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."
For the millionth time, there are no fossils of transitional species.
FWIW I was taught design evolution in engineering courses and studied physics in college. And logic in mathematics.
Of course we also were taught the old school “worship” of Darwin and his evolution in cell-based life and in fossil geology. I wasn’t until I took anthropology in college, that I realized what a crock “science” can be, and in the Physics Department up close I learned about fads and grant-chasing behavior in science. “Big Science.”
Only recently have I connected that grant-seeking behavior in academia to what economists have labeled “rent-seeking” behavior.
I have come to discover that I am and always have been, evidently strongly anti-rent seeking on a core philosophical level, at the same time I have learned that yes, there is a G-d, and we are beholden to him and are, in a deep sense of our lifetime on this earth — nothing more than rent-seeking.
Still, I appreciate that G-d made this world so that we can have some fondness and delight for making our own way, no matter how much of an illusion that all may be. And as illusions go it has a awful lot of frustration and aggravation in it.
In every moment the world, by G-d’s ever-immanence in it, we each individually experience is the best possible thing for each of us. That’s a useful even if taken only as a postulate, like the postulate that says all angles in triangle add up 180 degrees. It is far more than a postulate though, but by means of raw Bertrand Russell style logic that is all it can be.
Where does a man find the transcendental “Fear of G-d”? Perhaps only by looking inward, in his own being and soul, for I do not think it can be forced upon a man, not by any order forced upon him, of adherence to any stated doctrine, of even induced by logic.
It is, I think, “Fear of G-d” that makes the postulate of G-d — that first of of the Ten Commandments — alive to a man beyond mere acceptance as a postulate of a doctrine.
You can lead a Bertrand Russell to water (not easily, for a amazingly intelligence can be dwarfed by an ego) but you can’t make him drink. The water is only found in his own inner oasis.
Can science "prove" that unicorns don't exist?
MIsunderstands my point.
Intelligence, for example, exists. We're not trying to prove whether or not it exists. But whether it is a result of "randomness."
My point is that science cannot assign intent - it is by it's limits, blind to intent. It can say "nature abhors a vacuum" but that's not a purely scientific statement. It can say the universe does certain things but not that it intends to or was designed to.
This does NOT mean that the universe was designed - only that science by it's very good and solid limitations cannot say one way or the other.
Further, we cannot say that because science cannot speak to it, it therefore does not exist.
As to your second example: Yes, given enough tries, highly unlikely things occur statistically. (There are also clusters of highly-improbable occurances.)
I do not see how you can expand this to my point however. From our observances of the universe, where favorable conditions of matter exist, life occurs, where conditions for life are favorable, intelligence occurs, and the corollary for consciousness. This is what we observe.
To my major point again: Whether we see the latter emerging from the former, or whether we see the whole as a process favoring the latter is purely determined by our viewpoint.
The observable facts are the same; there is no scientific violation by either view. Yet viewpoint is not something subject to science.
No, it’s not immaterial to the discussion.
You’ve already demonstrated a deficiency in your ability to debate the issue and your understanding of science and scientific terms.
I’ve found that most die hard evos do not possess a degree or training in evolution. For most of them it’s either a hobby or an ideological issue.
OTOH, I’ve found that a great many on the non-evo side of the debate possess degrees in the sciences, with a significant number of them being advanced degrees in the biological or chemical sciences.
We can't even put our finger on why Pioneer seems to be out of position.
No, it’s not immaterial to the discussion.
Yes, it is. Whether I tell you about my degrees or not has no bearing on this discussion, no matter what you think.
You’ve already demonstrated a deficiency in your ability to debate the issue and your understanding of science and scientific terms.
LOL, I have?!! Hahaha! Do you always convince yourself by a process of repeated self-projection? It's abundantly clear how I've debated and who's had to modify their preconceptions, from a cursory examination of the whole thread, at length. The ignorance of some on the precondition of energy isolation required for applying the Second Law was particulary amazing to witness. So too was their insufficient grasp of what a system under consideration comprises of.
This is what I had said:
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, for application, requires the condition that the there exist a containment of energy within the system. The Earth, however, receives trillions of megajoules of energy from the Sun and other sources, and hence, the application of the Second Law requires careful consideration of this fact. Things can go from disorder to order, within a system (the Earth) when energy is input into the system.
To which you replied:
But not spontaneously. Work must be done for that to be accomplished.
Suspecting that like some of the others, you too might not know what you're talking about, I asked for a simple clarification: Define 'work' and the context you are using it in. To which you replied: You have to ask? To which I replied: Yes. To which you replied: Do you really need someone to hold your hand through this? To which I replied: Yes. Specifically, I need you to explain your specific use of those terms. Why the hesitation? And you went on to ask:
Are you an scientist by education or training? I’ve found that most die hard evos do not possess a degree or training in evolution. For most of them it’s either a hobby or an ideological issue. OTOH, I’ve found that a great many on the non-evo side of the debate possess degrees in the sciences, with a significant number of them being advanced degrees in the biological or chemical sciences. Very cute, but it still is irrelevant when it comes to answering what was asked of you. Please go back and try again and produce a proper answer.
Are you an evolutionist by education or training?
As you and everyone else can see, it's quite evident who over here is trying to avoid answering what was asked of them, and instead persisted and continues to persist in meaningless ramble that will get the debate nowhere.
I think, at least it appears so, that we are in agreement with each other on most of what was discussed between us. The only problem I can see is in defining what ‘randomness’ is, and both of us share even that.
Still not a good reason to introduce a God of the Gaps.
or why the Crab Nebulae is dimming http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/53534-crab-nebula-shoicks-scientists-by-dimming
If you can’t even answer a couple easy questions like, “What were we talking about?” and “What branch of science does it entail?”, then obviously the conversation is way above your pay grade.
You’ll never convince anyone of your scientific prowess when you can’t manage that much, except maybe your fellow evos who also do not have degrees in science.
LOL, back at the old game of answer-avoidance, I see.
My previous reply to you states why I want you to answer that question I had asked you earlier.
Keep ignoring it and attempting to distract those who are following the thread here, but you fool no one. The spotlight is brightly shining on you.
Now go back and read this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2657994/posts?page=286#286
When you have a specific, relevant answer to what was asked, do send out a ping. If you want to continue your game of tail-chasing, feel free to ping yourself.
No, you’re doing the answer avoidance. It started with trying to go off topic.
You wanted definitions. You didn’t even know what I was talking about. How are definitions going to help?
LOL. See #286.
You didn’t even know what I was talking about. How are definitions going to help?
Re-read what I wrote earlier, specifically the line after your quote in #286:
"But not spontaneously. Work must be done for that to be accomplished."
Unless you clarify what you mean by these two sentences in the context of what I had posted, there is no point in furthering the discussion with you.
Why are you so hesitant to elaborate on your own words? LOL.
*In the beginning....*
Is that wrong? Wasn’t there a beginning?
Speaking of unanswered questions.....
Still thinking on that one?
It's not hard. Nor a trick question. A simple "Yes" or "No" will do.
I'm not sure I approve of Mohler's tactics here. It seems there are many undisclosed presuppositions at work. Better they were disclosed.
At the same time, at the surface level of the problem, I find his description excellent.
Please keep me posted on developments!
He did answer that order is subjective. OTH, “order” in the Boltzmann, entrophy, sense is achieved when everything is as close to absolute zero as can be.
Too-smart-for-their-brain-pan-people ALWAYS confuse “order” in the SPIRITUAL sense of measure with order in the physical sense. How do we know that? Because they claim that adding energy can allow more ordered states to be achieved by the “magic” of evolution.
We ALL perceive spiritual order — we call it Beauty, Truth, Wisdom, Grace, etc. We know it when we see it!
Physical “order”, beyond the lowest energy sense, where everything is still, Death-like, is a matter of picking subjectively one state or a set of states of a dynamic system and calling them arbitrarily “order”, and other states “disorder”. In that case, WHO does the picking?
The too-brights magically ignore the who part of that. There is ALWAYS an observer just in order to have a system! But the observer is not in the system.
The set of all things not in the set, so to say.
Beauty is subjective, wouldn’t you say so?
And what is your pay grade, mm? What qualifications do you have?
I remember, not so long ago, I asked you a very simple and straight forward question: what is God and you never answered it. Do you know what God is? If you do, don't holdback.
So why are you chastising JCB for the same thing? What does the Bible say about that...something about a log in your eye...?
Sure. In the eye of a beholder, as they say. :) What some people consider "beauty" I wouldn't come near even if they paid me.
Romans used to have a saying de gustibus no est dispitandum, i.e. there is no arguing over taste. Flies do what they do, and eat what they eat. Who's going to tell billions of flies what to eat!?!
But I really like bvw's observation, to wit We ALL perceive spiritual order — we call it Beauty, Truth, Wisdom, Grace, etc. We know it when we see it!
Wow, bvw, what were you thinking when you wrote those words? What does Wisdom look like?
LOL, and now you know why I put that comment to you, there!
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