Mohler takes on 'theistic evolution'

Associated Baptist Press ^ | January 13, 2011 | Bob Allen

[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."

[eyedigress]

I am studying Jeremiah for your connections. You have quite a board of truth laid out for me.

[kosta50]

For one thing, there are no "gaps." The reason for that being: The Creator is not merely imaginary.

Oh? You saw him?

He is omniscient and omnipotent. By our observation, He HAD to be thus, to have made the world we see all around us as parts and participants thereof. :^)

Had to be? But he is "changeless", remember? Even though is said to have become his own "sweater"?

You are on record as saying that all views of God are opinions only.

Pretty much, unless you have objective evidence to the contrary that doesn't involve blind faith.

You even suggest that persons holding such opinions are morons.

There are all kinds of people on this planet, betty boop. :)

Further, you rule out testimony as having any evidentiary value whatsoever.

I take it with a grain of salt; that's all. Human recollection is very flawed, and unreliable.

Great. The position your line of thinking lands us in would seem to go something like this: Aletheia logos must succumb, must give "right of way," to doxa.

But "doxa" (since you use Greek terminiology), always means good opinion, praise, glory. It is used in suport of the "aletheia logos," not against it or else it's not "doxa." Aletheia logos" refers to a truthful, sworn statement — a "testimony" in the legal sense, and more. "Doxa" refers to whatever opinion commands public support at a given time. And times are ever a-changing....

You just said that I don't admit much of personal testimony, and yet you think I put public opinions above "true reason." And you say I am on a slippery slope? Slippery in what sense? LOL.

I hope you will soon find your "legs."

Or....?

[eyedigress]

We as God’s people have a much larger gate. He instructed it can be done. It shall be done in our depths.

[eyedigress]

We must rebuild the gate so those that harm are kept away.

[eyedigress]

For all of FR, this is a talk with GOD. It is not political or meant to be such. It is a walk.

[alstewartfan]

My thinking is absolutely finite. The existence of God forever in the past is incomprehensible, as is the idea of matter and energy having no beginning.
And you are so wrong about theists not being curious about the “how”, every bit as much as atheists. We believe that God has revealed His universe to us, and it is human nature to thirst for knowledge. I'm tired of Darwinists pretending that there are no assumptions made in naturalistic theory. You ASSUME that eyes,ears, kidneys, livers, hearts, brains, muscles, blood vessels can miraculously form through random mutations, billions of them, yet you cannot reproduce such phenomena! You can't even create life from inanimate matter... Bob

[kosta50]

And you are so wrong about theists not being curious about the “how”, every bit as much as atheists

What exactly are you referring to? If you are paraphrasing something I said it looks unrecognizable to me.

We believe that God has revealed His universe to us, and it is human nature to thirst for knowledge

That's your belief, sir. It doesn't mean it's true.

I'm tired of Darwinists pretending that there are no assumptions made in naturalistic theory

Assumptions per se are not the problem; how they are treated is. As long as they are treated as assumptions, that by itself does not claim to be the way the world is. But when they take on the character of "official truth" or "divine revelation," that's when they become problematic.

You ASSUME that eyes,ears, kidneys, livers, hearts, brains, muscles, blood vessels can miraculously form through random mutations, billions of them, yet you cannot reproduce such phenomena

And you? Do you assume some imaginary deity magically created them? Oh, that makes all the difference!

Personally, I never made such assertion simply because I don't know. That doesn't mean I can just reach for a convenient "god" to fill the gap with.

You can't even create life from inanimate matter

Can you? What makes your assumptions true? When you get sick do you do what the Bible says (chase out the "demons") or do you submit to worthless science to get better, and why? How do you decide when science is worthless and when it's worth your while?

[Alamo-Girl]

But because this is the way things work for humans "in time," we cannot say that this "model" pertains to God, Who is not in time.

Precisely so.

Time is part of the creation, not a property of - or restriction on - the Creator of it.

God is not thingly. And man is not the measure of God.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on God and non-locality, dear brother in Christ!

It is a very interesting meditation.

[MHGinTN]

Some on this thread want to make it a precondition that time exists in which 'god' is positioned and from that 'position' causes creation. Of course that is precisely the circular argument such deniers of God want us to follow because any 'preconditions' then become things which the 'god' would depend upon to 'do' and would therefore be equal to or greater than the 'god' under discussion.

A Christian believes any 'thing', even dimensions, are caused to exist by The Creator, and that is a part of the definition of The Creator, The One Who IS before anything made was made, and The One Who IS after everything made is ended. We take the Word of I AM, Who defined Himself as Alpha and Omega. ... And that irks the willful deniers that they cannot get Christians to buy into their circular reasoning. But then faith is like that, foolishness to them who are perishing.

[Alamo-Girl]

So very true, dear brother in Christ!

Man is not the measure of God.

Thank you for sharing your insights!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing that beautiful Scripture, dear eyedigress, and your testimony and insights!

[spunkets]

"A Christian believes any 'thing', even dimensions, are caused to exist by The Creator, and that is a part of the definition of The Creator, The One Who IS before anything made was made, and The One Who IS after everything made is ended. "

Christians are those who believe God and have chosen to value the same things He does. Being a Christian does not require that one believe God created dimensions, or that man can define the creator, or His creation, or any elements of that creation. God is a sentient rational being, who created man in His image and likeness, as per the parable of Genesis. Any sentient rational being that exists, must be composed of energy to provide for the functions that being is capable of. That means, it must exist within the dimensions of their world.

Dimensions, are simply quantitative elements of spacetime, which is in fact energy. In order for any being to exist, they must be composed of energy which provides for the machinery that provides the functions of sentience and rationality. If there is no energy to provide for those functions, there is nothing. Man can not define nothing to then be some spirit in a void and call it god, because the relevant definition of void is nothing and there is absolutely no energy in it to provide for the functions of a sentient rational being, or for the creation function. The real void is energy and it has dimensions. Any world must be composed of energy and have dimensions, at least one of which is time.

[spirited irish]

Kosta’s obvious hostility to God the Father is nothing new. Going back to the Garden (aka Atlantis and so forth) men have (over the course of their allotted lifetime) been sorting themselves out into two antithetical categories. On one side (side A) are those who seek the living Elohim while on the other (side B) are those who feel most comfortable with an impersonal force known as Elohim, or evolving matter, Christ Consciousness, the Force, etc.

Over the course of history, men have been willfully choosing which “side” they prefer: God the Father or the god of Forces (materialism/pantheism=naturalism).

Having made their choice, Side B (exemplified by Cain)eventually seal their doom by psychologically abusing, ridiculing, demonizing and finally murdering Side A. Prager agrees, and astutely noted that from the beginning of time, the very worst of our kind (Side B) have been murdering the very best (Side A).

In this thread, we can very clearly see these two sides, as well as Side B’s most obvious attempts at utterly destroying Side A by way of psychological abuse: ridicule, character assassination, contempt, and odious little remarks such as: “Oh? You saw him?”

From Comte to Hegel, Fourier to Karl Marx, Nechaev, Proudhon, Darwin, Lenin,and Anton LaVey, all were members of Side B.

Proudhon’s declaration synthesizes Side B’s hatred of God the Father Almighty :

“The first duty of man, on becoming free, is to continually hunt the idea of God out of his mind and conscience...for God..is hostile to our nature..Every step we take in advance is a victory in which we crush Divinity..”

Though Side B is free to reject God the Father, this does not mean that Side B is free of spiritual control. For if you refuse God the Father Almighty, you will find yourself confessing that another spirit is your “father”:

“I’m not the spawn of Satan, I’m the spawn of Lucifer,” confessed Transhumanist Max Moore. In 1991 Moore wrote that:

“Lucifer is the embodiment of reason...intelligence (and) critical thought. He stands against the dogma of God...He stands for the exploration of new ideas...Join me, join Lucifer, and join Extropy in fighting God and his entropic forces with our minds, our wills and our courage. God’s army is strong, but they are backed by ignorance, fear and cowardice. Reality is fundamentally on our side. Forward into the light!’

We should not find it strange that “death of God” revolutionaries Marx, Proudhon, Bakunin, and many more all hated God the Father but lauded the Devil as their liberator.

CS Lewis observed that God the Father endowed us with free will so that we can either choose Him or reject Him. The choice is ours to make. Hell said Lewis, exists precisely because Side B choose it.

[kosta50]

Prager agrees, and astutely noted that from the beginning of time, the very worst of our kind (Side B) have been murdering the very best (Side A)

Depends who has the LabelMaker^TM .

The world never had a shortage of rabid zealots and "truth enforcers" of any given doctrine.  They made sure everyone was properly labeled as friend or foe, as good or evil, as favored or condemned with respect to the official man-made deity (d'jour), whatever it may be, and either rewarded or punished accordingly.

So, when—in the 21st century!—I read rants that label people into the decadents of Abel and Cain, it reminds me that there is nothing new on this planet and that man will be man no matter what age or culture and, given the opportunity, would gladly return to stamping out those on side B (from their point of view).

The goal is to—by whatever means—silence those who think otherwise, firmly convinced that, by doing so, the enforcers of official truth are doing their god's work on earth, whether they insist, on the penalty of death,  that everyone worship Caesar, or by burning even the members of their of religion, simply because they dared baptize someone for the second time, or by blowing up innocent families in some Israeli pizza parlor. They are no different then those who would enforce "official truth" by any means in the name of pure race or socialist ideals. 

Thank you for the reminder.

[Alamo-Girl]

"Just when I think I'm out, they keep pulling me back in." - The Godfather.

I do not wish to continue a futile sidebar debate with posters whose sense of reality is so greatly reduced that they believe the Creator must be subordinate to the creation.

The egocentricity of such a worldview boggles the mind - it is literally irrational (one-sided, there is no "ratio" there.)

But the lowly photon’s witness has not been understood.

So for the lurkers following the claim that by having created, the Creator is then therefore subject to time – here goes.

To repeat, for the photon traveling a worldline through space/time, no time elapses. That is called a “null path.”

But the photon and its velocity and the space/time it travels are all finite.

More importantly, the photon - which has no mass and for which no time elapses - itself causes things to happen – something that our correspondents claim God the Creator cannot do without being subject to time.

When a photon goes into a black hole, that black hole is physically “informed” – that is cause>effect.

Information is the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver or molecular machine as it goes from a before state to an after state (Shannon, successful communication, the foundation for the field of Mathematics called “Information Theory.”) “Physical information” refers to the information content of a physical system (the message received).

And when that photon meets your eye, you physically sense it and then become aware of it, you are physically “informed.”

When the photon meets a plant's molecule, it becomes “informed” – the effect in this case cascades as the photon is absorbed in photosynthesis.

And not only that, we are informed by ricochet as the light is reflected by the moon, the water in a lake, etc. We are “informed” by the photon’s deflection.

So the photon does all of this, all the while being massless and timeless and yet our correspondents cannot perceive of God the Creator causing anything to happen without Himself being subject to time.

Good grief.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. - Genesis 1:3

My brothers and sisters in Christ may find it interesting that the CMB contains sound waves recording the inception of light in this universe.

The MAXIMA, BOOMERANG, and DASI collaborations, which measure minute variations in the CMB [cosmic microwave background radiation], recently reported new results at the American Physical Society meeting in Washington, D.C. All three agree remarkably about what the ‘harmonic proportions’ of the cosmos imply: not only is the universe flat, but its structure is definitely due to inflation, not to topological defects in the early universe.

The results were presented as plots of slight temperature variations in the CMB that graph sound waves in the dense early universe. These high-resolution ‘power spectra’ show not only a strong primary resonance but are consistent with two additional harmonics, or peaks.

The peaks indicate harmonics in the sound waves that filled the early, dense universe. Until some 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot that matter and radiation were entangled in a kind of soup in which sound waves (pressure waves) could vibrate. The CMB is a relic of the moment when the universe had cooled enough so that photons could “decouple” from electrons, protons, and neutrons; then atoms formed and light went on its way. - The Universe May Be Flat But It Is Nevertheless Musical

To listen in on the sound of the CMB, click here.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. – John 1:1-4

And now we have yet another correspondent who would subject God to energy. It’s the same tune, new verse. Energy is part of the creation, not a restriction on or property of the Creator of it.

God is not thingly.

Man is not the measure of God.

I shall once again try to leave this sidebar...

[betty boop]

More importantly, the photon — which has no mass and for which no time elapses - itself causes things to happen — something that our correspondents claim God the Creator cannot do without being subject to time....

And now we have yet another correspondent who would subject God to energy. It’s the same tune, new verse. Energy is part of the creation, not a restriction on or property of the Creator of it.

"Just when I think I'm out, they keep pulling me back in." — The Godfather.

I shall once again try to leave this sidebar....

Good luck with that, dearest sister in Christ! But please don't go too far away — we need gems of insight and commentary like this one as often as possible!

Absolutely splendid essay/post. Thank you ever so much for writing — and for the great links!

[alstewartfan]

I should have starred the “how” instead of quotation marks. Somehow I expected you to bring this up after I posted. My view that God revealed Himself through His Creation is a view shared by virtually all the Christians who concern you.
*Of course* I believe that “some deity ‘magically’ created” all facets of life. You believe that some evolutionary process, modification throuh descent, mystifyingly turned amoebas into birds, fish, elephants and humans, using billions of favorable mutations to do so. To me, randomness creating millions of diverse organisms is preposterus. You see divine guidance as silly. I demand evidence that non-life can turn into life, or a “simple” amoeba “evolving” useful wings or brains before I begin to be swayed. BTW, did you know that hummingbirds can flap their wings up to 200X per *second* during a courtship dive? (howtoenjoyhummingbirds.com) I’d almost call that “miraculous”! Bob

[MHGinTN]

Love the links ... but don’t respond, wouldn’t want to be responsible for dragging you back to this disgusting display of god denial based upon dishonest perturbations.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your encouragements, dearest sister in Christ!