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."
Fat chance. If someone comes here to promote their flat earth theory I am not obligated to believe that drivel just because some people believe it.
I’m not buying into your insistence that “fairy tales” are central to Biblical Instruction and must be accepted as a common assumption.
That is certainly your right, but my argument stands nonetheless, because it is objectively true, and will repeat it:
This makes the talking snake the central theme on which the largest religion on earth rests.
[“who's the editor?”]
YHWH
That is your belief, not a fact. If it is a fact, then prove it.
That “clunk” we heard was the hint you dropped hoping the RM would catch it (speaking of desperation)
If I wanted the RM to catch it I could have pinged him. So much for my "desperation." Implying motives to another FReeper, as you did, is an ad hominem mind-reading, as per the RF rules.
Your statement is for any energy A; A=0, then at some arbitrary coordinate A;ne;0.
"A science professor can’t give an F for science in a philosophy course he doesn’t understand."
You're making assertions in science class. In science class, real evidence is required to accompany your assertion and the assertion itself must be testable. IOWs, your assertion must lead to consistant, repeatable predictions that are irrefutable evidence that your assertion holds. If you have no evidence, then your assertion is not science and never will be. In philosophy the rules of evidence are nonexistent and anything suffices for evidence.
Your assertion is exactly formulated as shown above. Your claim is that the law of conservation of energy does not hold ARBITRARILY at some arbitrary coordinates. Produce the evidence, or your grade will suffer.
It's factually true. We don't know everything, ergo we can't know the whole truth.
(Prove my tagline wrong, I dare you.)
Your tagline has nothing to do with my statement regarding absolute truth. Besides, you need to prove your tagline because it's your assertion, not mine.
These things have been explained to you many times by other posters who know a lot more than I know.
Who cares what others have done? I asked you, since you used the terms as if you knew them.
Remember, we’re not debating the credibility of individuals. Rather, the disagreement is over the validity of particular ideas. This is extremely important to understand, for anyone participating in political discourse, anywhere. It seems we’ve identified another source of your confusion
I have no desire to discredit individuals. And, in case you dind't notice, this is not a "political" forum. We are debating other people's ideas about what deity is. If I disagree with someone's ideas about God that doesn't make me "anti-God" or "liberal"! I am not anti-God in any way. But I have many reasons to disagree with what people have made God out to be in their own minds.
As I've said in previous posts, I don't know who or what God is, so I ask those who claim they do. That doesn't mean I am ready to accept everyone's explanation, especially if I can find objections to them.
But if they say "this is what I believe" then that's their faith and I leave it alone. I don't debate anyone's beliefs. Only their arguments.
D-fendr: How do you know when I say "love" you and I think of the same thing?
That's a cop out answer if I ever saw one. Your answer, which is also something I asked you, doesn't address my question how do you know what is spirit or divine.
Then explain it.
Are you thinking of "speed limit"?
No, I said "speed of light".
I thought it a good answer because it is a good question.
If you and I are talking about love, how could we know if we are talking about the same thing?
I suppose we could throw up our hands and say: “it’s possible we’re talking about two completely different things, so let’s shut up about it.”
We could say: “well, since it could be two different things we’re talking about, whatever it is can’t really be at all.”
But if we didn’t choose either of those, and we still wanted to know whether when I say “love” you and I think of the same thing, what else could we do?
Then explain it. [relativistic time dilation]
"the objective measurement of time is different depending on your time frame" is about as concise as I can get. Time measured varies with speed of different frames of observers. Distance to gravitational mass can also be a factor. I'm really kind of lost what you're looking for, but Wiki is pretty brief and hopefully informative enough here.
No, I said "speed of light".
I thought maybe you were going for the speed of light being the speed limit. If that wasn't it, Einstein said quite a bit about light; I'm not sure where to look next. Can you say what you had in mind?
D-fendr: When I conceive in this area, things like will and want don't fit; maybe it's just me.
D, you said the not "as an 'initiation' of creation" but that creation occurred "as a result of its [creator's] existence". Then it was not a willful act. How does that square with your Christian religion which says that God actively worked for seven proverbial days to create the world?
[kosta: But since it [creator] exists eternally it would make sense the creation does also.]
I can see that conclusion. I can also not see it. Conceptualizing the boundary between eternal and temporal is a pretty dicey deal IMHO.
If the world is merely a consequence of the uncaused first cause's eternal existence (not its will or willful act), then the world must have existed eternally. This is contrary to the Big Bang evidence.
You might have me confused for someone else perhaps. And, these days "Christian religion" covers quite a range of views.
If the world is merely a consequence of the uncaused first cause's eternal existence (not its will or willful act), then the world must have existed eternally.
I'm sorry I still don't get how that necessarily follows. I did allow that that could apply to "creation" or creating. But I don't see it necessarily so, and if so wouldn't apply it necessarily to "world" or even "this universe." There could be much more going on - in time - that could be part of creating or creation.
As always, with the caveat that my conceptions here, perhaps all, are pretty limited, I think we almost could say by definition.
Thanks for your reply.
I don't believe there is an error in the logic of his argument, but would need to see more precisely where you are seeing one.
The problem (I wouldn't call it the error in logic) is existence = caused. Ergo, the uncaused does not exist.
I think I'd approach it this way: First, we have the first cause, unchanging and eternal requirements.
Which fall flat on their face. Either God ceased being eternal and unchaningnat at the "moment" of creation (supposedly a willful act), or the universe existed eternally as a passive ("unwilful") consequence of the first cause's own existence.
So creation, no creation (assuming this exists) would be in the area of "effect" rather than cause.
Cause is the reason for something, effect is a manifestation of it. You cannot separate cause and effect.
The first cause is unchanging, creation/no creation is a result of its existence - on nothingness perhaps.
This sound almost like postulating interspacial "dark energy" to balance a faulty formula.
The second approach would be to say the first cause is never not causing, not creating. What comes into existence as a result of its cause is subject to time and change, existence, non-existence.
The Bible say God finished his creation in seven days. I am glad I don't live in your world. :)
That's the way I'd approach it for now. I think it easily conforms to your cycling universe view.
How do you integrate that with Christianity?
How does he explain Creation?
That’s not the point of the objection, response or analogy.
We can't mix apples and oranges, D.
“Knowing” is not always a cognitive function, nor a knowing of forms or abstractions or concepts. To limit knowing to these is well, limiting your knowledge.
Then what is 'knowing"? Knowledge has to be accessible to consciousness, and therefore must be a cognitive function, even if you are talking about knowledge as mere "awareness". For example, you don't know your blood pressure or your blood sugar levels. This goes beyond mere "awareness" of such concepts. Knowing them implies having a cognitive idea if they are high, low, normal, etc.
Thanks D. I can look up Wikipedia or any other source. I was hoping you would illuminate me, and I don't mean that sarcastically. In fact I did read up on the time dilatation and all I find in it is something that is regularly misinterpreted by everyone, imo.
I understand that, depending on your measuring tool and conditions, the results will vary. If my meter stick is half as long as yours, it will take me twice as many measurements (and probable longer time) to measure the same distance! That the point is that this doesn't change the absolute length of the object measured.
If time is entirely an arbitrary result of our tools and conditions, then time is not a real entity but a relative measurement which means space can be defined by simple geometry without any time in it (in fact, a perfect vacuum should have no time in it since nothing changes).
The reason I asked how did Einstein define the speed of light is because in it there must be time. And since it is a constant (in vacuum), then which time did he use (knowing that space is not just vacuum)? How can the speed of light be a constant (absolute) if the time is relative?
This is like the photon particle theory of light. Electromagnetic radiation behaves like waves and particles at the same time. The former is shown by the diffraction pattern, and the latter by reflection. Obviously it is both wave and particle like (in our reference world), but the true nature of it is incomprehensible to us at this stage of our evolutionary capacity, and it may never become.
So, with all due respect to the minds that created the quantum and relativity science (they were no gods and their work is not divine, and therefore they shouldn't be treated as such), I think they themselves didn't understand it any more than we do.
We only know about it because our working models account for it, the way Potlemy's navigational system works to this day regardless of the erroneousness of his geocentric framework. I think it's best to leave these concepts out of rational discussions.
We necessarily see the world as it is from our perspective and our limitations. It doesn't mean that's how it really is. Only how we see it. That's' the world we have to live in. We can never say it's how the world really is. More importantly, we must never believe it!
Just as snails have to live in theirs; to them gravity means very little, but surface tension means a heck of a lot more then to us! To each his own. I prefer to live in here and now, within my capacities. That's the only reality I know.
Who or what is "creating" being mindful that whatever is creating is not unchanging.
"If you don't believe it, it doesn't matter what Jesus said."
It certainly does matter what Jesus said, because that's the subject matter that must be known and understood before anything anyone else said can be analyzed for truth.
"you tied it all to you as being the final arbiter of what matters."
It's my decision! That's what sovereignty of will, aka FREEDOM, is all about.
"Your, not knowing any Greek, call "BS" the article I referenced in which the author at length explains why, and displays exceptional knowledge of Greek grammar? Pathetic.
Your "exceptional source" is alone in producing a unique translation that no other authorities agree with and your translations are the same, as I showed in several posts above. The phrase translations from John 1:1 are "the Word was with God" and "the Word was God".
Only if you believe it. So, it still comes down to what you believe. Ergo my paraphrase was correct.
It's my decision! That's what sovereignty of will, aka FREEDOM, is all about.
That's right. Now you admit that what I said was right: what matters to you is what you choose to believe. Thank you.
Your "exceptional source" is alone ...
Again, that's what you choose to believe and damn the truth, right? There are many such sources, but you choose to ignore them. That's what I mean by living in your one room world. I think we have beaten this dead horse enough. You can pull your head out of the sand now.
You are not a Christian (i.e. a follower of Jesus)? All Christians agree that God said "Let there be light!" That is a willful, deliberate act (change) on God's part, an act which is incompatible with timeless existence.
How does God communicate, indeed intervene with the temporal and changing world in his state of timeless, unchanging eternity?
There is definitely a one-way arrow in Christianity that is not in Hinduism and other religions. But I don't see a conflict in this instance. The cycles need not be exact repetitions; I really wouldn't expect them to be.
Either God ceased being eternal and unchaningnat at the "moment" of creation (supposedly a willful act)..
I'm sorry, I still don't see that as a good logical argument. I used the laws of physics earlier as an analog; I just don't see your conclusion's logic.
This sound almost like postulating interspacial "dark energy" to balance a faulty formula.
It's postulating for sure. But I'm thinking: FIrst cause > nothingness > universe. If you're familiar with eastern religious concepts, nothingness is different from nothing - it's something, not nothing. You could also perhaps look at the Casimir Effect in here somewhere. As I've said several times, the Broken Symmetry creation model is the most appealing to me. I see it as another way to image the Big Bang, not a replacement for it.
In general, to give foundation to my views: I find the arguments, logic, physics and metaphysics pretty good for the uncaused eternal first cause. For me that's the firmest ground in this quicksand on the boundary of human knowledge and capacity. So I try to build out from there as much as possible. Realizing always my severe limitations in this area..
The Bible say God finished his creation in seven days…
I don't read that scientifically. I also view creation as continuing in each instant.
Thanks for your reply.
I can see holding that view; I can see also saying "it just is." But if I'm playing in the reason/logic sphere, I don't see a more compelling argument that existence ≠ caused.
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