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."
we don't have a clue what is truth to the person sitting next to you.… we don't know everything, and therefore can not know what truth is.
Then why and what and how are we discussing? Are you arguing something similar to solipsism? I'm really not clear here, it seems you arguing we can't know whether anything is true. IF that's true, how do you know that?
Do you think all religion is superstition?
What would you say are your religious beliefs?
I think they are a potent mix of superstition, the Golden Rule in its original form (do not do unto others what you wouldn’t want done unto you), or altered form selectively applied, some philosophy, deistic defences applied to fog dogma and plenty of self-contradiction that reveal their fundamental flaws.
None that are scripture / prophet-based. None whose dogmatic elements have equivalents in other faiths, independently derived. None that depend on faith in other men's words to have faith in a deity - in other words, none that require me to believe the words of other men, before I am able to believe in any deity that they mention, none where a deity chooses to convey of its existence through books, prophets or scrolls instead of direct revelation. Gods don't need messengers. See the ones that violate this description, and rule them out. If any are found to be in compliance, mention them, and I'll tell you if they are, or are not what I believe in.
None whose dogmatic elements have equivalents in other faiths
Is it the dogma part or are you saying your beliefs aren't found in any religion? All or in part?
Do you try to live by the golden rule? Other principles that have high value for you?
What I meant by that point concerning dogma is that if there are rival faiths that can compete on basic morality and share similar morals, then it is a case of independent civilisations developing societal rules on their own, and arriving at a commonality due to similar societal problems faced by them. This, by itself, is an indication that societies invent religions. No faith that I’ve studied so far can claim bragging rights to morals that benefit society and aren’t found in other faiths, directly or indirectly.
The Golden Rule would be one such standard of comparison. Practically every religion on Earth, in spite of having diametrically-opposed dogmatic characteristics, have a form of the Golden Rule within their tenets.
The Golden Rule is paramount. Everything else can be derived from it.
Literalism. Applying modern standards to ancient cultures and writers, anachronistic or lack of context. Not seeing the similarities in the questions that all human's face.
Killed by the same entity that supposedly created it - why create it in the first place?
Is there any point to anything in creation? Is there any justice inherent in the universe or is it all completely capricious? Does the evil we do inexorably harm our children?…
Why was an innocent life taken away after it was made to suffer for a whole week?
Why do innocents suffer? And what, then, is the value of being innocent?
Why are your scriptures deathly silent on this serious contradiction?
Are they? All of them?
Why is that?
IF, as a thought experiment, it benefitted society to do just the opposite of the golden rule, call it the iron rule, would the iron rule then have paramount value for you? Would it then be, for you personally, "good" to do unto others what you wouldn’t want done unto you?
I’ll gladly answer your questions, but I am a little busy at the moment.
Pinging Kosta50 to #1429, #1430 and #1431, if you want to indulge, or start off!
As you demonstrate, Alinsky’s version of trying to defeat the opponent by his own standards eventually becomes an exercise in self-ridicule. Alinsky should have realized that his entire book was defined as the ultimate in self-ridicule—the moment he dedicated it to the origin of destruction.
Don’t ridicule your argument this way. Relativism is not interchangeable with its opposite. (And you show your hand for all to see, with this tenacious defense of relativism.)
Relativism is nothing short of a desire to create one’s own reality, one’s own world—this is the desire to be God, and it only destroys.
Let’s examine a couple of facts: in dedicating his book to the ultimate wannabe, Alinsky establishes himself as the ultimate fool. What value is there in being a disciple of the ultimate fool?
Submission to God is acknowledgement of reality. I hope you will love God.
Whose God? Yours? My neighbor's? The "official" God? Which one?
You are reading too much into it.
Are you arguing something similar to solipsism?
No, never.
I'm really not clear here, it seems you arguing we can't know whether anything is true?
I don't think I ever suggested that. Rather, what I said was that while we know some things, we don't know everything.
Worth repeating.
That is obvious by simply studying different civilizations and cultures, or even subs cultures (such as variants in Christianity).
Practically every religion on Earth, in spite of having diametrically-opposed dogmatic characteristics, have a form of the Golden Rule within their tenets.
Precisely.
Oh, so now you are applying relative standards to what is supposed to be the absolute truth?
Is there any point to anything in creation? Is there any justice inherent in the universe or is it all completely capricious?
I asked you the same thing. What's the point of sulfur volcanoes on Io, or for billions of galaxies in the visible universe? Do you see any "justice" in that? Where is "justice" in the Holocaust? What is justice anyway, except a convenient abstraction, which, like beauty and other related concepts, is in the eye of the beholder?
Why do innocents suffer? And what, then, is the value of being innocent?
Well, if you know, then tell us.
Because it feels good. That's how we operate, feels-good, feels-bad. Even an infant knows it.
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