Mohler takes on 'theistic evolution'

Associated Baptist Press ^ | January 13, 2011 | Bob Allen

[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."

[YHAOS]

“LOL, you may be a glutton for punishment.”

You may be too prideful to admit error. The synonyms you offer are for the second definition of “contingent.” Some other synonyms, offered for the first definition of “contingent:” dependent on, conditional on, subject to, determined by, hinging on, resting on.

“Never mind that you left out the "uncertain" element form (from?) the definition of contingent”

Never mind that you left out the “determined by” element from your rebut. I provided a definition for the context in which I was using the term. You insist that sin would not exist without the talking snake (“you refuse to acknowledge the fact that without the talking snake sin would not have entered the world”). That makes sin directly contingent on the talking snake (by the gospel according to kosta, at least). Give it up. You’re only making yourself look foolish. It’s what happens when You indulge in the oldest of all fallacies: the blatant denial of the patently obvious.

“So much for your linguistic skills. You get an F.”

On the contrary our discussions have highlighted the deficiencies of your research skills. You’ve dramatically demonstrated you haven’t the expertise to be issuing grades on anyone (unless you’re doing it for comedic effect).

“You carefully avoided to answer why did God punish the talking snake if it was all the fault of Adam and Eve?”

Way back at the beginning of this sidebar (at least insofar as my participation is concerned) I observed that that none of the “fantastic tales” upon which you have been harping, or anything like them, embodies the essence of Biblical instruction. They merely give scripture scoffers an opportunity to sneer.

I suggested, rather, that the most important biblical instruction would be to heed the two great commandments, to honor one’s mother and father, to murmur not at the ways of Providence, and to attend to all the other issues central to Biblical lessons. We’ve gone round and round ever since.

Burden of proof (be it scientific, philosophic, or otherwise) does not come into play until common assumptions are established. I’m not buying into your insistence that “fairy tales” are central to Biblical Instruction and must be accepted as a common assumption. Earlier I observed that you give the impression that your materialism entitles you to claim objectiveness for anything you opine, and that opposition to your view can not be objective. You demurred. I further observed that we share no common assumptions so, while speaking to one another is possible, discussion is not. With that you seemed to agree.

Nonetheless you seem to want to continue the discussion absent common assumptions. Not likely, pilgrim.

Reading The Bible for instruction is not as simple a matter as reading a biological lab report or a paper on bones. I do accept scripture literally (as in “Thou shalt not steal”). I also accept scripture metaphorically, allegorically, historically, doctrinally and literarily. On this I would note that the dual commission issued to the KJV translators was to combine elegance of translation with faithfulness to the text (see In The Beginning, by Alister McGrath). I think the translators were eminently successful in their task. All of which leads me to conclude that scripture amounts to something more than a volume of lab reports issued on disparate scientific experiments. If one’s object in surveying scripture is for a purpose greater than merely promoting an argument, this understanding is indispensable. The cultural tradition and the literary tradition of the English-speaking people, the ancient Greeks, and of the Hebrew people, demand it.

[YHAOS]

“So, the talking snake wasn’t real, but only a metaphor?”

Insofar as reading the Holy Bible beneficially is concerned, tell we what metaphoric message would you read into the injunction to not steal? Or, what metaphoric lesson might we take away from the injunction against covetousness? Otherwise, see post # 1481.

[D-fendr]

I love that program "Life after People" that shows how the world and even our pets would do just fine if suddenly the humans were to disappear.

And, I guess, the world would go on if our pets were to disappear, or our loved ones were to disappear. That doesn't make either a good thing.

I really don't get the anti-your-own-species view. Certainly there are evil human beings. There are also good ones. Those that, in the extreme, see our species as loathsome are, IMHO, expressing a slightly broader view of their own self-loathing.

[D-fendr]

Thanks for your reply on the OT.

I’m certain you are aware of viewing the OT “through the New Testament.” And I believe Jesus did correct the Pharisee’s interpretation of the OT as regards one’s enemies and the innocent.

I see the reconciliation you skillfully outline as: “yes, Christianity is about the same God as Judaism.” But that does not necessarily entail exactly the same view as Judaism about God.

Of course, the messiah problem is ultimately a deal killer both ways.

However, I don’t believe it an orthodox Christian view of God as a genocidal killer. So, if that is the interpretation, somewhere, somehow, there *is* a distinction with a difference.

[spunkets]

"There are plenty of references to photons having mass."

Provide the evidence. ...from a reputable source, like from a university physics department, or a Nat'l/Int'l Lab.

Re: Mass is energy

"Well, then photons have mass."

No. Mass is a particular set of properties that some members of the set of real particles arising out of energetic fields have. Mass indicates that a particle arising out of an energy field can remain stationary and the particle requires energy to be transferred to it in order to accelerate and an energy release to decelerate. The set is real particles, which has more members than just massive particles.

Mass is the result of a particle's energy coupling with a uniform, non-directional(scalar) field of the vacuum called the Higgs field. The Higgs field can be considered as the lowest energy state of the vacuum after the BB, and is a coupling of particle energy to the compactified dimensions of space. That means that some of the particle's energy exists in the compact dimensions of space/vacuum. In order to accelerate a massive particle, energy must be transferred to the particle to occupy at least 7 compacted dimensions and the 4 dimensions of extended space. That increase in energy with velocity, which must be partitioned and transferred to compacted space, results in a mass increase of the particle, from it's initial inertial state of m_o.

A Photon is a force carrier that has no mass. It is a facilitator of electromagnetic(EM) energy transfer between massive particles with an EM component in this world. ie. those particles outside the vacuum. Unlike massive particles, their propagation velocity does not depend on their energy. A photon's velocity is simply determined by polarization interactions with the vacuum. Vacuum polarizations act as a reversible drag process. The average of the polarization interactions are the vacuum's electric permittivity(ε_o) and magnetic permeability(μ_o) constants. The speed of light is determined by those two numbers:

c=1/sqrt(ε_oμ_o)

Re: Space expands, because of the negative pressure of the vacuum

"You mean to tell me you understand what that means?

Yes.

" What is negative pressure in a vacuum?

Space is observed to be expanding. See Hubble's Law. Space is the vacuum. The BB was a phase transition; where the energy that comprises particles, arose out of the vacuum at the time of the BB are a different phase than that of the vacuum. The new phase is embedded in the vacuum and the gravitational field is an image of that phase on the vacuum. The image is formed by causing the extended dimensions to increase their curvature locally and the compacted dimensions to undergo an angular displacement, both in accordance with the local energy/momentum content.

That energy momentum content is represented by the stress-energy tensor of GR, T_μν. T₀₀ is the local energy density(ρ) and T_i,j, where (i=j=1,2,3), is the normal stress/(unit area) in the ith direction.

In order to determine what the pressure in the vacuum is, one must first note that the vacuum must look the same to all inertial observers. That means any coordinate transformation must result in an invariant p and ρ and that ρ=-p. The fig. below from Ned Wright, UCLA, shows the calc. β and γ are Lorentz factors that aren't important here and c can be set to one. After that, one must have data on the actual energy density of the vacuum, which is found from observing Hubble redshift data-the observed expansion of space.

Observations show that the effective energy density is slightly positive and close to zero. That means the pressure of the vacuum is negative. What does that mean? It means the vacuum is pulling itself back together and "expelling" the embedded energy of this world and it's gravitational field. It means that the internal binding energy of the vacuum is greater than the gravitational force between gravitationally bound groups of matter/energy, such as galaxies and clusters... All the energy of this world is being isolated, to be left to radiate back into the vacuum as entropic noise.

The pressure doesn't represent vacuum fluctuations, other than the level and particular energy distribution that results from the difference in cohesive energy density between the vacuum and the energy that comprises this world.

Above for fair use by noting © Scott Stillwell(spunkets)(2011)

Work fig from Ned Wright, UCLA.

Work fig from Ned Wright, UCLA.

" I am waiting for more copy and paste rubbish."

You already posted it. Do you think if it's posted, you won't see it again 'till I post it back to you?

Re:"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."

QM is a fundamental and general theoretical body of knowledge that can be used to describe the relevant physics of anything in the universe.

Re: "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?"

The equivalence principle comes to mind; especially in connection with falling elevators.

[spunkets]

Re: "It means that the internal binding energy of the vacuum is greater than the gravitational force between gravitationally bound groups of matter/energy, such as galaxies and clusters..."

Of course the driving force itself is the difference in binding energy with and w/o the embedded matter. As long as that's so, the pressure is negative and expansion occurs.

[spunkets]

Re: "No, science is the fluid that flows in the river. A raft is external to it."

"Not so. The facts of science are external to the flow of logic—in the same way that particular values for x are external to mathematical statements for x.

No. Science is a body of knowledge and understanding generated by reason. As such, it is properly the fluid, since it is the whole thing that is science.

"all reason necessarily follows a premise. Reason can never stand alone. You’ve got to start with something solid to stand on. What is the basis for the beginning of man’s reason? At best it’s mere subjectivity. Faith is the substrate for reason."

Reason is a logical process that stands on it's own. It is not dependent on any being, or any premise for validity.

Faith is believing in what someone has said, or written regardless of the reason for doing so.

[kosta50]

No. Mass is a particular set of properties that some members of the set of real particles arising out of energetic fields have.

Mass and energy are convertible; two different states of the same thing. Like water and ice or iodine and its vapor. Both are suscceptibe to spacetime warp (gravity).

Photos have no rest mass. At c, some theorize otherwise, fwiw.

Space is the vacuum

You mean space with little or no matter? And what is "space"? (the word vacuum means empty). Is "empty" a finite "thing"? You do realize this is no different than talking snakes an donkeys...or pink unicorns on Jupiter.

[What is negative pressure in a vacuum?] Space is observed to be expanding

And how do you "observe" space "expanding? Expanding into what?

Observations show that the effective energy density is slightly positive and close to zero

Just how close to zero? You know scientists love to exaggerate their claims or trust their readings way too much. After all they do have to publish to keep their tenures...so getting desired or expected results is not without an incentive...I have seen way too much rubbish to have treat all research with a grain of salt.

Look at the Hubble Telescope. After 20 years (someone's entire career!) of development and planning, it came off the production line "myopic" because the chief engineer trusted the Gaviola null test with only one test set! He trusted the readings. Idiot. In other words, he used a "yardstick" without making sure it was exactly a "yard"!

I have had people claim surface accuracy on some optical equipment that is mythology. At λ/20, a surface becomes distorted from the heat of your body if you stand next to it for a few minutes (after which it takes hours to equilibrating, and eveyrreaidng is different). Yet they claim surface accuracy three times that much and the "prove" it with their Photoshop doctored Foucault tests rather than an interferogram!

QM is a fundamental and general theoretical body of knowledge that can be used to describe the relevant physics of anything in the universe.

It's still a working model but some treat it like a Bible.

[kosta50]

Above for fair use by noting © Scott Stillwell(spunkets)(2011)

Scott Stillwell? You know how many Scott Stillwells are there? Why don't you provide a link?

[kosta50]

I have no desire to waste my time with you any more. Suffice it to say that the Oxford Dictionary defines "contingent" as subject to chance (uncertainty) as its first and foremost definition.

No snake, no sin, no sin, no death, no death no need for the Savior. The talking snake was not a chance. The crafty one had a role to fulfill. That much is obvious from the reading, and it was incumbent (not contingent) on him to do so. There was no one else to beguile Eve. If the snake wasn't responsible for the sin of Adam and Eve, then he would not have been punished.

But, hey, it's mind over matter. I don't mind and your invectives surely don't matter to me. Hasta la vista, baby.

[kosta50]

[Purpose and "intrinsic values" are feel-good constructs] What possible purpose could you have for saying that?

I think the horse is dead (just as philosophy). This is not going anywhere.

[kosta50]

It means that all other conditions being equal, we shouldn't destroy life. That it's not a coin-flip decision to destroy or not destroy life (all other conditions being equal)

That's positively insane. I never suggested anything like that. You conclusions are truly bizzare to me.

[kosta50]

All other conditions being equal, we ought act in ways that further life

Why? What value does life on earth (blue dot, speck of dust) have on the universe, which preceded it? Life is preserved when it is deemed worthy of preservation, like anything else.

[kosta50]

[In general, do you think something can be true but unprovable?

How would you know?]

I think we're looping back to "what is knowing" here. And what is considered sufficient proof

Sufficient proof is beyond the shadow of a doubt. What difference does it make if something is true but unprovable? It's unprovable! We can't know if it's true.

[kosta50]

But can't we know the truth more accurately or less accurately?

If it's not provable, it makes no difference.

[kosta50]

And, I guess, the world would go on if our pets were to disappear, or our loved ones were to disappear. That doesn't make either a good thing

Well, to us, it wouldn't be a feel-good thing.

[D-fendr]

Life is preserved when it is deemed worthy of preservation…

That would be a condition - worthy of preservation.

Inherent value says all conditions being equal… In your example, the worthy/unworthy of preservation would have to equal out.

So the question is: if were equally worthy and unworthy of preservation, ought you kill it? Or flip a coin, because there's no value to either decision?

Or would your values be to let it live unless you had a good reason not to?

like anything else.

Like a rock? Life/Rock, same thing, same inherent value?

If life has inherent value, it's not a coin toss question, you don't need a reason not to kill it, you need a reason to kill it.

Which is it for you?

[kosta50]

I’m certain you are aware of viewing the OT “through the New Testament.”

of course I do. The NT seems to have been written specifically to reinterpret the Old, so as to give divine authority to itself. I would have done the same ting if I were starting a new movement and wanted something to fall back on, especially if the audience had no clue about the Old one.

I see the reconciliation you skillfully outline as: “yes, Christianity is about the same God as Judaism.”

I said nothing of the kind. You must be quoting someone else. However, I did say that the Church maintains the Old Testament tells moral and spiritual truth (as seen through the prism of the New Testament). In other words, the slaughter of the innocent people, including David's bastard son, directed by the OT God is accepted as morally right.

Only the Christians claim that their God is the same God as that of Judaism. The Jews certainly don't! The same can be said of Mormons, who call themselves "Christians" yet their God is ontologically rather unrecognizable to Christianity. The fact that they, too, call on Jesus' name, and that's about the only commonality they have with Christians, density make them Christians. By LDS standards, the Gnostics are every bit as "Christian" as they are!

Of course, the messiah problem is ultimately a deal killer both ways.

There is no messiah problem in Judaism. As far as the Jews are concerned, he did NATO come yet. The OT tells them exactly what "qualifications" such a man must have, and they make sure to mention that, of about 13 of them, Jesus fulfilled only one, being Jewish!

However, I don’t believe it an orthodox Christian view of God as a genocidal killer

Oh? I suppose you see "Rights anger" in killing innocent children? or do you also believe the nosnense that David's son did not suffer, when the Bible says otherwise?

I honestly don't see much difference between that God and the deity the Muslim bow to.

[D-fendr]

Sufficient proof is beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Too high. We couldn't function with that requirement for knowledge.

[kosta50]

density = doesn’t
NATO = not
Rights = righteous

(my spellchecker is doing some strange things tonight...)