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."
And you carried her pack? Man, that's love - and youth.
I'm planning on taking my first cruise this spring - I think that makes me officially a senior citizen. (And I don't have to carry her pack!)
Nicely Done, Dear Sister in Christ!!
And thank you for your superb testimony!
Must have worked. Do the math -- this year, it adds up to 50... ;-)
Why does it require it? Is there a possibility that extant cosmological models could be wrong? Look at the Potlemaic system of navigation. It still works because it's based on the scientific method, but it's based on a defunct assumption that the Sun orbits the earth. The point being that just because it works it doesn't have to be true.
Cosmological theories have been radically revised since the Big Bang precisely because evidence gathered does not fit the theory, so new "degrees of freedom" are added (dark energy, dark matter, string theory, inflation theory, etc.) to balance out the equation.
Yet, modern cosmology is as much of an egotistic duel of dysfunctional individuals as it is a tragy-comic, budget-busting, version of Academic Never Never Land. Ask any of the esteemed nerds who get hefty salaries for playing with super expensive equipment, and they will tell you that while "dark matter" is an absolute requirement, no one knows what it is or how to find it.
At the end of the 20th century, the same class of scientists insisted that there must be spacial "eter" because the notion of radiomagnetic energy propagating in a vacuum was deemed "impossible." Of course, that was eventually dropped—and forgotten.
It is nto an exaggeration when I say that 21st century cosmologists don't even know what they are looking for! Yet they know it "must" be there—to balance the formula, simply because they believe their equations are true.
I have done a lot of work in theoretical optics, and I know that when I needed something I would add as many degree of freedom as I needed to get the desired result, and voila! The fact that my "perfect" optical system could not be made in the shop is another matter! I solved it on paper, so it "must" be true!
The same can be said of surface accuracies for testing equipment, and trusting numbers. The Hubble Space telescope (HST) was a perfect example of trusting numbers, and insisting that just because my working model says the HCT is good to go doesn't mean it's good to go. One hundred million dollars later, a nerd-driven project turned out to have an undercorrection any amateur telescope maker could have detected!
Likewise, today's astrophysicists have no clue why the universe is not slowing down as it should, according to their model. Well, maybe the model is flawed, and they have been prisoners of the quantum and relativity theories for almost a century and can't think outside the box!
So, I am not just a theological skeptic, but a skeptic of human nature. After all, theology is something man-made just as cosmology is. So when you say that time/space had to be created because (supposedly) they didn't exist, that's a theory. We don't know that.
Using the existing, popular working models, that's what our quantum physicists are saying, but there is nothing to preclude another Penzias & Wilson to make a remarkable discovery that will throw the whole thing into the trash bin just as the Steady State Theory was dumped like a hot potato.
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.
Perhaps our language is not capable of expressing some concepts, but when I define "eternal" as without a beginning or end, which is an acceptable definition, that's what I mean by it. If we can accept that something we call "deity" has no beginning and no end, why not space and time?
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.)
That is what I mean by being stuck in the box. It doesn't require it. Time/space can exists without beginning or end, uncaused, just as a presumed deity can be imagined to exist without cause. How do we know the Creator was not caused? If we substitute god/deity with A and Space/Time as B, we can't say one is without cause and the other requires it based on logic alone.
Now why would an ant even contemplate this much?
This much? Compared to ants on earth, we are much smaller to the known Universe, but our presumptions are much, much more grandiose.
there's the positive results of seeking, and occasionally finding, knowledge.
Seeking for the betterment is fine, as long as we keep in mind that we don't know or understand everything.
There are also downsides to reductionism and relativism
To anything man-made.
Why does it require it? (first cause, outside..)
To avoid the problem of infinite regress.
And I will never yield to your assertion that something is a fact simply because you believe it is.
God is not a hypothesis. He lives.
Prove it.
I’ve known Him for a half century and counting.
That proves nothing.
On the second point, space, time and causality are part of the creation not properties of – or restrictions on – the Creator of them.
No one knows that for sure. Your assertion is based on a theory.
The measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation from the 1960s forward all accrue to the same point: that the universe is expanding.
When, according to the same theory it should be slowing down.
That means that there was a beginning of real space and real time, that space/time does not pre-exist but is created as the universe expands. “In the beginning, God created…”
No, it simply suggests that there was an event, not the "beginning". Again, the rest is clouded in various (ever-emerging) theories.
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.
Invoking an imaginary creator is a weakness in itself known as the god-of-gaps.
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.
How do you know the "uncaused" cause was uncaused?
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.
No, it simply means that Adam became mortal. For example, fwiw, in its Genesis 2:35-36, the Pseudo-Jonathan Targum quotes Gen 2:17 as “on the day which you eat of it you shall incur the death-penalty.”
And concerning the curse being “in the day” and Adam living over nine hundred years...It is literal, as evidenced by the curse and how long Adam lived, and has to do with prophecy.
Adam did not live 1,000 years.
That was, I believe, the argument of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is not without a flaw because it relies on unwarranted assumpton that deity is not subject to regression.
The question is: is there the "ultimate refinement", that is—can mankind know and understand everything? The answer is clearly No. Thus our knowledge is inherently deficient and incomplete, and our conclusions are not absolute truth.
Our working models are intended to make our lives more comfortable, safer, etc. They do not even have to based on true assumptions as long as they achieve their intended purposes.
[Obviously, these cyclical changes are assumed by projecting observations backward]
And the projections just coinkidinkly line up with the observed information stored in ice cores.
So now you’re willing to admit that a molecule of Ice atop Mt Everest has lower entropy and higher potential energy than a molecule of water in the Indian Ocean? Yes or No?
And without energy from the sun, evolution is not possible. So solar nuclear activity is part of evolution? (It starts getting absurd when we extend and twist definitions.)
No, individual development is not part of “the central dogma of molecular biology.” It’s not evolutionary change.
Further, if evolution were true, transitional species would vastly outnumber currently known species.
There is no record of these intermediate species.
you: And I will never yield to your assertion that something is a fact simply because you believe it is.
On the last point, the Targum is not translation but interpretation. The interpretation of men is interesting but not determinative to me.
But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him. - I John 2:27
That is a beautiful and fully rational testimony, Sister Alamo-Girl.
Moreover, since spiritual truth can only be spiritually discerned, then there is no way that kosta50 can follow your rationale.
John 3:3 In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."1 Corinthians 2:14 The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
While some might find this a cute rhetorical device designed to shut off discussion, it is really not. A physicist discussing inflationary theory with a mentally challenged man has his work cut out for him trying to bridge the intelligence gap. Likewise, Christians must communicate across the "dead spirit" gap, and it seems only possible when God chooses to open the heart of the listener.
Kosta has not had his heart opened, evidently. It is possible that he simply isn't one of the elect or that his time has yet to come. He does seem to have an interest in the things of God, given his constant debating on the religion forum over things he does not believe, so perhaps that is a hopeful sign.
As I look out the window, a very fine snow is falling on our Ohio River Valley region. It is such a symbol of purity, newfallen as it is. The new birth, Kosta. You must be born again from above by God's Spirit.
You're still projecting backward into assumed, unobserved time frames. You don't really know whether they even exist, you're assuming that. If you want to believe it based on coinkidinks, that's up to you.
That is the very essence of evolution, something it is increasingly obvious you don't even have a rudimentary understanding of.
Natural selection acts upon genetic variation. Genetic variation in a population is created due to imperfect replication of DNA between parent and child.
The central dogma of molecular biology is that genetic DNA is transcribed into RNA that is translated into a chain of amino acids (a protein) that performs a function. Now that I explained THAT to you, perhaps you can explain to me why you thought it was relevant to the discussion?
Every species is a “transitional” from what came before to what will come after.
There are records after records of these “transitionals”, I have already mentioned two different ones.
Do you think if you put your fingers firmly enough in your ears close your eyes and chant “NAH NAH NAH” the examples will cease to exist?
Dear Mr. Bill. I never said that the entropy of snow and ice on Mt Everest was higher than water at sea level. Why do you misrepresent me so?
As for 'potential energy'? My point was regarding heat energy.
Apparently you believe that 'potential' energy gets you plants through evolution, since that is where all this started. So tell me, how does 'potential energy' get you to plants via evolution?
Borhs model of the atom could be completely off base and be replaced by a model that is the exact opposite, IF that model led to better predictability.
Which would not be saying Borhs model was “wrong” or “useless”; it was more correct than anything that had gone before and great practical use was made of it.
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