Ages of the Earth and Mankind, Part 1: No Answers in Genesis or Ellen White

by Ervin Taylor, May 2, 2016: Dr. Jack Hoehn recently posted a series of highly informative commentaries on the Adventist Today website. His discussions reviewed multiple lines of scientific evidence that taken together strongly support the conclusion that living creatures have been present on this planet for far longer than traditional Adventist believers currently seem to be able to accept.
As noted by Dr. Hoehn, and well-known to most members of the Adventist faith who read the pages of the Adventist Review and/or Adventist Today, the corporate Seventh-day Adventist Church in 2015 adopted a “fundamental” position concerning this topic. It declared that Seventh-day Adventists are supposed to believe that a massive corpus of evidence from many scientific disciplines that all tell us the same thing–that many forms of living organisms have existed on this planet for billions and hundreds of millions of years–must be rejected. As a consequence, the Adventist denomination in the 21st Century is now officially on record as advocating that the creation of life on this planet occurred “recently,” that it was accomplished in six, literal, 24-hour days, and that a recent, literal, world-wide flood occurred. On what basis does the institutional Adventist denomination know that this point of view is correct?
What those who support the change in the wording of the Adventist understanding of when and how God created have seemingly forgotten is that just as the ancient Hebrews and early Christians had no understanding of the physical nature of the universe, they also had no conception of how ancient the earth was and how long life and humankind had been on our planet. Fortunately, that lack of knowledge of these physical facts was totally irrelevant to the theological purpose for which the book of Genesis was constructed.
Historic Christianity, which, in this case, includes Adventist Christians, confesses that Jesus was both fully God and fully human. If he was fully human, his comments cited in the New Testament relating to this topic reflected the same lack of accurate information that his Jewish contemporaries and all other humans possessed concerning this matter.
A scientifically accurate understanding of the age of the earth and the human species began to be understood only with the rise of geology and paleontology as scientific disciplines beginning in the 19th century. Major advances were made in the middle of the 20th century with the development of the many scientific dating methods that Dr. Hoehn mentioned. In recent decades, even more precise chronologies have been developed in response to the introduction of a variety of new methods and data sets, such as that derived from marine and ice cores.
Nineteenth-century geologists and paleontologists determined that “Deep Time” was a characteristic of the geological and fossil record. Archaeologists determined that the record of human activity represented a very long prehistoric period measured in an unknown number of millennia that had occurred prior to the development of historic records. These two discoveries represent two segments of one of the great revolutions in modern Western understandings of the history of the natural and human world. That revolution in chronological understanding is fully comparable to the development of evolutionary biology, in terms of its impact on modern scientific understandings of the history of our planet and life upon it.
One point about the relationship of these two developments needs to be emphasized. On one hand, there is the scientific basis upon which current understanding of evolutionary biology rests; on the other, the scientific basis for current understandings of the time scale of the earth and its living forms, employing not only vastly different and distinct data sets and conceptual frameworks but also involving scientists from very distinct academic specializations. Biological evolutionary studies are conducted primarily by biologists, biochemists and paleontologists. The development of methods of dating geological and archaeological materials is primarily due to the research efforts of a diverse group of chemists and physicists.
Many religiously inclined critics of evolution and “Deep Time” might find it hard to believe that geochronologists rarely, if ever, discuss evolutionary biology since this is not their area of scientific specialization. There are those who find it amusing that critics are so misinformed that they talk about a “time scale developed by evolutionists” when addressing the results of isotopic dating methods such as potassium-argon and radiocarbon.
With all this as background, let us examine the historical contexts to help explain why the corporate Adventist denomination and thus many contemporary Adventists object to biological evolution and the reality of the existence of “Deep Time.”
In the middle- to late-19th Century, while some Protestant Christian church officials in prominent positions rejected various aspects of both biological evolution and the reality of long geological ages, many other mainline European and American Protestant Christian scholars and churchmen were favorably inclined to accept both evolutionary ideas and the understanding of the great ages represented in the geological and fossil record. In their view, evolution was God’s way of creating. Reservations were largely focused on the elements involved in the development of humankind. As for the Genesis “days,” they were understood to be symbolic representations of long geological periods. If they were concerned with explaining Noah’s Flood, it was viewed as only the most recent of many major regional floods that had occurred in the Near East.
The acceptance of these ideas within most mainline Christian bodies was directly challenged with the emergence of a major reactionary religious movement which arose initially in the United States at the end of the 19th Century. This movement within American Protestantism became known as Fundamentalism, based on the title of a 12-volume work which appeared between 1917 and 1919. In the 90 essays that make up these volumes, opposition was expressed to a variety of topics, including higher biblical criticism and liberal theology, as well as biological evolution.
Fundamentalism arose in opposition to what were referred to as “Modernists” within the liberal wings of several American Protestant denominations. One of the elements of this reactionary development which was particularly highlighted was the Fundamentalist view which posited that all statements in the Bible should be regarded as inerrant, i.e., not communicating any factual errors even in the areas of history or science.
During the middle- to late-19th century, while the developments we have been reviewing were occurring, the Sabbatarian Adventist movement was coalescing into yet another American Protestant denomination, the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Although the majority of the doctrinal positions that it adopted had been held by one or more existing Christian bodies, the initial formulations of several of its unique doctrines and doctrinal emphases were profoundly influenced by the views of one of its co-founders, Ellen Gould Harmon-White.
White was an emotionally highly-sensitive, 19th-century American charismatic mystic possessing a vivid and highly creative religious imagination. At various locations in the northeastern United States during the early- to middle-19th century, historians and sociologists have uncovered the existence of a number of individuals who reported having what they viewed as supernatural visionary experiences in which they were in contact with the divine. Most of these visionaries left no lasting record and attracted no followers. However, a few subsequently founded single-generation American religious communities, and some helped found sects and denominations that survived into a second and third generation. One of the best known of these charismatics was Joseph Smith, Jr., who reported several visionary experiences, and whose religious views and writings became the basis of the creation of a new American religious tradition, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons.
In the case of White, she was reared within the Holiness and Pietistic traditions of a radical form of Methodism. Most of her early visionary or out-of-body experiences reported by her tended to be focused on issues of her own personal holiness, or lack thereof, as well the religious condition of selected contemporaries, all of which were situated within the context of a belief in an imminent Second Coming.
White and all of the other individuals who were involved in the formation of the Sabbatarian Adventist movement and later denomination experienced the “Great Disappointment” concerning a specific date that had been predicted for the Second Coming. One would normally assume that people living through such a failed prophecy would quietly distance themselves from the failed event. However, that was not the way that White and the other individuals who were responsible for organizing the Seventh-day Adventist movement, and ultimately a denomination, reacted to this failure.
An analysis of the coping process that they and other members of such groups going through similar events employ was the topic of a classic work in the social psychology of religion: When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World (Festinger, Riecken and Schachter 1956).
The subject of the Festinger study was not Post-Millerite Adventism but a small UFO religion in Chicago who predicted the end of the world on December 21, 1954. When the predicted end did not occur, the UFO cult adherents, like the founders of the Sabbatarian Adventist denomination, reacted by not dispersing. Rather, the group sought reassurance by not abandoning their basic belief in an imminent Second Coming but actively seeking to convert others to their core belief. In the Adventist case, they insisted that the prophecy itself was correct, but the event to which it referred needed to be “adjusted.”
While there was an understandable hesitation to commit to any specific date for the Second Coming, White continued to insist that it was a very near event, “even at the door,” throughout the rest of her long life. Because of this, the Seventh-day Adventist denomination which White was instrumental in founding has, throughout its history, focused much of its attention on sometimes esoteric eschatological and millenarian topics.
The views that she included in her early writings concerning what we would today refer to as earth and early human history were taken largely from conventional understandings of her conservative religious environment. These views were supplemented in some cases by imagery and details that she obtained from her own vivid out-of body experiences most often referred to as visions which she believe came directly from God, some of which, she said, were mediated by angels. In reporting the substance of these visions in writing, she often employed the phrase “I was shown . . .”
For example, in one of her visions, she stated that she was taken back to the Creation described in Genesis and was able to witness what had occurred at that time. In writing about her visionary experiences and in other more general discussions, she, on a number of occasions, referred to “about 6000 years” to designate the time she believed that had elapsed since the time of the Genesis Creation. Presumably, that figure was derived from the margins of the King James version of the Bible. It is possible that, at least in her early experiences, she was not aware that these figures were not part of the biblical text, but that they had been added during the last quarter of the 17th Century.
It is important to note that how she interpreted the opening chapters of Genesis was a very minor element that became embedded as part of a background treatment into the fabric of her master Adventist narrative or religious world view: “The Great Controversy.” This theme was reworked several times over three decades in her writings before being assembled into a single treatment by her and her collaborators/editors.
White died in 1915, and between that event and the late 1940s, classical Adventism solidified into a tightly integrated, interlocking theological system. Meanwhile, schisms within several major Protestant churches had created separate Liberal and Fundamentalist branches of these denominations. Several Adventist church leaders proclaimed that Adventism clearly belonged in the Fundamentalist camp and, with few exceptions, that aspect of Adventism has continued to be emphasized in the traditional versions of its public evangelism and official pronouncements well into the 1960s after which, for a time, it declined.
That approach has been revived by the current president of the Adventist General Conference and organizations and individuals supporting his traditional Adventist theology and ecclesiastical politics. These organizations currently include such apologetic groups and websites as Adventist Affirm, the Adventist Theological Society (ATS), Educate Truth (sic), and the Adventist General Conference-sponsored Geoscience Research Institute (GRI).
In the interest of accuracy, it should be noted that the GRI supports Young Life Creationism but not Young Earth Creationism. This means that the fossils of living creatures cannot be older than 10,000 years and are probably 6,000 years old. However, the GRI seems to have no problem with the belief that our planet, our solar system, and the universe are billions of years old. However, like other Young Earth Creationists, the GRI continues to advocate the reality of a recent, world-wide Flood.
Also, in the interest of fairness, the current traditional Adventist understandings concerning Young Life Creationism plus the advocating a Young Earth Creationism and the reality of a recent worldwide flood can also be found on the web sites of other Fundamentalist organizations such as Answers in Genesis, which maintains a relatively sophisticated Young Earth/Young Life Creationist media operation and is even currently building a replica of that mythological structure known as Noah’s Ark.
In Part II, we will consider the effects that the need to accredit Adventist colleges, so that the accreditation of the Adventist medical school at Loma Linda could be accomplished, had on the vitality and credibility of the Adventist Fundamentalist ethos especially as its officially proclaimed views on earth and human history. This will provide the background to a discussion of the current theological polarization within First World Adventism concerning the nature of the Genesis creation narratives and how they should be interpreted. The principal elements of this debate concern the validity of biological evolution, objections to a belief in a recent worldwide flood, and the length of time that all living forms, including mankind, have existed on Earth.
Erv,
Jesus of Nazareth was (according to the biblical record) dependent on the Jewish scriptures for His understanding of Himself, Israel and the world. All His teaching was based on Scripture being true. If Jesus is the promised Jewish Messiah, i.e., Emmanuel, God with us. How can we view the authority of scripture differently than He did?
You write: ” If he was fully human, his comments cited in the New Testament relating to this topic reflected the same lack of accurate information that his Jewish contemporaries and all other humans possessed concerning this matter.”
Erv, aren’t you and Dr. Hoehn setting yourselves as authorities on what Jesus knew and understood? Haven’t you become judges of His teachings? If Jesus taught that at the end of time it would be like in the days of Noah before the flood swept them all away. You are really saying Jesus’s words have to be understood in the light of your superior knowledge. Jesus the Messiah, God, was an ignorant man compared to you. Jesus was not a man of science, unlike you and Dr. Hoehn who are scientists? Or do you just believe the scientists? Are they a superior authority to Jesus? Or just you?
William Abbott,
You have exposed the logical disconnect in the thinking of Drs. Taylor and Hoehn; and trust me—they will never be able to explain how it makes sense.
If Jesus is the Messiah that the Old Testament prophets foretold (as He is recorded to have claimed He was), and if He was the pre-existent Son of the living God (as He is recorded to have claimed that He was), and if the Old Testament was indeed written by holy men of God as they were inspired by God, and if Jesus did consider the Old Testament to be authoritative (as in “it is written…”), then it makes no sense to think for a nanosecond that He did not rely on the Old Testament record of things to be factual, or to believe that He was materially ignorant as to how things actually began.
On the other hand, it would make sense that Jesus did not know what He was talking about (or that He was reliant on incomplete and inadequate scriptural information) if He was not really who it is recorded/reported that He claimed to have been.
It doesn’t make sense to believe what the Bible says about God and about Jesus, yet not believe something else in the same Bible about what it says that God did or that Jesus did.
Here I must agree with Stephen Foster. For Christians, the teachings of Jesus have primacy.
Jack Hoehn does not agree with Dr Taylors theology. There is no reason for a realistic acceptance of scientific facts to challenge the divinity of Christ nor the reality of a historical Noah, Adam, or Eve. What is challenged is our interpretation of the chronology of the Bible. On this Dr. Taylor and I do agree.
Here I must agree with Dr Hoehn. Though I differ with Dr Hoehn regarding the specifics in his Atoday series on clocks, I do not find anything in the teachings of Jesus that says how old is the earth or human life on the earth.
Could someone please refer us to anything Jesus said that could be reasonably interpreted as a definitive statement about the timeline of creation and/or the age of the earth?
Ronald,
Of course, Jesus’ statements about Noah and the flood. Jesus believed the biblical account to be true, a historical event. The scriptures are far from silent about when the flood approximately happened.
Was Jesus divinely God when on this earth? Or did he come as a human with all the weaknesses of humanity? Can it be both? If so, when was he speaking and acting as a human and when as God?
Too often we overlook the fact that the entire Bible was written by humans like us, who are far from infallible. The Gospel writers wrote what Jesus was reported to have said as the first three were never in his presence that can be confirmed.
To expect humans to have written as men thousands of years later is impossible. They could only write as they experienced their world and heard what was said about events before they were born; and as they were perceived.
We denigrate and abuse the Bible when it is expected to be the answer for all possible questions of earlier life plus future life. It is only relatively lately that the Bible has been projected as the last answers to everything; in the past it was a source for revealing God’s love and man’s recorded history of their failures. If the Bible speaks to your heart, isn’t that the reason to read it? If looking for impossible answers, it’s not the book.
Elaine,
In the resurrection we have evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was wholly man and wholly God. He said: “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.”
If He was slain from the foundation of the world, if in the beginning was the Word, then we cannot divide Messiah’s humanity from His divinity. I will answer your question:“If so, when was he speaking and acting as a human and when as God?
He was always speaking as Messiah, the Unique One, the only begotten of the Father. “For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” If you prefer, the ‘fullness of Deity.”
“Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?”
Above Erv says: “If he was fully human, his comments cited in the New Testament relating to this topic reflected the same lack of accurate information that his Jewish contemporaries and all other humans possessed concerning this matter.” I have a question: If Erv’s statement quoted here is true, How can Jesus’ ignorance be limited to “this topic”?
Nothing like careful documentation and rational thought to stir up folks! 🙂
Nicely done!
The Gospels were not written at the time Christ lived. In none of Paul’s Epistles is there any reference to a Gospel. So they were written after Paul. Mark, the first Gospel written, was written shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem probably around 50-60 CE. Matthew was written later and barrows heavily from mark. Mathew is about 80 % mark. Luke was written toward the end of the first century and is about 50 % Mark. None of these writers with the possible exception of Mark were eye witnesses. That means that the story’s they tell are the oral traditions in circulation when they wrote. Consequently, they didn’t always get it right. There are around 600 differences between the four Gospels. Some of those differences are downright contradictions. One should be very careful in cherry picking the Jesus said statements. I’m not trying to diminish the authority of scripture but scriptural authority and scriptural infallibility are two different things. For far too many SDA’s authority means infallible. However, such a position is a form of Idolatry. Only God is infallible. To impute infallibility to a human document is to elevate that document to equality with God. Jesus was both God and man but just what does that mean. It seems to me that if he used his divinity while on earth then he had an advantage and could not have been tempted as we are. If he was a man, then he was first century Jew and shared there customs, thought patterns and world view.
I agree, Paul. The four gospels have different versions of some of the same events and stories, all primarily orally transmitted. And they each had specific agendas, not identical, in their efforts to identify Christ. The authors weren’t Matthew, Mark, Luke of John, of familiarity, didn’t have names affixed until toward the end of the first century.
They were all written more than thirty years after Christ died, in Greek (Christ and his disciples spoke Aramaic) by educated authors, (couldn’t have been simple, ordinary people) and they don’t agree on many details. John revises a narrative to fit his agenda of Christ-the-miracle-worker ergo God, placing the cleansing of the temple at the outset of Christ’s ministry.
Matthew truncates the “begats” for Jesus in his goal to emphasize the authority of Jesus, by leaving out several from the Chronicles source. Mark has a few verses added at the end, not in the oldest manuscripts. The sermon on the mount appears to be a compilation. Matthew and Luke are extensively drawn from Mark as well as another source, “Q.” These are just a few of the issues.
The lag between his life(c.30-70 years) and the writings about it allowed for time and opportunity for adjustments, revisions, and additions. Careful study reveals narrative modifications. The writers weren’t interested in providing a biography of Christ’s life but an explanation of his role as Messiah. Convenient memoires were the repository of the stories.
Continued:
Christ didn’t fit the Jewish Messiah model. He died. The Jewish Messiah was to a be king of power and glory, Israeli’s deliverer couldn’t be a dead criminal, a distinction Christ himself also made about the “son of man,” not referencing himself.
Christ’s death left his followers confused and puzzled. What he was and who he was wasn’t yet determined. That evolved with explanations developing haphazardly, traveling through the decades following his life. The Gospel writers started the process and Paul and the Catholic church eventually codified it into what is now Christianity.
I’m not saying it is practicing falsehood to be a Christian. Just that if you want to rely on “inspiration” adopt it in general terms. Specifics are a minefield of contradiction that require serious mental gymnastics to justify.
What about the many thousands of Jews that believed in Jerusalem when Paul visited? Jesus disciples must have been energized by his resurrection. Maybe Jesus really did teach them the Jewish Messiah had to die.
I wouldn’t use confused, puzzled and haphazard to describe the dynamic enthusiasm that motivated the people Saul of Tarsus was persecuting.
Are you funnin me William? Christology, how Christ was God and man took about three centuries to work out, ending up with the Nicaean creed, the current core of how to think about God/man. There was continual staggering from one idea to another, heretics identified and punished. Then some previously heretical ideas were adopted. Guess what, Christ didn’t explain it. Those darn Catholics did it!
How do you explain all those Jews, apparently thousands, who believe Jesus was the Christ, almost immediately after the resurrection. By the council of Nicaea approximately ten percent of the Roman Empire was Christian.
Jesus’ Messianic claims were widely accepted after his resurrection, especially among the Jews. I’d say it to longer than 300 years to settle up all the Christological details. We are
still working at it this afternoon.
You say, William, “How do you explain all those Jews, apparently thousands, who believe Jesus was the Christ, almost immediately after the resurrection. By the council of Nicaea approximately ten percent of the Roman Empire was Christian.” My answer: followers for strange ideas by gifted leaders happens all the time. Paul’s invitation to Jews was deemed so strange by the good-old-boys in Jerusalem they coerced him to an inquisition. Adventism isn’t even two hundred years old and look at the millions of sheep following its leaders! And there are Mormons and JW’s and Catholics with equally strange teachings!
William, all those Jewish converts became Catholic, as did the ten percent segment of the Roman populace you herald. By being Christian, you join them as Catholic with Peter as your ancient, apostolic, first pope because you practice the identical dogma developed and maintained by the Catholic church (of course you have a newer pope now)! You practice, in a large part, Catholicism in celebrating your “Christian” tenets. How does that make you feel, Huh?
Anyway, pray tell what Christological refinements you worked on the afternoon of May 3, 2016 at 12:33 pm. Whatever you develop, it should be forwarded to the Vatican for its imprimatur. It has a nasty track record of permanently disposing of tinkerers with its ex cathedra edicts and its sacraments! Those evil heretics, you an Adventist one!
Religious beliefs begin with men and the creation of myths surrounding events and people who may be created into gods or having more power than ordinary humans. It would not be a “faith” of “belief” if based solely on universally accepted evidence: 2+2 = 4 does not require faith; knowing the sun always rises in the east does not need faith; otherwise, it would be called a religion of which there have been hundreds whenever there are groups of people with common ideas and interests.
Thanks to archaeological discoveries, we now know that the Jewish Messiah model of king and glory was not the only model circulating around ancient Jews. It was perhaps the most common one, but not the only one by any means.
If Christ had been born two thousand years later, in our day instead, wouldn’t he refer to cosmology in our current terminology and understanding? Wouldn’t he speak of space/time? Might he not talk about the “big bang?” Is it possible he might describe the Creative hand in human evolution? Could he talk of the sun, how, after consuming most of its fuel, will flare out to a red giant stage and toasting the earth before eventually shrinking to a white dwarf? Might he talk of Black Holes as an illustrative metaphor? Might he cure the schizoid without labeling them devil possessed?
Yes, there is comfort for some who claim that if Jesus said it, it is true. I ask, how does the common view of his day become truth because he parroted it? His ignorance of the universe was shared by virtually everyone two millennia ago. Christianity lives very well in our day without adopting the myth of his day as fact for ours.
My point remains unaddressed: Jesus Christ viewed and used Torah and the Jewish Scripture in a particular way. Erv says Jesus used the scripture as authority in ignorance. He didn’t know better. He didn’t know as much truth as we do. Jesus in His humanity was merely human and He could not transcend His first century Jewishness.
Erv’s is certainly a coherent argument. I’m sure it appeals to Bugs. It does not reflect accurately the way Jesus thought about Himself. I’m not cherry-picking anything here. All four gospels give a very consistent representation of Jesus of Nazareth believing He was Messiah through the revelation of Torah/Scripture. I invite and encourage the Negative team to reference the gospel passages that refute my contention that scripture is the sole source of Jesus of Nazareth’s self-understanding.
If I am Jesus Christ’s disciple, if I believe He was Israel’s Messiah, then I submit my understanding to His understanding. I cannot exercise authority over Him and declare Him ignorant of truth. In following Him, I follow His example of using scripture as authority.
The Negative team of course can believe what they want. Please tell us more about the ignorance of Jesus.
Dear William,
I am writing this from the Briar Patch to which you recently threw me in your role as Crafty Brer Fox, where I am in shock from having been knocked off my rocker with your most impressive resume! I wouldn’t have guessed you are a cellulose decay expert!
Your model of faith leaves me incredulous as I look at your bona fides! My earlier challenge wasn’t intended as an ad hominin attack, but a question of how you can say, and apparently believe, the things you say you do considering your obvious considerable cogitative powers. You keep spilling the beans of your faith and I just don’t get it, more than ever.
Jesus was as cosmologically ignorant (not stupid) as anyone in his time. That is obvious. It just means His repeating common ideas doesn’t elevate them past the myth they were. (He didn’t know about microbes, either)!
So I now have made my way to the Fields of Ambrosia for further recovery. I am massaging my briar wounds and deciding if I can ever figure you out. I’m a year closer to understanding my wife. OK! so, I still have 99 years to go for her! You not so soon!
Cordially, Bugs
William Abbott,
Bugs make perfect sense from the perspective that Jesus was not God’s Son; or that there is no Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent Beneficent Creator of the universe. I have no quarrel with his point of view from that particular perspective.
Our quarrel, it seems to me, is with those like Drs. Taylor and Hoehn, who are fellow Seventh-day Adventist Christians, yet at the end of the day have come to many of the same conclusions that Bugs has.
Dr. Hoehn has previously made it a point to emphasize that his beliefs about who God is (and/or who Jesus is) are closer to ours than they are those of Bugs. We can only attempt to glean from what Dr. Taylor says about various things what his beliefs are; because he can’t actually articulate what he believes or doesn’t believe.
Stephen,
Very close. Bugs does expound hetrodoxical views about Jesus of Nazareth. The scriptures are not authoritative to Bugs. I think Bug’s exact position is he knows nothing about a creator or the creator’s nature. This is an assumption, call it his belief. He also believes that Goodness, which may or may not emanate from the creator is apprehendable essentially only through love and beauty. He realizes he may be self-deluded. It frees Him to from any obligation or duty to the creator, apart from his freely given love to others and appreciation of the beautiful and the sublime. It is a gift which he gives back to God – loving others, loving life, loving beauty. All of us who think God has revealed Himself through law and scripture are delusional. Bugs delusion is better than ours. We can leave him to smoke his ambrosia. As you say, our quarrel is with those who say the scripture is authoritative, but reserve for themselves the right to pick and choose the scriptures that are authoritative.
I’m hopeful Erv will further explain his Christology. Can he limit the ignorance of Jesus Christ to the Genesis accounts Erv believes are untrue?
When does being a Christian, a Catholic of Adventist Christian, require that all believe exactly alike? Originally, to be a Christian, meant a follower of Christ, his teachings. his life. There was nothing about belief in the age of the earth; how and when it was created; that an Investigative Judgment began thousands of years after Christ; that one must observe a day as holy, but a specific day out of seven; and hundreds more.
These are ALL man made extras that have no relationship to Christianity. When will it become simple: to be a follower of Christ is to be a Christian! Period, end of report.
Anything other than that is a denial of His humanity.
“A cellulose decay expert!” First class! Good show! Jolly Good Show! Bugs is a total genius. Why can’t the rest of us think of such good lines?
So true……….. “though i speak with the tongues of angels”. Love makes the world worthwhile.
Knowledge of the universe by most Earthlings didn’t occur until approx 1960. A thought, if Christ was not in the tomb, on the first day, wouldn’t the disciples have been out looking for HIM?? Instead of holing up in a fearful state?? Since spending 3 years glued to His side, and observing the miracles He
performed?? If they were unable to “bear the cross”, only by Divine interaction, can we!!!!
Validity of biological evolution? no yet…. what was validated so far is the validity of biological devolution. Ironically this was done by its best defenders; the population geneticists.
The church’s fundamental beliefs leave open a hatchway between two points of view on the nature of Christ. Why cannot this also be done in matters of the First and Second books of testimony about God (the Bible and evidence we can touch and measure in the physical realm of scientific observation)?
Perhaps in time, under wise leadership, this can be emulated in the matter of Creation as well as the role of men and women in the Faith. We need to understand that we live in an imperfect world, peopled by human being who vastly differ culturally and educationally. Why require us all to agree in lock step as we grow in wisdom, and in stature, and in favor with God and man? The fundamental issue is that God is the Creator and is the equal-opportunity Father of both genders; how these genders specifically adopt to various cultures where they serve will depend on the wise counsel at hand in local fields, as our teaching on Creation will differ in the tropical jungles (where animism prevails) from what may be taught in Toronto or Cape Town. This isn’t rocket science, it seems…..
If, as Erv argues, Jesus had no idea regarding past history outside of his own human situation, then how can one reasonably take Jesus seriously when He prophesied about the future? What about the claim of Jesus when He said, “Before Abraham was, I AM”?
Yet, it seems like Erv and Jack are willing to accept the claims of popular scientists, as superior to the Bible, despite the very weak and conflicting nature of these claims and in the face of very strong evidence that life on this planet cannot have existed for even a million years – likely much less. Both Erv and Jack consistently fail to critically evaluate their parroted arguments. Both continue to present as “fact” old and outdated arguments that have long been shown to be either very tenuous or downright wrong. And, both fail to see that their arguments fundamentally undermine the credibility of not only Adventism, but the Bible itself and Christianity at large.
Consider carefully that if Erv and Jack were able to convince the church to change its position to match their views, that there would be no reason to maintain the SDA denomination. What reason would be left for its existence? – or for viewing the Bible as authoritative on any topic as the “Word of God”? I for one would certainly see no compelling reason to maintain the title of “Seventh-day Adventist” or even “Christian” for that matter… outside of, perhaps, certain social benefits while living in certain regions of the country…
Continued:
Consider also, like any human prophet, Jesus claimed to have privileged information about the far distant past as well as the future – because of His very close connection and interaction with the Father. Was He lying? How then did He know, decades before the events, about that all the huge stones of the temple would be thrown down by the Romans in order to get at the melted gold after the temple has been burned? How did He know that the Roman army would briefly withdraw after surrounding Jerusalem? – and that many who were listening to his words would still be alive to witness this event? – So that not a single Christian would die during this invasion that killed 600,000 non-Christian Jews? Or, did He just get very lucky in guessing?
I just don’t see how those like Erv can have it both ways. Either Jesus was lying, or He did in fact have Divine privileged information – which God can even share with regular human beings if He so chooses. The argument that Jesus could not have known because He was living as a human while on this planet simply doesn’t hold water and is inconsistent with the claims of Jesus Himself along these lines.
“One would normally assume that people living through such a failed prophecy would distance themselves from the failed event.”
The key word is NORMALLY, Erv. When what seems normal to the naturalistic mindset doesn’t happen, the naturalist insists on diagnosing pathology. May I offer that the reason early Adventists didn’t distance themselves from the failed event was that they were certain God had led them and spoken to them. They had just misunderstood what He was communicating. This conviction led them to very deeply immerse themselves in scripture.
It is interesting to contrast the parallel lives of David and Saul. Both had multiple failures and repeatedly misunderstood God’s will for them. The difference was that David kept turning to God in his sin and failure. Saul, on the other hand, turned away from the God who had “failed” him. Would David have been a man after God’s own heart if he had been right – if his miserable failures had not driven him to passionately seek relationship with God? I doubt it.
Conservative fundamentalists and liberal fundamentalists on this thread are both making the mistake of thinking that the path to truth is correct knowledge and understanding of the natural world. Those of us who feel blessed by our Adventist heritage should surrender our need for vindication to the reality that God has blesses us not because we are right, but because even in our sin and flawed understandings, we continue to seek Him with all our hearts.
Nathan: ‘May I offer that the reason early Adventists didn’t distance themselves from the failed event was that they were certain God had led them and spoken to them. They had just misunderstood what He was communicating. This conviction led them to very deeply immerse themselves in scripture. ‘
And the result of this immersion? The IJ and the ‘system of truth’ (Ellen’s words) which is cobbled together around it. This ‘system’ is now thoroughly discredited. Only the social needs of a group with nowhere else to go maintain the façade. These debates on AT reflect little more than the moribund tics of Adventism’s ischaemic corpus. RIP.
Serge – The eye sees what the mind tells it to see. You see immersion in The Book (Yes – lamentably, too often the “red books” as well)as the source of an inadequate, flawed systematized faith. And of course you speak truth. But as with all truth, yours is a partial truth that leads one to give up the quest and turn away from God. And how is that working out?
I instead see, in the lurching, through-a-glass-darkly, attempts to encapsulate and institutionalize God’s Truth, the same sinful human nature that permeates every system built on our most noble beliefs and aspirations. What human religious, political or social systems can you name that have not been pretty well discredited?
I don’t know what Adventist faith communities you encounter, Serge. Mine feels quite vibrant to me, though I would say it has metamorphosed significantly from what you call the facade of Adventism toward more Christocentricity. Jesus used a grain of wheat as a metaphor for describing those who cling to formulaic, institutionalized religion for meaning and purpose: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it is just a grain of wheat. But If it falls to the ground, it brings forth much fruit.”
I remain optimistic about Adventism’s ability to evolve, because I believe those who are grounded in scripture AND are open to the God’s Spirit in their lives will not build anti-faith on the conviction that God’s Word or His Spirit’s leading are to blame for their failures.
Nathan,
You are being very gracious to Serge. I am more severe. Yes, the church suffers from ischæmia. It must eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ if it wants to live. When the early Adventists immersed themselves in scripture they found there Jesus Christ. These moribund discussions here at AT are still looking for and finding the one, Him, Jesus, whom we seek.
Serge, do you want to make the Adventist church all about something else? I know our house is filthy. Try doing anything with a bunch of sinners. Its always a mess. It hard to see your erudite sneers and contemptuous condescension as helpful as we clean and sweep the house looking for the Pearl of Great Price, but you are always welcome to join us. I suspect you find our debates here more stimulating than you let on. You keep coming back.
If you want to know about Jesus the Messiah, you have to read and study scripture. It’s our only source. You have to be a Torah scholar: Just like that Jew: Jesus of Nazareth. We will continue to seek Jesus in the scriptures and to tell others whom it is we have found.
“And the results of this immersion…? …Only the social needs of a group with nowhere else to go to maintain the façade.” No Serge: Christ lives in us; we are the chosen people of God.
“Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.” Who are you looking for Serge?
William, I find your thesis that Jesus was Jewish, therefore he must represent what you imagine was ‘Jewish’ at the time, rather strange. There is no one ‘Jewishness.’ Read Rachel Elior’s Three Temples to see how diverse, disparate and even schismatic Judaism was in the time of Jesus. So you must decide, which one was he? Not Pharisaism, that is certain. He condemned and criticised it without holding back. ‘Ye are of your father the devil, and the lists of yoru father ye will do.’ Is that the Judaism he was a part of? Paul, similarly, utterly rejected his former life in Pharisaism. There is a lot more argument for Jesus’ affinity with Essenism, but don’t forget the philosophical Judaism which was strong in Alexandria. (btw, there are good arguments for the authorship of the book of Hebrews being Apollonius of Alexandria).
Your calls for seeing Jesus as part of a mainstream, monolithic Judaism simply reflects a lack of awareness of the diversity of Jewish thought in those days. (and that situation remains). You could say that Christianity is a Jewish construct, but then highly modified by the generations which followed. Ideas are like that. But please, do not regress to Torah Judaism for your truth. No light to be found there. None at all.
Serge,
I will have to wait a bit to respond as fully as I desire. To both you and Bugs essentially about the same issue; the Jewishness of Jesus of Nazareth. He that is called the Christ. In the meantime let me ask you some questions.
To what extent was Jesus teaching Torah?
Was Jesus a Torah scholar, albeit, not schooled in the traditional manner?
Why were all the Jews, Pharisees, Sauducces, Herodians, even Pilate, interested in Jesus as Messiah?
Did Jesus believe Himself to be the Messiah long foretold in Jewish Scripture and universally anticipated by all the Jews, despite their many divisions and disagreements?
Did you think Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead?
Nathan, your harsh judgement of me as living a life away from God is false. How could you possibly know me to that extent? It is quite presumptuous of you to assume that everyone who leaves the errors of Adventism also leaves their relationship with God in the keeping of that failed denomination. Many, on this site, who have done so, confirm that since leaving Adventism, their spiritual experience has blossomed and borne fruit once unimaginable. I am certainly in that category.
I would also like to correct your psychology on the nature of belief. The eye doesn’t see what the mind tells it at all. It sees what the heart tells it. Mind is later called on to justify that choice. This is the what and why of the phrase, ‘the beauty of truth.’ It is also why Jesus said, ‘when ye seek with ‘all your heart,’ that ye shall find. (btw, since I was, praise God, dismissed from the SDA ministry in 1981 I have sought, and found, the most beautiful of truths imaginable. So I would say its working out pretty well, this life after Adventism)
Your hopes for the ‘evolution’ of Adventism are therefore doomed. Adventism remains mired in their attachment to the ‘rational’ view that their IJ errors are logical and systematic, despite generations of reasoned argument against it. The (non)-reaction to Cottrell’s last theological work is testament to this.
Nathan, you wrote: “I remain optimistic about Adventism’s ability to evolve, because I believe those who are grounded in scripture AND are open to the God’s Spirit in their lives…”
If you are speaking of those Adventists who only hold to the Scriptures and no other extra-biblical writings from which they draw knowledge and understanding of God, then fair enough. No doubt there would be many in this category.
But for those who think they are grounded in the Scriptures, or rather claim to have the Scriptures as their ultimate and only written authority, but also consult other writings, namely, those of the early SDA church founders—how are they “grounded in the Scriptures”? With that in mind, I have to agree with Serge. Adventism is much more than being “grounded in Scripture”, it’s more like being grounded in false doctrines.
Nathan, you wrote:
Of course this is the most important thing – a loving relationship with God and our fellow man which trumps everything else and is the basis of salvation. However, this isn’t to say that a correct understanding of various empirical and even doctrinal truths is of no real value. God says that He wishes us to worship Him in Spirit and in truth (John 4:24). That is why is it to our own benefit to carefully search out the Bible, as well as nature, to see if we can actually learn something of practical value – to include various truths that may form the basis of a solid rational hope, not only in the existence of a personal God, but in the reality of the Bible’s claims of a bright future of eternal life with God in a world made new as it was originally intended to be – a place were there is no more death or sorrow or suffering for any sentient creature.
That is why I personally see that the fundamental doctrinal positions of the Adventist Church are actually valuable – as a basis of a truly rational hope for a better world to come. This basis, this empirical evidence, is what makes the “Gospel Message” truly “Good News” – even for thinking people 😉
Sean – I agree with the principles you lay out. And I am sure you recognize that I embrace a Christian world view which sees the Bible as sacred text – as God’s Word. It (not Adventist doctrine) is to me the necessary and sufficient basis for joy in the present evil-filled world, and a truly rational hope in a better world to come. Hundreds of millions of non-SDA Christians have found such joy and hope through paths other than the Adventist one. As Bill Garber pointed out earlier today, Adventist creation science is not a logical necessity. It only becomes a necessity if one builds an interlocking theology and identity on that interpretation. And that approach strikes me as too rigid, too much of a Spirit-tight container. It becomes almost a naturalistic, deterministic theology.
I embrace the gift of the Sabbath without believing in a literal 6-day creation thousands of years ago. In fact, I treasure the Sabbath more because I see a much deeper meaning in the Sabbath than does Adventist theology, which makes the validity of the Sabbath dependent on Creation literalism.
Of course scripture shouldn’t mean whatever we want it to mean, any more than our sacred political text – the Constitution – should mean whatever the moral will of 5 SCOTUS lawyers read into it. All paths to God have pitfalls and potholes. The best way to know if one is on the right path is reflect on whether that path is taking them closer to Christ – not whether we can pass a beliefs test.
Dr. Pitman makes several statements which seem to me to raise substantive issues which need to be respectfully considered. It should go without saying (but I will) that these comments express only my opinion and Dr. Hoehn may or may not agree with these opinions in whole or in part.
The response here will be what, to me, is the most egregious and counterfactual statement of Dr. Pitman.
He says that I am willing to accept the claims of scientists “despite the very weak and conflicting nature of these claims and in the face of very strong evidence that life on this planet cannot have existed for even a million years – likely much less.”
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to read arguments that Dr. Pitman posts on his web site, Educate Truth, and in other venues, where he repeats this point over and over again. When I first saw his comment, I wondered if he actually understood what he was reading in the scientific literature dealing with geochronology. However, let us assume that he has read widely in this literature and understands what he is reading.
Therefore, I assume that he must realize that, at most, 1% (and probably less) of those scientists whose areas of expertise and research are in various areas of geochronology would agree with his statement. For specialists in isotopic dating methods, this kind of statement is– how shall I put it without being unkind–simply ludicrous.
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The actual situation is exactly opposite of what Dr. Pitman alleges. To provide support for his position, he will cite various types of anomalous data. What he fails to tell those who may not be familiar with the publications that deal with the major isotopic dating methods such as radiocarbon. argon-argon, and uranium series, such data represents a very small percentage of the total data base that has accumulated over the most recent decades for each method.
Also, most of the questions he has raised have been resolved–at least the satisfaction of those having research experience and expertise in the relevant fields. Finally, the largest percentage of the anomalous results that are cited by Dr. Pitman and those supporting his views were published in the early years of the development of a given method when some problems had not been, as yet, resolved.
There are a number of other counterfactual and disputable statements that Dr. Pitman has posted in his response. These will be dealt in other responses.
PS
Nate has again used the term “liberal fundamentalist.” He certainly can use words such as “fundamentalist” in any way he wishes, even if that usage does not track with the actual definition of this word. I guess this is a classic illustration of Nate’s creative inventiveness.
Re: the definition of a “fundamentalist”
Erv – For an evolutionist, you take a decidedly prescriptive view of language when it suits your purpose. Given the Orwellian conscription of language by the Left in contemporary culture, your resistance to diversity and linguistic evolution when it comes to one of your favorite pejoratives is remarkable. As you know, it was one of the stalwarts of liberal Adventist theology – Fritz Guy – who expanded my horizons when he observed in a talk a few years ago that there are liberal fundamentalists as well as conservative fundamentalists. I immediately grasped his meaning and truth. The fact that you do not, Erv, strikes me as less an intellectual stance than an emotional one.
Why don’t you check Wikipedia’s discussion of “fundamentalism.” Scroll down to “non-religious,” and you will find there a mirror reflecting many, if not all, of the characteristics demonstrated on this website by you and others who regularly contend with religious fundamentalists. I would hope Wikipedia might persuade you to relinquish your death grip on a narrow, self-serving definition of “fundamentalism” to the possibility that there may be a larger linguistic universe out there than the one which you and your “tribe” of methodological atheists inhabit.
Erv wrote:
Please, why the strawman? Where have I cited anomalous data to support my position? My problem with such dating methods isn’t some anomalous data here or there. My problem is that such dating methods are not independent methods on closed systems, but are open systems that must be calibrated – against each other! And, as you very well know, C14 dating is particularly problematic for your position since there is far too much of it, consistently, within the soft tissues of dinosaur bones as well as other organic materials in the fossil record. Your arguments so far that these findings are the result of contamination or “background” aren’t adequate. Detrimental DNA mutation rates and a host of other factors also do not allow for the ancient ages you’re proposing – despite their popularity among most mainstream scientists. I’ve been to several of your lectures and read many of your arguments over the years – none of which, to put it kindly, are very original and most of which are either out of date or simply wrong. Still…
The problem with Naturalistic Evolution is not the problem of geochronology but that the age of the Universe commonly accepted is not long enough for the the process of Evolution commonly believed to achieve the complexity of our World.
The long and short of it is that Erv believes in the popular vote of the strong majority of scientists – even though he personally doesn’t understand how to explain the “science”. He is not able to reasonably explain, nor is anyone else, how random mutations and natural selection could produce anything beyond the lowest levels of functional complexity this side of trillions of years of time. He doesn’t understand how the high detrimental mutation rates in slowly reproducing creatures (like all mammals for instance) could be overcome by natural selection. He doesn’t understand how so much carbon 14 could exist in dinosaur bones and other organic remains within the fossil record. He doesn’t understand a lot of things – but he still believes that the basic claims of neo-Darwinism are still true. Why? Because it’s popular.
However, this leaves him in a tough spot when it comes to religion. He claims to believe in God, but he also claims that there is no solid empirical evidence for God’s existence. In other words, as William Provine once put it, the type of religion that Erv wants the Adventist Church to adopt is effectively indistinguishable from atheism – when it comes to any kind of rational or evidentiary support. Why then even pretend to be an “Adventist” or a Bible-believing Christian when the finger of God cannot be detected behind anything in our world?
Geochronology and evolution are areas of study independent of each other.
The reading of the Bible is a third unrelated matter entirely, until a Bible reader makes it otherwise.
It seems that how we hold God, and specifically God’s intention with regard to humanity, does indeed determine for us God’s intention with regard to natural revelation and with regard to special revelation.
Now, a simple reading of the Bible yields a flat Earth that doesn’t move and a Sun that moves across the sky.
It takes a sophisticated reading of the Bible for Seventh-day Adventists generally to believe the Earth is spherical and is turning on its own axis and at the same time circling the Sun which is stationary relative to the Earth.
So, what about how we hold God that lets us simply dismiss repeated Biblical reports of the Earth as flat and stationary?
And then, how can holding God in this same way possibly require that the earth be created ex nihilo, 6,000 years ago, in six, 24-hour, consecutive days?
It is important to keep in mind the question here is about how we hold God, not why we hold God in this way. (Why we hold God in this way is the subsequently useful question, of course.)
But first, what specifically about God (not the Bible) requires one to believe in what is commonly termed, Young Earth Creationism? Or not?
This is the apriori question in play here, it seems.
Perhaps Erv will entertain this question next.
You pose a good question Bill. I would say that except for the understanding that God, by His nature, is, was, and has been capable of having created the earth as we know it very recently—and capable of having done so six literal Earth days, despite any evidence to the contrary—there is nothing about God that “requires one to believe in what is commonly termed, Young Earth Creationism.”
We all can certainly appreciate the honesty of Dr. Pitman in admitting that rational individuals accept the understandings of the “strong majority of scientists” who are specialists in a given area of research. I assume that “strong majority” is the same as saying the “overwhelming majority.” What would be the alternative? To accept the views of the 1% or 2%? Can we not assume that Dr. Pitman accepts the views of the overwhelming percentage of the specialists in his medical field and not the 1 or 2 practitioners who advocate the use of, for example, crystal balls to decide if a biopsy contains cancer cells? We thus accept the overwhelming amount of evidence that the earth and life on earth is very, very old, evidence developed by the “strong majority of scientists” involved in geochronology.
Accepting science and accepting the views and understandings of the overwhelming majority of scientists are two very different things, Erv. The very reasonable imferences that might be drawn from scientific evidence are not science. The “overwhelming majority of scientists” are simply accepting work done by a tiny fraction of scientists.
A very good example of this is the climate consensus that has been built on the fraudulent creation and manipulation of data by a handful of paleoclimatologists. Erv, have you read the article recommended by William Abbott in the current edition of “First Things” – “Scientific Regress” – by William Wilson.
Scientists are human beings with the full range of emotions, temptations, and nefarious motives that plague all humans in positions of authority. I imagine it is safe to say that the overwhelming majority of scientists reject I.D. That’s because they believe in the religion of naturalism. It doesn’t qualify their opinions as science.
The difference between you and Sean isn’t really over science at all. It is about the reasonable inferences that can and should be drawn from a vast array of scientific evidence. That’s a matter of reason, logic, and subjective preferences. Your conclusions are determined by your agnostic, materialist world view. Sean’s are determined by his Adventist world view.
Elaine writes above about the mythical basis for belief: “It would not be a “faith” of “belief” if based solely on universally accepted evidence: 2+2 = 4 does not require faith;”
Exactly, Elaine, without myth there would be no religion, nothing in which to “believe.” You can’t believe in gravity, or Newton’s third law. You can “believe in” a risen Christ because it isn’t evident and exists only in the mind. It is extra-factual, on several levels, beyond fact, absent any conceivable, definite verification. It is an opinion, a proposition, for which one “acts as if” it is true. The believer glosses over any weakness of evidence (conflicting eyewitness accounts, the need for “eyewitnesses” the number of witnesses and their veracity, etc.), because the person “likes” the tenet. And that paucity elevates it to grand evidence because of its deficiencies, it then operates in the highest order of belief as an act of “faith.”
Myth has several different meanings. Here I am not talking about the resurrection being a myth as in a lie. It is a religious tenant, neither provable nor unprovable. It is an indispensable part of a larger narrative, the exact function of myth. The rabid defenders of the resurrection concept recoil in horror when presented with this verity because they mistake their “acting as if” it is true as the certification of the factual nature of it.
Bugs, Most of the time I agree with you 100%. However, your description of faith is what is, not what it should be. Faith should be evidenced based. For SDA believers consider SC page 105 “God never asks us to believe, without giving sufficient evidence upon which to base our faith.” “Our faith must rest upon evidence, not demonstration.” The Bible asserts that we should prove all things and hold onto that which is good. To me that which is good means hold on to that which has supporting evidence. To the SDA believer the Bible says prove your beliefs.
Paul, I maintain there is a difference between believing something and believing “in” something. Religious belief, faith, is believing “in” something. Believing “in” means to subscribe to a viewpoint, not an acknowledgement of a set of inarguable facts. Mr. St. Paul acknowledges the ephemeral nature of faith in his famous quote about it being the substance and evidence of things unseen, but hoped for. And he was aware of the tenuous, propositional risk of belief when he fretted about the danger of Christology exclaiming that his life would be most miserable if Christ really didn’t rise from the dead. It was his acknowledgement of the possibility it wasn’t true. Yes, he believed “in” it anyway, which is exactly what the exercise of religion is about.
Ellen gave it a good shot in her attempt to prop up religious belief, by claiming God supplies sufficient evidence, but she was dead wrong, based on Paul’s statements alone. Buttressing of religious tenets is done by people, measured by opinion, not delivered by God. Virtually all religions operate in this fashion and encompass belief “in” something.
Religious evidentiary criteria is subjective, in the mind of the beholder. Once there is a collection of “facts” religion halts, science begins. Faith cannot be “proven.” Faith is ephemeral, extra-factual.
I want to point out to the young earth believers that arguing that the science evidence for an old earth is faulty does not by default prove a young earth. You must present the physical evidence supporting your young earth claims. According to the hypothetical-deductive method proof is achieved in two ways: strong inference or null hypothesis. One alleged supporting piece of evidence (DNA neoMD’s argument) is not strong inference. Strong inference requires many pieces of evidence.
Ppriest,
I want to agree with you, (surprise). All our criticisms of geochronology and paleoclimatology don’t exactly establish they are wrong. (NeoMD’s DNA evidience may represent on exception.) They establish the limitations of knowing that they are accurate. Enough assumptions added together and the probability of error and erroneous conclusions becomes highly probable. None of that proves the earth is young. I have not presented evidence that the earth is young. Establishing the YEC has not be the point of any of my arguments.
Quite valid, Ppriest. However, you might want to qualify your last statement. Inference – even proof – does not necessarily require many pieces of evidence. All it requires is one non-falsifiable piece of evidence from which no other inference can reasonably be drawn.
And of course, I am sure you will agree that evidence falsifying YLC/YEC doesn’t ipso facto support neoDarwinian theories of life. For example, population genetics uses science and math in computer models to draw inferences about how long life on earth has been around. It was originally used to falsify Creationism. In recent years, with more scientific appreciation for the complexities of genetic science, population genetics is falsifying not only Creationist “science,” but the very neoDarwinian conclusions it was once used to support. And, once again, the I.D. hypothesis, proposed by those who understand and accept the implications of population genetics, is not established by falsifying the tenets of Neo-Darwinian theory.
However, when you are able, through credible evidence, to falsify or cast doubt on the necessity of particular inferences offered to explain reality, alternative hypotheses often become more plausible.
Larry, the basis of faith is subjective, as it should be. To thine own self be true. Faith
is the substance of “hoped for reality”. Nothing has touched the heart of billions of mankind, as deeply as the life of Jesus Christ, GOD, and the story of His Graceful
act of self-sacrifice for His Creation. It is a truthful Truth for every believer. No one on Earth, can disprove it’s reality. Intellectual Design is a reality, who is able to disprove it?? There are notable persons who have tried, and failed, because there
are “no absolutes”. They are unable to empirically “prove their thesis”. Therefore it is
our faith, into what is best for us as individuals, to rely on the positives that give us
Love, Peace, and a joyful knowledge in that which perpetuates our immortal lives. You may call it wishful hope, it works for us. There are others, in which they must continue to search for the golden ring of discovery; the pot of gold at rainbows end;
of “Ponce’s, fountain of youth”. Not finding the answers at Earthbound, they are dreaming of flights to distant planets, searching for the formation of life’s most basic of beginnings, while refusing to accept the intellectual design of an Eternal Cosmos
Creator, of this galactic Milky Way, this Universe, and all the continuing interconnected spatial sectors. Follow your faith and you’ll have your desire. Your
individual belief fulfilled, and let no one come between you and your heart of hearts.
I had not realized the degree to which Nate is a thoroughgoing Postmodern relativist.
It seems to me that it is correct to suggest that the views and opinions that we accept are, at their core, based on fundamental assumptions or postulates that we make, many of which we are not aware. That certainly is true in theology and philosophy.
If we are dualists about the nature of the world and reality, i.e., there is the natural and there is the supernatural, we will tend to go in one direction in our theology and religious commitments. If we are monists, i.e., there is only one reality, we will tend to go in another in our theology and religious commitments. In this area, Nate is certainly correct. Worldviews make the fundamental difference.
However, a little over 500 years ago in the West, a few individuals started a process to think about how to understand the physical world that tried to get around the problem of worldviews. Some of them were a little tired of the so-called Wars of Religion in western Europe, which were mostly about politics and who controls who and what, but were fought in the name of two competing religions.
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Of course, these individuals did not accomplish that, but they developed the next best thing — if one is interested in learning how the physical world works. We call that that process science. It is simply working from a particular world view — from a methodological point of view, not a metaphysical point of view. We all know the nature of what that concept is called–methodological naturalism.
It is a worldview that was held by a few ancient Greek philosophers. However, in the modern world, it has been fleshed out over several centuries by a lot of very smart people to be one of the most powerful and successful ways of studying the natural world.
Regretfully, there are some individuals who insist on turning methodological naturalism into existential or metaphysical naturalism. These are individuals like Richard Dawkins.. There are others, many of whom are very well informed and very smart, such as Nate, who seem to not appreciate the difference. But perhaps I am misrepresenting his point of view on this.
There are others, like many Fundamentalists, who apparently don’t even understand the differences between these two ways of approaching the natural world. There is little we can do to help them.
You are not misrepresenting my views at all, Erv. What I think you fail to appreciate is the extent to which methodological naturalism can be an enormous barrier to accepting, much more understanding, reality beyond the capacity of its epistemological tools. When a system works very well to explain reality, we tend to give it too much power.
The 20th Century was marked by an alarming extension of methodological naturalism into sociology and psychology, leading to deterministic models built on the myth that unreliable experimentation with uncontrollable human variables could be called science.
Those who laid the foundations for modern science were, for the most part, humble investigators who had an abiding conviction that we are not alone in the universe; that behind, above, and outside their methodological naturalism was a Prime mover – an Intelligent Creator who could not be accessed by naturalistic Babels.
So it’s not the quest for natural explanations that is the problem. It’s the presuppositional absolutism of naturalism that I would challenge. That dogmatic approach is as much the enemy of science as the dogmatism of Biblical literalism, because both approaches have in common an unwillingness to acknowledge their limits.
I find some agreement with this Nathan. I acknowledge the limits of the Biblical literalism to which I lean (insofar as the explanation of origins is concerned) in that what the Bible describes cannot be proven and some of it can apparently be disproven—“apparently” being the operative word.
Among the limits of the naturalist approach is that absolute (fundamentalist?) naturalists won’t acknowledge that they cannot prove how or when we got here, but cannot admit that; just as they cannot admit the fact that there is a mathematical certainty that we are not alone in the universe.
Nate,
Your comments regarding limitations of methodologocal naturalism are very well stated. Kudos!
Erv,
Given your perspective on Methodological Naturalism as the foundation of modern science, tell me, is there any empirical evidence in the natural world that you would ever cite as evidence of intelligent design? – or perhaps even the finger of God? I know that you once said that you know of no such evidence. I’m just wondering if you’ve changed your mind? If there is no such evidence, then upon what basis should any rational person believe in the existence of God?
In this line, consider that science, even modern science, is in actually capable of detecting design behind various phenomena. In fact, this ability forms the basis of several scientific disciplines – to include forensic science, anthropology, and even SETI science. If scientists practicing in these particular disciplines think themselves able to detect deliberate design, even if the designer be a non-human alien designer, behind various phenomena, how is Methodological Naturalism fundamentally at odds with the need to invoke very very high level design behind certain phenomena? – levels of design that would be essentially indistinguishable from what a God or at least a God-like Designer would be able to produce?
Now, perhaps you don’t see such evidence of design behind our universe or living things, but even the likes of Richard Dawkins accept that such evidence is at least theoretically possible. How about you? What empirical evidence would it take to convince you?
Early Calahan wrote:
This is certainly the definition of fideistic faith. However, this is not how the Bible describes faith. The Bible always describes faith as being built on solid empirical evidence as a basis for the leap of faith. Biblical faith is not therefore not completely blind or irrational. There are very good reasons for taking the leap – according to the Bible itself.
As an example, did the faith of Jesus disciples increased, decrease, or stay the same after they saw empirical evidence of the Resurrection with their own eyes and touch the risen Christ with their own hands? Without this empirical evidence what do you think would have happened to Christianity? I think it would have died right then and there. Even Paul argues that without the empirical resurrection of Jesus, the faith of the Christian is worthless (1 Corinthians 15:14).
I propose to you, then, that faith is not entirely subjective – at least if it forms the basis of a rational hope. Useful faith is rational in that it is based on solid empirical evidence that can be appreciated by rational candid individuals who are honestly looking for truth.
Sean, Alice was seen in wonderland by witnesses. Wouldn’t that be empirical evidence, verification of her presence there, using your definition of “empirical?” Your reinterpretation of “empirical” reduces it to “opinion,” leaving faith as an entirely subjective enterprise.
So far, Erv’s explanations eclipse yours. You suggest he purchase “reasonable” arguments. Who or what is the arbiter of those arguments? You are stuck in a subjective quagmire and don’t seem to know it!
Sean, the “leap of faith” as you describe has nothing to do with the “faith of Jesus”. God draws us to Himself. We are powerless to do anything and that includes believing in Jesus Christ. The “remnant of God’s Spirit” drew me toward Himself when I was led to read the New Testament Gospels. I then became conscious of His presence; it was the “Revelation of Jesus Christ” in me—the “resurrection of Jesus Christ”.
Faith is a spiritual gift. The English Bibles translate “faith in Jesus”; the Greek word used is “of”, that is, “faith of Jesus”. Or, the faith we have is from Jesus—His faith. Having faith “in” Jesus could imply we have built this faith, or belief in Him by our own power. But Eph. 2:8 clearly states: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God”. The “Gift” is the “Faith of Jesus”, His Faith in us. “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit”; “for one is given the word of wisdom through the same Spirit,…to another faith by the same Spirit” 1 Cor.12:4-11. He [Jesus] is the “Author and finisher of our Faith”. Heb. 12:2. The woman with the issue of blood believed that her healing would come from Jesus and therefore touched His garment; and Jesus said to her, “your faith has made you whole” Matt. 9:22. She believed in Jesus because she saw His miraculous works. The apostles said to Jesus, “Increase our faith”. Luke 17:5. Jesus does this by working miracles within our hearts and lives.
Continued reply to Sean:
Notice in these verses it says “faith came” and, “after faith has come”:
“22 But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith [of] Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. 23 But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. 24 Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25 But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.” Gal. 3:22-25. “One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” Eph. 4:4-6. Jesus said “And you hold fast to My Name, and did not deny My faith..” Rev. 2:13; “Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” Rev.14:12.
When we see the Spirit of Christ working in our hearts, preparing us for eternal life with Him, we have this hope in us which builds the “faith of Jesus” in us. This “Faith of Jesus” is also the “power of the resurrection”. And His works in and through us justifies us before God the Father; because the Father sees the New Creation of His Son in us.
DD,
Abraham sacrificed Isaac, in faith, without any evidence that God would resurrect Isaac. Jesus Christ was obedient, even to a death on the cross, without empirical evidence He would rise from the dead. The author of Hebrews says, “Faith is the evidence of things not seen.”
So I concur with your criticism of Sean’s statement: “The Bible always describes faith as being built on solid empirical evidence as a basis for the leap of faith.” Faith is best described as DD explains it: Faith is a gift from God. That is biblical.
That being said, there is lots of empirical evidence for faith. And faith has a progressive attribute; exercise faith and it becomes stronger. But it does not originate in us, neither is it fruit borne of compelling evidence. It is God’s gift. “…according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
By the way, Erv, just because I usually accept the opinions of specialists in my field of medicine doesn’t mean that I always accept their opinions. If a particular opinion makes no sense to me given my own understanding of a particular topic, I don’t care if those who oppose me are “specialists” or “experts” at all. Sure, I carefully listen to their opinions, but that isn’t the final word for me.
At some point you need to do some thinking for yourself instead of blindly trusting in the opinions of this or that “expert”. After all, the popular opinions of the majority of experts can be and has often been wrong throughout the history of science – sometimes painfully wrong. And, many times it was the non-expert working alone in the face of ridicule and strong opposition from the experts of the day that ended up being right.
That’s the way real science works. Real science isn’t a popularity contest. Real science is based on the weight of empirical evidence where the hypothesis presented is testable in at least a potentially falsifiable manner – regardless of its popularity. That is why real science can work regardless of who does or who doesn’t agree with you.
In short, think for yourself. Present what you think are the most reasonable arguments without always appealing to the authority of others. Appeals to authority may be interesting and useful at times, but they really have no explanatory power.
In the SDA church there a currently 3 major ways of understanding creation.
1. Young matter, young life. This is the original and traditional view it holds that E< 10,000 yr, E and life in similar condition at creation as now, No evolution, Adam and Eve are real historical figures and are first man and woman. It denies the science for old earth and evolution.
2. Old matter, young life. This is view holds that earth matter is 4.5 billion yrs old but life was created 6000 yrs ago. Promoted by Dr. Robert Brown in the 1970’s when was director of GSRI. I was exposed to this view at a GSRI workshop in 1980. This view involves a selective use of science (evidence for old earth, rejection of evidence for evolution.) Both of these views are recognized by the church.
3. Old matter, old life. Promoted by Spectrum since 1963 and AT since 1993. This view accepts the science for an old earth and evolution. This view is not recognized by the church and is activitly opposed by many YEC. However, all three views are held by active, practicing SDA’s. All three views have a biblical bases and are creationistic. Part of the problem is that far to many SDA equate evolution with atheism. Atheism denies God. Evolution is change over time.
I noticed that the great majority of evolutionists don’t really understand the mechanisms of this theory. They parroting words like “mutations”, “natural selection” and “genetic drift” to explain its mechanism but they don’t know their profound limitations.
Erv in several of his writings assume “biological evolution”, like a proven fact. I would like him to explain it.
Neo,
Furthermore, “mutations” and “natural selection” and “genetic drift” utterly fail to explain the origins of life. Simply put, there is NO microbiological explanation for the origins of life. The more we learn about the underlying microbiological mechanisms, the more we understand how utterly, hopelessly, improbable, that they are the result of chance, rather than an incredibly clever design.
Nathan, you wrote:
It depends. There’s a spectrum to this argument. On one end of the spectrum there are those Christians, like Kenneth Miller for instance, who are Darwinian through and through. They believe that random mutations and natural selection built all the diversity of living things that we see today over hundreds of millions of years. I’m with William Provine when he argues that such a view is “effectively indistinguishable from atheism.”
Then, there are the theistic evolutionists, like Dr. Hoehn for example, who argue that God planned guided the bloody process. This really isn’t much better, theologically, because it paints God as not only a liar, but an evil liar.
So, what does the rational Christian have left? Don’t get me wrong, I know that there are a lot over very good and sincere Christian evolutionists out there who love Jesus and will no doubt be saved. My point is that Christians who reject a literal week in favor of any form of the Darwinian story have a significant theological problem on their hands.
In short, what kind of God are you worshiping? I dare say that one’s view on origins does in fact affect one’s view of God.
Surely you know the difference between theistic evolution and intelligent design, Sean. And surely you know that Jack Hoehn subscribes to the latter. At least that is my understanding. I.D. is not a theory of origins so much as it is a thesis that refutes natural selection and random mutation as viable explanations for life as it exists or has existed the past. I.D. theorists are for the most part dar more interested in the science and math that falsifies Neodarwinism than they are in putting the intelligent designer, compelled by the complex codes and information systems
of life, in a box. Those of us who accept the inferences drawn from the science behind I.D. don’t have all the theological answers to reconcile your proof texts with life origins and development in deep time. But then you don’t have the scientific answers to reconcile the evidence of science with your reading of the Bible. The imprecision of science doesn’t permit me to ignore it as unreliable.
I am far more content with not knowing all
the answers than you seem to be. One’s view of earth origins can affect one’s view of God. But in my case, it only deepens my faith in a God who not only created the natural order, but frees us from the natural order. This is the profound message of the Sabbath, and it is the theme, repeated time and again in Genesis, that God continually reinforces in covenant relationship with His people throughout scripture and beyond.
Sean wrote:
“Christians who reject a literal week in favor of any form of the Darwinian story have a significant theological problem on their hands.”
These are not the only two possible beliefs regarding origins. Years ago I organized a symposium on Creation and Science, where knowledgeable Christians from various disciplines presented their understanding of the questions and answers. One of the presenters was a Japanese graduate student who encountered and embraced Christianity as a young adult. Studying Genesis without any prior indoctrination, he proceeded to methodically compile a list of various ways that Jews and Christians explain the Creation narratives. He came-up with about two dozen distinctly different approaches.
Sean wrote:
“I dare say that one’s view on origins does in fact affect one’s view of God.”
I dare say that one’s view of God does in fact affect one’s view on origins. Regardless of one’s views on these matters, the reasoning behind these views is inherently circular. This is but one of the reasons why it is impossible to “prove” which views are correct.
Another reason is the utter impossibility of replicating at any credible scale, the operation one’s putative mechanisms of origins. Lacking both the resources to construct a full-scale experiment, and the time to await the results, we are left mostly to speculate and extrapolate from retrospective studies, and from experiments that cannot approach the complexity or the scale of the modeled phenomena, by orders upon orders of magnitude. In other words, an empirical nightmare.
Jim, am in agreement with 1. 3. and 4. but suggest possible alternatives to 2, and 5.
2 . Re: Arbitrariness. i believe it very obvious that God favors Lucifer, first. Lucifer was
God’s most beautiful, intelligent, created creature. Jesus the Christ, as God, has continued grieving for his lost son. This has permitted Lucifer to continue his rebellion, as Jesus as yet to have the closure required, as to be able to bring resurrection to Earth’s saints, He must finally give up Lucifer.
All of Earth’s human creation are next in line of Jesus, Gods, love and grace. Just as each human
creature is worth many sparrows. God’s love is proven. This is why we have the parable of the prodigal son. In heaven there is no male or female. On Earth there is mankind, divided, in two parts
as Jesus has kept busy, continuing to create mankind, to eventually grace heavenly places, when HE
finally accepts that Lucifer, the bright and morning star, Son of God, is lost forever. Then comes the glorious harvest of Earth’s saints.
5. In the interim the immanent’s of God, natural and supernatural, is suspended pending God’s
time of grieving Lucifer. He is sustained by the love and praise of His Earthly creation, but His compassion, love, tenderness, gentleness for Earth, is held in abeyance, until His cup of tears is totally full. Then He arises, and in ALMIGHTY POWER, returns to Earth as King of Kings, and all shall will see HIM.
Sean wrote:
“In short, what kind of God are you worshiping? ”
Here is my own answer, subject to further enlightenment.
1) A Transcendent God. God exists separately and independently from the natural realm where we exist. Being limited to the natural realm severely constrains our ability to understand and explain God.
2) A God of Benevolent Intent. God is not arbitrary or capricious. We may not understand God’s purposes and actions, but God understands everything.
3) A God of Order. God is the source of the ordering principles of reality, both visible and invisible. Studying visible reality can help us to envision the invisible, to the extent, and only to the extent, that the same ordering principles apply across these realms.
4) A God of Love. The foundation of Love is Freedom. Freedom is constrained by choices. The freedom of creatures is constrained by the nature of their existence as well as their choices, whereas the freedom of God is constrained only by God’s choices. God is not a control freak. Insofar as possible, God permits created entities to operate freely. Nevertheless God can choose to intervene whenever and wherever and however God deems to be appropriate.
5) An Immanent God. God desires the closest possible companionship with created sentient beings, both natural and supernatural. These beings are inherently limited in their ability to approach God. Consequently God chooses to approach them.
Dr. Pitman: “That’s the way real science works. Real science isn’t a popularity contest. Real science is based on the weight of empirical evidence where the hypothesis presented is testable in at least a potentially falsifiable manner – regardless of its popularity. That is why real science can work regardless of who does or who doesn’t agree with you.”
Bingo. Something we agree on!. The “popularity” you refer to is usually the result of what the specialists in a particular subcategory understand the weight of the empirical evidence to be. I assume that you would agree that over the last half century examples of “total outsiders” discovering something that directly contradicts the consensus of subject matter specialists is extremely rare. I realize that you must focus on these instances, but they occur very rarely in mature parts of a given scientific field.
Dr Taylor wrote:
“I assume that you would agree that over the last half century examples of “total outsiders” discovering something that directly contradicts the consensus of subject matter specialists is extremely rare.”
This statement may be true within academia, but it is manifestly false in the world of high-tech, where “outsiders” can and do revolutionize our previous ways of thinking and doing. Jobs and Gates and Zuckerberg were all “outsiders”. The general prevalence of Dr Taylor’s view in academia, is precisely why Yours Truly and many many others chose to leave the “halls of ivy” and pursue our visions elsewhere.
And to be fair, there ARE many venues within academia that pride themselves on their ability to innovate. But they are more focused on changing the future than on studying the past. (Some high tech practitioners including Yours Truly do have a passion for studying the past along with our “day jobs” of changing the future 8-).
Continued:
So, I agree that the Adventist position on origins is not a logical necessity when it comes to salvation or a personal relationship with Jesus. However, when it comes to establishing Biblical credibility and the character of God as honest and good (with deep concern for all sentient creatures that He has created), the literal creation week does seem to me to become a very real logical necessity.
Now, I’m glad that you appreciate the Sabbath on a “deeper level”. However, recognizing the literal nature of the creation week would not take this away from you. There are many very deep and diverse meanings to the Sabbath – both physical and metaphysical. And, the literal nature of the creation week takes nothing away from these. It only adds to the overall credibility and consistency of the Bible – and to the attractiveness of the character of God.
I didn’t see the rest of your post here, Sean. I’m glad to see that you don’t subscribe to the view that the seventh day Sabbath makes no sense unless one is a creation literalist. I don’t think pre-Eden evil undermines the theology of a living God any more than current evil undermines that conviction. In fact, the more I see of evil and chaos in the natural world and in human nature, the more I am convinced that the persistence of the good, the true and the beautiful cannot be explained by naturalism.
I believe in a God who certainly could have created the earth in 6 days. I also believe in a God who have us the stories of creation so that we can best understand who He is and who we are as humans created in His image and existentially poisoned by sin.
I meant a “loving” God – not a “living” God.
Erv, you wrote:
It has to be rare or no one would trust the experts at all. However, it is not unheard of or even what I would call “extremely rare”. It happens quite often – even in my own field of pathology the consensus in regularly modified or completely overturned. Not too long ago, for example, the advent of immunohistochemistry in the practice of pathology changed a great deal of thinking that had been almost doctrinal truth for a long time. Cytogentic analysis is doing it again for many different aspects of my practice as a pathologist. Quite clearly the experts “get it wrong” every now and then. While they are usually right, thankfully, they are often wrong. They simply aren’t God – as even you should know by now 😉
So, it is good to think for one’s self – at least on occasion. It is good to challenge the experts every now and then and test long-accepted or popular truths to see if they really are true. As soon as this stops happening, science stops happening.
And, as previously mentioned, appeals to authority, while interesting and occasionally useful, have no explanatory power. Even an child can know what the majority thinks. It’s another thing to know it yourself and be able present your own rational…
Bugs & Serge,
Jesus of Nazareth was either a man like every other man or He was a unique man, the only begotten Son of the Father. The resurrection is evidence that He was the unique one. His Resurrection is evidence that He is “King of the Jews – Messiah.” His resurrection is proof His teachings and promises are true.
Jesus’ resurrection and status confirms Israel’s status as the chosen people of God. This in turn affirms the uniqueness of Israel’s story and gives unique credibility to Torah: God’s Law and the promises (prophecies) found in scripture.
Bugs says: “My answer: followers for strange ideas by gifted leaders happens all the time.” Bugs answer is a rejection of Jewish uniqueness and Jesus’ Messianic nature. The interpretative lens of Jewish ‘chosen-ness’ is removed. And Jesus and his followers become just ordinary, deluded folks.
Serge says to me: ” But please, do not regress to Torah Judaism for your truth. No light to be found there. None at all.” I am going to post directly below my comment something I clipped from a Jewish website:
William, when I read the history of Israel I find them reaping no benefit whatsoever from their proclaimed special relationship with God. The pact with God was, “We’ll keep your commandments, never forsake you and you agree to give us benefits given to no other nation.” However, their abject history doesn’t reflect it happening that way. Their story parallels that of the surrounding pagan and gentile nations. Periodic obedience to the Torah didn’t deliver them from suffering wars, captivities and long enslavement periods. So it is difficult to show that being a “chosen” nation had any reality to it. Either God wasn’t too good about keeping his end of the deal or their special relationship was imaginary.
You say: “Bugs answer is a rejection of Jewish uniqueness and Jesus’ Messianic nature.” I don’t entirely reject your charge. However, delusion isn’t a word I would apply. Hope is the proper word. It appears that as long as there have been people there has been yearning for deliverance from pain and suffering. Adventists still embody that consuming, universal hunger to the degree of predicting it “soon” even though it has never happened in history, nor according to any hopeful predictions ever.
The hankering for Messiah reveals nothing about God, nor does Christ’s claims to be one except as a missed chance to intervene and actually rescue the world.
CONTINUED
Yes, the hope of the Jewish Messiah appears in the Gospels (remember, the Gospels didn’t appear until more than fifty years after Christ died), but not a dying one. From a Jewish point of view, Christ’s miserable death as a criminal by crucifixion totally eliminated him from any Messiahship possibilities. A new David was expected, a live one, with great energy, flair and glory, a might deliverer.
Christ shared the same idea of a Jewish Messiah that would appear, a son of man (not him) in great glory to usher a new restored world. His followers were promised that some wouldn’t see death before it happened. His disciples thought he might be the one (until the crucifixion) and verbally jockeyed among themselves for positions in the future administration.
Deliverance is a dream, nothing more. Wait until next year (soon), an NFL Superbowl fantasy that has been a universal apocalyptic cry for deliverance for eons by a suffering world.
Christ appeared to be concerned about helping people cope with life, not aiding their escape from it.
Bugs,
You and I are not off-topic although it might appear that way. It is the uniqueness of Israel that gives Torah its unique authority. The believer can’t dismiss the veracity of the biblical accounts and call them ‘myths,’ to use your word.
You reject Israel’s uniqueness. Here’s the history of it in 1500 characters. No nation except Israel endures from antiquity. Nations and tribes rise and fall. Israel uniquely endures. Nobody is talking about a homeland for the Roma/Gypsies or reestablishing the Hivites and the Jebusites.
Jews score higher on IQ tests, significantly higher, than any other group. If you reject an intrinsic biological basis for the difference, ascribe it to the mental discipline of Torah study. Choose any explanation you like – Jews score what they score. 22% of all the Nobel Laureates have been Jews. On the matter of Jewish cleverness one could go on and on.
Christianity and Islam directly derive from Judaism. Christianity derives so explicitly from Judaism that they worship a Jew whom they believe to be the Davidic Messiah King and they appropriate Torah and its story as their own. Torah arises and remains the foundation of the rule of law, which is exponentially more responsible for modern prosperity than the scientific method.
I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob and a scepter will rise out of Israel.
William, your recount reply regarding the high level of Jewish intelligence and cultural endurance is anecdotal, not demonstrably related to an imagined special relationship with God. The Torah wasn’t the only set of rules and regulations developed by societies in their time frame. Nor were the Israelites singular or consistent monotheists. If being a special people with God means centuries of persecution, defeat and destruction then why form or claim such a painful alliance?
One such Torah like law, the Code of Hammurabi, attributed to the Amorite king, preceded the Torah by a few hundred years and was designed for the same purpose as the Torah.
Bugs!
You are not arguing, you are floundering in denial. You are not explaining Israel’s uniqueness, you are trying to deny it. You can believe what ever you choose as to the ‘why’.
Code of Hammurabi? What Poosh.
William, you are custom made for my proposition about religious belief. I have posited for a long time that the two basic principles of faith are 1. you choose what you “like,” and 2. you “act as if” it is true. William, you never step making me look so smart! You “like” your interpretation of Judaism and you “act as if” your version is true, and in fact, is the only TRUE interpretation.
Thanks for the boost to my humble ego!
I am not a Hebrew scholar, but this makes sense and helps me make my point:
[ …]In conclusion, the Hebrew word Torah תורה comes from the Hebrew word “Orah” אורה which means “Light” as well as “Teaching” and the English word “Aura” which refers to a “Surrounding light”, is directly related to our Hebrew word of “Orah” which also means light; because just as the “Aura” is said to fill and surround the body, so does the “Light” of Torah, God’s Teachings, fill us up both externally and internally causing us to be “Spiritually-Illuminated” from the Inside out and it is thus that we fulfill our role as God’s “Chosen People”, by being a “Light” to the World, via our “emulation” of the source of our “Light”, God’s Teachings “Torah”. I hope All got something from this and may we All continue to grow in Truth.
http://learntorah.blogspot.com/2013/04/torah-is-light-spiritual-illumination.html
It feels like we are on the same page here Stephen Foster, accepting that God could have with the snap of divine fingers brought a billions of years old universe into existence just 6,000 years ago. And it also feels a little lonely, don’t you think? Most comments here are from those who are highly vested in settling exactly whether God actually snapped those divine fingers 6,000 years ago.
Bugs, I join you in supporting Elaine’s observance that it is a denial of faith to believe we must prove the age of the earth.
And it could not be more obvious, Ppriest, that attempting to weaken the other’s science in no way establishes one’s own position, scientific or otherwise.
And Earl, I like where you are going with Faith. Paul offers that Faith is enduring, while knowledge, spiritual practice, and prophecy all are temporal. So, it behooves us to embrace Faith alone. Paul says that faith is measured to each of us directly by God.
Very helpful, Erv, in alerting us to the power of presuppositional thinking, dualism v monism coming into play here, and the enduring challenge of presuppositional beliefs.
And I like your distant view, if you will, William Abbot!
Sean, you helpfully clarify that YEC is first of all Seventh-day Adventist and ‘not a logical necessity when it comes to salvation or a personal relationship with Jesus.’ However, you believe that in ‘establishing Biblical credibility and [in turn?] the character of God … the literal creation week does seem to me to become a very real logical necessity.’
Yes.
You got me thinking.
October 22, 1844 was a profound application of logic to the scripture. It was perhaps unprecedented in its rational depth. And Hiram Edson, I believe it was, declared the fullness of their logic to have been ‘blasted’ (his word) away. As October 23 dawned with what he declared years later to be ‘the most sublime sense of God’s presence’ of his life time as the result of that blast.
The Seventh-day Adventist church was formed by people who treasured this permeating sense of God’s presence over creedalism. It is substantive that founding Seventh-day Adventists declared as their creed simply, ‘the bible’ in its undifferentiated state.
God’s presence, though, is atomized in establishing Fundamental Beliefs.
Subjecting inspiration to logic, traps the Creator of Time to increasingly distant points in time, differentiating ourselves from God and in turn from each other.
In medicine rational differentiation is the key to healing, while it turns faith into cancer, hope into desperation, and love into an impossibility.
Jesus heals without differentiating.
Very profound, Bill. Wonderfully articulated!
The early Greek supremacy gave much more to our modern cultures than most all others. Interesting how even with God’s initial created twosome, living some 900 years, their offspring became ungodly, and evil was evident from the beginning, with
their progeny choosing local man made gods as their protectors or as their evil taskmasters. Also there were “giants in the land”, supposedly fallen angels, that cohabited with women, and bore the product referred to as NEPHILIM. Giants??
Obviously, the early women were of large size (DNA). Possibly they, the giants were the builders of the massive stonework up mountainsides in Peru, and elsewhere, where massive boulders of thousands of lbs, were erected with no known methods
of today. The plains of Nazca, where geometric lines and figures are outlined, as seen from high altitudes. The Exodus, from Egypt whereby Moses and the Israelites
wandered a few miles for over 40 years, with no archaeologic evidence resulting. This seems impossible for a leader leading several thousand around in circles for 40 years without violent rebellion?? Were there other creatures from somewhere in the Cosmos that came to Earth in some type of space vehicle, with special methods for
lifting monolithic stonework?? Should have been more information on something that changed the whole population of the Earth to desert the God of Creation??
I want to point out that Ted Wilson has made the age of the earth an issue when he asserted that unless you believe in a 6 day creation 6000 years ago you are not a Seventh-day Adventist. FB# 6 which is the church’s official statement concerning creation also makes it an issue. Wilson’s assertion implies that those that don’t believe as he are heretics. I have pointed out there are three major views of creation is the SDA church: 1) YE YL, 2) OE YL, and 3) OE OL. All three are bible based and creationistic. The first two have official recognition while the third does not. According to Wilson if you hold the third view you are not a Adventist and thus a heretic. I don’t like the spirit of this assertion. In a different time and place those who hold to 3 would be burnt at the stake. Yet the OE OL believers are being honest with the scientific evidence. I always thought that honesty was one of the fruits of the spirit and was included in what it means to be a Christion. Why isn’t the third view recognized? On this web site there seems to be continual arguments about the age of the earth. I doubt that it will ever stop. I have pointed out that all the arguments against the science supporting an old earth does not by default prove a young earth. The only way to prove a young earth is to present lots of physical, empirical, evidence. One piece of evidence is not enough, you must have enough to establish a strong inference. You don’t present that evidence because it isn’t there.
The absence this evidence of should lead one to take out his/her beliefs for spring cleaning. Is your faith (belief) based on evidence (SC 105)? If not than why not?
If we are to believe in theistic evolution as the basis for creation, and that it took untold hundreds of millions of years, then are we to assume that the same process will take place with the Creation of the New Earth?
And another question. If God used evolution to create, is He still creating? Or at some point did He say it was good enough and put a stop to the process that had been ongoing since time immemorial?
In the words of Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson: “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.”
The idea that a Creator “used” evolution as a method of creating betrays a misconception about evolution.
“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. It is an alternative to Christianity. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.
‘… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.’
Michael Ruse professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph, Canada (recently moved to Florida), He was the leading anti-creationist philosopher whose (flawed) arguments seemed to convince the biased judge to rule against the Arkansas ‘balanced treatment’ (of creation and evolution in schools) bill in 1982. At the trial, he and the other the anti-creationists loftily dismissed the claim that evolution was an anti-god religion.
Ruse, M., How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? National Post, pp. B1,B3,B7 May 13, 2000.
Job 31:15 implies that God creates us in the womb. Isa 44:2, 24 and 49:5 teaches the same thing. This texts seem to imply that God is still creating. And why not, He is a creator God why should he stop creating? These verses also gives us an idea of at least one way he creates. We know that we began with the union of a sperm and egg forming a zygote which grew to a baby. All steps are controlled by genetic actions coded in the DNA. So from the zygote to baby is a natural process. Yet God takes credit for that process. Doesn’t this imply that creates through natural process.
In your first question you are asking me to limit how God creates. He is all powerful and can create in innumerable ways. He could have formed the universe instantly. But he did not.
Years ago it was thought that the universe was static, unchanging. If they would have considered Newton concept of gravity they would have realized that universe could not have been static. Gravity says that the universe must be either contracting or expanding. Hubble showed that it was expanding. Evolution is defined as change over time. The fact that the universe is expanding over time means it is evolving. Since God created the universe, he created it to evolve.
Richard neither the Bible nor real science supports the Neo Darwinian evolution. This theory doesn’t have mechanisms that can be verified and this is big problem. Usually mutations and natural selection are mention as mechanisms.
1. Mutations could be positive or negative but the ratio is 1/10,000 to 1/1,000,000. So for a positive mutation will be like going upstream in a very powerful water rapids or like going up in the Niagara Falls.
2. In humans the positive mutation are almost absent and we identified close to 8,000 negative ones related to diseases, and each year this list grows by 300.
3. The most serious evolutionists know this (population geneticist) and they have been publishing in regard of the human genetic meltdown for years. This genetic degeneration of the human race is going in fast rate. (down no up)
4. The principal mechanism actually goes against its own theory.
5. Now the majority of mutations are near neutral but also this represent a big problem because the powerful natural selection is incapable to exclude them, because they are near neutral, but accumulates like termites.
So if there is not a proven mechanism this theory belongs more to matter of faith than science.
Some galaxies are merging. Change over time. Some stars undergo nova and supernova. Change over time. If evolution is seen in the universe as a whole, why not on earth? And indeed it is. Mountains are built, continents separate and move apart. The elliptical orbit of the earth about the sun changes from near circular to elongate. The earths tip on its axis changes for around 22 degrees to 25 degrees. Change over time. These changes affects the amount and distribution of solar radiation the earth receives. Change over time. These changes in solar radiation, results in a constantly changing climate. Life must change in order to adapt to these climate changes. Evolution. God created the universe to evolve, all of it.
To be quite clear, I’m not a believer in any kind of evolution as an explanation for the origins of life. It’s at complete odds with Christianity and the need for a Savior. However I have wondered how the theistic evolutionists view a new earth Creation.
Richard that is a very sharp observation! If they believe what the Bible say about the future (very fast a least what will happen in humans) why not believe what is writing in Genesis.
The flip side of course is that if you don’t believe the Bible was accurate in the telling of our origins then it would be impossible, logically, to believe what the Bible says about the future. Telling about a past event is vastly easier than is accurately predicting something that has yet to take place. The faith we have in the Bible as an accurate book of prophesy is based, at least in part, on our confidence in it accurately recounting past events.
I don’t know that I’ve seen anyone arguing for theistic evolution on this thread.
There is no logical problem Richard. do you take ” streets of gold” and other descriptions of the New Jerusalem literally? If not, how can you take what the Bible says about earth origins literall? There is much in the Bible that I’m sure you don’t take literally. So it’s not a matter of whether one believes what the Bible says, but what one believes about what the words and stories mean. How can you take literally what Genesis says, and say that Ecclesiastes should not be taken literally?
There are multiple factors that go into deciding how scripture should be read and interpreted. You seem to be suggesting a mindless, foolish consistency, which Emerson, I think, characterized as the hobgoblin of small minds.
If not theistic evolution that some Adventists believe what is it?
If we can’t take the past events in the Bible literally because they’ve been disproved by science then it makes no sense to take prophetic events literally because certainly a mass bringing to life of dead people is not possible scientifically, nor a new earth, or heaven…..or God. If we are going to toss out the beginning of the Bible then certainly the end is wrong as well. And then there is all that stuff in between……..
Richard Sherwin,
You are articulating the exact case that I have been attempting to make on this site for the past six or seven years!
If the Bible cannot be believed about something in particular…then the Bible cannot be believed about anything at all.
Of course, I happen to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God that reveals to us what God wants us to know; particularly about the Word of God. I have little quarrel with those who don’t believe this. My issue is with those who purport to believe what the Bible reveals about God as love, but that’s about all they believe.
What’s up with that?
Actually it does take faith to believe that 2 + 2 equals 4. That is based on a mathematical theorem. Most think that religion is faith based and science is fact based. It takes faith to believe that the presumptions behind science are correct. We in science do not state our beliefs as fact but theories. It takes faith to believe that they are consistent. Both religion and science need faith.
I forgot to say, why not take the streets of gold literally? 1 Corinthians says we can’t begin to imagine what God is preparing to make for us. Streets of Gold would be nothing in comparison.
I quite agree, Richard. And the literal 6 day creation imagery of our faith is probably nothing compared to how it really happened.
My dictionary defines evolution as “any process of formation or growth; development.” I defined it as “change over time.” You could replace change with formation, growth, or development and get the same meaning. If taken literally, Genesis 1 describes the formation of the earth in 6 days. Isn’t that change over time? It seems to me that create and evolve have pretty much the same meaning. The SDA church has in the past accepted microevolution, but microevolution is still evolution. So when you say you don’t believe in evolution does that include a 6 day creation? Do you believe the universe is expanding? Are some galaxies merging? Have some stars undergone nova or supernova? If you answer is yes to any of these questions, then you must acknowledge that the universe is evolving. If the universe is evolving doesn’t that include the earth and life on it? I would like to know how a believer in a literal interpretation of Genesis answers these questions.
Sure we all believe in evolution. As a bee keeper I know that certain pathogens evolved to resist efforts to eradicate them. I also know that when I mow my lawn the tall dandelions will get their seeds cut off while the ones growing closer to the ground will not. It’s commonly known as survival of the shortest.
That said it’s generally known that when we speak of evolution as the origins of life we mean a process that starts with a
mixing of molecules that some how became life and over hundreds of millions of years of trial and error results in humans. In other words we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps. However that is against all that the Bible teaches, even if we refer to it as theistic evolution.
A horseback rider in Phoenix was struck by lightning several days ago killing the horse and horribly burning the rider. It seems to me the creationists gloss over the largest counter argument to a Creator. The earth isn’t a safe place for people. There is chaos and randomness into which “God’s handiwork” has been deposited without provisions for its survival, a major oversight for such a reputedly Crafty Being. There are countless ongoing natural threats to humans any of which can denude the planet of life. A young earth or old, the threats are the same. Asteroids, super volcanos, gamma ray bursts, forest fires, pandemic diseases, comets, to name a very few find no resistance in bare human flesh. Humanity could wake up tomorrow and find itself dead.
Our time and space is called “Goldilocks,” because we are still here. Everything is just right, in spite of the cosmic, solar, and planetary guns leveled at our heads. We are favored by the odds. Seems God plays dice with us. Why would he craft a biomass so symphonically complex as us and, like a blithering idiot leaving a priceless Strad violin out in the weather, leave us to ultimately decay? He’s a farce.
Whoops, I have overlooked that the awesome biomass has intrinsic problems of death and disease. So that portion of Goldilocks has limits, is also flawed, subject to the ID Dice Tosser.
Love is the counterbalance, hope, God, in the face of the poor casino of Goldilocks.
Bugs-Larry,
You already know that I agree with you about our “Goldilocks” cosmos. And Naturalistic Evolution also must posit (though not admittedly) a highly improbable “Goldilocks” series of chemical reactions in order for life to even begin to exist, must less evolve. And nobody has yet even constructed a credible proposal for what could have been this sequence of reactions in the presence of plausible ambient conditions. Whereas the cosmologists have a Big Bang narrative that hangs together fairly well, and only need help to fine-tune their physical (actually mathematical) “constants” to produce useful results. To me these are two of the absolutely strongest arguments for the existence of a Beneficent Designer.
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Regarding the big question of What went wrong? The answer is not provable. Adventists have traditionally invoked the adverse consequences of Wrong Choices. But how the wrong choices of humans could have provoked the apparently random lightning bolts that killed the horse and scorched the rider, or stunned but otherwise spared my brother, or killed my God-fearing cousin.
Throughout the Old Testament (and even in the Apocalypse), humans repeatedly raise the question of whether the Beneficent Creator has somehow gone Missing In Action. The Bible posits the notion of a supernatural Adversary to explain this serious conundrum. But this notion only pushes the cause of the problem beyond our realm of observation.
I choose to believe the Bible promise that God encompasses both Beneficent Designer and Love Guy, and that Love Guy is not MIA, and that Love Guy will eventually set things aright. But of course none of this can be empirically demonstrated, as we both well know.
In the end these three things endure: Faith Gal, Hope Child and Love Guy. And the greatest of these is Love Guy.
And you can count me as one of Love Guy’s many Hope Children, begotten through Faith Gal.
Bugs,
Lightning ain’t the half of it. What about evil, monstrously evil, living creatures. Lightning seems to me just a bit of bad luck. In McGuffy’s reader #1 they taught the wee ones to read, “The cat plays before it slays.” A gruesome introduction into “God’s second book.” But whether its baboons and tomcats murdering their offspring or man himself murdering his offspring, I think the creationist has ALOT of explaining to do. Especially if he believes in a Creator who is both totally good and absolutely all powerful. How does the believer explain the pervasive presence of evil in the world?
The materialist, the man who cannot believe in God, has no philosophical problems. He just has to accept the fact that lightning strikes where it strikes and that men and baboons do what they do. What is is. Right and wrong, good and bad, even truth and falsehood, are artificial constructs; delusions if you will. There is a love guy, but we are mental, he lives only in our heads. Rise from the dead, “can’t know anything about that.”
Hope in what you want, believe in what you want. Just realize there is no basis for judging anyone or anything. You might as well take opium. Its all the same. A man might as well do anything if there is no Creator. Its all the same.
‘Very Interesting”, says Shultz. God was passionate toward the horse, struck by lightening, but the human creature involved will have a suffering living existence.
William you are a wise man. Quantum mechanics strikes again. But a rainbow probably marked the spot, as a memorial, for the horse. Lets cut to the chase. Our God is the Almighty, all powerful. Yet if we buy the Great Controversy story, He isn’t. What His plans are for Earth are unknown to humans. We all postulate as to our origins, and the “meaning”, for our existence. But be honest, not a single one of us is aware of the reality of our being. An Almighty, being aware of the intense struggle an ordinary person has, day to day, not having basic understanding of the important
issues of Human life, Constantly seeking Truth that isn’t forthcoming. Watching our forebears suffer debilitating illnesses, weaken, and die. Our children, born with deformities, and life threatening ailments. Annihilation by what i refer to as demons, or devils, by the millions, year after year. Genocide by mothers of their very own, and physicians gladly assisting, as they grow as rich as Midas, As the lineup at their doors never ceases, to the sum of a half billion, in the past 50 years. Of which the taxpayer is complicit as we furnish the gold so it can continue. We all have blood on our hands. Continued.
We are a bloody people. Just as those before us. It never ceases. i submit to you. If our God is love, how can we logically say He is Almighty, when He doesn’t put a stop to the carnage instantly?? Adam came, and was ingloriously defeated. Jesus came and the result was, He was crucified. We haven’t “seen” God since?? Obviously, someone else rules on Earth. The Mighty Men of Earth have joined forces with the ultimate ruler on Earth, with the desire to enslave man to serve the mighty, not the Almighty. Think about this, if our God is Almighty, why can’t He quash the rebellion and its leaders instantly, as supposedly He created it all in 6 days of indeterminate length?? There is a reason why i hang in, because, like Job, i swear i will trust Him, though He slay me. The reason, Intelligent Design. i know that anything worth while
i observe has a design. Nature, even its seemingly static features, has ID, as it is ceaselessly changing, providing eye candy to our psyche, ie: Larry’s photo magic.
The heaven’s declare the glory of god, LOOK UP. 1. If God, alone, is sole arbiter of life, and know’s the end from the beginning, why would He have created Lucifer, a God, with eternal life?? Obviously He did, indicating Lucifer/Devil, is the Prince of this EARTH. And its taking a long time to set things to His desire for Earth and its creatures. We don’t have the answers, and all the quibbling over mundane issues isn’t going to change it one iota.
Erv,
I haven’t taken the time yet to read your entire article nor the replies. But I can see that it is based on assumption that humans currently know all about the cosmos, time, space, and relevant issues. I have heard (though cannot find) that CS Lewis once said that physics (and I would say math) holds the key to what we don’t know. Geology, fossils, and dating are based on assumptions. If we think quantum physics is strange now, we haven’t begun to know the universe.
On the other hand, I don’t think the worldview of the ancients was correct either. The original story came down through many cultures and generations and no doubt got garbled in many of them. What we can trust in faith is the creation by the God of Israel and that the OT is closest. The number seven is highly symbolic throughout the Bible and means complete or perfection. The term seven days is vital to the creation. How long they were is not described nor is the rotation of the earth. We are told all we need to know–God as Creator. Because His character is good, He cannot be a creator through death and violence. Neither can Christ be a savior from sin if death existed before sin. (His salvation is the basis for Christianity.)
Dr Taylor wrote:
“Historic Christianity, which, in this case, includes Adventist Christians, confesses that Jesus was both fully God and fully human. If he was fully human, his comments cited in the New Testament relating to this topic reflected the same lack of accurate information that his Jewish contemporaries and all other humans possessed concerning this matter.”
I am wondering what Dr Taylor would care to comment upon what it would mean if Jesus was fully God?
Dr Taylor wrote:
“Major advances were made in the middle of the 20th century with the development of the many scientific dating methods that Dr. Hoehn mentioned. In recent decades, even more precise chronologies have been developed in response to the introduction of a variety of new methods and data sets, such as that derived from marine and ice cores.”
And further confusion regarding the roles of Clocks vs Calendars in Chronology. More precise Calendars does not necessarily imply more precise dating. Se my extensive and detailed comments at the end of Part 5 of Dr Hoehn’s series.
Dr Taylor wrote:
“That revolution in chronological understanding is fully comparable to the development of evolutionary biology, in terms of its impact on modern scientific understandings of the history of our planet and life upon it.”
This statement may be strictly true, but it is also rather misleading. Evolutionary Biology does indeed require Deep Time (arguably Abysmal Time or Utterly Implausible Time), but the reverse is not necessarily true.
The generally accepted ages for the Earth and the Cosmos, are totally inadequate to explain the origins of life. You could probably make a much more convincing case for Deep time if you did not harness it to Evolutionary Biology.
But of course this choice has less to do with the Scientific Method than with the Scientific Agenda.
After their “kind”. How many “kinds”have appeared on Earth?? If we were discussing “evolution”, the sequential mutations of very early, and even initial individual cells would have been very similar even after structure appeared.
Yet the end result over countless years, eras, eons, we have very distinct supposed complete “kinds”. A dog is a dog, a cat is a cat, a chimpanzee is a chimp, a man is a human. Each kind after it’s distinct kind. There are varieties of each kind, male, female, hermaphrodite, size, skin color, intellectual capacities ect. but still distinct “kinds”. Mutations make changes in all, but never bridge it’s kind. This
is a strong position supporting “Creation”, which i believe, nullifies “evolution”. That we’ve had massive monsters on land, in the past, (from their fossils), indicates a period perhaps prior to mankind. There has been speculation, perhaps, this was a role played by evil spirits performing super natural feats, that is by actually having creative powers, and or manipulation of DNA. In any sense of
why, and how, this could be, is beyond most of us, if anyone. I’m not ruling out ET’s, in the distant past, and certainly not presently.
I wonder if Mr. Hamstra would be so kind as to provide us with his understanding of what the “Scientific Agenda” might be?
“www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/scientific-regress”
“aeon.co/essays/how-economists-rode-maths-to-become-our-era-s-astrologers”
I am not anti-math nor anti-science. I have built my career on careful application of mathematical and scientific knowledge. But I am against holding-forth that science is inherently self-correcting and therefore less fallible than religion. In principle this should be true but in practice it falls far short of its lofty ideals.
Scientists are fallible humans. Ditto for Theologicrats. Nobody likes to admit they were mistaken, much less acknowledge the possibility that they have built their career and staked their reputation on the backs of the mistakes of others. As I wrote in my detailed comments on Dr Hoehn’s series, I submit that it would behoove both Scientists and Theologicrats to manifest less Hubris and more Humility.
i offer as proof that mankind’s “first” appearance on Earth was as an complete functioning adult.
A human baby would have found it impossible to survive until the age of at least 12 years of age.
It would have been eaten within a few minutes by ravening meat eaters. It would have deceased from the elements in 24 hours. It would have starved shortly after creation, unless coddled by the Creator and protected until it was able to procreate itself.
I’m sorry to continue to wonder if Mr. Hamstra would be so kind as to provide us with his understanding of what the “Scientific Agenda” might be? I attempted to read the URL he listed but the link does not work. Just one short sentence answering the question would be appreciated. I really would like to know what “The Scientific Agenda” might be.
“www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/scientific-regress”
“aeon.co/essays/how-economists-rode-maths-to-become-our-era-s-astrologers”
When I copy the aforegoing URLs (embedded in quotes to evade the Atoday automated censors) and then paste them into the URL fields in my browser, web pages open that contain interesting articles about how modern “science” has gone off the rails in some ways.
Please read these articles and then you may find some sense in my own views succinctly stated here.
Religion begins as a quest for answers about the supernatural realm. But as religions gain traction, religious elites develop. And these elites exploit religious pursuits to acquire and maintain and expand, power and influence and control over others.
Science begins as a quest for answers about the natural realm. But as sciences gain traction, science elites develop. And these elites exploit scientific pursuits to acquire and maintain and expand, power and influence and control over others.
At the limit there is little distinction between the behaviors of powerful religious leaders and powerful scientific leaders. They tend to rely less and less on the powers of persuasion and more and more on the powers of coercion. “Here is what I have found” becomes “Here is what to believe”. The quest for knowledge and understanding becomes the quest for power and control.
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Power elites supplant appeals to reason with appeals to authority, as the basis for understanding and deciding.
Humans being human, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Power elites compete to gain control over streams of resources (educational and media bandwidth, levies upon taxpayers, etc) to consolidate and perpetuate their advantages. All in the pursuit of “truth”.
Science and Religion, properly exercised, can provide useful checks and balances for each other. Left un-checked, either becomes a menace to society. What religious leaders did when they gained influence and control over civil society in prior millennia, science un-checked can and will do and is doing.
I thank Mr. Hamstra for his helpful reply. His comments seem to me to be very reasonable. Regretfully, there certainly are some scientists–fortunately a small minority–who conflate and confuse science with scientism. However, when it comes to understanding how the physical world works, trusting the weight of scientific evidence, seems always to be preferable. The objections of fundamentalist Christians can usually–but not always–be ignored as misinformed and misguided.
Bill Garber wrote:
“God could have with the snap of divine fingers brought a billions of years old universe into existence just 6,000 years ago.”
God could just as easily have brought a billions of years old universe into existence just 6,000 seconds ago, complete with reams of commentary on the Atoday web site, which does far more to demonstrate how little we truly understand about God or the Cosmos. There was no Flood, just the appearance of a flood. There was no Jesus, just the appearance of ancient Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts, apparently translated over succeeding apparent millennia, into hundreds of apparently different languages. And all of those cuneiform cylinders and hieroglyphics painted on stone, were cleverly planted by God just to make us think humans have been imagining things and writing them down for thousands of years. Ditto for ancient cave paintings on the Iberian Peninsula, cleverly placed to make us think these caves were inhabited by pre-historic humans.
Absurd you say? Once you turn God into a Cosmic Chameleon or Charlatan, there is no limit to where God could be hiding nor how difficult God could make it for us to know or understand or believe anything whatsoever about the Past, Present or Future. Is God the author of Order or of Chaos or of Nothing?
To Bill Garber, why would “God,” the Charlatan do that (Jim’s quote from your previous reply)? To fool you, Bill and your buddies, because you have an agenda limited to yourself and a tiny handful of willing searchers eager for being deceived. Man up, Bill, your proposal and the engendered effect is beyond fantasy. There are some things “God” cannot do. Die for one. Deceive for another. Twiddle with the “laws” of the universe for another. All by definition.
With your reasoning, Bill, your “God” isn’t only a charlatan, but capable of being fickle, another impossibility. Goodness gracious, facts matter in your role as an accomplished cellulose decay expert. The fairy tale “God” of your speculation isn’t even Superguy, but a fabricated dotard of your inept imagination!
Of course if you are happy with the “Charlatan” of your devising, he might, to entertain or befuddle you, periodically adjust cellulose decay rates without notifying you!
Yes, I enjoy rushing through the doors you leave wide open for the exercise of my skill at satire and sarcasm! So, I await your reply knowing you are capable of a good rejoinder!
I returned from the Fields of Ambrosia way too soon and addressed my funny (?) reply to Bill Garber mistaken for William Abbot , the Cellulose Decay Expert (CDE), who wasn’t mentioned in Jim’s statement.
So, my quick apologies to Bill and William for the mistaken identities. My statement stands, but minus Bill Garber as the specific target.
I may have to head for Glacier View in Colorado for complete recovery from early onset of dementia!
Jim has a fertile mind bending, offering either wisdom or satire. If we assume that our Creator is the one and only “Almighty one”, in the Cosmos, then yes, with the knowledge we have, He is able.
Would that He had made our understanding of His great enterprise more transparent, by providing us with an “enigma tool” that provides answers of true/false. In the interim we blindly rehash the same arguments day after day. Yes, there was a flood, many floods, with great loss of life. Witness the recent tsunamis which we have seen in brilliant color. i believe the Grand Canyon was formed by a massive deluge of water released from the sudden breaking of a land dam, holding waters of the melted glaciers of the Ice Age. The Marianas Trench in the South Pacific and other deep ocean
trenches were probably formed at the same time. Some land masses becoming drowned to ocean
depths, some ocean land up heaved, ie: the Himalayas. i believe hydraulic pressure is perhaps of equal ability to move mountains as is Nuclear blasts.
Boy, are you begging for rebuttal. What beverages were you consuming while in the F of A??
You go so frequently for Rehab; Now we know they most provide your special private cache.
I apologize only for peccadillos, Earl, which, in this case was not paying enough attention to names. Otherwise there was nothing requiring an apology! My statement was sound and otherwise well-reasoned. And I invite a rebuttal, if there is a worthy one. Rebut if you dare! My editing skills display ineptitude, but not my thinking!