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."
Is the Golden Rule the independent value or is survival?
If a society violating the Golden Rule survives longer than one which follows it, it is therefore "better" in terms of values?
If the Golden Rule's value is independent of survival then it doesn't matter, in terms of value, how long a society practicing the rule survives.
You seem here to be introducing a new value:
Sustenance of success is key.
How is this defined?
It is a convenient, albeit silly, general utility get-out-of-jail card, like so many others they keep in their arsenal, along with the famous "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways'..." {Isa 55:8]
This way, David's son's torturous killing by God over a whole week becomes an act of "virtue", and the call for the slaughter of the children and ravaging of the women is seen as "just anger" and "God's justice", which, of course, is nothing but good.
an dlikeness = and likeness
I think you understand very well that man’s level of understanding of morality and all other topics necessarily exists on a significantly lesser scale than God’s level of understanding. Whether you think of God as real or as imaginary, the difference in level of awareness is part of the equation.
This fact is logically necessary as well as scripturally based: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” (Isaiah 55:8).
What sense does it make to expect that a world fallen to sin would be a world with no suffering and no sorrow?
Now, you can claim you don’t believe the Bible in its entirety. But you can’t logically make the argument that mankind’s suffering from the effects of God’s wrath is inherently contradictory, when the Bible itself tells us that the evil repercussions of sin will effect the lives of people beyond merely that of the individual who committed the sin.
And you cannot claim it makes sense for us to expect to fully understand all the reasons for God’s actions. If you think you can make this claim, then make the claim and give support for it.
[just as I predicted in my previous post!] But the same Bible you believe in as the inerrant word of God says man is an image of God and God-like (in God's likeness), and it also says "we have the mind of Christ" contradicting Isaiah (what else is new!). If you have the mind of God then his ways must be your ways as well. In which case, prove it! But if you don't (can't), why should I believe you or your holy book?
What sense does it make that a perfect Maker would make an imperfect world?
Now, you can claim you don’t believe the Bible in its entirety. But you can’t logically make the argument that mankind’s suffering from the effects of God’s wrath is inherently contradictory, when the Bible itself tells us that the evil repercussions of sin will effect the lives of people beyond merely that of the individual who committed the sin.
I don't need the Bible to know that evildoing of some affects others.
And you cannot claim it makes sense for us to expect to fully understand all the reasons for God’s actions.
I would never presume to understand the reasons for God's actions (if his thoughts are different than mine) but I would not presume they are just or good either. Maybe you can explain to me why God commands infanticide and that is good, and when people do it it is evil. Either the world is exactly the way God wants it to be, or it isn't. Personally, I think the world is the way it is, whether you and I understand it or not, and no god has anything to do with it.
It makes no sense to expect that the object of creation can possess the mind of the creator. There’s just no way around this.
Your mind in this discussion is more like a bird flying into a window, falling down, then flying into it again, over and over. Me, I’m just another bird, sort of like you. I know how hard that window is.
When you’re away from the computer, maybe driving down the road or waiting in some line somewhere, or trying to fall asleep at night. I would ask you, humbly, to consider something. (If you don’t fear nonbelief, you won’t shun a moment’s contemplation of Christian mythology.)
Think about the idea that any good in you is put there by God, and any love in your heart is love from God. Think about God’s handwriting. There in the bosom of a man, every beat is another moment of life, another chance to live. To think, to dream, to see what’s right in front of you.
A conclusion cannot be validated on the basis that the same conclusion is its own premise. This is what you are doing.
You are trying to say that laws of physics have always been true because they have always been true.
But empirical knowledge of the Big Bang tells us that laws of physics were nonexistent surrounding the moment of the Big Bang. This fact obliterates all criticism of religion by secular intellectuals who say religion is invalid because it is “superstition,” where superstition is defined as anything not explainable by the laws of physics.
What was the point of David's child's conception by a god that clearly didn't want it to happen?
Courtesy ping to #1630.
Let’s expand this a little.
Just how much of God’s mind should we expect to know? What should be the ratio of known to unknown—would 80/20 meet your demands? 90/10?
It becomes clear that inability to answer this question demonstrates complete absense of the necessary conceptual foundation such that questions like yours in post #1630 can reasonably be pursued.
LOL!
What about knowing even if there is [a] God (whatever that may be)? How do you know (and I mean KNOW!) that what you know about God is really from God and not some ordinary mortal's hallucination? After all, many a NT writer mentions being "in a trance" when they had visions and heard voices. Sounds pretty much like hallucinations to me.
Besides, I hear preachers every day "explain" to their congregations what God meant when he said...How do they know that unless they presume to know the mind of God? And what does Paul mean when he said "we have the mind of Christ"? Then, as a believer, you ought to be able to answer James C. Bennet's question in #1630 because it should have been revealed to you, according to the Bible.
Too bad you’re not one of the liberals (they claim immunity from the either-or mindset through their professed monopoly on “nuance”), or I could get you twice over on this one.
Logic says that we can know none of God’s mind, or all of it. The third option is that we can only know part of it. I’ll let you figure out which possibility makes the most sense.
Once you have your answer, apply it to our conversation and see how it works.
Too bad you’re not one of the liberals (they claim immunity from the either-or mindset through their professed monopoly on “nuance”), or I could get you twice over on this one.
Dream on. This has nothing to do with the content of my post (or the specific questions I asked).
Logic says that we can know none of God’s mind, or all of it.
How do you even know there is a God, let alone his mind?
The third option is that we can only know part of it. I’ll let you figure out which possibility makes the most sense.
And how much of it do you know?
Once you have your answer, apply it to our conversation and see how it works.
Oh, that's really rich/s.
courtesy ping
Thanks for the ping!
The fact that the people unquestioningly conducting the child-slaughters at the supposed instruction of their god - a moral lapse that strangely doesn’t even deserve an explanation beyond, “I am this and I can do that!” with no discussion of the significance of bestowing such a quality to that god, destroying its definitional property of perfect justice - but replaced with a secondary scale in order to hide the violation of the first, all shows how man-made the entire enterprise is - and how alike it is to practically any other theological system developed elsewhere on the planet. The consequence of allowing dual scales for “perfect” justice to the divinity of your choice is that it becomes impossible to distinguish from any other god’s reason for existence. Muslims could and actually do justify the vile ways of their god (very much Old Testament-like) by those same lines of illogic - that is how their god behaves, and it can do whatever it wants - including “defy” the realms of logical possibility and do its earliest act and latest act and everything in between, both at the same time, and separately - due to the consequence of removing time from being a factor in that deity’s existence. And they say their god likes its “creation” to be rational.
A particular god wanted David’s child to not exist, but nonetheless “allows” its conception in order that it can be killed later on - for what? As a lesson? The entire “salvation plan” technically rests as crucially on that child having to be snuffed out of existence as it does on any other factor. This is no different from any other man-made barbarism. Free choice in the midst of influencing factors beyond the realms of free will further complicate this arrangement. Our choices, in reality, are influenced by the choices others have made before us.
Thus, when it comes to doing something they seem to know the mind of their god, but when something goes awry, or is clearly nonsensical, then it becomes a divine enigma that is not ours to understand. Conveniently.
Precisely.
Holier-than-thou-ism is also a powerful motive for religious-superstitious power-dominance-patronising fantasies. Tweak them a little, and the masks slip off.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.