Such a god will know the reason for his non-belief, as well. If not, that god isn't a real god.
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."
In one aspect. In another it is an answer to how anything can exist in the cause and effect universe we observe.
Existence applies only to the "created" or caused. It basically comes donw to UNcaused = NONexistent; caused = existent.
IF this is true, how can anything exist?
Existence applies only to the "created" or caused. It basically comes donw to UNcaused = NONexistent; caused = existent.
IF this is true, how can anything exist - without an uncaused first cause?
If it is not changeless than it's not eternal.
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
That's a hypothetical, free wiling assumption to "balance out" the equation. That's no different than a cosmologist saying there is "dark matter", there has to be, even though we don't know what it is or how to recognize it! But we need it to balance out our equation!
Guess what? maybe the equation is flawed!
Mendel’s laws explains limited and bounded variations.
IF macro-evolution occurs, bacterial organisms with the fastest reproduction rates should have the most variations and mutations. Natural selection would choose the most favorable changes thus allowing these organisms to dominate. Therefore, organisms that have evolved the most would have the shortest reproduction cycles and many offspring.
Also consider the fruit fly experiments with fast reproduction cycles and many grotesque and useless mutations imposed upon them. Yet when the experiments were stopped the fruit fly populations returned to ‘normal’ within a very few generations.
But the opposite appears where more complex organisms, such as humans, have fewer offspring and longer reproduction cycles yet number among the highest rates of variation.
Organisms in many diverse environments and greater numbers should, according to macro-evolution, have the greatest potential for evolving new features and species. And yet their population numbers are astronomical, their dispersed throughout every extreme environment, while their actual number of species and variation is relatively small.
Please do explain allmendream.
What makes you think the basis for all existence (space/time/energy) is not eternal? Why do they have to be created but God doesn't?
Quick move the goalposts before anyone notices you have no retort for my last reply...
I do hope and pray that this is the last I’ll entertain of your nonsensical ramblings. Where is logic dear kosta?
Jewish apostates rejected Jesus Christ in favor of the laws that they tried yet continually failed to keep. These laws were there simply to show us all that we can not acquire salvation through our own works. Sin and the laws are a dead-end.
Could you not have made it more apparent what believers are expected to do?
that you may do it ~ that is, preach the word of faith.
Well said, Robby. Produce the goods. We have an immense head start in that WE can actually observe life in action. We don’t have to start with random atoms aimlessly, successfully mingling, as naturalists insist is all that as necessary for life t begin! Bob
What did you hope to accomplish with your little non sequitur insult of ‘it’s not a conspiracy’?
I think it is, but not just because the First Cause argument is persuasive that it is.
Why do they have to be created but God doesn't?
Dependent existence is the universe as we observe and explain it. That's the first part. The second part (whatever you wish to call it) follows from logic - which explains why there is any first part at all.
IMHO, the second, logic part, has remained unscathed thus far and more successful objections tend to go after the first part.
Feel free to explain!
You throw a person out of "worship services" for no possible fault of his or hers, and then expect the same person to attain salvation. What then is the use of the said "worship services" or even the congregation if salvation can be attained outside of it? What use are congregations, or churches, even, in that case?
That's what philosophers and scientists engage in continually. Until they come up with something that explains or solves the equation. And they duel with equations, looking for errors in others and their own, leading to new out-of-balance or unexplained observations, and the process continues. It's how the fields of inquiry work, a major part of the process. Einstein's cosmological constant is an unusually interesting case study in this.
Guess what? maybe the equation is flawed!
And maybe the flaw is that it is flawed.
Either way, we have do more than assert there is an error in an explanation or argument, else we're just nay-saying, rather than engaging in discussion and rational argument.
I am reminded that thanks to the Hubbell, astronomers now have a lot more on their plate, and that the universe that Einstein knew as a young man, is not what they see now. Let us say he was Galileo and Newton was yet to come. The more they look, the more it seems as though the universe of 1900 was as a mole hill to a mountain range. The new Newton is yet to come.
Such a god will know the reason for his non-belief, as well. If not, that god isn't a real god.
Good point.
I’d only add that there is still the incongruence of large and small, searching for the TOE.
We are mostly discussing he very big here, discoveries on the very small could, likely will, impact them.
The new Aquinas is also yet to come.
:)
As you say, we do live in interesting times. And I am grateful for the opportunity to witness this shift in paradigm as the ramifications of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and Information Theory on the presuppositions of natural science are becoming clearer.
Thank you oh so very much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
I missed this reply, your 655. I’m going to be out this weekend, I’ll give it attention as soon as I can. Thank you.
Of course, I must share this classic:
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