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."
I'm not "irate" with your objections.
Answer me this: Exactly how do you cope with the problem of the "subjective–objective" interface of human experience in this world, in such a way as to guarantee that you, yourself, are not in the grip of a total fantasy?
Or try this question: What is your definition of insanity?
By the way, I note with amusement the arrival of many dictionary definitions as if to circumvent my previous suggestion about not yielding the rules of engagement which include the control of the dictionary.
Sorry, there is a huge paradox, as the earlier comments illustrate.
Time is a dimension and there may be more than one dimension of time (Vafa, Wesson et al) just like there are at least three dimensions of space.
May be? Time is a scalar quantity.
Time and space are required for physical causality - not the other way around.
The first cause (the cause of a mathematical point of zero spatial dimensions which can then change giving rise to dimension time) cannot be physical.
God alone can be the uncaused cause of physical causation. The Creator is not physical, He is not a part of the creation.
Words and measures that we use to describe the beginning of creation - indeed, the creation itself - are themselves part of the creation - as we are - and cannot apply to the Creator of them.
I wrote:
The moment something changes what it was doing (or not doing) is the moment it ceases being changeless, and therefore ceases being timeless. The moment of creation is such a moment. For the created and the creator.
The problem is not merely that the creator changed after an act, but that the creator was never free from the bondage of time, in the first place. A change of state required to perform something at a finite moment renders the performer chained to the influence of time, both before and after the act was performed. Otherwise, change would not be possible. No change implies no finite moment of creation.
The paradox clearly exists unresolved by your attempted explanation.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!
Not to me it isn't. In the period commencing with the establishment of the Department of Education in the Carter Administration till now, American students have sunk from first to 22nd place in the standard tests of educational achievement that are administered internationally.
Your friend's insight that "the great discoveries in science are more often then not found by the 'outliers'" strikes me as spot-on. The problem is, nowadays some "outliers" may not be permitted to publish because their "science" does not conform to the orthodox model favored by their colleagues.
Peer review is supposed to weed out the nut cases — not to throttle free speech about potentially significant new scientific insights.
Thank you so much for sharing your excellent insights, wmfights!
The requirement to conform your thinking to the demands of those that claim "orthodoxy" has destroyed their credibility. Quality of thought and learning has declined because of this "group think" at the same time costs have gone through the ceiling. Now there is a growing awareness that a college degree is just not worth the cost. It's a destructive trend.
God is not thingly.
You are merely making definitional stop-gap “solutions” to avoid resolving the paradox.
See my earlier reply in detail, please.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!
"Evolution" by definition has no intention, no purpose or plan.
"Theistic" means there is a plan.
“... but this can only be possible if you allow the violation of the rule you mentioned at the beginning. That is, a creator cannot create without changing.” No, you set that limit, just like Dawkins tried to define the designer he was seeking to refute. Sorry, that is not what I set as the starting axiom. In fact, my starting axiom as a Christian is that The Creator does as He pleases, and He chose to Create time and space. That you nor I can conceive of Creating without temporal limits being yet created is why we Christians assert that the ultimate answers are unknowable to us in our present state.
Yet, you haven't refuted the paradox. You've only claimed that there is no paradox and then proceeded with dogmatic, definitional, terminology-based stop-gap "solutions" that only serve to attempt to hide the paradox, as your earlier reply reveals.
Change requires time. A creator has to change from its state of not doing something to its state of doing it, in order to create. Thus, creation requires time, and puts the creator i the realm of time. Thus, the creator isn’t a timeless entity.
This is a very simple argument, and should not strain anyone, to understand.
Your argument that a creator can do as it pleases is meaningless in this context, as it clearly cannot create change in its state without having time tracing the change in the state of the creator - which is something that you yourself implicitly agreed with, earlier, when you mentioned that change requires time.
You continue to try and define Creator as 'temporally limited'. I just don't accept that for it would make GOD The Creator dependent upon things. We who are within the limits of time and space can only create something using 'things'. The uncaused cause of the universe of limits is by my definition outside of the limits He creates.
Change is impossible without time. Even for a god.
Your argument that a creator can do as it pleases is meaningless in this context, as it clearly cannot create change in its state (you assertion/assumption posed as axiomatic to the definition you want to refute) without having time tracing the change in the state of the creator (you complete the circle so your mind does not have to contemplate the obverse)
I am not asserting The Creator has create change in His state, you are. And it is upon that horn that you hang the rest of your refutation. You nor I can conceive of an entire physical universe being created without diminishing --or if you prefer, changing-- the Creator of this 'thing'. But I offer that loving does not diminish one, though because the act of loving takes place in time and space it does change one. But The Creator is not in time and space as Creator. As Jesus, God is in time and space. As Holy Spirit, God is interacting with time and space. But you assume this means The Creator is changed when Creating, and it is with that very assertion that I differ: Change to you and me is a temporally limited quality, but The Creator Created the temporal limits from a 'position' outside of dimension time.
If you start with the assumption that a cause must have a cause or it is not nor ever has been, what are you immediately doing? ... You are setting the definitional limits using temporal qualification which you want to be in order to reject that which you do not want to accept.
You believe creation to have a finite origin. Agree?
If so, there was a moment when the said creation didn’t exist, followed by the period when the creation gets within the realms of existence. Note the transition.
If you claim a creator as the source, then this creator created at a particular moment. What does this imply? It implies that the creator’s existence experienced the following:
1. The portion until the moment of initiation of creation by the creator, in order to maintain the claim that creation had a finite origin.
2. The portion at the moment, and after the act of creation has been performed.
These are clear transitions that the creator will undergo simply by the process of causing a finite creation. In other words, a sharp transition has occurred in the state of the player (from not having done something, to having done it), to allow the change that makes possible the realisation of the act of creation.
Put simply, change requires time, as that is the nature of change in its elements.
The paradox clearly remains unresolved.
Your sentence implies a temporal series ... the 'before the moment of creation' is implied. Until God created Time, there is no such thing as that which you are assuming in order to define that which you don't want to acknowledge. The paradox is sourced in your own circular reasoning.
I've presented no "circular argument" here, and have explained my argument in detail, in my earlier reply.
The only acknowledgment that is yet to be made, is on your part in accepting that your "solution" has a paradoxical problem that it cannot resolve, and instead attempts to conceal, necessitating faith to "resolve" it.
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