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."
To use the language “why would a bacteria want such and such genetic mechanism for a survival advantage” is to accept the premise that evolutionary forces are running things.
It should be clear by now that I don’t accept this premise.
Genetic error is disorder, thus entropic.
How can he not blindly accept that which is uncertain?! What nerve! Can you understand that???
The “myth” has been observed. Just like Australopithocine, ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
What are the real world observations that would preclude the accumulation of a 100% difference in noncoding DNA given enough time? Functional constraints would, of course, limit the amount of change tolerated in genetic DNA.
You haven't even explained what would preclude the accumulation of the KNOWN amount of difference, some 2% genetic and 6% genomic, that has theoretically accumulated between humans and apes over some seven million years.
What would preclude two separate populations of the same species from accumulating enough differences in DNA over time that they could no longer reproduce between groups after sufficient time and the accompanying INEVITABLE change in DNA?
Isn't this merely placing a stop-gap pseudo-solution only to avoid the conceptualisation of a physical infinity? I find it more problematic, especially when we can already imagine infinity in a very physical sense - the volume of the Universe, for example. It's not merely large, it's infinite. For another perspective, what's containing the Universe?
A causer also needs causing. "Avoiding" an answer to that by definitional "solutions" creates more problems than it answers, even if it can pretend to be a solution.
One doesn’t have to accept the premise that evolutionary “forces” are “running things” to see that...
1) bacteria have a gene for error prone DNA polymerase in addition to their high fidelity DNA polymerase.
2) this gene is expressed when the bacteria experience stress.
3) the result of its expression is an increase in changes in DNA during stress.
Now the power of scientific theory is that it provides explanation.
You say that to explain it you would have to “accept the premise”; so I guess no explanation will EVER be forthcoming.
Once again you demonstrate how Creationism is useless as an explanatory model.
Why does a bacteria have an error prone DNA polymerase that it expresses during times of high stress?
‘No idea. Don’t want to know. Not interested in accepting the premise that would make it understandable. Would go completely against my previous statements that mutation doesn’t lead to higher functionality’
This still has the premise that "everything that exists needs a cause." If you take this premise, all you have are dependent causes - the infinite regress, and the result that nothing exists because the "cause" buck is passed on infinitely. Turtles all the way down.
The first cause argument does NOT use this premise, therefore it's not violating itself by having something exist that is uncaused. In the First Cause argument everything in motion needs a cause, everything dependent, changing, in time, imperfect needs a cause. This set includes everything we sense in the universe, everything in space time.
The First Cause is not in motion, independent, outside time, perfect and unchanging. Therefore it is not in the set of that which needs a cause.
Looking at it strictly logically:
Assuming everything must have a cause as a premise, results in nothing existing (all dependent causes lacking the necessary independent cause). The first cause argument avoids this obvious failure.
Can anything change anything else, without itself changing its changeless state?
Second, if you are emphasizing that everything for everything that exists there must be a time when it didn't exist, then we're back at the "eternal = outside time" point where "time" and "when" and "before" etc. are meaningless.
All of this fits together. In order to explain why anything exists, X must be true; if X is not true, nothing exists.
Acquinas developed four variations of his basic argument and they've lasted as a standard to test against. They're pretty tight.
The key phrase there is ‘assembly of the Lord’ ~ does not equate to heaven in my study Bible rather worship services or an exulted office/position back in Moses day.
You can simply pray the prayer of salvation (see Romans 10:8-10) or you can continue to act as experts trying to trip up true believers but you can’t have it both ways. Choose ye this day who you will serve.
IF it was changeless, it would, therefore, not change, else it wasn't really in a changeless state.
In more general terms in the argument, the first cause is independent (in all senses of the word); everything we know in the universe is dependent - it requires something else in order to come into existence.
Simply by continuing to read what the Bible says in regards to this baby.
Nihilist? Which definition, pray tell?
nihilism [my emphasis added]
1. total rejection of established laws and institutions.
2. anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.
3. total and absolute destructiveness, esp. toward the world at large and including oneself: the power-mad nihilism that marked Hitler's last years.
4. Philosophy .
a. an extreme form of skepticism: the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.
b. nothingness or nonexistence.
5. ( sometimes initial capital letter ) the principles of a Russian revolutionary group, active in the latter half of the 19th century, holding that existing social and political institutions must be destroyed in order to clear the way for a new state of society and employing extreme measures, including terrorism and assassination.
6. annihilation of the self, or the individual consciousness, esp. as an aspect of mystical experience.
Synonyms:
Notwithstanding that you reject "testimony" in principle?
I tend to think of those examples as opinions. Three is a difference, I am sure you understand.
Good grief, dear kosta; but you must be dreaming. Either that, or grossly (and grotesquely) misrepresenting what these men were saying.
You are such pleasure, betty boop.
grotesque
You are outdoing yourself, bb.
I venture to say that her point is, you love playing contrarian. Christopher Hitchens does too. Can you match his intellect? ... Will it amount to a tinkers dime if you’re wrong and God really does exist, Is Creator, and knows whom you are, intimately? We’re trying to share with you that it will infact be very important. Whereas, if you’re right, not a tinker would give you change for nothing.
We can just as easily than presume that space/time/energy ("chaos" if you will) is the UNcasued cause that collapses and inflates over and over ad infinitum.
The First Cause is not in motion, independent, outside time, perfect and unchanging.
Then what is "Let there be light!"? That "unchanging" First Cause has just changed!
The first cause it to bring something into existence before it can cause it to move, so that everything that we say "is" or "exists" had to be caused to exist. Therefore the first cause cannot exist, cannot "be".
But they must avoid it while proposing "definitional" solutions; otherwise they have to conclude that the very cornerstone of their faith does not exist.
“when two different lines that formerly could reproduce fertile offspring can no longer do so”
This is not an observation, but a speculation. Speciation remains a myth.
“What would preclude two separate populations of the same species from accumulating enough differences in DNA over time that they could no longer reproduce between groups after sufficient time and the accompanying INEVITABLE change in DNA?”
Answer: the fact that genetic changes do not result in additional morphology.
His arguments are a stop-gap answer to infinite regress.
All of this fits together. In order to explain why anything exists, X must be true; if X is not true, nothing exists.
This is the problem with Aquinases "tight" argument. We know we exist, but we don;t know that the Uncaused cause does. If we had to be brought into existence by an UNcaused cause, then that cause does not exist in the sense of the word. Existence applies only to the "created" or caused. It basically comes donw to UNcaused = NONexistent; caused = existent.
Deut 30:12-14 is the basis of the Jewish belief in works based salvation. Romans 10-8 is Paul's alteration of the Deuteronomy 30:14 to promote his agenda, even though the Bible prohibits adding words to the scripture. This is nicely illustrated in this article by Rabbi Tovia Singer
Employing unparalleled literary manipulation, however, Paul manages to conceal this vexing theological problem with a swipe of his well-worn eraser. In fact, Paul's innovative approach to biblical tampering was so remarkable that it would set the standard of scriptural revisionism for future New Testament authors.
A classic example of this biblical revisionism can be found in Romans 10:8 where Paul announces to his readers that he is quoting directly from scripture as he records the words of Deuteronomy 30:14. Yet as he approaches the last portion of this verse, he carefully stops short of the Torah's vital conclusion and expunges the remaining segment of this crucial verse. In Romans 10:8 Paul writes,But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith which we preach).
Predictably, the last words of Deuteronomy 30:14, "that you may do it," were meticulously deleted by Paul. Bear in mind that he had good reason for removing this clause -- the powerful message contained in these closing words rendered all that Paul was preaching as heresy.
This stunning misquote in Romans stands out as a remarkable illustration of Paul's ability to shape scriptures in order to create the illusion that his theological message conformed to the principles of the Torah. By removing the final segment of this verse, Paul succeeded in convincing his largely gentile readers that his Christian teachings were supported by the principles of the Hebrew Bible.
Deuteronomy 30:14
Romans 10:8
But the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.
But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith which we preach).
The question that immediately comes to mind is: How can Paul deliberately remove a vital clause from Moses' message and still expect to gain a following among the Jewish people? While considering this question, we can begin to understand why Paul attained great success among his gentile audiences and utterly failed among the Jews who were unimpressed with his contrived message.
It is for this reason that although both Paul and Matthew quoted extensively from the Jewish scriptures, they achieved a very different result. Paul was largely a minister to gentile audiences who were ignorant of the Jewish Bible (the only Bible in existence at the time). As a result, they did not possess the skills necessary to discern between genuine Judaism and Bible tampering. These illiterate masses were, as a result, vulnerable, and eagerly consumed everything that Paul taught them. In fact, throughout the New Testament it was exclusively the Jewish apostates to Christianity who challenged Paul's authority, never the gentile community.
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