There are more stars in the visible universe than there are grains of sand on all of earth's beaches...and you talk to me about truth. Who are we kidding? We can't handle the truth.
WATCH: Carl Sagan: The Pale Blue Dot.
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."
Actually, that was my omission, since it's not a matter of interpretation.
Apparently, it’s your biblical opinion (interpretation) that sin is contingent on a talking snake
Contingent? Are you lost? First, if I said that the talking snake is responsible for sin that was ushered into the world, I don't think I was saying it was "contingent"! You better look that one up as well.
Second, it's not an interpretation but basic reading comprehension of what the Bible says actually happened. If the snake did not bear any guilt (i.e. if it was not complicit and responsible for man's fall from grace) why would God punish exact his punishment on the snake as well as Adam and Eve?
Had there been no snake saying, “let there be sin,” there would have been no sin
I never said that. You are making that up as well. Why do you feel that you have to distort what I have written, when you know (or should know) that your straw man will be easily debunked? Are you a glutton for punishment? So quit making things up.
Obviously, according to the Bible, the snake played a role in the generation of sin and bears responsibility for it. Without the talking snake, who would have beguiled Eve?
According to materialist dogma, death is inescapable irrespective of one’s state of grace...
More straw men. We are not talking about materialists, but non-meterialists. Rather than rant and rave hoping to deflect the fact that literalist Bible believers are required to believe in talking animals, perhaps you can just answer what was the talking snake doing in God's garden and who put him there?
That's not the definition of momentum and photons are massless, so the equation, "E=moc2" does not apply to photons. mo represents the rest mass of a particle and photons have none, since they travel at the speed of lightand never rest. If they had a rest mass, their mass would be infinite at their normal propagation velocity.
Momentum is defined by the equation E2=p2c2+mo2c2. Since the rest mass of the photon is 0, the momentum of the photon is, p=E/c.
for the photon:
E=hν then p = hν/c = h/λ, where λ is the wavelength.
Note that only the presence of energy generates a gravitational field and only energy is affected by the field. Mass is energy, but the field and the effect of the field depend on the value of the energy only.
" The gravitational force (or "pit" in timespace jargon) that is required to detectably affect the photon mass is much greater than anything we can create on earth. The force is much greater than even our sun's gravitational pull. This is why the discovery of the gravitational lens (predicated by Einstein) proves that photons are subject to gravity and therefore must have mass, otherwise the GR formula E=mc2 does not apply to photons.
"E-moc2" is not a GR formula, it's part of special relativity(SR) and was published in 1905. GR is the theory that space itself is warped by the energy contained in it. Space itself(gravity) is a result of the existance of energy and has an energy value equal in magnitude, but opposite in sign. One article of evidence to back up the theory was the observation f starlight bending during a solar eclipse in 1917.
"How does Einstein's theory account, for example, for the read shift?"
Space expands, because of the negative pressure of the vacuum. That expansion results in a loss of photon energy to the gravitational field, which is space. The longer a photon flies in interstellar space, the longer it's wavelength becomes and the energy "loss" appears in the gravitational field.
" So if all this sounds a little bit like "lawyering" it's because it is! Which is why we can say there are is always some doubt, and no absolutes, and no one understands it and there are always convenient "loopholes" or "angles" from which these issues can be handled, sometimes leading to completely different conclusions, yet all of them true!
Rubbish.
" A perfect example of this is your eprception of these letters as being curves (such as letters c, s, q, p, etc.) when in fact they are shapes ahcieved by miniscule dots (and the distance between each two dots is simply a straight line) which under a micorscope would lose their smoothness and continuous appearance. In your eyes they are "integrated" into smooth and continuous complex curves.
Rubbish.
"and just as a single brick does not define a house, neither does quatum mechanics describe the world."
Quantum mechanics does describe the world, regardless of your analogy.
"ust as the photograph of the earth from space does not reflect what it's like to be on earth, neither does the Einstein's theory of relativity describe how we experience gravity (i.e. as spacetime "pits")."
GR does describe gravity and how one would experience it. ...In spite of your analogy.
"For each aspect of reality we must use the most adequate tool ("measuring stick"), and always be aware that it is only one aspect of what is really out there."
BS detectors are nice.
Just repeating my statement: "There's a lot of similarities. That's why my friend and I could discuss and compare, there's a commonality of experience."
This is pretty much what we do to determine if the experience is defined by the concept we use to communicate it. We can't give another our exact experience, of colors, for example, so there's limits; but, humans infer that human experience is similar, color-blind anomalies aside.
An example I use a lot is taste. We have the concept "sweet taste." I don't know for certain that sweet is the same to you as to me, and it's very difficult, if not impossible to give the knowledge of "sweet" to someone else. But if a whole lot of people taste sugar and say "that's sweet" we infer we're talking about the same taste, same sense experience.
The further away human experience is from reducibility to sense knowing, the more difficult it becomes. Love is that way. And there are different kinds of love and we use different names and descriptions. Like the eskimos with snow, perhaps.
So, I think we have a range of fuzzy factors, but not complete error.
Thanks for your reply.
Thanks for your reply.
I think from your posts that you have a quite limited view of what Jews and Christians in particular *must believe*, most specifically concerning the Bible and science.
I don’t share that view, though I used to. It might help if you considered that there are physicists and astronomers who are also priests. They are not bible-thumpers, literalists, bibliolaters, etc.
Now I also see the corollary among *some* scientists. They adhere to the debunked philosophy of scientism, it’s a form of philosophical and religious ignorance. I don’t expect them to know this area, it’s outside their field; however, when they pontificate on it, the ignorance shows.
The corollary is that scientist can be as ignorant in metaphysics as various religious are about science. The conflict between the two, when it occurs, is, IMHO, due to ignorance, rarely malice.
>>>”Who created your god?”
Since we do not a theological framework for discussion, I’m using reason, in particular the first cause argument (with the caveat of you don’t have to call the first cause “God.”) And in this argument, the answer is, you guessed it:
The first cause is uncaused, for the reasons stated in the argument.
Since we do not share a theological framework for discussion…
Mass is energy...
Well, then photons have mass.
Space expands, because of the negative pressure of the vacuum
You mean to tell me you understand what that means? What is negative pressure in a vacuum? I am waiting for more copy and paste rubbish.
Rubbish.
Rubbish is to pretend that QM has answered all questions. It's not religion. It's a theoretical working model.
Quantum mechanics does describe the world, regardless of your analogy.
So does the Ptolemaic navigational system. And even though it's based on geocentric universal model, it still works. Just because a working model works doesn't mean it describes the world the way it is.
GR does describe gravity and how one would experience it. ...In spite of your analogy.
So, how we experience things is how the world really is? Can we get any more narcissistic?
But that's where the error lies. When we taste sugar we are told its "sweet". We are told vinegar is "sour". It's a learned response. It's doesn't mean we all experience it the same way.
Some people hate sugar and love vinegar. Women have a particular preference for chocolate which seems to be more than what it does for men. Others seem to really like the experience of alcohol while other hate it, etc.
Taste—in fact all experience—can be reduced to to three categories: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. Depending how we experience something will determine not only our immediate response to it but also whether we are likely to seek to repeat it, avoid it or never think about it.
Approach-avoidance behavior says a lot about who we are and how we are put together, as well as what our present state is.
Concepts such as love, justice, truth, divine, eternal, etc. are not absolute values. They cannot be verbalized, described or visually represented. They are abstractions.
Sometimes our "common experience" is cultural. We are conditioned to respond within the confines of our cultures. For example grief, or happiness are often culturally defined responses.
As for love being something we experience in common, let's not forget that a sadist and a masochist make a "perfect" couple, yet we know they experience their love hardly the same way. :)
It can be reduced even further. All the way down to biochemical reactions.
Still there is a qualitative difference between you and a paramecium or a stalk of corn. Reductionism is useful, but inaccurate when taken as all truth; because it reduces truth as well.
Of course it can, but as far as we are concerned it is irrelevant. The same can be said of the rainbow. We don't care what is taste on a biochemical level but how we experience it. Do you think of a t-bone steaks as animal body parts or as tasty, jucy meal?
Still there is a qualitative difference between you and a paramecium or a stalk of corn. Reductionism is useful, but inaccurate when taken as all truth; because it reduces truth as well.
Sounds good, but what is truth? Is the paramecium any less true than I? No, just less relevant to me, as I am less relevant to a paramecium. Do fish mind if it's raining?
I think it is relevant in approaching the subject of truth. Is truth reducible to biochemical reactions?Is the paramecium any less true than I?
That wasn't where I was heading. What is truth for a paramecium? Is truth for you reducible, in principle, to the same thing as a paramecium? Stimulus/response? If not, what's the difference?
Of course it can, but as far as we are concerned it is irrelevant.
I think it is relevant in approaching the subject of truth. Is truth reducible to biochemical reactions?
Is the paramecium any less true than I?
That wasn't where I was heading. What is truth for a paramecium? Is truth for you reducible, in principle, to the same thing as a paramecium? Stimulus/response? If not, what's the difference?
That's part of what taste is, isn't it? Is that not true? Truth can't be just what we experience. Otherwise we are creating the world in our image. Most religions have done just that.
What is truth for a paramecium? Is truth for you reducible, in principle, to the same thing as a paramecium? Stimulus/response? If not, what's the difference?
What is truth to you or to me? Not only do we not know what the truth is for Paramecium, but we don't have a clue what is truth to the person sitting next to you.
Paramecium is part of the truth—a reminder that the word is nor just for us, about us or from us. Just as we don't see or hear the entire electromagnetic spectrum, we don't know everything, and therefore can not know what truth is.
What is the purpose or reason the universe exists? The sulfur volcanoes on Io, or planets orbiting stars too distant for us to reach (the closest star is 4 light years away)? It takes light on average 1.3 seconds to reach the Moon. The light from our Sun takes eight minutes to reach us, and 100,000 years to cross our galaxy; 2 million years to reach Andromeda galaxy, our closest galactic neighbor.
There are more stars in the visible universe than there are grains of sand on all of earth's beaches...and you talk to me about truth. Who are we kidding? We can't handle the truth.
Yeah, contingent (dependent on or existing only if certain other circumstances are the case - conditional on, subject to, determined by, hinging on, resting on). Your complaint has been that I contest the idea a talking snake is central to Biblical Instruction (“you refuse to acknowledge the fact that without the talking snake sin would not have entered the world”). Are you now denying that sin is dependent on a talking snake?
I’m not lost. Maybe you are. You claim that without a talking snake there would be no sin. That sure sounds like sin is contingent on a talking snake. No snake . . . no sin.
“Second, it's not an interpretation but basic reading comprehension of what the Bible says actually happened.”
It is a matter of interpretation. You claim that sin is contingent on a talking snake (that it would not exist without the snake -“is responsible for sin that was ushered into the world”). I claim that sin is contingent on Man’s willfulness (that sin would not exist absent Man’s willfulness).
“I never said that. (a snake saying, “let there be sin”) You are making that up as well. Why do you feel that you have to distort what I have written, when you know (or should know) that your straw man will be easily debunked?”
Well then, debunk. Are you claiming that sin is a material object? That the snake went out somewhere beyond the Oort cloud and found sin, like the he might find a rock floating around in space, and brought it back to earth? Clearly you are “influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts,” and are not at all objective in your judgment. Accept the consequences of your advocacy. Obviously, it is your desire to have your cake and eat it too that distorts what you think and write.
“We are not talking about materialists, but non-meterialists.”
Yet, it is your materialist dogma that blinds you to the simple understanding that sin stems directly from Mankind’s willfulness. Materialists don’t think sin exists. Therefore, talking snakes sound no less fantastic to Materialists than the willfulness of Man.
What's not there to our mutual avail? We both have access to the scriptures, and can tear down the verses to their essence.
I find this "theological framework" excuse, and the approach merely a way of cloaking Deism with the wrapper of another religion, to attempt to pass the latter off as truth... JMO.
So, the talking snake wasn’t real, but only a metaphor?
LOL, you may be a glutton for punishment. Here are some of the synonyms for contingent: unpredictable, accidental, fortuitous, incidental, unexpected
unforeseen, dependent.
Never mind that you left out the "uncertain" element form the definition of contingent, such as (1) "dependent for existence, occurrence, character, etc., on something not yet certain" [as in: contingent on the weather] or (2) " liable to happen or not; uncertain; possible" [as in: plan for contingent expenses.], or (3) "happening by chance or without known cause" [as in: contingent occurrences].
So much for your linguistic skills. You get an F.
It is a matter of interpretation. You claim that sin is contingent on a talking snake
I never said it was contingent on the talking snake. I would never say such an idiotic thing. If you wish to paraphrase what I said then use words such as incumbent, or compelling or necessary...but not contingent. Don't make me laugh.
Well then, debunk
Read the Bible. There was no one else.
Are you claiming that sin is a material object?
You do seem to be lost. I never said that either. More strawmen.
Clearly you are “influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts,” and are not at all objective in your judgment
You carefully avoided to answer why did God punish the talking snake if it was all the fault of Adam and Eve? Why was the snake there to begin with? You think that scam artists are not responsible for their scams?
Yet, it is your materialist dogma that blinds you to the simple understanding that sin stems directly from Mankind’s willfulness.
Then why was the snake punished?
Materialists don’t think sin exists. Therefore, talking snakes sound no less fantastic to Materialists than the willfulness of Man.
I don't think man's willfulness is fantastic; I do think the talking snake is.
Thanks, JCB. Very appropriate and to the point.
Thanks for your reply. Theological framework is more than access to the scriptures, just as a physics discussion is not necessarily possible just because both have access to physics texts.
Your questions, as I said, indicate a rather limited, somewhat bad stereotype, view of Christianity. I can’t defend something that I don’t believe and it seems a long way to go to get to there. It would help me to know what your religious background is, whether you are arguing against religion in general or Christianity in particular, etc.
I’m not trying to convert you or justify my faith, merely discuss the subject of science and religion, reason and so on.
You’re welcome, D-fendr!
What’s the stereotype in seeing, say, for example, the failure of morality when David’s child is killed for only being born a bastard? Killed by the same entity that supposedly created it - why create it in the first place? So that it could suffer for another’s fault? Where’s this “perfect” justice? How many more ways can anyone interpret this? How many other ways can this killing be justified? What are your views on this? Why was an innocent life taken away after it was made to suffer for a whole week? What did the suffering trade for? Why are your scriptures deathly silent on this serious contradiction? Why is this not addressed at all?
If this understanding is in your eyes, “a limited scope”, feel free to expand it.
It would be meaningless for you to know my background - assume that I was a Protestant, and proceed. How will your arguments change?
As I said earlier, the “reasons” you’re giving with regard to “the lack of a theological framework” are merely excuses that are being placed to prevent yourself from seeing the flaw in your beliefs - of using Deism to justify superstition. I’m driving a wedge between the two, so that they may be separated and examined.
It matters next to nothing if priests and others are also physicists. Many Muslims and others are, too. In fact, a huge number of them have a deep interest in quantum physics - and they see what they learn as reinforcing their faith in their god. You’ll be amazingly suprised how multi-polar the human mind can be - how self-contradicting it can be.
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