Posted on 06/17/2014 6:17:41 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Whenever I engage in conversation with people I meet for the first time I try to avoid being asked the question, “What do you do for a living?” But if I am asked I say, “I am a minister.” Generally, the one who asks then inquires, “What denomination?” or “What kind of church?”
Here is where I always have to clarify, depending on the most recent news headline involving Christian leaders: “I am a Baptist minister, but I am not a science-denying Baptist minister who thinks that dinosaurs lived alongside humans a few thousand years ago.”
What a strange irony that a 30-foot-long fossil of an Allosaurus will be on display at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., where museum founder, Ken Ham, recently debated science educator Bill Nye. Ken Ham and his colleagues think it defends the book of Genesis and supplies evidence of Noah’s flood. Good grief.
Unfortunately, this is real life, not a Charlie Brown cartoon. According to a recent survey by the Associated Press, 77 percent of people who claim to be born again or evangelical say they have little or no confidence that the universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang. And 76 percent of evangelicals doubt that life on Earth, including human beings, evolved through a process of natural selection.
Educated evangelicals know better. According to Newsweek 99 percent of America’s earth and life scientists hold to some form of evolution. Darrel Falk, a biology professor at evangelical Point Loma Nazarene University, told Cathy Grossman of the Religion News Service, that many biblical (evangelical) scholars do not see a conflict between religion and science. He noted: “The story of the cosmos and the Big Bang of creation is not inconsistent with the message of Genesis 1.”
I suspect that many (if not most) educated evangelical biblical scholars who subscribe to some form of biblical inerrancy (and sign faith statements testifying to that fact) believe what professor Falk believes.
They know there are different kinds (genres) of biblical literature which call for different approaches other than a literal interpretation of the text. They know that the creation stories are parabolic in nature and are not chronicles of history or reports conveying scientific data. They know that these stories are spiritual, metaphorical and theological stories and, while not factual, they certainly teach truth about God and God’s relationship to the world.
They know Ken Ham’s claim that “no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record” is utter foolishness.
Harvard theologian Harvey Cox tells about the time the student leader of Harvard’s atheist group on campus took one of his theology classes. This otherwise bright student wrote a very weak paper in which he sought to discredit the God of the Christian and Jewish faiths by attacking and dismantling a literal interpretation of the Genesis flood story. He thought that by proving the story could not have happened the way the story says it happened, he would thus disprove the reality of God.
Dr. Cox said to the student, “Don’t you know a story when you read one?”
Educated evangelicals know that the creation stories were never intended to be history lessons or science reports, because the Bible is not a history or science book.
Educated evangelicals also know:
• That evangelical Christians need not fear or deny the enormous amount of scientific data supporting evolution.
• That the story of evolution and the biblical story are not mutually exclusive.
• That a healthy faith welcomes and is informed by science.
So why do so many evangelicals deny evolution and believe in a literal interpretation of the creation stories in Genesis?
Apparently what educated evangelical professors know and believe is not getting down to the people in the pew.
Why aren’t educated evangelical pastors teaching their churches these things? Are they afraid of being shunned or looked down upon by their peers? Are they afraid to rock the evangelical boat? Are they afraid of facing conflict in their churches or losing their jobs? Are the professors actually teaching what they believe and know to their students?
Whatever the reasons, it’s time for evangelicals who know the truth to come out and proclaim the truth. If the truth sets us free, as Jesus said, then many of our evangelical sisters and brothers need to hear a liberating word from their pastors.
OPINION: Views expressed in ABPnews/Herald columns and commentaries are solely those of the authors.
Chuck Queen is pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Frankfort, Ky., and author of Being a Progressive Christian (is not) for Dummies (nor for know-it-alls): An Evolution of Faith.
Bingo. And they keep overlooking the text asserting that for the first few “days” there was nothing constituting a “day”.
It’s a false argument to insist that everyone who believes in God as Creator believes that man and dinosaurs co-mingled 6,000 years ago.
If God did not create the universe, was He surprised by the Big Bang? Did God(s) spring forth from the Big Bang? Or does God not exist?
Eating our own does not benefit, political or otherwise.
Surveys can be funny things. According to a poll cited by Dennis Prager, half of all “evangelicals” don’t vote because they believe it goes against their faith.
Did Christ write it?
“Either the entire Book of Genesis is true, or Christ is a liar and a charlitan! Take your pick!”
“Did Christ write it?”
Gospel of John, Chapter 1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
I would say “Yes!”
And I would say that common usage of the word "Christ" refers to the Son of God. So I'd say you were a generation off.
He inspired every syllable in it, through the Holy Spirit, as Moses wrote it down.
To borrow a phrase from some unknown Hippie from the 1970s....”Read the Bible for yourself. It’ll scare the Hell out of you.”
Excellent advice, IMHO.
Looking for his beliefs on gay marriage, I found he wrote on Kentucky.com last year that because gay marriage in the U.S. is “inevitable,” (he even compares the “evolving” situation to “biological evolution”) he says the government should only recognize civil unions for all and leave marriage to churches. And he suggests denying civil unions or gay marriage to same-sex couples is “discrimination” and concludes by saying that eventually all 50 states “will be on the right side of history.” He sounds like he’s trying to destroy the church from within.
I refer folks to Dr. Walt Brown’s book all the time on these debates. In fact here are 2 of my most often referred links [see my FR links homepage if you want more related info].
101 Evidences for a Young Age of the Earth...And the Universe
http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth
Center for Scientific Creation - In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningTOC.html
I picked up a used DVD lately called “Icons of Evolution,” which gives the story of how a high school teacher was barred from teaching any supplemental materials (from secular sources) which in any way cast doubt on evolution. This included telling students how there are long-dispelled myths created to support evolution which are still taught today, such as deceptive drawings of fetal development of different species that were deliberately created to suggest common ancestry.
Something else that was particularly interesting, too, is that they challenge the idea that bacterial “evolution” supports macroevolution. They say that drug-resistant bacteria are actually less fit (referred to as fitness cost, I believe) and as soon as the original bacteria is reintroduced, they quickly die off. Their genetic mutations are not improvements.
Also here’s a video presentation for anyone who doesn’t have time to read the book.
Videos Fountains of the Deep, Flood of Noah by Pastor Kevin Lea of Port Orchard, OR
http://www.youtube.com/user/CalvaryChurchPO#p/c/11/XXQKSv5o_Po
Pastor Lea is no slouch himself with a background in nuclear physics.
thanks !
In the first sentence we find...
Genesis 1
1 In the beginning ELoHIM created the heavens and the earth.
The total numeration of Elohim, or Aleim ALHIM, being 1 + 30 + 5 + 10 + 600; or avoiding the use of final Mem, we get 1 + 30 + 5 + 10 + 40; neglecting the tens 1 + 3 + 5 + 1 + 4, and placing these figures in a circle, we get the sequence 3.1415, notable as the value of pi, or the relation of a diameter to circumference of every circle. Elohim is both a singular and a plural word.
Numbers, Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues
http://sacred-texts.com/eso/nop/index.htm
Note: occult simply means 'hidden'
And Yeshua noted...
Luke 12:27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Well it turns out that...
...the Lilly has 100 times the DNA content of Man.
From: http://staff.um.edu.mt/acus1/4genfunction.htm
This will get you started...
Torah And Science Part 1
Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7AIUn8VcjI
Age of the universe see...
The Missing Link in the Debate
Isibiel Myrna Cohen
http://www.yashanet.com/library/missing_link.htm
Clip:
...In the Jewish Midrash, an expansion of the Talmud that clarifies historical and moral teachings, the Sages teach that the creation of the soul of Adam, and the six days of Genesis are separate events (Schroeder).
Still, how do six days of creation equal fifteen billion years? According to the calculations of the 13th century Kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac of Acco, the universe is precisely 15,340,500,000 years old.
The calculation proceeds as follows:
According to the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a, " R. Kattina said: Six thousand years shall the world exist, and one [thousand, the seventh], it shall be desolate…". Ancient and medieval Kabbalists such as Nehunya ben HaKanah, in Sefer HaTemunah (written about 100 AD) and Rabbi Isaac of Acco understood these seven thousand years a running parallel to the Jewish Sabbatical cycle. In this cycle the fields are planted and harvested for six years and left unplanted in the seventh year.
It goes on a bit...there's lot's more...
In other words, this so-called “Baptist preacher” thinks same-sex sex acts are OK but infant baptism is “sinful”? :?
But what does this show? That Chuck Queen reads public opinion polls, and is addled enough to believe that somehow they are revelatory of God's Truth? What other explanation of his motive could there be?
Is he arguing that Christian ministers and priests have to "get hip" and conform their teaching to the current myth du jour, in order for their pews to be filled?
Jeepers, that advice looks to me like it's completely "bass-ackwards."
The Christian Church has not survived and thrived for over two thousand years by cutting itself to the size of the currently prevailing public frenzies, which ever pass away....
Anyhoot, the evolution question is entirely at the root of the current confusion.
As a Christian, I believe in evolution. But that is not to say I believe in Darwin's evolution theory.
On the Genesis account, I see God's Creation as laid down "in the Beginning," according to His Word, the Logos, Son of God, as involving a process that unfolds in space and time. That is, a process that evolves — from a First, to a Last Cause.
The First Cause is God's intention with respect to His Creation, as instantiated according to the Word of the Beginning. [An interesting question: What is the qualitative difference between "Let there be Light!" and the big bang from the singularity that the physical sciences seem to have noticed recently?]
The Final Cause is God's purpose or goal for having created anything in the first place.
What evolves in-between the First Cause (divine Creation) and Final Cause (Judgment Day) is human existence and experience, largely of the natural world. "In-between," an on-going implicit cause governs the world of men and nature, precisely in a temporal, that is to say, an "evolutionary" process.
Evidently, Charles Darwin would have no truck with such ideas. His biological evolution theory has no concept of purposes or goals: There are no first or final causes. Evidently, there is only an "eternal universe" without beginning or end; it just rolls on forever; and everything that happens in it, in the biological realm especially, is merely serendipitous happenstance. Whatever "works" seems to be the criterion of "truth." (Assuming Darwinists care about such a thing.) But Darwin's theory does not address, let alone answer, the question: works for what "truth???" (Or even whose "truth?")
According to Darwin's theory, everything in the biological world is an accident that, by happenstance, might work out "in a positive direction" for a while. Long enough to breed (with luck) a next generation; who then will face the same sheer pointlessness of existence that their progenitors did.
"Natural Selection" by means of "Random Mutation" does not compass the identification of purpose in Nature. Yet every actual biological function is a cause seeking the completion of an effect necessary for the existence and maintenance of the total biological organism. This is purposive, goal-oriented behavior that screams of a final cause at work, mediated by at least some minimal form of intelligence.
In short, to me Darwin's theory is rude, crude and socially unacceptable. But worse, it is totally mindless — both in its methods, and in its presuppositions.
I would think it is the business of pastors especially to point out this sort of nonsense to their congregants, to remind them constantly that man's theories cannot be the measure of God or of what He wrought; if you want to understand what God wrought, best to start with Genesis.
Instead, so many of our modern pastors are rolling over and playing dead in the face of "elite opinion."
Such shepherds are unworthy of their flocks....
Well I'll put a sock in it for now.
Thanks for the great post, SeekandFind!
Purposeful phenomena such as biological repair and maintenance to the benefit of the autonomous organism cannot arise by mere happenstance.
Thank you so much for your informative essay-post!
~~~~~~~~~
Dear Sister in Christ,
As I have said before, I greatly prefer the term, "development", rather than "evolution", when discussing how the state of "our" (physical and biological) universe progressed from the moment of creation up to the present.
And, I do that with several considerations:
~~~~~~~~~~~
So -- I respectfully submit that, for our purposes (unless discussing Darwinism, per se) we restrict discussions of the progress of God's universe (both physical and biological) to the use of the term, "development", as opposed to "evolution"...
~~~~~~~~
So did I -- freshly chiseled into the BOTTOM side of a flipped-over limestone layer, and the largest one actually carved from MUD for photographing and casting.
My wife is from Glen Rose, TX, and her father took me to the "McFall site" on the Paluxy River to show me where he had used his trackloader to turn over limestone slabs for "the man of God who came here to PROVE that man walked alongside the dinosaurs".
I know that charlatan's name -- because he came prepared with a pre-cast plaque -- with his name on it!
As soon as I had carved a big "X" (repairs still visible in later photos) across the biggest mud-carved "giant man track", I headed for the car -- because I refused to stay where Satan was so obviously at work!
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