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
In fact, the term "false dichotomy" (or any variation of it) has been used exclusively by Alamo Girl, beginning in post #494.
All other references to "false dichotomies" were quotes of & responses to her accusations.
All claims of "false dichotomies" are based on misunderstandings of both Aquinas himself and of my reports on his views.
The truth of the matter is just what I reported in the beginning (i.e., Post #72 above): Aquinas did distinguish between methods of knowledge, and did not allow they might come into conflict.
But the historical fact, of course, is that they sometimes did, and do.
So there are no "false dichotomies" here, FRiends
Your choice -- there are roughly 300,000 individual churches in the US today attended by typically 60 million; worldwide about 40,000 denominations serving two billion Christians.
So, if Christianity is your religion, one of those should suit you.
If not... well, there are circa 4,000 Jewish synagogues serving three million practicing US Jews.
Don't know much about other religions, would not recommend them, especially ones which preach or practice violence against "non-believers".
From my first posts on this thread a major point has been that science as we understand it, is a byproduct of Christianity, especially as first defined by St. Thomas Aquinas.
By that, I don't mean to exclude Jews since they have been disproportionately huge contributors, but many other religions are actively anti-science, and those I would steer away from.
But if you sincerely want my advice on how to chose a church, then here it is: chose a church the same way you would chose a spouse, and be just as loyal.
BroJoeK: “The simple fact of the matter is that “evolution” is the answer you get when you make the scientific a priori assumptions of “natural explanations for natural processes.”
In the past 150 years there has been no other serious scientific explanation proposed and confirmed.
So evolution is the scientific answer.”
Spirited: The science defended by betty and AG is not natural science (methodological naturalism/scientism) but rather the higher order science made possible by the Biblical view of Jehovah God as Creator, as C.S. Lewis affirms in his book, “Miracles:”
“Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator.” (The Magician’s Twin, edited by John G. West, p. 21)
It is also the case that the Biblical view of a living, personal Holy God transcendent to nature de-divinized nature, thus allowing man to study it without committing sacrilege.
The natural science and evolution championed by BroJoeK, dialectical materialists, Darwinists, eugenicists, liberals, Marx, Hitler, methodological naturalists, leftists, apostate priests, etc. is lower order science bespeaking the inability of the mind (spirit) of natural man to transcend nature, thus all that exists for him is this dimension. Tolkien’s Gollum, btw, was a natural man.
For natural man, all knowledge is discoverable through natural science and evolution which is really a reinstatement of ancient conceptions of unseen (mystical) forces or energies at work here in this world. For natural man, all knowledge, facts, and power are to be found here below.
The following examples demonstrate the inability of the minds of modern naturalists (blood and soil men) to transcend the natural dimension:
“The philosopher sates his appetites without inquiring to know what his enjoyments may cost others, and without remorse.” (The Marquis de Sade, Libido Dominandi, E. Michael Jones, p. 26)
In “Leftism as Psychopathy,” John Ray, M.A., Ph.D., begins by pointing out that moral imbecility is a primary characteristic of psychopathy before briefly outlining some of its other defining features:
“(the psychopath) is unmoved by brutality (except to enjoy perpetrating it); he has no moral or ethical anchors or standards; he is deeply (but discreetly) in love with himself (narcissism) so secretly despises others and thinks they are fit only to be dominated and exploited by him and those like him; he is a great manipulator who loves getting others to do his bidding by deception or otherwise; he is the master of the lie and the false pretense but sees no reason to be consistent from occasion to occasion; he will say anything to gain momentary praise or admiration; his only really strongly felt emotions seem to be hate and contempt and he is particularly enraged by those who have what he wants and will be totally unscrupulous in trying to seize what others have for himself. But above all, the psychopath does not seem to be able to tell right from wrong and, as a result, does sometimes commit or connive at murders and other heinous crimes with what seems to be a clear conscience.”
“That seems to me to constitute, by and large, a fairly comprehensive description of your average Left-wing intellectual – particularly of the many intellectuals who did (and often still do) support in various ways the old Soviet system in Russia.”
Paul Hollander’s book “Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society” recounts what morally depraved Leftist intellectuals and liberalized priests (natural men) did for many decades in the Soviet era. To quote one Amazon reviewer:
“Political Pilgrims is the amazing story of how Western intellectuals embraced Marxist tyrants at the very moment their colleagues were rotting in prison cells, and the common people everyone claimed to be concerned for, were starving. The book relates how cultural and religious leaders from the West, including familiar names, visited the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other communist countries, and told the most appalling lies.” (ibid, Ray)
As posters like tacticalogic have pointed out, science is merely a tool, readily available for use (or mis-use!) by anyone who grabs hold of it.
And while science every day saves and improves the lives of billions of people, it is also sometimes misused, most notoriously by dictators starting wars or exterminating whole populations.
That is simply a fact, not even debatable.
But, as I've also posted many times now, I don't blame science itself for the fact that historically bad people mis-use it, any more than I blame Christianity for historical horrors committed by Christians against "heretics" & "infidels", etc.
betty boop: "...you yourself proffer a notorious example of this ghastly abuse of science: “Gore-bull warming.”
Are you trying to refute yourself?
Or are you just too lazy to connect the logical dots?"
Somebody is being intellectually lazy here, FRiend, but it's not me.
betty boop: "(2) I don’t need “honesty” to make a decision about whether a traffic light is green or red....
It is unclear to me how a term from the moral universe — honesty — applies to this seemingly mainly empirical situation, or could apply, without trivializing the moral universe."
Every day dishonest drivers run red lights, are sometimes stopped by police, or cause accidents while claiming the light was green.
These people are the moral equivalent of Al's "Gore-bull warming" science.
Those politicians look at scientific "traffic lights" which are in fact "red" or at most "yellow" and claim them to be "green" = "go for global warming".
They are also the moral equivalent of anti-evolution "scientists" who deny all scientific evidence to the contrary, in order to justify their Biblical understandings.
That's not "science".
betty boop: "You seem to suggest that “the truth of the matter” is the result of “consensus.” [Quoting you directly, “Thus ‘consensus’ is the result, not the cause of, the truth of the matter.”] "
What is your problem here?
Are you intellectually dyslexic?
How could I possibly be more clear, and yet even while you quote the truth, you twist it around to mean the opposite?
What's up with that?
Which part of "Thus ‘consensus’ is the result, not the cause of, the truth of the matter," do you not get?
betty boop: "That strangely sounds like a political statement to me:
In what way would what you describe here be different from a public opinion poll?
And how is science to advance if it is faced with/constrained by such a monumentally impoverished mentality?"
Obviously, yours Ms. boop, is the "monumentally impoverished mentality", if plain English words get twisted around inside your mind to mean the opposite of what they clearly say.
You must stop that, FRiend.
In this case my analogy of the traffic light absolutely perfectly applies.
The light is either red or green, but it is your moral choice to respond lawfully or illegally to it.
If you chose to respond illegally, and cause an accident, now you face yet another moral choice: will you tell the truth and suffer the just consequences, or will you lie and claim the light for you was actually green?
Likewise, science itself requires truth-telling and can be highly disrupted by those who lie -- "Gore-bull warming" being the perfect example.
So can you tell us why that simple idea gets so twisted around backwards inside your brain, Ms boop?
betty boop: "For consensus kills curiosity.
Or rather makes curiosity superfluous, once the 'consensus community' makes its pronouncements known — and forbids all questions that rise outside its putative domain…."
Science itself is not all-about "consensus", except in the sense that we all agree a traffic light is green.
If the light is green, and we see it as green, then anyone claiming otherwise is clearly lying, and should be questioned about their motives.
Of course, "yellow lights" are a different matter, as are traffic lights which malfunction or shut off.
Now we have lots of room for interpretations & interpolations about which people can legitimately hold different opinions.
So nature does not always give us a clear red or green light -- sometimes the lights flash erratically, etc.
Then the science is not "settled" and research continues.
I ask again, what is so difficult for you to understand about that, FRiend?
Alamo-Girl: "Definition of dichotomy from Oxford Dictionaries:
1a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different:a rigid dichotomy between science and mysticism"
So, I "get" that you object to the word "dichotomy".
Would you also object to the word "distinction" -- which serves my purpose here equally well?
You're right, I skipped over all that, as irrelevant.
But post #689 was not the post referred to by HiTech RedNeck in his post #587.
Conversely, the historical sciences - such as archeology, anthropology, Egyptology and evolution biology - deal with a historical record which is spotty at best and construct stories to explain the observations and the gaps between them. They cannot go back in time to see if the gadget they believe does A actually does A or something else. To them, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
In the context of the article I'm not sure you can include astrophysics in that list of "hard sciences". The charges of heresy being leveled by the author appear to be from a perspective of Biblical literalism. That doctrine rejects any postulation of "deep time" and theory that relies on it. Many accepted theories in astrophysics postulate events having happened across time scales beyond what the theological doctrines say can exist.
In essence then, iiuc, R7 responded in agreement by posting his own examples of "you can't feel my pain", while throwing in some unnecessary snarkiness, for which editor-surveyor and HiTech RedNeck jumped all over R7.
In the process, your original point got lost...
Sorry about that. :-(
Sure they are -- so long as empirical data is available to confirm their theories.
But once we leave the realms of human-scale in the here-and-now and reach down to the very-smallest (strings) or the very-largest (multiverses) or both (Big Bang), or inexplicable weirdness (spooky action at a distance), then, then the allegedly "hard sciences" become every bit as "soft" and mushy as, oh, say, English Literature!
Have I shared with you all my absolute favorite Youtube video on this?
If that doesn't tell us about so-called "hard science", nothing will... ;-)
Alamo-Girl: "Conversely, the historical sciences - such as archeology, anthropology, Egyptology and evolution biology - deal with a historical record which is spotty at best and construct stories to explain the observations and the gaps between them."
In fact, 100% of time, without exception, science always does the best it can with whatever data it can collect -- whether that data is totally convincing or not.
Then to account for the fact that not all scientific ideas are equally valid, they divide them up into categories such as "hypotheses" & "theories" distinguishing by the degrees of certainty in confirmations...
Out of time again. Must run. Back later.
I say that “science” has gotten too big for its spiritual britches. If creation is a frank miracle and shows all signs of being such, then really “science” should back off enough to not keep on dogmatically positing “naturalistic evolution.” Now its task is — if it is equal to that task (it might not be) — to somehow frame the miracle in. The natural processes we know through the non biological sciences are far too feeble to kick even an amoeba into life. Using biology to say they are is only a grand exercise in question begging.
Well they should know about God.
to say they are => to say they are capable
By the way it isn’t an either-or — that’s false dichotomy. But the hierarchy must be kept, or God will overthrow that applecart. He must. He is God.
And when God does a miraculous creation by way of saying “Yes, I personally care about life, and I am visibly showing it is something special in order to prove it”
And then what is “falsely called knowledge” comes along and says no no no no no
Then the applecart of the “falsely called knowledge” is going to fail.
In fact that arrogance has already carried over into globull warming. Warming if any is far less than these oh so confident slyentists trumped it up to be, with far less bad (and possibly beneficial) consequences.
Except where naturalistic evolution is concerned -- whereupon the hammer gets pounded down that it's "THE! CENTRAL! FACT! OF! BIOLOGY!" (Not a theory) Well that makes "biology" B.S. And yes there is a God. And no you can't make Him out to be a fool forever without making your own self into a fool too.
And I mean... if there is ever a blatant case of “confirmation bias”
THE DOGMA OF NATURALISTIC EVOLUTION IS IT
Quite funny that in biology, its sister sciences virtually never make an appearance!
And let me even further point out something.
The actual use of “naturalistic evolution” in biology is like some kind of demonic obbligato to God’s melody. It’s awfully poor at showing anything “a priori.” OK, if you are naturalistically evolving, what are you going to naturalistically evolve to BE? There’s stuff that doesn’t really work all that well, yet it persists between the “naturalistically evolved” generations. Who needs an appendix? Cats, dogs, humans, monkeys all have them. Surely something vigorous enough to go from a monkey to a man would have made that appendix go away too? But it didn’t. A fallen creation that is sustained by grace explains the situation quite well.
Wow, he said, she said, some big brouhaha over who’s more wrong.
Talking about you, brother joke.
The issue at hand is heresy. The question is not whether creation is a frank miracle, but whether that miracle happened exactly as described by a literal interpretaion of the Book of Genesis.
There is nothing in the Theory of Evolution itself that disallows the possibility of a Creator God. In the context of that theory it's entirely possible for the universe, and life itself to be an object of divine creation. The disagreement is over details of how and when it happened - whether God created life with the ability to evolve and how long ago.
Well, it’s pushing credulity. If biology gets a place at the Christian table, by all means seat the other sciences too. And things like mathematics. They get a voice. And their voice ends up being “Biology? We think you’re B.S.ing.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.