Posted on 01/16/2011 4:09:10 PM PST by balch3
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) -- A Southern Baptist seminary president and evolution opponent has turned sights on "theistic evolution," the idea that evolutionary forces are somehow guided by God. Albert Mohler
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote an article in the Winter 2011 issue of the seminary magazine labeling attempts by Christians to accommodate Darwinism "a biblical and theological disaster."
Mohler said being able to find middle ground between a young-earth creationism that believes God created the world in six 24-hour days and naturalism that regards evolution the product of random chance "would resolve a great cultural and intellectual conflict."
The problem, however, is that it is not evolutionary theory that gives way, but rather the Bible and Christian theology.
Mohler said acceptance of evolutionary theory requires reading the first two chapters of Genesis as a literary rendering and not historical fact, but it doesn't end there. It also requires rethinking the claim that sin and death entered the human race through the Fall of Adam. That in turn, Mohler contended, raises questions about New Testament passages like First Corinthians 15:22, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."
"The New Testament clearly establishes the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon the foundation of the Bible's account of creation," Mohler wrote. "If there was no historical Adam and no historical Fall, the Gospel is no longer understood in biblical terms."
Mohler said that after trying to reconcile their reading of Genesis with science, proponents of theistic evolution are now publicly rejecting biblical inerrancy, the doctrine that the Bible is totally free from error.
"We now face the undeniable truth that the most basic and fundamental questions of biblical authority and Gospel integrity are at stake," Mohler concluded. "Are you ready for this debate?"
In a separate article in the same issue, Gregory Wills, professor of church history at Southern Seminary, said attempts to affirm both creation and evolution in the 19th and 20th century produced Christian liberalism, which attracted large numbers of Americans, including the clerical and academic leadership of most denominations.
After establishing the concept that Genesis is true from a religious but not a historical standpoint, Wills said, liberalism went on to apply naturalistic criteria to accounts of miracles and prophecy as well. The result, he says, was a Bible "with little functional authority."
"Liberalism in America began with the rejection of the Bible's creation account," Wills wrote. "It culminated with a broad rejection of the beliefs of historic Christianity. Yet many Christians today wish to repeat the experiment. We should not expect different results."
Mohler, who in the last year became involved in public debate about evolution with the BioLogos Foundation, a conservative evangelical group that promotes integrating faith and science, has long maintained the most natural reading of the Bible is that God created the world in six 24-hour days just a few thousand years ago.
Writing in Time magazine in 2005, Mohler rejected the idea of human "descent."
"Evangelicals must absolutely affirm the special creation of humans in God's image, with no physical evolution from any nonhuman species," he wrote. "Just as important, the Bible clearly teaches that God is involved in every aspect and moment in the life of His creation and the universe. That rules out the image of a kind of divine watchmaker."
I am sorry. I was reading from the bottom up! :)
You’re welcome, and I will try and answer this again in greater detail later, but for now, I wanted to ask you that if a deity was so interested in conveying to its creation the ‘reality’ of its existence, why would it do so using media that is not merely corruptible, but of a highly suspect nature, forcing the believer to rely on human testimony, instead of direct revelation?
In other words, if Moses (or Arjuna, or whoever) could talk to the divinity, then why not all the rest of humanity? Also, it’s an important thing to note that when Moses went up to collect the tablets, his people, after supposedly having witnessed all the extra-ordinary ‘miracles’ and other occurrences, decided to lose faith in this particular deity, and began making their own. Doesn’t this strike you as odd? That first-person witnesses to ‘miracles’ would do this? En masse? Another point of suspicion is the people themselves demanding they want a middleman-prophet, instead of direct reception. Isn’t this rather convenient for the scripture writers to attach?
The causal loop is a common objection. There are two or maybe three ways to answer it.
First question: what got the first one in the loop, started? What was its cause?
Putting aside the problem of "want" here (it implies change), the answer is quite simple: The infinite/eternal can come through, can be known in, our finite temporal existence through the finite. You can think of it as footprints of something outside your dimension.
Another very rough, somewhat cliché analog: If the wind "wants" to become known to beings without the sense of touch it moves water, moves objects.
Another way of saying this is the infinite can be evidenced to a finite being through the finite. The finite is, by definition, corruptible, imperfect - else it would be God.
Christianity differs from Islam and much of Judaism in this way. The bible is a finite object written by (inspired) finite beings. If this were not so, we would be confusing Paul, for example, for God. And confusing the finite for the infinite is a definition of idolatry (bibliolatry for example).
forcing the believer to rely on human testimony, instead of direct revelation?
I don't believe that is an accurate statement. It is not absolutely necessary to take another's word for what God is, one can explore for themselves.
I don't know. Why is infinite regress "impossible?" What proof does Aquinas offer that infinite regress is not possible? If we can speak of "eternity" then we can certainly speak of "infinity".
Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false.Imagine a chain comprised ONLY of links which require the previous link in order to exist. Imagine an infinite series of these links. No matter which link you choose - on into infinity - the link it is dependent upon is itself dependent up the next link. You never get to any link that does not need a cause - by definition (all dependent links). The chain waits for some cause to ripple through, but there is none.
The chain never gets started - each one in it is dependent upon a dependent upon….
Imagine looking backwards at an infinite line of people playing tag, each waiting for their tag to tag the next. That's all you have are waiters, no one get's tagged.
If all there are are dependent existences waiting for their cause, none get caused. Nothing exists.
Since we know things exist, this explanation of existence comprised only of dependent causes must be false.
There are so many holes to this assumption / mode of salvation:
What if the person is mentally-impaired? What if this person is from a community in an island in the middle of the ocean? What if this person is, as I asked long ago, a parasitic twin that's incapable of any cognitive function? Why do the available modes of salvation only apply to normal, healthy beings? Your assumption certainly requires that precondition.
Prophets and the follower's faith in the prophets are pre-conditions that are absolutely necessary for your belief in your flavour of divinity - without them, you need direct revelation.
The problem of time and change is still to be addressed: If divinity didn't have time, it cannot perform acts one after the other - because anything it did, would be done simultaneously with everything else that it did - since the 'being' is outside time.
This assumes infinite regress is impossible.
We're back to where we began - a god that initiates is itself under the realm of time - such a god is an artificial invention to pretend to "stop" infinite regress. If a god can exist forever, going back in time, why not the universe itself? In other words, what caused this god, other than an arbitrarily-invented definition as a stop-gap "solution"?
"More spunketism lies. In #1197 you wrote "All that matters is what Jesus said and whether I believe that. That's all I'm concerned with."
That statement doesn't match the statement you made in #1213, to which I replied to in #1226. IOWs, what I said in #1197 doesn't match what you said in #1213. So calling me a liar is just more false witness.
"Ridiculous? Why, because all English Bibles say "with?" Well not all.
Your link gives the translaiton: WITH. Note the translation they give is "was with God". They include the Greek as Strong's #4314, which clearly says a proper translation is "WITH".
Re: Слово было у translates: word was with
"The Russian preposition 'y' (u) doesn;t mean with but at, towards, in, near, among, etc. but never "with"! Russian with is 'c' (s).
с Богом translates to "with God". было у Бога translates to "was with God"
"You know, being intentionally myopic is not very smart. You are using only Christian sources, which are doctirnally hamronized to support Christain beliefs. using thema s any profo is circualr reasonsing."
Proof only counts in hte fields of logic and mathematics. Google is not a Christian source.
"There are many other sources which disagree with all your doctrinally tainted English Bibles. But the real problem with John 1:1 that I owuld be cocnerned wiht if I were you is not whether the Word was with, at, near, by, towards, or in presence of God, but whether it says that the word was a God rather than God."
A single source is not many and John certainly did not refer to Jesus as "a god", because "a god" refers to more than one god and no man other than Jesus(the Word) was with God in the beginning. Judaism is monotheistic grasshopper and Jesus was a Jew. John was referring to "the Word" as Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, who was God and still is.
Sure it is. You said "All that matters is...whether I believe that. That's all I'm concerned with" and I said "You only told me what matters is that you believe." Same thing.
Your link gives the translaiton: WITH
The link I provided in my previous posts explains why. You can't always translate the words exactly because English is not structured like Greek.
с Богом translates to "with God". translates to "was with God"
So does "было с Богoм". The "было у Бога" means was at God" and that sounds awkward in English, so it is translated as "with".
A single source is not many and John certainly did not refer to Jesus as "a god",
I have no intentions of doing your homework. I gave you one source as an example, you can find others, if you are interested in truth.
The way John 1;1 is written most certainly means that the author meant to say that the Word was a god and not the God Almighty. The same grammatical example can be found in Act 28:6, the word θεος without the definite article means a god, not God.
At any rate, John 1:1 most clearly shows that the Word was at, near, with, towards...God, and that he is not one and the same as God. Calling the word a god is only a logical extension of his previous statement.
But, hey, you can always stick your head in the sand and pretend the sun doesn't shine. Works for ostriches.
I am perplexed as to why this seems to be such a barrier, but assuming that uncaused first cause exists for no cause whatsoever is not?!
If a god can exist forever, going back in time, why not the universe itself?
It seems to me that the first cause had to be something closer to our anthropomorphic idea of the 'first cause', something intelligent (in our sense of intellect) and preferably with a personality, a "person" we can relate to and talk to, someone who listens to us, etc.
The universe lacks all that, so to the man, who has convinced himself that he is in created literally in God's image, this is unacceptable. Christianity, of course, goes the farthest in that respect with Jesus actually being believed to be a 100% human as well as 100% divine.
This is actually very pagan, in particular Greek pagan (no surprise there), since the Greek religion was supremely anthropomorphic, and was easy for them to accept Jesus as deity in human form. The spread of Christianity through the Greek-speaking world was no accident.
That is an interetsing question. I was surprised to find out that some Christians believe their health and wealth is actually a sign of God's favor. I suppose drug cartel families must feel especially favored by God according tot hat logic.
The problem of time and change is still to be addressed: If divinity didn't have time, it cannot perform acts one after the other - because anything it did, would be done simultaneously with everything else that it did - since the 'being' is outside time.
That's why omniscience and omnipotence are logically mutually exclusive, yet Christians always mention both as God's divine qualities.
But neither was the first cause. So what's the difference?
No, yours does; or, your concept of God does,.
The problem of time and change is still to be addressed.
Neither God or the universe are limited to what we can conceive of. It might be the Tao that says "if it could be said, everyone and their brother would know by now. Some things we can't fully conceive of; some one can't give another the knowledge of at all. But..
Imagine this: an unchanging lamp whose effect upon those who wish to come nearer depends upon how they react to love.
What is the mode of salvation for the unborn dead, the insane, and the parasitic twin?
Problem with any unchanging entity that does not have a time scale to separate its actions is that it has to do everything it will do, at the same moment. This is impossible, and hence nothing can be changeless and timeless.
No, it provides a strong logic for why it can not explain existence. Not that it is impossible to have an infinite regress, but that this is proven false because something exists.
It logically points out that if there is only an infinite, or finite, series of dependent causes without an independent first cause, nothing would exist.
Something exists, therefore an existence of infinite regress of dependent (intermediate) causes is false, not impossible.
In the argument it's not assumed, it's concluded.
There is no moment, but I gave an analog. Something does not have to change in order to have different effects at different times on different people. It's not a deterministic view either.
How so? To arrive at this conclusion, you need to assume the conclusion, beforehand. If these is an infinite series of dependent causes, by the mere statement it means that no "first" cause can exist because that would negate the infinite regress. Since the infinite regress is not conceivable in the human mind (just as the infinite volume that the real Universe is expanding into is incapable of being imagined) it does mean that infinite regress is impossible.
I had posted the video of infinite series that converge to a finite number - to illustrate this, precisely - that just because the infinite cannot be imagined, it doesn't mean that things that depend on it cannot exist.
Any answers to what I asked just before this, in my previous comment? I'd love to hear your answers...
But this is not mere 'effect' we're talking about. This is the deity's mode of operation as well - which spans time - 7 days of "creation", etc. - the span of time at a time when there is no one to be concerned about "effects". This is a distinction that should not be downplayed.
Resting itself is a time-based activity. You don't rest unless time has an influence on you.
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