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 are not?
Belief in God is the lesser of two absurdities, humaly thinking Why?
The fact that there was no beginning is ncomprehensible, yet of necessiy it must be
But the idea that God is without beginning and without end is comprehensible!? Why?
Where would bees be without their hives? How does a spider live without a *pre-existing* ability to spin webs? I think that your belief that some undirected evolutionary process begat such marvels is suspect, to say the very least. Bob
This is a typical god-of-tha-gaps approach: if we can't explain something (knowledge gap), the answer is God did it! Inability to epxlian something (yet) doesn't prove God did it.
The only difference between the two gaps is that one (naturalistic) will tend to seek the answer, while the other will not. The former favors progress; the latter doesn't. Would you rather submit to medical science (imperfect as it may be) or have some shaman/priest/voodoo doctor etc. chase the "demons" out of your body? Would you rather fly than simply accept that "God didn't intend for us to fly; else he would have given us wings."
At this post I say that you have summed up God’s Will very profoundly.
The order of Hell must be addressed.
Space/time itself is expanding.
Thank you so very much for sharing your insights, and thank you for your encouragements!
.....”For all these years, the theologians have been closer to understanding reality than any other knowledge discipline”.......
As Jastrow said:
.....”At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greated by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries”...... - God and the Astronomers page 107.
God’s Name is I AM.
Now that quote is simply wonderful. Thanks
Take your time and take days if need be. I have been trying to understand the Salvation of the Old Testament and those that Christ set free. I am trying to understand how GOD is dealing with us now and just what to expect next. GOD Bless You.
Hot stove top. :)
Or try this question: What is your definition of insanity?
A way for lawyers to get someone guilty as heck off the hook.
Are you saying that the First Cause is a material cause?
One more reason to be nice to agnostics like he was.
And your point is? Well, never mind.
HAHAHA! The same old "out of context" excuse. As if a "context" would have made the slaughter of innocent children, and the snuffing out of an innocent life for the fault of another, more "moral".
BrandtMichaels, if you have an explanation as to how the child attained "salvation", feel free to provide it. I don't see it but you say you do, so why the hesitation?
Very simple. Can you think of an entity that is doing nothing AND doing everything at the same moment, simultaneously? If you cannot, that shatters your argument that your deity of choice is "timeless" and "changeless". I hope you can now understand the consequences of removing time from acting upon an entity that causes change.
Could you elaborate, please?
Ah! the old "centrism trap"! Even our resident Yabbut seems unable to escape the assumption that he and his universe are all that is.
By what authority or logic do you claim that this is the only created universe, and that God did not create others before and after He created ours?
To me God is changeless in His nature -- not in his choices of what He does. Or are you so omnipotent as to claim otherwise?
One “senses that” if they are far far from academic scientists, and near to those who revile their work and disparage them as the enemies of the faith.
Most academic scientists in the U.S.A. are people of faith.
Belief in an orderly universe created by God, a universe that is understandable and predictable to mankind, has been one of the reasons why the sciences have advanced so much under the tutelage of Christian or Jewish theology.
Long term, a populations morphology is ONLY changed by changes in the DNA code. Feral pigs and domestic pigs are not the same, and it was not directly their environment that causes them to be different - but the effect the environment had on the favorability of DNA variations.
A wild pig raised in domestic circumstances looks like a wild pig and a domestic pig raised in the wild looks like a (skinny) domestic pig.
So I repeat (to those of you in Rio Linda)...
“Genetic changes within a population are the only thing that DO result in changes in morphology of a population.”
WRONG. I am not saying the changes will be predetermined and spell out Shakespeare; I am saying that change in DNA is inevitable. You insist there is something that is going to preclude this change, but you don't seem to know what it is.
What is going to stop change in DNA in a population over time if DNA polymerase introduces changes every time it copies it?
Lose that circuitry and cognition is gone, but the soul is unchanged.
Our biology is not transcendent or mystical.
A biological brain of sufficient size would be able to reproduce the same sort of feats, but without a soul, would it aspire to them, would it give its life meaning?
My “reductionist view” is that physical phenomena have explainable physical causes. This is the view that has led to all scientific advancement. The physical phenomena of our brains being capable of cognition and calculation is explainable by our very large and complex and resource consuming physical brains.
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