Posted on 11/03/2007 7:44:49 PM PDT by 49th
Well, you're also doing it wrong by the standard of the greatest theologians who ever lived. So I'm in good company.
I’ll add that you’ve got to be mighty confident of your theology to dismiss somebody like Augustine out-of-hand. Will young seminarians be reading the works of Saint Taxesareforever 1500 years from now?
I’m just glad I’m not signed on to the same company you are. It went bankrupt a long time ago.
Gotcha. Yep. Secularism all the way. Never a doubt but you just admitted it. Cherry pick your data and call it facts. And that is the name of evolution.
My "company" signed a contract 4,500 years ago, and my "company" has outlasted all of its competitors: Babylonians, Pharaoh, Persians, Romans, Hitler and Stalin.
I think I'll take my chances, thank you.
No, they will be reading the Holy Bible just like they do today. They don't look around to find people they agree with in order to form their opinions like evos do. They go directly to the True Source.
Really? So you elevate theology to the level of Biblical text? Now I'm not up on every element of Christian dogma, but isn't that blasphemy?
Any thing that counters evolution to a evolutionist is blasphemy to them.
Is that the case? Have any scientific evidence that "counters" evolution? Because I'd love to see it.
Always asking for information but never able to provide it. Still waiting for my history breakdown in hundreds of years.
Sure. Just as soon as you get me a testable way to confirm any part of the six day creation narrative.
I asked first. Like I said, typical for an evo. Always asking and never providing.
Awwwww, I'm so sorry! But you see, that's precisely the problem. You're using a religious framework to evaluate science, which doesn't work: scientists don't receive neat hundred-year chronologies on stone tablets. We have a great deal of evidence, but it looks very different.
You can't use religious arguments to critique science. But just the same, I can't use science to critique religion (unless you can somehow find a way to give me a testable claim, which I doubt you're clever enough to do).
You see, you're not just ignorant of science. You're also wrong on theological grounds -- and that's why I attack your theology with Augustine and Maimonides, not with Darwin or Gould.
You attacked also with Luther and have you given me any substantiating evidence for this? No. Did I ask? Yes. Like I said, you cherry pick your data and try to present it as this neat little package that backs up your claims, but actually it really is what you would call crap. Not only looks it but smells like it.
We disagree on this subject of the Earth’s, and man’s, Creation, nonetheless, you make some excellent, and valid, points. I’m not going to bridge the gap, but let me respond to some of your comments:
I have no idea who are Maimonides or Nahmanides, however I am currently reading through Augustine’s City of God and Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. From my reading they clearly accepted the age of the Earth as being ‘young’ (if 6,000 years old is ‘young’), and God’s ex nihilo Creation. Some excerpts from these books:
Augustine’s City of God, Books 11 (Chapters 4-8) and 12 (Chapters 10-15)
Book 12, Chapter 11 The falsity of such history as ascribes to the world a past of many thousand years.
“Those who hold such opinions are also led astray by some utterly spurious documents which, they say, give a historical record of many thousand years, whereas we reckon, from evidence of the holy scriptures, that fewer than 6,000 years have passed since man’s first origin.”
Book 11, Chapter 6 The beginning of he world and the beginning of time are the same
2nd paragraph “… The Bible says (and the Bible never lies): ‘In the beginning God made heaven and earth.’
Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1 (Chapter 14)
1. “…Hence God was pleased that a history of the Creation should exist – a history on which the faith of the Church might lean without seeking any other God than Him whom Moses sets forth as the Creator and Architect of the world. First, in that history, the period of time is marked so as to enable the faithful to ascend by an unbroken sucession of years to the first origin of their race and of all things…”
“…Justly does Augustine complain that God is insulted whenever any higher reason than His will is demanded (Lib. de Gent.). He also raises in another place wisely reminds us that it is just as improper to raise questions about infinite periods of time as about infinite space (De Civit. Dei.)".
Although I agree with you that the Bible is not a science text, prior to the 18th Century it was largely accepted as fact that the Earth was less than 10,000 years old – which is why it wasn’t discussed a great deal.
It was a ‘given’.
But you are right, the important point to be learned from Scripture is the Truth: We are all helpless sinners. We come woefully short of being worthy of appearing before a perfect and spotless and infinite God. And yet, the Good News: God was manifest in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ, and it pleased God to pour out His wrath on His only Begotten Son (“My Shepherd, the man who is my fellow…”) so that the payment for our sins would be full-filled, and we would be redeemed, and made Righteous in Christ. The Age of the Earth, when contrasted to this Blessed message, therefore, can seem to be a distraction, or a nit.
Nonetheless, there are several reasons why I place value on this point:
1) It is what the Scripture says. Again, you make a legitimate assertion when you say that you ‘think I’m seriously misreading the Bible’. That’s very fair. The Bible was written by an infinite mind. I am an idiot. I am not going to grasp every detail that is being communicated. And you are also right that there are an awful lot of ‘fill in the blank’ areas regarding man’s history. Nonetheless, I’ve read, and re-read the Scriptures in question. I’ve read the Hebrew. I’ve compared Scripture to Scripture. They seem awfully clear on this point. God even had Moses record HIS words that HE created the Heavens and the Earth, ‘and all that in them is’, in 6 days – when HE was speaking to Moses and the people of Israel from the ‘smoking mountain’. Likewise, Jesus also states that ‘man was there at the beginning’. And in addition, God used Peter to write and warn:
” …Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old,…”
I’m somewhat familiar with the other ‘models’ (e.g., Gap theory, Framework, Day Age, etc) that allow billions of years – but in my reading, God has gone out of His way to emphatically state that He created the Heavens and the Earth in the not so distant past.
2) There’s a deeper issue involved than the Age of the Earth. Since the 18th Century the principle of Bible inerrancy has been under attack. Voltaire, Griesbach, the school of German Higher Criticism, all chipped away at the foundational document of Western Civilization, the Bible. This allowed, in the following century, the doctrines of Marx, Nietzsche, and Darwin to grow out of the rubble. On the surface, just philosophical musings, or scientific speculations. But the net result was the ‘evolution’ of a society that no longer ‘feared God’. A society that has lost its way. Exalting any new theory, and clever ideas, they lost wisdom. So I wrap up the ‘Age of the Earth’ issue within the general assault on the Bible. Same timeframe, same issue (or at least the same allies).
3) Theological 1. If Adam was not the first man, and if death did not come by sin – then there is not only a contradiction in the Bible, there was also little need for Jesus to be made man to die for our sins. If sin was not engrafted into man’s flesh at the Fall, there was no cleansing to made by the sacrificial offering of unblemished, and sinless, flesh in the person of the only Begotten Son of God, Jesus.
4) Theological 2. Since the time of the Fall, when Adam hid from God in the Garden, man is constantly trying to hide from God. Developing a myth that will shove God billions of miles in the past, and billions of miles away is just a baby step towards atheism. Man can 'claim' that he fears God, but its a lot easier to convince himself that God 'is not watching' when he's told himself that God did 'something' untold billions of years ago, and then stepped aside...
Be not deceived: God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Journalists. . . Since birds evolved from small dinosaurs, their teeth didn't have to shrink from the size of T. rex teeth down to nothingness. They were already small. The prototypical bird, Archaeopteryx, has teeth (no beak) and a tail. The tail is present in early birds and shortens until replaced by a pygostyle. No great mysteries about the evolutionary trends here, the only question is what genes are regulated in what manner. We already know how to change gene regulation in chickens to produce embryos that grow teeth, I guess it looks like next we'll have chicken embryos with tails.
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