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."
Therefore, I consider Mohler's position that Creationists who are not YEC adherents must be some form of "evolutionist" to be disingenuous, specious, and frankly, dishonest.
That is a typically liberal trick: categorize people, label them, and, then attack the label. Pure Alinsky stuff...
In these debates, the evolutionists apply the "creationist" label to mean "young earth creationism." I suspect they believe it is easier to debate against YEC than any other kind of Creationism. LOLOL!
The liberals know that the one who controls the dictionary controls the debate. The unborn child is relentlessly called fetus. Homosexual behavior is relentlessly called gay. And so on.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!
Your friendly resident Christian chemist has posted something like this before -- but I guess once more won't hurt:
Man said, "Sure -- I can create life. First , you take some dirt..."
God said, "Wait a minute! First, you have to create the dirt."
I'm curious about the word here "random". If I remember correctly;
Science is deterministic - there are causes for events, we don't live in a random universe.
Secondly, random is a subjective quality - 6397204 may be a random number to you, but it's not to me. In other words, you cannot look at it or analyze it, and say objectively - that is random.
I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.
You tell me, will a system with higher energy have higher entropy?
Apparently not with the most famous member of the PCA.
Secondly, random is a subjective quality - 6397204 may be a random number to you, but it's not to me. In other words, you cannot look at it or analyze it, and say objectively - that is random.
I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.
You are right, every event has a cause, but what I meant by my use of the word 'random' was that there is no specific intent ("intelligent design," if you will) on the part of the forces that were involved in causing the referred event to occur (i.e., the series of DNA segments to combine / split off / alter). In other words, when you come across a plant in the crack on the middle of a wide road, did "intelligent design" cause the elements (the heat of the Sun, the rain, the snow, etc.) to produce a crack on the road of specific dimensions, that later allowed dirt to accumulate, just so that a seed could fall onto it and produce the plant from it? Or did 'randomness' have a part to play? It would be better to substitute 'randomness' with 'unintended consequences of natural forces,' perhaps.
>>Oh yes,
No. The kinetic energy stored in the ice atop mount Everest renders a reduction in the local systemic entropy relative to the water localized in the Indian Ocean. There is a measurable systemic differential.
That differential in entropy is what drives hydroelectric plants - and, again, helps make it possible for you to electronically disseminate your religionist drivel into the Real world.
It's funny that you assume that.
>>The kinetic energy stored
The POTENTIAL energy stored
Order comes from energy? Please give an example.
Doesn't "intent" lead to the same problem? It is impossible purely scientifically to measure or detect intent, isn't it? It's an error scientifically to say that physics intends for areas of differing electric charge "intends" to equalize their charge. They just do.
I see we are on the same page here in that what we're looking at is somewhat a teleological question, again outside pure scientific detection.
There are an almost infinite number of niches for life, yet not all occur "randomly".
In the only part of the universe we have been able to observe properly, life emerges from matter, intelligence emerges from life, consciousness emerges from intelligence.
Scientifically, this can only be correctly described using "random," that is the only explanation possible that science can assign; however, if both random and intent are subjective (or questions in the sphere of philosophy of science), are they at least possible given that because science cannot claim that what it cannot detect does not therefore exist.
Amen. Surely "Intelligent Design" foreordains whatsoever comes to pass.
Psalm 33:11. The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.
Isaiah 14:24. The LORD of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand:
Acts 2:23. Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:
Acts 17:28. for 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said,'For we are indeed his offspring.'
Ephesians 1:11-12. In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.
Except that IF we are to believe the WORD is God (John 1:1) it cannot be ignored that God made it a point to repeat what took place using those very specific WORDS in Isaiah 45 Now it is good to read the whole chapter, because here we have Cyrus, NOT of Israel, His anointed, 45:1.... I am not going to type the whole chapter but pick up in verse 16
They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of the: they shall go to confusion together that are makers of idols.
But Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end.
18 For thus saith the LORD That created the heavens; God Himself That formed the earth and made it: He hath established it, .... (Why) He created it NOT in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: "I am the LORD;
and there is none else.
19 I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth:
I said not unto the seed of Jacob, 'Seek ye ME in vain: I the LORD speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.
Just a tiny bit of research will demonstrate that Isaiah refers to the exact and specific words Moses used in Genesis 1:2.
God did not create this earth 'in vain' and Solomon wrote much on vain-ity, in Ecclesiastes.
Right. I’m smarter than he, and I don’t beg my friends to come and view my corpse being dissected. What an insufferable ego! His super ego got in the way of his wisdom, all in all. The set of all sets, so to say.
The problem, D-fendr, has been addressed in a humorous way by Stormer earlier, in post #221.
Can science "prove" that unicorns don't exist? Can science disprove Stormer's proclaimed belief concerning them? If it can't, then how can you, or anyone say that what Stormer 'believes' in is nonsense?
Besides, when you say that 'scientifically ... can only be correctly described using "random," that is the only explanation possible that science can assign,' what do you mean? My use of the word 'intent' was actually to show that there is no place for assigning 'intent' to the causes. How does intent even come into the explanation? I'd love to hear your explanation.
An interesting quote to consider:
"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?"
- Unweaving The Rainbow.
On the point of chance and your mention of our observation of the Universe around us - what percentage would you assign to the completeness of our search for extra-terrestrial life? Additionally, to put a mental picture in the mind of how probability can be daunting, consider a person who purchases a lottery ticket on a given day, and later ends up winning the jackpot. For him to have won the prize, he'd have had to have chosen one set out of millions, if not billions, of possible winning number combinations. Now this is up to the level of the ticket alone. Step back a little, and observe the forces and events that lead to the man to have chosen the specific sequence of numbers - things that went on in his mind at the time he bought the ticket - things that could have occurred due to chance happening whose probabilities of occurrence are dauntingly minute. Step back even more, and the person would have had to have been at the right place, at the right time, to choose to buy a ticket. Go back further, and a specific sequence of events would have had to occur, for that person to have elected to invest his money in a lottery ticket. Go further back into those events, and you'll see how its order was affected by 'chance happenings' determined both by the actions of that person, and those of others who influenced him, thus clubbing probabilities of every one of them, to make the total probability seem improbable. This is not even considering the odds of the man's parents having met and mated to produce him, having met at a particular time, in a particular place, and lived in a particular way - and all these probabilities make the odds of him winning the lottery so incredibly rare - and yet, people win lotteries all the time!
~~~~~~~~~~
Indeed. It is always more challenging to argue with an opponent who thinks.
Apparently, dealing with folks who both think and believe drives the denizens of both extremes right up the wall! LOL!!
If we can't be certain about the position or momentum of a particle within an atom, how can we be so certain about the origin and history of background radiation?
May I suggest you take a mind development course or some vitamins that improve mental functioning? I feel like I’m trying to discuss constructing a canned cat food factory with a hungry but fat lazy cat when our house is infested with rodents.
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