Posted on 09/18/2006 1:51:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Or how about:
Since God created the universe, and since He made statements about the origins of mankind and the history of mankind, and since we believe God is moral and truthful and would not lie to us or deliberately contradict His own statements about Himself or the universe He created:
A. We believe His statements to be true and strive to the best of our ability to understand and obey them.
B. We do not believe His statements to be true, but still want to believe in Him.
C. We reject the statements of God in the Bible as truth.
If A, then perhaps we have misinterpreted the data based on assumptions about what happened in the past (uniformity of natural causes in a closed system). We cannot re-create these conditions in a lab experiment, so we have to rely on our assumptions, or admit that perhaps conditions were not always constant, or our "baseline" may be incorrect. If the data contradicts clear Biblical statements, we have to abandon the Bible or "science", or "do" a systhesis that leaves the Bible neither the Bible nor science science. If A, then we must keep science inferior to Biblical revelation when they contradict, since scientific observations and interpretations are incomplete and subject to human fallibility.
If B, you have much of modern theology, where we have created God in our own image and can pick and choose from the Bible the statements we wish to believe as it suits us.
If C, "let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die."
Junior,
"Bats are birds. Rabbits chew their cud. Locusts have four legs."
Could you please elucidate how this disproves the Bible.
Many would like to claim that we really don't know what Jesus said. However you cannot have it both ways.
If Jesus got it wrong on creation, on Noah, on historical statements, etc., what makes us think He got it right on:
Forgiveness of sins.
Heaven
or anything else He said.
If God wrote a book that serious, sincere students could not understand and benefit from, what is the point?
PS - I am sure Jesus has often been misquoted and misinterpreted, and that I have been the culprit on more occasions than I would like.
If A we should be aware at all times that our human understanding of the words of the Bible may be flawed, and that clear physical evidence trumps possibly poorly understood divine revelation. Lest we fall into the error of the Catholic Church WRT geo-centrism. At one time it was felt that the words of the Bible were quite sufficient to refute helio-centrism. The argument posed was essentially the same one that you supply above.
Now we know better, and read the relevant passages without requiring the earth to be stationary. Likewise few readers blink at passages describing "Stars falling to earth", yet science tells us that stars are giant fusing balls of gas inconceivably far away. To suggest that the stars were suns like our own, that might have their own planets was considered heresy, punishable by burning at the stake. Would you keep science "inferior" to Biblical revelation WRT those passages too?
Or, more likely, misinterpreted scripture.
If B, you have much of modern theology, where we have created God in our own image and can pick and choose from the Bible the statements we wish to believe as it suits us.
A problem I find most acute in the modern phenomonon of Biblical "literalism," along with its marked tendency to fabricate convenient material for the purpose of back-filling Biblical dilemmas.
Bats are not birds; rabbits do not chew their cud; and locusts have six legs. If the Bible were the Word of God it would not have gotten that stuff wrong.
Good points. No, I am not suggesting flawed interpretations of the Bible should be propped up. There is much that can be learned from studying God's creation, AND how to "rightly divide the word of truth." The church has made mistakes and errors, as have scientists and scientific establishments.
Do you accept the Bible as divine revelation, and, if so, what does it say to you that you can "believe?"
Could you provide references to the verses where the Bible makes these assertions, so they can be addressed more specifically?
Thanks.
Nice attack. Any substance?
Thank you for your cogent replies and opinions. I've very much enjoyed this discussion.
-- spinestein
#2 is really dumb. In creation God makes the entire inter related eco system and each living organism with all of it's awesome complexity. Using words like watch maker and tinkerer is a dishonest attempt to belittle that.
Have they done so?
Yes. (point 15, esp.)
I don't believe the Bible is divine revelation. I note that those who claim to be Christians appear to be divided between some who accept evolution and others who reject it. That is why I characterise the "evolution true/false" dispute as an inter-denominational dispute of Christians (and indeed an inter-denominational dispute in *some* other religions too, such as Islam). There is not a corresponding dispute within science nor within all religions. There was a dispute within science when the theory was first proposed, and as the evidence rolled in the dispute died away.
Between the Lines: LOL, the same can be said of many evolutionists past and present.
Please document "many" instances of "present" "evolutionists" who "have all the answers figured out" and are "bending facts every which way to make things come out the way they want."
Let's say "present" means "within the last 50 years" and "many" means "at least 5".
I just noticed this one. There are far too many alleles in the human genome for this to be possible. ie the human race is far too genetically diverse to have endured such a tight bottleneck so recently. (unless of course God has been fiddling with the human genome to increase diversity and make it look entirely consistently as if the most recent human genetic bottleneck is much more distant and involved a lot more individuals)
That's not true. Matthew 5:48
"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." God is telling folks here that they can use the gift of reason that was given in Gen 1. Nothing had ever changed since man was created in the image and likeness of God.
And ask any "literalist" about the "how" of creation, or the paradoxes of Genesis 3, or the readily apparent metaphors in the Genesis account, and watch in amazement all the hand-waving and dismissive pshaws that accompany their rather embarrassing comic book theology.
The current flavor of fundamentalist "Biblical literalism" is a thoroughly modern phenomenon, and it has spawned an entire industry of imaginative, non-Biblical tall tales, making the very use of the word "literal" a patent absurdity.
I don't remember anything like that; doesn't sound like a very good place to invest.
Thanks for the ping!
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