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."
Even the highest figure of the entire genome (a much larger set of data, as only about 3% of the genome is genetic DNA) is 10% if you “score” deletions and insertions differently; I gave the figure as 6%.
Why would there have to be so many different species to explain such a trifling difference in DNA?
The observed rate of change within the species more than explains the observed difference, if there is indeed six million years separating the two (TWO distinct populations, not thousands) species.
I have.
A closed universe would accommodate a repeat cycle; however, it still leaves the gap at the beginning of the cycle, singularity, no time/space, as well as the metaphysical gap of the cause of the cycle.
We're on the edges here of both physics and human conceptual capacity. Greater minds than ours struggle to even fathom the possibilities.
Science was against the germ origin of disease no more than 200 years ago. The idea that anything exists outside of out galaxy was not a fact until the 20th century when Hubble resolved the Andromeda Galaxy into individual stars with the 200-inch Palomar Telescope. Big Bang theory as been around for a short time (1960's), relatively speaking, and has undergone several revisions already. At least science, unlike religion, doesn't claim it has a definite answer, simply because it lacks proof, and having "spiritual" eyes simply doesn't cut it.
Agreed.
There is an even simpler means of imagining the problem: If the Universe began from a point, what was it expanding into?
This, in itself reflects the problems of attempting to accommodate a finite universe in an infinite ‘volume’.
Typical liberal whine ... you insult others then whine when someone tosses a put down your way. You will have a nice day, won’t you? Are you so fragile ...
Someone pointed out that every age thought they had a pretty good handle on things, only to have it overturned.
Asimov used the shape of the Earth as an example of the refinement of the scientific method.
If your model is that the Earth is flat, you are only off IIRC some 8 inches per mile. It is a pretty good model! The refinement of the model that it was round was a big philosophical leap, but it is well supported by what we know know about the universe (nothing as large as the Earth can be any other shape than a (roughly) sphere).
And the refinement of the model that it was a perfect sphere has been discarded for the more accurate model that it is a lopsided sphere.
Each refinement of the model led to a more accurate assessment of the reality, and thus to more accurate prediction.
That's progress.
however, it still leaves the gap at the beginning of the cycle, singularity, no time/space, as well as the metaphysical gap of the cause of the cycle.
But the same "gap" afflicts the notion of a god. If you can assume an eternal (no beginning and no end) god, why not eternal (no beginning, no end) recycling universe?
If your god has no creator, why does the universe?
We're on the edges here of both physics and human conceptual capacity.
Thank you. So, let's just acknowledge the world exists and do the best we can to make it as pleasant as possible. Just as the ants in my back stand no rela chance to figure out why the yard exists or who I am, or why I am in the yard occasionally trying to kill them while at other time ignore them, and just as they are unlikely to know they live in a North American continent, which is part of larger reality called earth, circling around the Sun, in a galaxy called the Milky Way, a member of a group of local galaxies, in an endless space filled with innumerable galaxies, they are best off just being ants!
Or as Taoism says: "the world is the way it is even if we don't understand it." Deal it with without imaginary gods in the sky. I think the hardest thing for humans is to admit that their reasoning capacity and physical limitations simply prevent us from knowing and understanding everything there is to know and understand. It's an insults to our ego, since we declared that we are an image an likeness of God, a god-like creature.
Man's got to know his limitations.
And my Bride of (then) three years (for whom I carried the backpack on the Fujiyama climb) and I enjoyed reminiscing about our adventure.
Indeed -- thanks to you! I enjoyed the "trip"! '-)
But the same "gap" afflicts the notion of a god.
I don't believe the notion of a god enters into our discussion here. I'm discussing the question of the creation of space/time/causality and the argument that it requires a first cause outside space/time. Thus far, I've referred to it as "first cause" and "it." Within my limited capacity I envision it as a principle or law, much like physics only larger, encompassing physics, meta. Metaphysical.
If you can assume an eternal (no beginning and no end) god, why not eternal (no beginning, no end) recycling universe?
Leaving names aside, you still have the gap. Taking the current most accepted scientific model as an example, you have the Big Bang beginning, we are now after the beginning, and we're theorizing what happens next - in space/time. Under the cycle theory, we have a collapse of space/time, no space/time, then another Big Bang - another creation of space/time. Rinse and repeat.
In short we have space/time now. It exists, we exist in space/time, not eternal (outside time). There is a gap between this universe and eternal. Postulating a never-ending cycle is different than postulating eternal, they are not equal concepts. For one thing never-ending still has a beginning.
If your god has no creator, why does the universe?
Again, the argument is that the existence of space/time requires something outside space time. The First Cause argument states this in terms of causality. We can conflate time and causality (as we have often on this thread), and say the corollary: the existence of causality requires something uncaused (call it what you wish.)
This is a nutshell version of the argument.
So, let's just acknowledge the world exists and do the best we can to make it as pleasant as possible.
Now where's the fun in that? :)
"the world is the way it is even if we don't understand it."
Now why would an ant even contemplate this much?
Deal with it without imaginary gods in the sky.
I'm with you there, but I have a great deal of respect and value for the area of knowledge examined by philosophy and religion, Taoism for one example. :)
I think the hardest thing for humans is to admit that their reasoning capacity and physical limitations simply prevent us from knowing and understanding everything there is to know and understand.
Absolutely agree, but for that negative, there's the positive results of seeking, and occasionally finding, knowledge.
It's an insults to our ego, since we declared that we are an image an likeness of God, a god-like creature.
There are also downsides to reductionism and relativism.
Describe the “observed” change.
To establish evolution as fact necessarily requires a detailed description of the intermediate species, including a description of the corresponding changes in both phenotype and genotype.
This sort of documentation—required for scientific validity—has never been done, for any evolutionary process.
Not even for a single one of these supposed transitions.
The observed rate of change from adult to child is the average amount of mutations per 1000 base pairs of DNA. That is the “observed” change.
It is more than enough to explain the difference in human and chimp DNA (2% genetic 6-10% genomic), if we had a most recent common ancestor some six million years ago.
One need not have all the pieces of the puzzle to see the pattern. That is the very nature of the scientific method and its beauty.
What do we see some 3 million years ago in the fossil record?
Something about what you would expect from a creature that shared a recent common ancestor with chimps only three million years before.
Lucy.
The change from adult to child is not an evolutionary change.
Please understand this. Back to square one. (We need at least a single piece of the puzzle—just one will do for starters.)
Fossils from 3 million years ago suggest discrete species, separated by immense gaps in genetic information. If evolution were true, these gaps would not be there.
If you even understood the first thing about evolution you would understand that.
Fossils from 3 million years ago suggest discrete species, just one that HAPPENS to look like what you would expect a human to look like that had only half as much distance from a common ancestor as a human.
If the evolutionary model were an accurate predictor of reality, then that is exactly what you would expect from fossils 3 million years ago. And there they are.
Just as when they looked for a shoreline around the time tetrapods were evolving, darned if they didn't find a “transitional” that looked like half a fish and half a salamander.
God is not a hypothesis. He lives. His Name is I AM. I’ve known Him for a half century and counting.
On the second point, space, time and causality are part of the creation not properties of – or restrictions on – the Creator of them.
Indeed, any being coming into existence subsequent to the existence of space/time and physical causality could not be The Creator, Alpha, El Shaddai (God Almighty), I AM, YHwH (He IS) which is also translated to The Lord.
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether [they be] thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all [things] he might have the preeminence. For it pleased [the Father] that in him should all fulness dwell; And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, [I say], whether [they be] things in earth, or things in heaven.– Colossians 1:15-20
That no physical cosmology (big bang/inflationary model, cyclic, imaginary time, multi-verse, ekpyrotic, etc.) can explain the beginning of real time is considered the great weakness of them all. All such physical cosmologies presuppose space, time and physical causality even though we know space/time does not pre-exist and yet must exist before there can be physical causality.
The exercise in post 363 is as simple as I can make it and still illustrate that the beginning of space/time and therefore physical causality requires an uncaused cause.
On the third point, the Hebraism in Genesis 2:17, the repetition of the word means that Adam was cursed with more death than a simple “lights out” physical death.
And concerning the curse being “in the day” and Adam living over nine hundred years, I refer you back to my post 317. To the Jews, early Christians and to me, the repeated statement that a day to God is equal to a thousand years to man is not a vague reference. It is literal, as evidenced by the curse and how long Adam lived, and has to do with prophecy.
But Spiritual truth cannot be discerned by a natural man.
You said we can see “Wisdom”. What does “Wisdom” look like?
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