Posted on 04/05/2009 8:10:35 PM PDT by betty boop
I don't see sacrifice as a waste.. i.e. Jesus, Apostles, Preaching, Prayer etc..
It is merely a service or could be a form of love..
a.k.a. the golden rule..
It really does appear that the YEC view stuffs our Almighty Eternal God into a little box about the size of our puny notion of Time.
We humans experience Time in a certain limited way (irreversible linear series of moments moving past–present–future). God does not. To use Him as the authority to back up the very limited, partial human view of a "young earth" (~6,000 years) seems, er, inappropriate in the face of accumulating evidence. To say the least. At the heart of such a claim is a major "category problem": God and His Ways do not reduce to our human conceptions (no matter how brilliant) simply because He is God and we are not.
It's interesting that some commentators here favorable to the YEC thesis are aware of all the evidence piling up in support of a ~13.7 billion year old universe (If past predicts future, probably that estimate is not cast in stone). They say they appreciate the evidence, it's pretty dandy, and such like. But they maintain that the conclusions from the data are "faulty." I gather they are faulty because they do not square with the YEC perspective. No other explanation has been advanced so far, AFAIK.
And yet the burden is on them to show how the cosmological data can be interpreted differently than the way contemporary physics interprets it. This is a scientific question; so to answer with a literal reading of Genesis wouldn't cut it....
Don't get me wrong. God is the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe and everything in it, including you and me — but this is so regardless of how old or young we conjecture the universe may be from our human standpoint.
Thank you so very much, TXnMA, for your excellent essay/post!
Thank you TXnMA!
Excellent point, I would add that in addition to the AGE of something being immaterial to the fact that it was created by God, so too is the mechanism of creation immaterial to the fact that God is responsible for its creation.
Discovering the mechanisms of biological evolution no more means that God didn't create all life any more than discovering the mechanisms of nuclear fusion means that God doesn't make the Sun shine.
Well that's certainly true allmendream. The only problem is TToE has nothing whatever to say about the Creation except that it was somehow "mechanical" or a mechanistic event. Theist evos turn God into the cosmic Watchmaker. But still evo theory doesn't have a clue how God made the watch. They just try to explain how it goes on ticking.
Darwin's theory is ineluctibly in the grip of the Newtonian Paradigm and the "Cartesian metaphor" of the Universe conceived as machine. If we want to understand the origin of Life, this is the WRONG MODEL!!!!!!
You'd think biologists of all people would be interested in this question.
At the end of the day, to me TToE is ultimately a doctrine, just as YEC is a doctrine. Both would seem to need serious, rational reexamination.
JMHO FWIW
You wrote: “We humans experience Time in a certain limited way (irreversible linear series of moments moving past–present–future). God does not.”
The first curiosity is, how would you possibly know how God experiences anything, much less time?
Secondly, do you think “time” is a thing or an attribute?
I do not, by the way, believe time is a thing. For me, time is a concept for the relationship between motions, just as linear dimension is concept for the positional relationships between things. I think, to treat time as a “thing” with metaphysical attributes of some kind, is hypostatization or reification. (I'll happily accuse Einstein of that mistake.)
I don't think you agree with that though, and would be interested in why not.
Finally, one other irresistible question. Do you think for God, time is reversible? (That, for example, a child could become a baby, reenter the womb and become a fetus, then a zygote, then split into an egg and sperm, etc.)?
Hope you are having a good day.
Hank
It seems that unless God did things in a magical mystical way beyond understanding that he is somehow less of a God to you. To me a God who created the mechanism whereby all things would come about under his guidance is a lot more powerful and foresighted than one who has to go “poof”.
Just because God makes stars using gravity and nuclear fusion doesn't mean that God didn't make the star, or that describing gravity or nuclear fusion removes a need for God.
Biological evolution has nothing to do with the origins of life, only how they change in response to selective pressure.
As a biologist I am interested in the question of abiogenesis, and my basic philosophy is exactly the same.
If and when a rudimentary life is created by a scientist from non living matter it will, to me, only speak to the strength of the scriptures whereby God commanded the land and sea to bring forth life.
To others it will be a death blow to their faith that God can, for some unexplained reason, only create life or change life by magical mystical means rather than by utilizing the natural laws that God created.
bb: I don't. But I have very good reasons for believing that He doesn't experience Time as humans do (unless He wants to, as with Jesus Christ Incarnate), based on category reasons. The Creator and the created "occupy" distinctly different logical categories, which are decidedly inequivalent. Thus one cannot use finite concepts as a measure of God's timelessness, or Eternity. I AM and Eternal Now express the reality of the divine Nature. That's all I need to know.
Hank: Secondly, do you think “time” is a thing or an attribute?
bb: I think it is neither. I think of it as "context" in which things happen i.e., events occur. It is essential to causal entailment in Nature. (So is Space.)
Hank: Finally, one other irresistible question. Do you think for God, time is reversible?
bb: Time itself is a "creature" of God. The Creator is not subject to the laws governing the Creation. One imagines questions regarding the reversibility or irreversibility of time are moot to the Being wholly outside of Time — in Whom we mortals live and move and have our being....
It's a rainy day today. Again. Sigh....
But I'm good! I'm wishing you the same Hank!
Boil it all down, allmendream, and what we have is this: You would make yourself the measure of God.
Or so it seems to me. FWIW.
p.s.: On that dated "mechanism" stuff. The Universe is not a machine and the Creation event was not a construction job — a mere assemblage of parts. For the Creation has a Telos, an Omega — a divine Purpose. Machines do not have purposes of their own.
How do we, as Christians, know ANYTHING about God? Through the Bible.
2 Paul 3:8 My dear one, do not lose sight of this one thing. A thousand years to the Lord is as a day, and a day is as a thousand years.
Is that the only way?
Science can only deal with things “mechanical”. And a machine does have a purpose, and was created for a purpose; just as our universe has a purpose and was created for a purpose. The machine I create doesn't need to be magical for it to be an embodiment of my intent and purposes.
So if creation was a “mechanical assemblage of parts”, somewhat knowable and predictable by scientific means; that diminishes God to you more so than if it was a magical assemblage of parts?
What other ways to you recommend?
Magic has nothing to do with it!
Science — as presently constituted — can only deal with things “mechanical.” But that doesn't make God the Great Mechanist, or the Creation mechanical at its root. Science LIMITS itself by the ironclad presupposition that the universe ultimately "bottoms out" in particles. These teensiest hard-bodied "billiard balls" of the Newtonian mechanistic picture are thought to be the ultimate "parts" of the universe.
However, awareness is growing that the universe bottoms out, not in the particles per se, but in the relations between them and with the system they constitute. This view (emerging in the fields of system theory and information theory) holds the information/communication relations (so to speak) as preeminent.
Such relations are not "material" in any way; they are not "physical." What they are, is: Phenomenal (i.e., are capable of being modeled and evaluated on the basis of evidence). And as such, seem like proper subject matter for science to me. Provided there is a willingness to slip out of the straightjacket of the "mechanistic model" for a time, if only hypothetically....
Until/unless biologists are willing to do this, a prediction: The creation of a living organism from non-living matter will remain the pious yet ever elusive pipedream of doctrinaire Newtonians.
JMHO FWIW.
I believe God gives us four Revelations of Himself: (1) Holy Scripture; (2) the “Book of Nature,” or the Creation itself; the Incarnation of Christ; the Holy Spirit with us. One Single Message in “four languages,” so to speak.
It’s a rainy day today. Again. Sigh....
But I’m good! I’m wishing you the same Hank!
Thank you and good for you. Happiness does not depend on circumstances. It’s rainy here too, since we are both New Englanders. No sun ‘til Friday I’m afraid. I was really counting on global warming, too. ;>)
Hank.
Yeah. Me too! :^)
Science that “steps out of the straight jacket” of dependence upon physical causes to explain physical phenomena needed to be in a padded cell and IN the straight jacket, as such is the domain of kooks and quacks and charlatans who have accomplished NOTHING of any value.
So, essentially, God isn't a great God unless He did everything the way you think He should have.
So, please explain WHY God is more powerful and foresighted if He did it your way, instead of *poof*? We're looking at an entity who can create something out of nothing. If you grant that He created the whole universe then why is His greatness dependent on HOW He created it. Did it take more thought? More creativity? More anything?
Is an entity capable of creating everything more or less powerful because of HOW He created it than THAT He created it?
Since God is unbounded by time, it didn't take Him any longer from His perspective to create it step by step that to do it instantaneously.
I see no reason why the means used during creation change if God is “hands on” or “hands off” in any way.
Yet the assumption of many in the time of Newton that any description of planetary motion in reference to natural forces (gravity) meant that God was not responsible for moving the planets.
To those stupid enough to stake out the ground that God must magically move the planets, suggesting that gravity does the work diminishes God to them.
Similarly, to those that suggest that species can only be created or changed by magical means, suggesting that evolution through natural selection of genetic variation does the work diminishes God to them.
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.