive, or apostate clergy.
Over eighty years ago, Rev. C. Leopold Clarke wrote that priests who embrace evolution (evolutionary theists) are apostates from the ‘Truth as it is in Jesus.’ (1 John2:2) Rev. Clarke, a lecturer at a London Bible college, discerned that evolution is the antithesis to the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus Christ, thus it is the greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration:
“It is a battering-ram of unbelief---a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly and miraculously---and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses….Already a tremendous effect, on a wide scale has been produced by the impact of this teaching---an effect which can only be likened to the…collapse of foundations…” (Evolution and the Break-Up of Christendom, Philip Bell, creation.com, Nov. 27, 2012)
The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. But how horrible a travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see church leaders more eager to be abreast of the times, than earnestly contending for the Faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). It is high time, said Rev. Clarke, that the Church,
“…. separated herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up to date…What, after all, have custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology, which has….no message of comfort or help to the soul?” (ibid)
The primary tactic employed by priests eager to accommodate themselves and the Church to modern science and evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when we see Genesis, especially the first three chapters, in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is the argument embraced and advanced by mega-church pastor Timothy J. Keller.
With a position paper Keller published with the theistic evolutionary organization Bio Logos he joined the ranks of falling stars (Catholic and Protestant priests) stretching back to the Renaissance. Their slippery-slide into apostasy began when they gave into the temptation to embrace a non-literal, non-historical view of Genesis. (A response to Timothy Keller’s ‘Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople,” Lita Cosner, Sept. 9, 2010, creation.com)
This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this damnable heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of the Origenists. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,
“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)
As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)
In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to reduce the Revelation of God to allegory and myth is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.
Scenarios commonly proposed by modern Origenists posit a cleverly disguised pantheist/immanent nature deity subject to the space-time dimension and forces of evolution. But as noted previously, it is sinful man who carries the burden of time, not God. This is a crucial point, for when evolutionary theists add millions and billions of zeros (time) to God they have transferred their own limitations onto Him. They have ‘limited’ God and made Him over in their own image. This is not only idolatrous but satanic.
Additionally, evolution inverts creation. In place of God’s good creation from which men fell there is an evolutionary escalator starting at the bottom with matter, then progressing upward toward life, then up and through the life and death of millions of evolved creatures that preceded humans by millions of years until at long last an apish humanoid emerges into which a deity that is always in a state of becoming (evolving) places a soul.
Evolution amputates the entire historical precedent from the Gospel and makes Jesus Christ unnecessary as the atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically points out:
“The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus…into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity.” (“Atheism vs. Christianity,” 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)
None of this was lost on Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1985). Huxley was thoroughly familiar with the Bible, thus he understood that if Genesis is not the authoritative Word of God, is not historical and literal despite its’ symbolic and poetic elements, then the entirety of Scripture becomes a collection of fairytales resulting in tragic downward spiraling consequences as the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation makes clear in part:
“By denying the historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis, theistic evolutionism has fostered a preoccupation with natural causes almost to the exclusion of supernatural ones. By denying the several supernatural creative acts of God in Genesis, and by downplaying the importance of the supernatural activity of Satan, theistic evolutionists slip into a naturalistic mentality which seeks to explain everything in terms of natural causes. Once this mentality takes hold, it is easy for men to regard the concept of spiritual warfare as a holdover from the days of primitive superstition. Diabolical activity is reduced to material or psychological causes. The devil and his demons come to be seen as irrelevant. Soon ‘hell’ joins the devil and his demons in the category of antiquated concepts. And the theistic evolutionist easily makes the fatal mistake of thinking that he has nothing more to fear from the devil and his angels. According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, there is a tremendous increase in diabolical activity and influence in the formerly Christian world. And yet most of the bishops of Europe no longer believe in the existence of evil spirits….To the Fathers of the Church who believed in the truth of Genesis, this would be incredible. But in view of the almost universal acceptance of theistic evolution, it is hardly surprising.” (The Difference it makes: The Importance of the Traditional Doctrine of Creation, Hugh Owen, kolbecenter.org)
Huxley had ‘zero’ respect for modern Origenists and received enormous pleasure from heaping piles of hot coals and burning contempt upon them, thereby exposing their shallow-reasoning, hypocrisy, timidity, fear of non-acceptance, and unfaithfulness. With sarcasm dripping from his words he quipped,
“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the “ten words” were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Darwin’s Bulldog---Thomas Huxley, Russell Grigg, creation.com, Oct. 14, 2008)
Pouring more contempt on them he asked,
“When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of “Wolf” when there is no wolf? If Jonah’s three days’ residence in the whale is not an “admitted reality,” how could it “warrant belief” in the “coming resurrection?” … Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him?” (ibid)
Concerning Matthew 19:5:
“If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a “type” or “allegory,” what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (ibid)
And concerning Cor. 15:21-22:
“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” (ibid)
After much thought, C.S. Lewis concluded that evolution is the central, most radical lie at the center of a vast network of lies within which modern Westerners are entangled while Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit. The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes. To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness, and that it should be done while reverence is professed,
“…. is an illustration of the intellectual and moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism…’He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of God,’ claimed Christ of Himself (John 3:34), and no assumption of error can hold water in the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.” Evolutionary theists are serving the devil, therefore “no considerations of Christian charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate Christian leaders or Churches who fail to condemn and to sever themselves from compromising, cowardly, shilly-shallying priests”---the falling stars who “challenge the Divine Authority of Jesus Christ.” (ibid)
The rebuttals, warnings and counsels of the Fathers against listening to Origenists (and their modern evolutionary counterparts) indicates that the spirit of antichrist operating through modern rationalistic criticism of the Revelation of God is not a heresy unique to our times but was inveighed against by early Church Fathers.
From the scholarly writings of the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Rose, to the incisive analysis, rebuttals and warnings of the Catholic Kolbe Center, creation.com, Creation Research Institute, Rev. Clarke, and many other stalwart defenders of the faith once delivered, all are a clear, compelling call to the whole body of the Church to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, for as God spoke and Jesus is the Living Word incarnate, it is incumbent upon the faithful to submit their wills to the Divine Will and Authority of God rather than to the damnable heresy proffered by falling stars eager to embrace naturalistic science and the devil's antithesis--- evolution. But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord,
“…you have your choice: choose this day that which pleases you, whom you would rather serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15
>> “guilt by association” is a logical fallacy.
That’s not logical fallacy. That’s a topological assertion.
Do you have a source for that? I can find lots of references for "guilt by association" being classified as a logical fallacy.
Definitions
- - - - - -
association: The act of consorting with or joining with others
guilt: The state of having committed an offense
Prove that “guilt by association” is false (logical fallacy.)
An example contradiction: the murderer consorted with his friend to hold up the bank. The friend provided the weapon used during the course of the robbery that resulted in the murder of a teller. The friend is guilty in providing the weapon that was used to murder the teller; therefore, it cannot be stated as truth that “guilt by association” is a logical fallacy. QED
The phrase is meaningless.
!
It has a very well know and defined meaning. I don't have time for some who wants to play that game.
“So, now, if “traditionalists” deny, say, evolution, what does that make those who agree with it, non-traditionalists?”
Spirited: As the Catholic Kolbe Center for the study of creation argued so well, natural science and evolutionary thinking create a mindset within priests who accept this way of thinking that becomes incrementally averse to the Biblical view of total reality. Obviously this is because methodological naturalism/natural science bespeak a closed system, a box with its’ top sealed tight against the supernatural dimension while Darwinism presents an inverted anti-creation account (everything begins at the bottom) that is the antithesis of the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo where everything begins at the top before falling.
Whereas the view of reality posited by naturalism consists of one dimension, the natural or sensory dimension, according to the biblical view there are two dimensions, that which we can see and that which we normally cannot.
The natural or blood and soil man faces what he believes is the total reality of the universe and interprets what he believes to be true against this one half. So everything must be matter, chemicals, grey matter, and instincts. The Christian man faces both the seen and unseen and interprets truth against these two interacting halves of reality. Thus Paul declares that we are made,
“...a spectacle unto the world, and to angels and men.” (1 Cor. 4:9)
The blood and soil man cannot understand Paul’s seemingly fantastic claim because his view of reality is a major barrier for the blood and soil man who claims to ‘see’ but is really blind to total reality.
What Paul is affirming in 1 Cor. 4:9 is that reality consists of two halves, hence this earth is really a theater and men are on its stage being observed by both the seen (men) and the unseen—Angels and fallen Angels, as betty pointed out.
Men cannot see them but they can see and hear us. Fallen Angels are all around us, watching, listening, leading men astray, corrupting minds, and speaking persuasive thoughts into the minds of men. One of their most popular suggestions is that all that exists is one substance (monism) that is either physical matter (Atomists, Secular Humanists) or spiritualized matter (Cosmic Humanists).
Now either the blood and soil view of reality (closed system) is true or the Biblical view consisting of the seen and unseen is true. If the closed system is true then adherents of the Biblical view are deluded. If however there really are two halves of reality, then the blood and soil view is extremely naïve and blind to the total reality of the universe. From the Christian viewpoint, no man has ever been so naïve, nor so ignorant of reality as modern blood and soil man with his natural science and evolutionary thinking.
If by that you mean some “Darwinists” are also atheists, then of course that’s correct.
But many are not, and neither science in general nor “Darwinism” specifically require any religious belief or non-belief.
Do we agree?
As to who might be more *ss-hattish than somebody else, I suspect that’s another one of those questions science just can’t answer.
;-)
When one considers the ramifications of what Alamo_Girl referred to, namely Schroeder's explanation of dual temporal perspectives, a 100 million year slow change in organismal expression is but a moment from another perspective.
God as Dreator, by definition is greater than His Creation, and His creation is far greater than man has yet discovered (dimensional variability is still in infancy regarding 'higher dimensions').
Since first learning the vagaries of Darwin's theory of natural selection I have marveled that humans have figured out one of the ways God creates. Sadly, the opposite effect seemed to settle into Darwin's life as he gradually rejected the learning from his youth and instead of integrsating he became, at best, an agnostic regarding God and The Grace of God in Christ.
We Christians could take another approach, and decide that God is still creating, but now generating creations at a spiritual level of the greater Universe of His creating, using a selection process described in Romans with English words of "Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified" (Rom 8:30), to describe changes vaguely expressed in the 4D limited universe if pondered without spiritual eyes and ears.
Many do not realize, or include in their reasoning, that space/time and all dimensionality are parts of the Creation and not restrictions on, or properties of, the Creator of them.
To a timeless God, is it any more or less a miracle if it happens in an instant, or over time? Is it any more or any less God if something occurs that looks like direct intervention, or something that is the logical outcome of principles or an algorithm God has set in place and in motion?
Because my observation is that God sometimes intervenes in a way that changes a circumstance in an instant, and sometimes in a way that plants a seed that bears fruit over time. Sometimes both in combination.
I believe that creation is still ongoing, and will continue to continue, because that is the essential nature of God. He is a Creator God. Its what he does. Creation continues to unfold and will continue to unfold. We have a role to play as agents of creation, but its his game.
Well and truly stated.
Strangely enough, when many of the same of what you now call the “allegedly” mocking of Christians, was introduced to you, by yours truly, in 2009 on FR (see February of 2009, How Much Longer Can They Sell Darwinism?), you had no objection, just excuses for the misbehavior of Atheists attempting to use Science as a shield. Apparently you’ve decided that tactic doesn’t work, so you’ve now opted instead for denial. Obfuscation and denial are all you have. Hence my reference to “great billowing clouds,” which apparently drives you crazy.
Dawkins, and his many acolytes (fans), have been found guilty of violating the very canons of the science they pretend to praise as superior to any possible religion or other code of ethics.
Your denial efforts notwithstanding.
Dear BroJoeK, who's quote is this? It doesn't "sound" like C. S. Lewis' language at all. [I do not see much use of strictly denotative language in his works: He is a great literary artist who typically employs symbolic language.] I thought, well, if a statement like this exists in C. S. Lewis' body of work, then I'd likely find it in The Abolition of Man. Having just skimmed that work, I could not find that statement or anything like it.
Plus there is this problem: Lewis was far too gracious a man to ever "mock" anyone or anything. That was definitely not his style.
This may simply be a case of someone attributing something to Lewis. If so, I'd like to know who, what, and in what context. I'd be glad to look into this matter further. Would you kindly give me the cite for the above statement?
But this quibble is about the authorship of a statement. I gather that's not really what you're interested in. So, "Indeed, let's look at that quote again."
Primarily, this is a statement about evolution. It doesn't directly specify Darwinian evolution, but seems to imply it. I can give you my analysis, but can only do so from my own point of view — which I suspect may be very close to C. S. Lewis' own.
For openers, speaking as an orthodox Christian, in no way do I find the idea of "evolution" objectionable in principle. From the cosmic perspective, it seems very clear to me that the Creation, or the universe as you may prefer to call it [hopefully we won't quibble about terms, at least not yet] is a process that unfolds in space and time, from a beginning, progressively developing its potentialities as it "evolves."
The Darwinian claim that Christians find objectionable is that evolution is fundamentally a random process. This is not to say Christians deny that there is a certain amount of randomness in nature. Certainly I don't. But the point is, randomness cannot serve as an organizational principle governing the evolutionary process. Undisciplined by law, randomness just continues to be random. The point is, randomness has no principle whereby it can produce its own organizational laws, such that it can cease to be "random," and actually evolve into "something."
But then it will be argued, Natural Selection is Darwin's organizational principle. A "natural" selection is one that is elicited by environmental pressure, acting on random mutations of already-existent organisms about which we know nothing apart from the fact that they already exist. That is to say, Darwin's theory is not a theory of the origin of biological beings (i.e., the origin of life); it is a theory about how existent beings change morphologically, or speciate, over time.
Thus we are left with the squishy proposition that the natural environment, which is itself ever changing, acts on a random flux of biological possibilities, for the purpose of — selecting for reproductive fitness. How banal a final cause could there be than that?
For make no mistake about it: "Survival of the fittest" is a final cause, though a rather puny, paltry one. I doubt many Darwinists would ever admit this, of course. Just as they reject out of hand the idea there could possibly be "design" in nature, even if it very much looks like there IS design in nature.
So they say this is just "apparent" design. Which is like saying that nature is engaged in a full-time job of fooling us; and yet Darwinists still place their faith in natural selection, even though nature itself has no lawful principle to stand on that Darwin's theory bothers to elucidate; and which seems to play the jokester in this "apparent design" business.
And at the apex of Darwin's evolutionary chain is Man — who Darwinian thinking easily justifies as "a vicious predatory animal."
Notwithstanding all of the above, a whole lot of people out there think Darwin's theory is the sine qua non biological theory! Worse than that, they believe it is a theory of man.
Contrast the characterization of man as a "vicious predatory animal" with the characterization of man conveyed in a couplet I found recently in a Roman Catholic missal:
Yet you have made us little less than gods,No wonder dogmatic, bitter-ender, materialist (and oftentimes atheist) Darwinists, and thoughtful Christians have such difficulty seeing eye-to-eye: They do not even stand on the same ground of Being. It is just on that point that I aver that Darwin's theory is a very great lie, in that it falsifies not only the order of nature, but the order of man and society.
With glory and honor you have crowned us
Gave us power over the work of your hands,
Dominion over all that you have made.
I do not "mock" Darwin's theory in saying any of this. I hold it too dangerous to the well-being of human persons and societies to dismiss it by such cheap means.
Generally, Christians do not believe the universe is a random development. They believe it is a consequence of God's Word in the Beginning, the Logos, which specifies the organizational principles of the universe that guide (but do not completely determine) its evolution in space and time.
What I find truly fascinating is that recent findings in scientific physical cosmology seem to corroborate God's statements in Genesis 1. In physical terms, we hear of the Singularity, or even (to my ear) of what David Bohm called the "implicate order" that was initiated "in the beginning" in the Big Bang/inflationary universe concept.
I could wish that modern-day biologists were so "open-minded."
Must close for now. Thank you so very much for writing, BroJoeK!
Jeepers, this is news to me, dear R7 Rocket. Could you/would you provide further details?
Also, while you're at it, if you could give me your definition of "magic," I would find that most helpful.
Just trying to "get on the same page" with a stranger....
You said it was a logical fallacy. And you’re wrong. Not a game.
Every reference work I can find says it is, and you’re the only one that says it’s not. Looks like the whole world is wrong except you.
How banal a final cause could there be than that?
WoW what a concept... that..
natural selection is “a banal story and limp attempt at explaining original cause”...
At least thats what I got... from your screed above...
I have always “felt” that..... just didnt put it in those words..
Boiling original cause down to the level of the breeding of domestic dogs and cats..
which is not natural in any way..
The breeder being the Natural Selection God(god removed)...
Talk about Easter Bunnies and Santa Clauses.. even Tooth Fairy’s.. (invisible friend’s)..
The natural selection god did not make Chihuahua’s, Beagles or Siamese Cats...
BUT he may have made democrats.. the bastard...
Non-belief is an implied requirement to whatever might contradict the given “science”. So “science” can certainly apply constraints on faith. Then there’s the “science” of Global Warming which arguably requires “belief” the “deniers” fail or refuse to adopt.
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