Questioning Ellen White’s Understanding of Geology: “Infidelity in Disguise” or “Fidelity to Reality?
by Ervin Taylor
By Ervin Taylor
October 18, 2013
The Adventist Review (AR) has again reprinted excerpts from an article listing Ellen White (EGW) as author, this time under the title “Infidelity in Disguise.” This article originally appeared in March 1879 in the Signs of the Times. Every few years, it appears that some editor at the AR decides that there is a need to explain again that EGW has spoken all that needs to be said on the topic of Genesis, geology, and Creationism.
To make sure that no one misses the point, there is often an accompanying statement that says something like “Seventh-day Adventists believe that Ellen G. White (1827-1915) exercised the biblical gift of prophecy during more than 70 years of public ministry.” I gather that readers are supposed to take away from that statement the understanding that since she was assumed to have the “biblical gift of prophecy” her views on this topic are to be accepted without question, “on faith” as it were. EGW said it. I believe it. That ends the discussion.
Understanding what Ellen specifically had in mind when she wrote or what had been edited together from earlier material she or her assistants had assembled from other sources is beyond the scope of this brief commentary. A scholar who has looked into this says it appears that she may not have been responding to Darwinian evolution as such but primarily to ideas presented in a work entitled "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," published in 1844.
One might reasonably conclude that maintaining the authority of EGW in the 21st-century Adventist Church continues to be one of the main concerns of the institutional Adventist press and the currently dominant administrative establishment at the GC.
That some wish, in the second decade of the 21st Century to highlight EGW’s 19th-century views on, of all things, geology, might strike some as a strange way to try to maintain the prophetic authority of someone whose principal focus throughout her lifetime was on the need for a Christian to develop deeply-felt spiritual values. Would it not be more helpful to highlight EGW’s focus on “God is Love”? Or is that too abstract?
What is gained in the 21st Century by continuing to link EGW with a totally scientifically-discredited understanding of earth and human history? This understanding was a widely held belief among conservative and evangelical wings of many Christian denominations in her day, and it would have been strange for her not to have believed it as well.
However, efforts today to endorse her views on this topic seem to be the equivalent of trying to support belief in a flat earth to support the authority of the Bible. That certainly was a belief held by the ancient Hebrews. Today, we now know that their understanding was simply wrong. But does this take anything away from the great themes that the Biblical narratives address such as our relationship with the Divine, as evaluated in terms of how we treat others?
Just as the understanding of the shape of the earth by the Hebrews was wrong, EGW's understanding of geology was also wrong. However, certain elements of the faith tradition she helped to found have created such a mythology around her that admitting this probably is more than anyone can reasonably expect.
Perhaps the best we can hope for is that her views on this topic will come to be only of historical interest to the point that, like her views on the Shut Door and human and animal amalgamation, they can effectively die a natural death by benign neglect. Unfortunately, this process may take several hundred years.
PS. On a slightly different topic, if someone wants to take a short break from some important task and has time to waste 15 minutes of fun reading, go to the Educate Truth (sic) web site (www.educatetruth.com) and read the exchanges of views on the thread that is dealing with “The Adventist Accrediting Association to Approve LSU’s Accreditation.” That thread is currently exhibiting how conservative Adventists can’t even agree when they are dealing with this topic among themselves. (By the way, Educate Truth (sic) is Dr. Sean Pitman’s site whose main purpose is to demand that La Sierra University turn itself into a Bible college and is outraged when it refuses to do that.)
'One might reasonably conclude that maintaining the authority of EGW in the 21st-century Adventist Church continues to be one of the main concerns of the institutional Adventist press and the currently dominant administrative establishment at the GC.'
The problem isn't Ellen White as a prophet. The problem is a misunderstanding of the gift of prophecy. If Mrs White is judged against biblical standards – something which both conservative supporters and liberal detractors don't do – her 'problems' are not so much of a problem. The Bible is not the Word of God – Jesus is. The Bible is just the human word of the Word, with all its limitations and parochical cultural intentions.
'A scholar who has looked into this says it appears that she may not have been responding to Darwinian evolution as such but primarily to ideas presented in a work entitled "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," published in 1844.'
Very interesting. Didn't Ellen White live at a time when the theory of evolution was new, and starting to be used to support 'scientific racism', social-Darwinism and other nasty stuff. Perhaps we should keep that in mind as to what Ellen White's 'mission' may have been on the subject at the time based on 'present truth'.
I am reminded of that great scene in the movie 'The Matrix'. The main protaginist Neo asks the Oracle if he is 'The One'. The Oracle says, 'No, you're not the One'. However, it turns out he was actually 'The One.' It seems Neo could not fulfill his mission unless he was humble enought to think he wasn't The One. So the question is, did the Oracle 'lie', or did she tell Neo 'present truth', which is what he needed to hear at the time based on his own particularly circumstances.
I am reminded of Jeremiah's 'present truth' that they surrender to Babylon.
So, God lies to us in the Bible and in the writings of Mrs. White about our true origins because, "It's what we needed to hear at the time?" By implication then, God reveals the real truth on such important topics, not to his prophets, by to someone like Darwin?
Come on now. Using this line of reasoning you can get your Bible to say anything you want. What's the point of religion beyond some warm fuzzy feeling at night or a type of "religious wishful thinking"? If you can't really trust the Bible regarding those elements that can be tested and potentially falsified, upon what rational basis can you trust the Bible with regard to its metaphysical claims that cannot be empirically tested? – such as the existence of a life after death or a home in Heaven someday? or the creation of a "New Earth" where there will be no more suffering and death or survival of the fittest?
As an aside, what is the point of having an organized Christian religious group, like the Seventh-day Adventist Church, that claims to take the Bible at its word and recognize the unpopular 7th day of the week as the day that God has declared to be "Holy" as a memorial of a literal creation week? – if that's not really what you beileve?
Despite Erv's claims, the purpose of our church schools is not to promote what everyone else is promoting. Why spend the money if all your going to do is create another public university that promotes ideas that are fundamentally opposed to what the organized church claims to promote? Beyond this, it is only right, morally right, to tell people what they can expect from our own church schools. It's called truth in advertizing. And that is the main purpose of the EducateTruth.com website – to tell people what some of our schools are actually teaching – contrary to what the school is suggesting in its own advertizing and contrary to the assumptions of many church members worldwide who ignorantly send their children to what they believe is a school that actively promotes basic Adventist ideals.
Sean Pitman
http://www.DetectingDesign.com
You have presented some interesting thoughts. Although I have difficulty believing that Christ and God could have created through a slow evolution of death and suffering before sin, Christians can hardly deny the geological evidence. I tend to believe there was another creation at some time when the adversary was cast down to earth. I can't prove that, of course. But I must believe in a good God or no god.
But I also believe that Ellen White did not know any more about geology than did the prophets of old. When I read her explanation of earthquakes, I researched it to find that her belief was exactly that being taught at the time. We now know it wasn't true. She was not a 21st-century scientist but a person sent to lead a church movement that would prepare a people spiritually for the future. She did not claim infalibility. But that is what humans have always done with spiritual leaders and visionaries–make them into, if not gods, at least untouched by human frailities and thus infalible even when evidence shows otherwise. My opposition to evolution is based on biblical principles and nothing more.
Ella M suggested that "So the question is, did the Oracle 'lie', or did she tell Neo 'present truth', which is what he needed to hear at the time based on his own particular circumstances." May I suggest that approach has a lot to recommend it. Prophets may say and write things that from a factual perspective may not be "true," but in a particular set of circumstances, they express ideas that help a particular faith community stay together and move on. Later adherents then have the responsibility of moving a particular faith community beyond the limited understandings of a previous prophetic figure. Some faith communities apparently can make such adjustments. For example, our Lutheran friends re some of the views of Martin Luther. But other, such as ours, have a very difficult time doing that.
Much agree. I am also reminded of those little armbands Christian Youth wear, 'WWJD' – 'What Would Jesus Do?'
One will note it is not, 'What Did Jesus Do' but 'What Would Jesus Do?'
It seems in religious life that much of the focus is often on the far easier question of what the prophet said or done. The far more difficult question, but far more relevant and important, is to look at why the prophet said what he or she said, within their cultural and factual context. Only then, one can assertain the far more relevant and important answer to what would the prophet do?
To take a very extreme example of this, look at the issue of slavery. For many years, and perhaps even today in some places in America, various Bible texts to support racial segregation and slavery. If one only looked at what the prophets of the Bible say, without cultural context or search for universal ethical principles, then the Bible does indeed support slavery. However, some Christians, like William Wliberforce, and like the SDA Pioneers who were abolitionists, were willing to look at the more difficult question – what would Jesus do.
The problem with Ellen White, in my resptful view, is the tendency to judge by more harsh standards from other prophets or religious leaders. The point about Martin Luther is very apt. Interestingly in Martin Luther's own lifetime, some groups of people hijacked or misapplied some of his own words, leading to a series of Peasants Revolts that resulted in millions of deaths.
Dr Taylor: 'So the question is, did the Oracle 'lie', or did she tell Neo 'present truth', which is what he needed to hear at the time based on his own particular circumstances." May I suggest that approach has a lot to recommend it.'
Upon further reflection, even the staunchest defenders of Mrs White at the E White Estate recognise this principle – that sometimes prophets communicate what the audience at that time needs to hear, rather than the actual or total factual scientific truth.
Ellen White described a world with 'seven moons', which was purported to be Jupiter or Saturn; however, we now know this was astronimically incorrect. However, this factually incorrect statement was what Joseph Bates needed to hear based on his understading at the time:
'Obviously, what Bates heard corresponded to his knowledge of what telescopes showed in 1846. Almost certainly this vision was given in Bates's presence to give him added confidence in Ellen White's ministry. If she had mentioned the number of moons that modern telescopes reveal, it seems clear that Bates's doubts would have been confirmed.'
Importantly, the E White Estate admits that in relation to prophetic statements that seem to concern science, and wholly relevant to this discussion:
'Attention has been called to statements that seem to show that Ellen White made grievous errors regarding scientific issues. Prophets are not called to update encyclopedias or dictionaries. Nor are prophets (or anyone else) to be made "an offender by a word" (Isa. 29:21). If prophets are to be held to the highest standards of scientific accuracy (every few years these "standards" change, even for the experts), we would have cause to reject Isaiah for referring to "the four corners of the earth" (Isa. 11:12) and John for writing that he saw "four angels standing at the four corners of the earth" (Rev. 7:1).'
That's what the E White Estate admits!
http://www.whiteestate.org/issues/faq-unus.html#unusual-section-c2
Stephen,
In her statement " As the moon and the stars of our solar system shine by the reflected light of the sun"
"starts" (points of light) mean the planets. Would you disagree?
Good Article Dr. Tayler. I think it is helpful to think of the concept of 'accomendation' when attempting to understand the main point of a piece of inspiration. Like a parable. which attempts to bring home a central point, (some exceptions), and the extranious details are not always literal- rich man and Lazarus for example. The problem with Ellen White is that she herself did not always see that the extranious details are not the Main Point.
I think Christ's parable of the rich man and Lazarus is an excellent example of how God works with humans. He speaks to them where they are, and His most important point is always a spiritual or moral one. Sometimes I wonder if the church's obsession to make EGW infallible on all subjects distracts from God's spiritual work through her.
By not understanding the obvious–that she was a product of her times–we have turned her into an idol, and that turns away other Christians. When working for World Vision, one group leader went through Steps to Christ for morning worships. These spiritual writings can be easily accepted by other Christians, and that is where the emphasis needs to be, if only as a starting point.
God prepared this caring, humble Christian lady to accept visions as a chanel of His leading for an end-time movement, showing that God is love and He is our Creator, Rescuer, and Re-creator.
That is, "accommodation"
Maybe I am not remembering the whole story, but I thought the planet described by White was unknown and Bates merely came up with what he thought it was according to astronemy at the time. Neither of them knew 21st-century science, and we don't know what future science might reveal that we don't know now. Truth is progressive.
As for the "four corners of the earth," that metaphor is still used and everyone knows it as a metaphor. The number "four" is and was symbolic. I don't see the comparison that the Estate is trying to make.
In this quote from the 1879 Signs of the Times article, Mrs Ellen White writes her reason for rejecting long age creationism (and in turn evolution) based on what the bible teaches regarding the creation of this world in relation to the Sabbath and God's dealings with man. This position is solely and emphatically put forth by her on a theological basis which is accepted by faith. The biblical revelation narrating our origins and the account of creation is accepted by faith. There were no other eyewitnesses except God (The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit) which we accept also by faith and it is a reliable basis for our faith because these three witnesses were there at creation. Science has no credible witnesses that were there to record and observe our origins. The faith they subscribe to looks for pictures to fit the pieces of the puzzle. They should therefore stick to stuff they can observe, reproduce and prove. Can science prove that the world was not created by a Creator God in a seven literal day week by sheer miraculous omipotence of one who was [the] only 'eye witness' at creation and the omniscient Creator and master designer himself?
Believers that the Godhead were the intelligence, brains, computers, planners, architects, builders, of Earth, Creator of life forms and ALL that there is, are many legions, hordes, multitudes in all ages. God created man in His own image, He gave man a computer brain fashioned after His own. According to Moses, God created Earth and all in it, in SIX (6) Days, and although God was not tired, man was, so as a memorial symbol of the Seventh Day, according to Moses (or whoever it was that wrote Genesis) God took the day off and rested???? Now as a narrator of the story of the creation of man, Moses, etal, spoke to the people in analogies they could comprehend, in the available knowledge known to man at that very early time in the history of this planet, as we think we know it here in 2013.
Seemingly all true prophets or chosen vessels used by God, were given the selected message of the day, and they then, or at a later date, told it to others, & or wrote, etched, or in some way caused it to be reproduced, by hand, with hope itwould survive the harsh conditions of the times, and earthly disasters, for example the flood that annihilated all but EIGHT (8) precious souls. For a contrast to that dramatic epic filled period, today we have the world's best educated and trained scientists in all physical sciences, alive and working, and they are having all manner of difficulty knowing for certainty the truth of some of the Bible World's strategic physical locations, and recorded history, after only 2000 years. It hasn't survived the elements of but few instances, of man & time erosions. Many of the Bible's story settings have been verified, but the most important missing element of the actual life of Jesus Christ in the time frame of the early first century, other than the Bible, are almost non existent. Why is this?? Because other than the apostles, Peter, Paul, Mark, & a few others carrying the Gospel message to the known world (the areas around the Mediterrainian Sea), the event of Jesus'es sojourn on the earth wasn't highlighted for posterity. Amazing indeed the power of the Gospel message, centered on Jesus Christ, had unbeliveable success with just a handfull of cadre. That in itself is a miracle, that men & women braved the hardships of a seemingly impossible task, to the death, usually alone. What phenomenal power of the spirit. And the Godly guided effort bore fruit, and today is the most loving message of a loving Creator who has informed man that He is the Light of this World and all the Worlds to come, that He is the Eternal One, The ALMIGHTY LIVING GOD, and that He will return to Earth, raise up His billions of created mankind from the elements, and restore their souls, to be a part of all He has planned for future non ending eons. Whether it was Six literal solar days for God to do His Earth creation (according to Moses), a human creature subject to his intelligence, to deliver the Godly message to the people in a form they could understand, or Six periods that covered literally millions or billions of years, does not change the truth of what God accomplished. We are here. We are not an illusion. God did not consult with the inhabitants before He created them. He didn't create according to the way man thought He should have done it, the way man would have preferred it. The intelligence of all that there is did it HIS WAY, ON HIS ETERNAL SPATIAL TIMETABLE, NOT MAN'S. If you want to live forever, earthly time is unnoticeable in the annals of Eternity. What does it matter if you return to the dust for millions or billions of "unknowing Earthly years", while awaiting the restoration of your personal soul in your newly fashioned spiritual body alike to His glorious body??? God put us here to prepare us for eternal living. He knows what He has created here, and also in innumerable other locales throughout the Universe (universes??). Jesus'es plan was not to hold our hand for a few billion years, and to look in on us occasionally to see how we were doing. The Holy Spirit, our comforter is available to all who want Gods wisdom and comfort. A few billion years in God's time doesn't register a blip in eternity. Atheists not having seen God, and haven't put their fingers into His wound, say it can't be because their sciences of Earth can't work it out in the lab. They don't understand "BLACK HOLES", because they think all of space and its inhabitants are a unexplainable accident of what?? If there was nothing?? They deny intelligence was a reality until they were born!!! They can't believe there is intelligence in outer space??? They can't believe that "BLACK HOLES" may be the conduit to other universes???? The heavens have their own laws of operation and are not dependent on Earth's physical sciences. Mankind is unable to comprehend our awesome Creator's Majesty and unlimited eternal power. Rest easy friends, God is eternal, and His Godly intelligent plan is precisely on His timetable.
Earl,
I am not sure how much of what you wrote I can follow, but I can tell you to stay away from black holes. Whether or not there are wormholes that pass matter or energy between black holes is a mathematical theory that has not been confirmed by experimental science and it is highly unlikely that it could be confirmed. Before matter or energy is sucked-into a black hole it is accelerated to very high speeds and ripped apart by tidal forces. Before you could cross the event horizon of the black hole you would be totally unrecognizable. If part of your remains managed to travel through the hypothetical wormhole to another black hole, and be ejected from that black hole, it would also be totally unrecognizable as "you". The only thing that can be ejected from black holes (according to Stephen Hawking who did the math) is random quantum particles that dissociate at the event horizon. Once again – please stay away from the black holes (and arguably the sci-fi also).
Black holes are proof of scientific orthodoxy's acknowledgment of the possibility of 'supernatural events'.
Earl,
I do believe that God can do whatever He/She/They choose to do. God is no more beholden to black holes than to any other physical phenomena that we can observe (or infer) with the telescope or microscope or shovel.
Are other religions quite as interested in sci-fi as some Adventists? Does it have something to do with the understanding of heaven and that one day they may be transported there. Check with the Mormons, they are already there immediately after death.
Are some ex-members of a religion so interested in their former religion as ex-Adventists? Why is that?
And it isn't just religious people. Atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Hawkings are almost obssessed with science fiction subjects, whether they be: aliens, time travel, worm holes, the Big Bang, parallel universes. To these world renown scientists, these theories are more science fact than science fiction.
If the Gospels were written today, I suspect at least one of them (if not all) would have utilised modern science fiction language rather than 1st Cent Jewish and Greek metaphors. For example, John 3:16 and the Resurrected Christ seems nuts to atheists and non-believers – like you Elaine. However, many of these same atheist intellectuals will say with a straight face that there are possibly time-travelling aliens amongst us, possibly with amazing healing and metamorphical powers. Dawkins and Hawkings both utilise similar ideas.
The only difference is when such concepts are told in religious terms it seems crazy and irrational; when in modern scientific language equally without proof, it seems wholly rational. Why do you think this so?
Jim, if i wished to be popular with others, or considered insane, because of what i write, i would take your advice. i am not original, i am not a authority on anything. i write what i am moved to write, at the moment, perhaps motivated by the blog. i know nothing about black holes, only conversant because of Ferguson's several references. None of my input on these blogs is planned. i only write what comes to me. i find i never feel malice or knowingly condemn others, or write in favor of any nefarious or evil thoughts or deeds. Therefore i believe i am led by the Holy Spirit to write what comes to my mind, as i have not previously given any
thoughts of the content. i am very surprised myself when i write speculative possibilities as i have no precepts of such. Approx. a year ago when i first came to AT, it was suggested that i and others with expressed unusual beliefs were probably psychotic. It caused me no concern, or bothered me of the comment. Hope you are better able to follow my future offerings.
Black holes are important to theology or philosophy insofar as they demonstrates scientific orthodoxy's acknowledgment of the possibility of 'supernatural events'. The Big Bang is another. These are events that science recognises is beyond observation with the scientific method, because space and time break down or cease to exist.
To me black holes and the Big Bang are perfect illustrations, or perhaps modern-day parables, that modern rationalist presumptions against 'miracles' are limited. The fact is the Big Bang and black holes are 'supernatural miracles' when you think about it.
Stephen,
It is important to distinguish between Causes and Effects.
For black holes both the causes and the effects are at least partially understood. And as we discover more black holes of varying masses, we can and do observe their development and behavior and learn more about their causes and effects. The fact that we have no mathematical model of their internal behavior does not obviate naturalistic explanations for the observable phenomena.
For the Big Bang we can observe many of the effects and even reproduce some of them in particle accelerators. As we make more observations and perform more experiments, our confidence in our models of the effects of the Big Bang increases. This does not say the Big Bang has been completely confirmed – only that it is the most plausible explanation of the observed evidence. However we have much yet to learn about the cosmos and I fully expect revisions in cosmological models as we learn more.
As to the causes of the Big Bang, they are beyond any current (or in my opinion likely) human capability to study. They remain a complete mystery and as such a fertile playing field for both sci-fi and religion.
If you are looking for mysteries in cosmology you might want to look at the questions (not answers) of dark matter and dark energy.
I am also interested in ideas about:
Stephen,
On the (possibly incorrect) assumption that you are interested in ideas enlightened by information, I will respond to each of your bullets with individual comments. I will try to carefully distinguish between my ideas and my sources of information.
Re creation days and Einstein – –
Time Dilation and Length Contraction are two predicted consequences of Einstein's theory of Special Relativity, perhaps better known for E=MC^2. In this theory these phenomena are inseparable. I might add that this theory has been confirmed by a large variety of different experiments and is applied in everyday life in nuclear medicine, nuclear power generation, and even your GPS must account for Time Dilation for accurate results (because microwave photons travel through air near the speed of light while the GPS satellites move more slowly and in different directions relative to the receiver).
In order to observe the relativistic effects, objects need to be accelerated to non-trivial fractions of the speed of light. For particles with little or no mass like Photons or Electrons, this is not such a big challenge as they normally move very fast. In fact the bigger challenge with these particles is to slow them down so we can observe their behavior more closely. Only recently have physicists achieved the ability to trap and manipulate individual photons or electrons.
For heavier particles like protons, netrons, nuclei, etc, an enormous amount of energy is required to accelerate them to "relativistic" speeds where Time Dilation occurs. At these energy levels the heavier particles have been stripped of any affiliated electrons. Without their valence electrons atomic nuclei do not have "chemical" properties. Ergo – no water, no air, no earth, no flora or fauna, no us. Not to mention that at very high energy levels fission and fusion reactions occur among the nuclei so you don't even have a stable collection of elements.
The hypothetical astronaut who travels at the speed of light and returns at the same age, would return as a cloud of matter bearing no resemblance to a human being.
So Einstein provides neither aid nor comfort for Creationists beyond the First Day when one could speculate that only light and darkness might have existed (ie small particles that normally move at very high speeds).
Re heaven and parallel universes – –
"Well God, I don't know very much about you but we have built you a nice little cage" – H. Simpson.
The theory of Quantum Completeness was developed in the 1950s to explain various paradoxes that arise in quantum mechanics. It has been partially confirmed in very small-scale experiments. It has practical applications in quantum computing, however progress has been agonizingly slow – scientists have only managed to assemble a few Quantum Bits and the parallel information decays fairly rapidly.
Drawing from this theory (and others) Stephen Hawking and his fellow-travelers have built some cosmological mathematical models involving minuscule multi-dimensional strings, that can describe parallel universes, worm-holes connecting black holes, etc. Each parallel universe exists within its own space-time-additional string dimensions. In these models the parallel universes are presumed to operate under similar if not identical physical laws, albeit the possibility exists that they may operate with different vlaues of fundamental physical constants. There is no known way of confirming or refuting these mathematical models, so they provide another fertile ground for both scientific and un-scientific imaginations.
From careful study of Bible passages in Isaiah and elsewhere, Bible scholars have for centuries concluded that God is described as both Immanent and Transcendent – a spiritual paradox. Isaiah states that God dwells outside of physical space and time (transcendent) and also inside every believer (immanent).
Throughout both the OT and the NT the concept of Heaven is wherever God dwells. If you believe that God is the Creator of time and space, it seems natural to conclude that He must transcend both time and space. Since those hypothetical parallel universes each exist within (independent) time and space, God Trancendent must exist outside any parallel universes that might exist pursuant to string theory or other human cosmological hypotheses.
A transcendent God cannot be confined to any of the cages conceived by the human imagination.
Re death and resurrection and immortality – –
Here is how I explained this subject to my Jr High SS class. (This is an over-simplification because I AM inhabits eternity and does not need to remember anything.)
Both before we were conceived and after we die we exist in the mind of God. God sees/remembers us both as we are and as we are meant to be. Using a computer analogy, we consist of defective software operating inside faulty hardware. We need both a hardware and a software upgrade.
When we die the old hardware is scrapped. At the Resurrection of the Saved, God installs the upgraded software with all faults removed, on new perfect hadware. The saved are both who they were and also who they are meant to be.
A the Resurrection of the Lost, God re-installs the defective software on faulty hardware. Not because He is arbitrary, but because the Lost have refused His offer of a free upgrade. The Lost are who they were.
At this point one of the youth asked whether God has a Delete command that will erase the file. I responded that this is called the Second Death. When God deletes someone all memory of their existence is gone. Whether they still exist in the mind of God we do not know but they no longer exist anywhere else.
Re the resurrection body. – –
By my previous analogy this would certainly be a major hardware upgrade. Being imperfect people in an imperfect world, we can only imagine what a major upgrade would entail. But I for one know that I am seriously in need of major hardware and software upgrades.
There is very little in Scripture regarding this subject, primarily Paul's assurance that when Christ appears we shall be like Him, that we shall see Him as He is. One can sutdy everything about the nature of Christ Incarnate in Scripture in a fairly short time. Since so little has been revealed there is much room for speculation and argumentation. So if you will indulge me I will speculate.
By my previous analogy, Christ at the incarnation installed His perfect software into defective human hardware (one spritual author claims thousands of years of accumulated defects). Somewhere in the process of His resurrection and ascension and installation in Heaven, he apparently received one or more major hardware upgrades. He did not need any software upgrade.
There is a case to be made that just as He performed His own hardware "downgrade" at the Incarnation so He performed His own hardware upgrade(s). If this is true then I can be confident of His ability to perform the necessary software and hardware upgrades in me.
How many software upgrades He will perform, and when, where and in what order He will install them, has been a subject of much speculation and argumentation of Christians for two millennia now, and of SDAs for over a century. For my part I find considerable joy and assurance in Paul's statement that we are His workmanship. I do not have to attempt to perform my own upgrades.
Disclaimer – I am well aware that to the Greeks this may be utter nonsense.
Why do we see through a dark glass, of blurred instinctive thought patterns and ofthe reality of the heavens, and the Majesty of the heavens, the KING of KINGS??
O' you really can't believe that garbage, "worm holes, space travel, aliens", give me a break, we haven't proven it in the lab, yet!!!!.
I do not have to appeal to sci-fi for evidence of God. I have found plenty of evidence (but not proof) for God in my studies of Scripture and Nature. But more importantly I have found evidence in my own life and the lives of people around me.
"Supernatural" means an event or anything that humans cannot explain–at the time. This is why in ancient writings there are so many "miracles"–they could not be explained. Once they are understood, they are no longer miraculous, or supernatural.
Mysteries or miracles?
A mystery is something for which we have no complete explanation. Black holes are an example of a partial mystery. We can describe fairly accurately what happens up to the event horizon. Beyond that the current physical models of cosmology break-down. There is no reason to believe they are supernatural, but because they cannot be completely described using current knowledge they provide rich fodder for science fiction.
A miracle is a singular event that demands a supernatural explanation. Singular events are not amenable to confirmation by repeatable observations or experiments. The Incarnation and the Resurrection are miracles. Attempts to explain them rationally using natural mechanisms are pointless.
The extent to which the origins and development of the cosmos, our planet, life, humans, etc, were miracles or merely mysteries, is a question that can be and is hotly debated. To what extent were these repeatable phenomena amenable to scientific confirmation vs singular phenomena not amenable to scientific confirmation?
All miracles are mysteries but not all mysteries are miracles.
Although I enjoyed reading some sci-fi in my youth, I have always tried not to confuse my faith with sci-fi. My faith is based upon my own experience and what I have learnt from the experiences of others. My science is based upon confirmation of the results of repeatable observations and/or experiments.
Erv,
Ellen put down what she believed what the Bible said.
What part do you find fault with?
seven literal days?
that infidel geologists believe in a much older earth?
Bones of men and animals are found . . . showing that much larger men and beasts once existed. . . . Because the bones found are so much larger than those of men and animals now living?
. In [God’s] providence men, beasts, and trees, many times larger than those now upon the earth, were buried at the time of the flood, and thus preserved to prove to man that the inhabitants of the old world perished by a flood
May I suggest that what Mr. Fortner says about EGW is correct, but incomplete. She wrote down what she believed the Bible said about creation, but it was complemented by what she remembered she had experienced in her out-of-body-experiences ("visions"). In her mind, apparently it was hard to distinguish these two sources of what she believed.
Her belief that the Bible said creation occurried in seven, literal days "about six thousand years" ago can be obtained by a literal reading of the King James Bible, which in her day, included Ussher's chronology in the margins. Most, and perhaps all, of the individuals with which she came into contact on a daily basis believed the same thing, so her views on this topic was not at all unique. She also had "visions" which repeated, with some slight modifications, what she read in the Bible.
Ellen died in 1915. The massive corpus of scientific data concerning geochronology would not be developed for 40-50 years. And little, if any, that data came from "infidel geologists."
Like the ancient Hebrews knew nothing about the true nature of the shape of the earth or the relationship of the earth to the sun and to the rest of what we now call the universe, EGW had no reason to not believe in what she wrote about the earth and its history. The ancient Hebrew were wrong about the shape of the earth and EGW was wrong about how long humans, and plants and animals have been on earth and how old the earth actually is.
Let's move on.
It's fine if you want to "move on". It is just that by doing so you're really moving out of the Adventist Church. I know you like to take on the title of "Seventh-day Adventist" for some strange reason, but you're really not SDA beyond the fact that you seem to like the society of SDAs and think to make a big splash in a small pond. Docrinally speaking, you personally subscribe to very few of the "fundamental" positions of the church that make Adventism unique. And, without unique doctrinal positions, the church loses its meaning for existence.
What you are promoting, then, are ideas that, if followed, will eventually destroy the church as a unique organization with a unique mission. One could even argue that this is true for your ideas and their effect on the rational basis for Christianity at large…
Theat's a pretty strong statement, Sean. There's not a whole lot that Erv and I agree on 100% when we post comments on the AToday website. But this is one of them. He has offered a very concise and sympathetic statement of how Ellen White saw the world, and the sources of that perspective.
I accept the Truth of the Genesis creation stories as God's word to me. It very much determines my understanding of the nature of God and man. The valuable information that science provides regarding deep time and biological processes over that time (very little) does not determine my concept of the essentially spiritual nature of ultimate reality, any more than a literal seven day creation dictates a theistic naturalism that makes Sabbath keeping part of some sort of divine natural law.
I have a far deeper, richer undertstanding of the seventh day Sabbath and its importance than I did when I believed in Creation literalism. You can pursue your purge if you want. But how far are you prepared to go? I am much closer to your theological understandings than I am to Erv's. Would you deny that I am an Adventist?
I certainly understand how one could question Erv's Adventist bona fides. But I would not do so on the basis of his rejection of YEC/YLC. I would only do so on the basis of his rejection of Adventist/Christian fundamentals that I accept (LOL).
How does my commitment to Creation literalism as God's word to me adversely impact my witness to a soon coming Christ who calls me to keep the seventh day holy? Relinquishing the Church's death grip on science will not destroy the church as an organization with a unique mission. It will free the church to renewal as a movement with a unique mission.
Hi Nathan,
I like you. I think you're a good guy – honest and sincere and a good guy all around. I also believe that Erv is just as honest and sincere in his beliefs. However, I do disagree with your suggestion that the concept of a literal creation week is irrelevant to the basis of Adventism and even Christianity at large. Accepting the Darwinian concept of hundreds of millions of years of sentient life existing, evolving, suffering and dying on this planet, is antithetical to the Bible's description of God and his concern for the suffering of our world. It also undermines the concept that God "will make everything new" – as it was originally intended to be as a place without suffering and death for sentient creatures.
Such a concept, I believe, is indeed fundamental to the Gospel Message of a solid hope for the future and a more accurate understanding of the character of God and the reason for why this world is like it is.
Don't get me wrong. Some of my best friends are agnostics and a couple are strong atheists. Yet, we get along just fine. I have nothing against those who old opposing religious beliefs. My problem is with those who want to undermine the Adventist Church from the inside – especially when it comes to presenting one's self with labels that are not truly reflective of one's positions. I believe this to be a form of false advertising and deliberate deception – a moral wrong in anyone's book. For example, La Sierra University should not advertise itself as being supportive of all the Adventist doctrinal positions while it is in fact actively promoting, as the true story of origins, the Darwinian perspective. Instead, it should say in its advertisements, up front, that it is opposed to the position of the church on the topic of origins and will be promoting mainstream Darwinism in its science and even religion classes. That way nobody would be blindsided by what is really being taught in one of "our" schools. It's only fair to be very clear as to what one can expect to recieve for one's money… and we're talking a lot of money for tuition these days.
Because of this, I'm a lot harder on paid respresentatives of the SDA Church – teachers and preachers. I'm not nearly so concerned about general church attendance or even "membership".
All the best,
Sean
Sean,
You present these choices as the only two possibilities – either must either accept YEC or Darwinian evolution as a theory of origins. I know many people who believe in God but who do not believe he created the world a few thousand years ago. Many believe He did it incrementally, others that He did relatively rapidly but a very long time ago, or in a series of miraculous events separated in time.
You can offer evidence to support any of the above hypotheses but I have not seen where any of them have been conclusively proven or disproven.
Nothing can be "conclusively" or "absolutely" proven – not even in science. Everything is based on the "weight of evidence" that produces "predictive power" that is useful, but is not the same thing as absolute proof.
As far as the weight of evidence is concerned, there is a great deal of evidence that strongly suggests, to me at least, that the Darwinian mechanism of random mutations and natural selection (RM/NS) is limited to very very low levels of functional complexity. It cannot create, this side of trillions of years of time, any biolocial system that requires a minimum of more than 1000 specifically arranged amino acid residues. Beyond this, the detrimental mutation rate is far far too high for slowly reproducing creatures (like all birds or mammals for instance) to avoid eventual genetic meltdown well shy of a million years.
The concept of theistic evolution, where God guides the process and solves some of these problems, is fine for those who believe in non-Christian ideas of some kind of supernatural being or Deistic Force. However, for the Christian, the concept of suffering and death is claimed, by the Bible, to have started with the moral Fall of mankind on this planet. Before this time, the Bible claims that there was no suffering or death for sentient creatures and that God actually suffers when even a little sparrow falls wounded to the ground. Such a concept of God, the Christian concept, is completely opposed to the Darwinian perspective and to any possibility of a truly good God who is also all-powerful.
Hope this helps.
Sean Pitman
http://www.DetectingDesign.com
One more thing. I'm not a supporter of the YEC position. Rather, I personally subscribe to the young-life position. In other words, I believe that the universe and probably the basic material of the Earth pre-existed the creation week described in Genesis. And, other passages of the Bible seem to me to say the same thing… that the uiverse and other worlds with intelligent beings witnessed the creation of our world.
Sean,
Where exactly in the Bible did you find the text that says there was no suffering or death for sentient creatures outside the Garden before the Fall?
And how do you distinguish "sentient" creatures? Are cows sentient? Tigers? Apes? Elephants? Rats? Crows? Ravens? Parrots? Dolphins? Orcas? All nephesh? I am not being facetious – I am trying to understand what you said.
I am theologically inclined toward the young-life position for at least the "higher" life forms, but I cannot find much support for this postion in paleontology or geology. You seem to allow for the existence of celestial objects before the beginning of the Genesis creation week. Is it possible that there were bacteria before the beginning of that week? Trilobites? Stromatolites? Algae? Plankton? Where and how do you draw the line? Note – I am not espousing macro-evolution with these questions.
May I suggest that we all should welcome Sean Pitman to the freedom and openness of the Adventist Today web world from the dark confines of the Educate Truth (sic) domain.
It does take someone like Sean’s rare perspective on science and faith to foster what rarely happens–Nate and I agreeing on something. In this case, it is the intellectual blind alley of Biblical literalism when it comes to the Genesis creation narratives.
Fortunately, Sean has absolutely no standing on the question of whether I am or not a “true” Adventist. That’s a question of relevance only to my home Adventist church. Why Sean sees the need to even raise the question has always eluded me. As for making a “big splash in a small pond,” I’ve always thought of it as making very, very small ripples in a tiny, tiny pond.
I cannot express the most important point better that Nate has done when he suggests that “relinquishing the [Adventist] Church’s death grip on science will not destroy the church . . . It will free the [Adventist] church to renewal as a movement with a unique mission.” Now I suspect that Nate and I may have some slightly different views on what that unique mission might be, but we agree on getting rid of the Adventist “death grip” on what the Genesis creation narratives are really trying to communicate. Hint to Sean: It has nothing to do with how old life is on Earth or what processes God used to create the world and life on this planet.
Sean and Ervin,
Comment Guidelines
I appologize if anything I said came across as needlessly pejorative. That wasn't my intent…
I share Jim's concern that we should all follow comment guidelines, but I could not find in anything Sean's comments which are objectionable. Now with regard to my comments, I can see where a reader might see in them "needlessly pejorative" wording. Sorry about that. I will try in the future to do a better job of hiding my pejorative terminology.
I share Jim's concern that we should all follow comment guidelines, but I could not find in anything Sean's comments which are objectionable. Now with regard to my comments, I can see where a reader might see in them "needlessly pejorative" wording. Sorry about that. I will try in the future to do a better job of hiding my pejorative terminology.
What do you believe the "unique mission" of the Adventist Church to be? And, if you personally see no empirical evidence for God's existence, as I've heard you explain before, upon what basis do you believe the Bible to be any more useful or credible than any other religious text claiming some kind of Divine origin?
Please correct me if wrong on the following: traditional SDA understanding of the time lapse of the Creation week was 6 literal 24 hour solar day periods, followed by a 7th day in memorial of Gods Creative power.
Gen 1:1, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Day 1.
Gen 1:16 And God made 2 great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the smaller light to rule the night, and the stars also. Verse 17, And God set them in the firmament to give light upon the earth, verse 18, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to seperate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. verse 19,and there was evening and there was morning, the fourth (4th) day.
The question: If there was no Sun until the fourth (4) day, how could there have been six (6) LITERAL SOLAR 24 HOUR EARTH DAYS utilized in the Creatioin time frame????
How long were the first three (3) days in Gods eternal space time????
Having asked myself these very questions since childhood, I am curious whether Sean or anyone else here (or at the GRI or the BRI) has a simple explanation? I do accept the authority of Scripture but I am unable to determine how to apply it in this particular case. I understand and accept that God can do whatever and whenever He wishes and that He is not limited by His own laws of Physics.
For my part I drew my own first chart of the Solar System shortly before my 6th birthday. It included the distances to the sun and the moon, the relationships between the planets, and as an aside the number of trillions of miles in a light-year, understanding that the stars were light-years away.
Most of my life I have not understand why for four days (assuming that He created these heavenly bodies during the day rather than the night – otherwise say three days) He made light from the sun to the earth and the moon travel backwards in time (ie negative velocity), while making light from the stars travel forwards in time (by what is now estimated to be more than 13 billion years).
If one argues that He created the Moon in the evening and then the sun in the morning then how did the moon become visible that night before the sun was created? If one argues that the moon was not visible during the night because it was a New Moon then God might have created the sun and the moon both as sunrise. Then how did God create the moon to rule the first night of its existence? Only the Full Moon rules the entire night, and during the New Moon both the moon and the sun rule the day together and only the stars rule the night.
For as long I have wondered if each creation day was approximately 24 literal hours comprising roughly equal amounts of first darkness and then light, then either there was no time before that first evening or the first evening at least was indeed much longer (by orders of magnitude) than 12 hours.
Sorry but I do not think that if I could ask Moses these questions he would insist that my questions are wrong or that he was trying to twist-up everything that he knew about the relationships between time, the sun and the moon when he wrote the narrative. Could my inability to understand merely be a lingering vestige of my childish naivete?
The Bible seems to suggest that the universe and other created intelligences on other worlds pre-existed the creation week for our planet described in Genesis (Job 38:7). This suggests, quite strongly I believe, that the author of Genesis was describing what he saw from a limited Earth-bound perspective. From this limited perspective, the Sun, moon, and stars would not have become distinctly visible through the thick atmosphere of the Earth until this atmosphere was cleared. As on a cloudy day, one could still tell day from night, evening from morning, without being able to see the Sun or moon or stars.
This concept is refer to as the "Passive Gap Theory" of creation were the Genesis account of creation only deals with the creation of the structure of the Earth necessary to support complex life and the creation of life on the Earth.
And, when God says that He will one day create a “new heaven and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17, 2 Peter 3:3, Revelation 21:1), certainly that should not be interpreted to mean that God starts out with nothing. It is simply talking about taking an Earth that will be “formless and void”, yet again, and reforming it to be able to support life yet again – as it was originally designed to do.
Hope this helps…
Sean Pitman
It is amazing to observe the whirligigs true believers spin to rescue the Creation story from immutable facts.
Quoting Genesis employs myth to affirm myth. Nothing gained.
Why are you and other "creationist" so afraid of the true facts? You can adjust your faith. You cannot adjust facts.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." is not the first day really; this is the preamble that is a pre-summery. God created light–Big bang-Universe on the first day. The Forth Day it say simple to "let the Lights 'appear" due to the atmosphere clearing up through out the third day and opening up on the Fourth Day. God Had Created The Great Lights it states.
Well one fundamental question that literalists tend to eveade is when did God create time and space?
If the first "evening" was literally half of a 24-hour day, then did God create time and space 12 hours before creating light? If the answer is no then the first day was either a half-day that began with morning rather than evening, or else it was a very long day consisting mostly of night before the creation of light.
Why do I ask this question? Because for me the possible answers uncovered the futility of insisting that the entirety of Genesis 1 fits into 6 literal days. Yet it is now being proposed that this will become become a Fundamental Belief. I do not think that Moses himself would have made this claim. If he was learned in all the knowledge of the Egyptians that would have included astronomy as it can be observed without a telescope.
Similar issues arise if one claims that the sun, moon and stars were literally created on Day 4. The only way I can conceive to square this with what is observed via the telescope is to place the earth at the center of the cosmos and to come up with a "creationist inflation" hypothesis of space-time to account for how the arrived in their presently observed relaitonships (position and relative motion) in only a few thousand years. Either Day 4 was not a literal day or at a minimum the stars were not all created on that day or we are by a vote of the GC standing almost everything that can be observed through a telescope on its head. Again I doubt that Moses himself would have made this claim had he had a telescope.
Regardless of what you believe about the remaining days of creation you should not insist that Day 1 was a literal day unless you admit that time and light and energy and matter already existed prior to Day 1. I noted that the authors and editors of the recent SS Quarterly had very little to say about the evening portion of Day 1 nor what were the inital conditions at that time. They also did not say much about what actually happened on Day 4. Surely they were aware of thse pitfalls and simply avoided them. I wish the theological literalists would do likewise. Otherwise in a few years we will again modify this fundamental belief or find ourselves at increasingly great pains to try to defend it.
Supposing you woke up this morning and had no memory of any religious concept, none of the Bible, a complete blank. But you wanted to know (if you didn't already) about the universe and what now is known. Your only information would be verifiable scientific information. You would find the structures are racing away from each other, having started at a central point, there are four known forces, one of which is gravity that works as a mighty mix master of creation and disintegration, death and resurrection of all stars and planets, and all that in them is, on a basis that needs no "creator."
Because of the distancing bodies it is calculated to be at least fourteen billion years old. You would look at the information about our earth and see that it is in the billions of years old, you could travel and look at geological formations around the earth and see that it took an awful long time for the upheavals, deposits, and chaos to create our planet.
You would look at the sun ( not right at it, of course) and know that it is a hydrogen reactor that will eventually consume itself, frying the earth in the process, reduced down to a white dwarf, just like the trillions of other stars in the universe. Larger stars dramatically explode, creating heavy metals and sending junk off to be reclaimed eventually by gravity and transformed into new bodies.
And on this blank morning you felt a need for God. Would you unknowing parrot the Genesis story? Would you posit a creator? Or if the Genesis writer(s) had this knowledge would something entirely different have been written?
And at the end of this revelatory experience your lapsed memory returned. What of your religious past would still be valuable?
I think Christ's affirmation that God is love all you would need. Love is imposed us in on our chunk of the universe, unaffected by physical law. And it is a universal human experience. It is simple, totally encompassing, and immune from anthropomorphism.
The God of Christ's revelation is all we need now.
Well since I started studying astronomy and the Bible at about the same time (5 yrs old) I have been dealing with these very questions for almost all of my life.
Best current estimates are that the Big Bang was about 13.8 billion years ago. I was not around back then and given the mysteries (not necessarily miracles) of "dark matter" and "dark enrgy" we still have a few major holes to fill-in re cosmology. And I have pointed-out repeatedly that Moses was writing to people who did not have a telescope to know about almost anything that we now know is out there. I suspect that the universe and the earth as an "abyss" were in existence long before the "Day 1" described in Genesis.
If I did not have the Bible I would probably still appeal to a supernatural cause of the Big Bang and of the amazing fine-tuning of well over a dozen physical constants that together make it possible for us to be here to argue about this (the so-called Anthropic Principle). I still think Somebody wanted us to happen and rigged the deck to make us happen. But I think there is a lot about when and how He did it that we simply do not know and probably cannot know. Genesis 1-2 tells me a lot about Who did it and why, but from the standpoint of Physics it really tells us very little about the mechanisms He used. For that we needed to wait for the Telescope, Galileo, Newton, better telescopes, Einstein, particle accelerators, better telescopes, Hubble, better telescopes and large-scale computer simulations of alternative scenarios.
"Well one fundamental question that literalists tend to eveade is when did God create time and space?"
Not everyone avoids this question. I, for one, don't think the Bible addresses this question at all. The Bible does claim that the universe pre-existed the "creation week" described in Genesis, but doesn't go into further details. Therefore, the universe could be very old indeed…
So then you admit that God might have used pre-existing matter as part of His six-day burst of creative energy recorded in Genesis 1?
In Genesis 2 He uses pre-exisitng matter to create first a man (from clay) and then a woman (from a rib). But I know many a Fundamentalist who must insist that in Genesis 1 He was not allowed to use pre-existing matter on Day 1 when the Abyss was presumably a vacuum, or on Day 4 when everything beyond the waters above the Firmament was still a vacuum.
If you go down the slippery slope, then maybe God commandeered a rock that had already been orbiting a stable medium-sized star for who-knows-how-long. But if you admit of the possibility that there might already have been stars or black holes or whatever-else out there that were not visible through the clouds with or without a telescope, then maybe there might have been some bacteria in all that muddy water that were not visible without a microscope?
Sean, I am wondering just where you would draw the line between natural and supernatural processes in the origins of the earth? For myself I do not know the answer to this question.
Of course I support the idea that the universe pre-existed the creation week of Genesis – and likely the basic material of the Earth as well. The Bible itself strongly suggests the truth of this concept by claiming that the angels sang for joy at the creation of our world.
As far as life pre-existing the creation week, this is very very very unlikely since the Earth was not in a state to support complex life prior to the creation week. As far as the pre-existence of "simple" life, like bacterial life, it might have been possible for such life to survive (probably not), but it would also have required a creative act on the part of God to place such life on this planet prior to creation week. I see no rational reason why He would think to do this? The suggestion makes no sense to me. It's like putting some sort of very hardy, very unusual, form of bacterial life on a place like Venus. Why do it? What would be the point?
Darrell,
I admit being attracted to the "creation as observed from earth" explanation that you seem to be espousing. But if you go there then how can you be certain that the days that Moses (or whoever passed down the story) observed, were literal days?
Why is it essential that Moses' story be verified? In the first place, there is no evidence that Moses was the author, but I digress.
When you and I were born our parents told us our birthday but it really made no difference, as the most important fact was that we were here. We study history but place far too much emphasis on details and miss the real picture. This is the result of long dissecting and analyzing the first two chapters in Genesis: proceeding from the position that it was all a live, and literal account of events. Then, once adopted, there is the additional problem of combining the two very different accounts in a consistent picture. Was Adam God's first created act (Gen. 2) or was he the next-to-final act with Eve being the crowning event? How could there be light and darkness forming a day when no sun nor moon had yet been created? Was there a rotation of the earth and what was the center around which it circled?
It has been said (somwhat facetiously) that Eve was God's second big mistake 8-).
Without Eve we would be spared the argument over women's ordination. Then perhaps half of the commentary on Atoday would disappear. And without Genesis at all then most of the "regulars" would only have EGW and TW to kick-around. But without Eve there would be no Ellen and probably no TW (unless men could clone themselves) so there would be little remaining purpose for this web site. And since the Bible claims that Jesus was descended from Adam and Even and Noah we could probably ignore Him as well.
I have heard it suggested when I was young that maybe God Himself (or Theirselves) subbed for the sun for a few days as a source of light and gavitation. Personally I never did find that suggestion very convincing. I feel really sorry for the people who have to try to answer every scientific mystery from Genesis. Some of them were my school teachers.
And I also feel really sorry for the people who because they could not answer every important scientific question from Genesis, have turned their backs on Jesus as the answer to the even more important questions of life. Many of them were and some still are my friends.
Oh, and did I mention that without Eve there would be no point to the social restrictions at my boarding academy?
Why are so many convinced that the creation story was told as facts? It is only one of the numerous creation myths that are found in different parts of the world; the Mediterranean area being the first to learn writing and thus recorded their stories. But there is a Babylonian creation myth that is very similar in 7 days of creation with almost the same identical events in order as the Bible account.
Myths were told as a way of explaining to descendants just as there are numerous Grecian myths of heroic deeds that they love to read and yet no one today believes that there were literal gods instructing the actors of an event.
The Bible is a wonderful book but taking every thing in it as literal destroys the beauty and forces the reader to park his mind while he's reading it.
Elaine,
Sometimes myths and legends are based upon the cultural memories of historical facts.
If you visit Crater Lake in Oregon you might learn that the indigenous peoples have myths about how this lake was once a mountain that was destroyed. Their myths try to account for a pre-historic event via supernatural phenomena, but they nevertheless have a basis in fact.
Ditto for the Atlantic Sagas which were passed down via stories and for many years regarded as being heavily laced with mythology. Until archaeological excavations uncoverd some intersting artifacts at L'Anse Aux Meadows the claim that Vikings had reached North America was only a myth and legend.
Myths give us information laced with the beliefs of the people reporting them. Archaeological discoveries give the actual evidence and intelligent people accept those findings as true, while the myths tell more about those who told those stories.
Elaine, very few disagree that Genesis is reflective in some ways to creation myths of 3000BC, but reflective only. This is true for many reasons other than that the Hebrews simply took there theology from Babylon, which is certainly NOT true. As the late Dr. Hazel has shown clearly Genesis one and two are apologetic in nature, so the story does address the points of assyrian and babylonian creation stories. For example addressing "the creation" of the sun and the moon and the stars.
Clearly Scholarship has recognized that Genesis is reflective of creation myths of its time for the simple reason that Genesis is attempting to correct the myths of that time. The late Dr Haszel at Andrews wrote a book on this fact. Genesis is not “borrowing content” but speaking to “the culture.” Notice the High View of Mankind in the comparison, and think of how the Genesis story also speaks against the modern low view of man in the myth of evolution.
"Viewed with respect to its negatives, Gen 1:1-2:3 is a polemic against the mythico-religious concepts of the ancient Orient…The concept of man here is markedly different from standard Near Eastern mythology: man was not created as the lackey of the gods to keep them supplied with food; he was God's representative and ruler on earth, endowed by his creator with an abundant supply of food and expected to rest every seventh day from his labors. Finally, the seventh day is not a day of ill omen as in Mesopotamia, but a day of blessing and sanctity on which normal work is laid aside. In contradicting the usual ideas of its time, Gen 1 is also setting out a positive alternative. It offers a picture of God, the world, and man…man's true nature. He is the apex of the created order: the whole narrative moves toward the creation of man. Everything is made for man's benefit…" (p.37, Vol. 1, "Explanation," Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 [Word Biblical Commentary, 2 vols.], Word Books, Waco, Texas 1987
A more interesting view is that the themes of ‘six days of creation and the seventh of rest, the fall of man and a flood of the known world,” are historical and /or oral traditions of real events that predate the writing of all that of Mesopotamia by thousands of years and from which their garbled redactions come.
Bugs, very few disagree that Genesis is reflective in some ways to creation myths of 3000BC, but reflective only. This is true for many reasons other than that the Hebrews simply took there theology from Babylon, which is certainly NOT true. As the late Dr. Hazel has shown clearly Genesis one and two are apologetic in nature, so the story does address the points of assyrian and babylonian creation stories. For example addressing "the creation" of the sun and the moon and the stars.
Clearly Scholarship has recognized that Genesis is reflective of creation myths of its time for the simple reason that Genesis is attempting to correct the myths of that time. The late Dr Haszel at Andrews wrote a book on this fact. Genesis is not “borrowing content” but speaking to “the culture.” Notice the High View of Mankind in the comparison, and think of how the Genesis story also speaks against the modern low view of man in the myth of evolution.
"Viewed with respect to its negatives, Gen 1:1-2:3 is a polemic against the mythico-religious concepts of the ancient Orient…The concept of man here is markedly different from standard Near Eastern mythology: man was not created as the lackey of the gods to keep them supplied with food; he was God's representative and ruler on earth, endowed by his creator with an abundant supply of food and expected to rest every seventh day from his labors. Finally, the seventh day is not a day of ill omen as in Mesopotamia, but a day of blessing and sanctity on which normal work is laid aside. In contradicting the usual ideas of its time, Gen 1 is also setting out a positive alternative. It offers a picture of God, the world, and man…man's true nature. He is the apex of the created order: the whole narrative moves toward the creation of man. Everything is made for man's benefit…" (p.37, Vol. 1, "Explanation," Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 [Word Biblical Commentary, 2 vols.], Word Books, Waco, Texas 1987
A more interesting view is that the themes of ‘six days of creation and the seventh of rest, the fall of man and a flood of the known world,” are historical and /or oral traditions of real events that predate the writing of all that of Mesopotamia by thousands of years and from which their garbled redactions come.
Very well, Darrel. Whirligigs galore! If those mental gymnastics buttress your faith, that is fine with me. It is much simpler, and no real threat to faith, no buttressing is required, to accept the real overwhelming natural evidence that the creation story is not history. It doesn't matter one hair's diameter who came up with the myth first, or if Genesis is more authentic as a polemic. Your mythical interpretation of the value of Sabbath at least gets past the rule of eternal law! And you have an interpretative argument for your self imposed illusion of strict Sabbath observance. I do wonder if your are keeping the real Sabbath? A round world complicates the case (it was thought to be flat in the times of your Genesis source). And calendars are relative recent inventions. Maybe there was a hiccup along historical timeline and your are actually worshiping on Monday, the day of the moon? You have mythical reasons for observance, so, I guess it doesn't really matter.
Finding authenticators for a point of view, has no value. Don't overlook the flat earth society it can surely provide support.
Whirligigs galore indeed!!! Try do deal with the evidence and leave you 'whirligig' at home please.
I am totally amused how my assertions are never met point by point, only emotional diatribes, or at worst meaningless babble. Temperamental response suggest a paucity of facts to bolster a rebuttal. Darrel, you completely missed the point. The whirligig is in your house, and I can't "leave it at home." I don't have or need one to spin my facts with lofty quotes from foggy sources or retreating into wishful thinking. Why are you, and others who profess your faith, so thin skinned at any challenge? What are you afraid of? If I am so far in foul ball territory, laugh at me. Or show me where I dropped the ball. If you are convinced of your faith, my proposals should enhance your convictions.
Just laugh a little bit, I do. These discussions are fun. Enjoy!
Bugs-Larry,
Perhaps if you offered point-by-point evidence for your assertions and they appeared as less of rhetorical (if not emotional) diatribes one might be more inclined to address them point-by-point. Simply throwing broad assertions into any discussion and then claiming that anyone who fails to refute them is mistaken, is a rhetorical artifice widely employed by (among others) preachers and politicians and demagogues. But it is nevertheless a philosophical fallacy. In any system of logical reasoning the burden of evidence (if not of proof) falls first on the person making the assertion.
I myself have never seen a "whirlygig" and I have no idea what this thing or concept refers. So it is very difficult for me to take your rhetoric seriously or analyze it critically. I have had the same problem with many evangelistic sermons so I wonder if perhaps when you emerged from your Adventist coccoon you did not shed all of its silk lining?.
Jim, I am crushed by your allegation that places me in the pigeon hole with preachers, politicians, and evangelists. Not a car salesman? That would have been better! And don't knock the remnant of my silk lining, it's my only souvenir from my sojourn in orbit.
Anyway your rhetorically critical advice is worthy of study. I'll get back to you. And a whirligig is a contraption made to spin mindlessly in the wind.
My apologies for overlooking car salesmen.
Every week I look for a preacher. Every few years I need to look for a car salesman. At least once in my life I should look for an evangelist. I don't have to look for politicians – they are constantly looking for me (or at least my vote, my taxes, etc). So much for my rhetorical hierarchy of needs – your own may be different. You may have noticed that demagogues were intentionally omitted as I tend to avoid them whenever possible.
Thanks for teaching me about whirligigs – I never knew what was the generic term for those contraptions my late father-in-law liked to build as a hobby. Here in Oregon we attach electric generators to our whirligigs. I happen to prefer wind chimes because to me they sound nicer but my wife finds their noise to be annoying.
Just choose the myth you want to bet your life on. Does it really make that much difference when there is absolutely no way of knowing what happened? It is rather amusing to see all the various explanations made to preserve the Sabbath; all of which casually dimiss that it was God ONLY who rested after His work, but never instruction for Adam and Even to also rest–which would have been on their first day.
It is an Adventist assumption made in efforts to support its universal command, despite no mention or evidence of Sabbath observance of anyone until Sinai.
Elaine,
I prefer to bet my life on evidence rather than on myths.
I have bet my life on God because I have found strong existential arguments and anecdotal evidence (though not any proof) that God exists and that God loves me.
Elaine,
Just because there is no way of absolutely proving everything that happened does not mean there is no way to learn some things about what happened. Very little that one thinks one knows can actually be proven beyond any doubt, or in many cases even beyond reasonable doubt.
Regarding the popular narrative of this web site, my claims would apply equally to both the "creation absolutists" and the "evolution absolutists". There are enormous problems with both hypotheses as well as with the assertion that they are mutually exclusive.
"despite no mention or evidence of Sabbath observance of anyone until Sinai"
If you have even one text showing that the Sabbath was observed by humans prior to Sinai,
surely it should not be difficult to print it.
FYI: I have read my Bible in many translations and have yet to find a single text supporting commands to man to observe any day before Sinai and the giving of the Decalogue. Why not simply post the text(s)?
This is speculation and analysis on my part. I believe the Adventist church was born with an inferiority complex earned from the dismal, public, disappointment at its conception. To rise above the pain, it needed to overcome its trauma by rising above all other faiths with distinctive, singular doctrines. Spirit of Prophecy, sanctuary, health reform, second coming, and the Sabbath were a few that distinguished it, over a period of time, ahead of all others. The Sabbath was the most outwardly notable defining characteristic and so was attached in first place in the identity plate of the denomination, Seventh-day Adventist.
Point? To this day Sabbath observance remains a specific, distinguishing marker. Its adherents wear it with pride as evidence of a superior attachment to the deity. So, regardless of the of strength of contrarian evidence for observation, they will emotionally defy any attack, and defend it, if nothing else, by tradition. The Adventist church is populated by people who want to be special and Sabbath observance is their trademark.
Elaine in the past several commentators in AT already provided some texts. Is possible that you ignored. Here are two of them
I close my case good luck!
In their eagerness to adopt distinguishing marks, the SDA pioneers practically limited their studying to the OT where they found the Fourth Commandment, and called attention to the other churches who were worshiping on the first day rather than the day given by God.
From the OT laws they also read and adopted the Jewish food laws, tithe, and the IJ; none of which were ever given to any but the Israelites. Apparently, the KJV version of the OT with Ussher's chronology was their source for dating, and they overlooked much of the NT that, had they studied as much as the OT, would have found that no longer were the Jewish laws in effect for Christians.
All their texts in support of Sabbath come from the OT, excepting the Gospels which covered the life of Christ BEFORE Christianity was born.
Exodus 16 is the story of the Israelite's complaining that they missed the food of Egypt and God sent "food from heaven" but nowhwere are they told to observe the seventh day, only that they should gather the food for the next day. Moses then tells them that it is the sabbath in honor of Yahweh.
As the record of the giving of the Law is not previously mentioned, it shows that all the stories are not written in sequential order. The Law is not mentioned until later, so how were they to know about Sabbath observance? Surely, they could not have observed it in Egypt.
Not until four chapters later is the giving of the Law recorded. Retroactive law cannot be observedl
No one has argued that Jesus did not observe the Sabbath and the famous SDA quote is always given about the Sabbath, yet Jesus was answering the Pharisees' objection and accusation that he had not properly observed the Sabbath commandment, the most revered and external sign of Judaism.
Read the Bible AFTER Jesus' death when Christianity began and there is no command ever given to Gentile Christians on a special day of worship; Sabbath has always been the most distinctive mark of Judaism. Christians trust that the Holy Spirit was leading the apostles when the abrogated Judaism practices for the new Christians; and Paul's several instructions against judging anyone who observed a day; and that all those special celebrations INCLUDING SABBATH were only a shadow; the real thing is Christ.
It's interesting, Elaine, how you seem to play a shell game with the N.T. When believers cite actual words or actions of Christ, you discount them, if they challenge your world view, by observing that much of the Christ "myth" was made up by early Christians who had an agenda. But then, when you want to discount the importance of Sabbath keeping, you give great authority to what you believe to be the early Christian church's disregard for the words and actions of Jesus.
Jesus also asked his disciples to pray that in the future, during the destruction of Jeruselem, that their flight be not on the Sabbath day – suggesting that they were to keep the Sabbath day holy even after His death. This also suggests that Jesus believes the Sabbath was made for everyone, during Creation Week – not just for the Jews. He expects all to keep His day, the "Lord's Day", Holy – in remembrance of Creation and our standing before God.
Sean,
Although I think we would generally agree regarding the Sabbath, it must be pointed-out that the Christians who would need to flee from Jerusalem would be Jews who already kept the Sabbath. This supports the argument that the Sabbath would remain relevant for Jewish believers but does not answer the question of whether Gentile believers were also expected to keep the Sabbath.
Jesus was telling this to his disciples – men who were no longer under unique Jewish law or traditions, but under the universal moral code that had always been in place (consider Paul's discussion of the symbolic Jewish laws – like those having to do with circumcision, etc.). Clearly, Jesus expected the special observance of the Sabbath to continue among his disciples and all future converts to Christianity.
In fact, for hundreds of years the early Christian Church did observe the Sabbath wherever it went. This is well-documented historical fact. This clearly supports the idea that everyone originally understood that the Sabbath was not part of the ceremonial laws, unique to the Jews, that were "nailed to the cross", but was in fact part of the original moral code given to all mankind.
Nice answer and not a whole here that I personally disagre wtih. But I am wondering specifically if you think there would be non-Jewish believers in Jerusalem who would need to flee approx 40 years later? From Acts it appears the Jerusalem church was the last bastion of the Judaizers. From later church historians it appears that after the fall of Jerusalem they went off to the Decapolis region and kept-up their Jewish rituals while continuing to worship Christ.
i've always had a problem w/tags or badges, of inclusion in a special or elite group,or those forced to wear the idenity marker signifying inferior, or slave, or prisoner, victims for destruction. It is either a marker of PRIDE, or of dishonour, and i don't like either. To my thinking, a macho, jingoist, holier than thou, arrogant form of PRIDE is not acceptable to me. The egotist loves the tags that point to their sense of smug superiority of themselves, elevated to the top of the stele. I'MMM P-R-O-U-D-D-D….My Rolex is bigger than yours, and almost as big as my head. I love to treat my peers with hundred dollar meals, to bring praise of my eminence, especially when the establishment is paying the tab, as part of my exclusive perks. This is happening while in the world there are people trying to eke out a few crumbs to feed their emaciated babies, as they waste away.
Folks, selfishness and elevated egos, can never be acceptable in a "world view", that believes every individual life, except those who opt out, is precious, and has value of equal measure.
Almost interesting diatribe, what does it mean?
Touche, Larry. Would you not make allowances for a senior moment where the motivation for "musings" (not diatribe) from other threads, appeared out of context?? Two lashes across the nose with a soft whip of spagetti.
Go easy with the lashes, Earl, I have had those senior moments all my life, but now that I am one, I haven an excuse!
David, since you have furnished your "Sabbath" texts, here are some additional ones on the Law as it relates to Christian. Will you interpret them, also?
Ex. 12 45-49. "No uncircumcised person may take part (in passover, the first of the Jewish celebrations). If a foreigner wnats to be admitted to the celebration, he must be circumcised. This explains the reason the Jews after Pentecost tried to force the Gentiles to be cirumcised: no non-native born Jew could take part in any special events who was uncircumcised.
Acts 15:5,6; 1o-11; 14-20.
Rom. 7:1-6.
Rom. 8:1-4.
Gal. 2:14-17.
Gal. 3: 19-29.
2 Cor 3:14-17; 25-29.
2 Cor: 5:14.
Col. 2:14-18.
The entire book of Hebrew.
Dr Taylor says: "The ancient Hebrew were wrong about the shape of the earth and EGW was wrong about how long humans, and plants and animals have been on earth and how old the earth actually is."
——–
The 'how long' (I'm assuming) is making a reference to evolution which by default invokes the 'millions of years ago' rhetoric that evolution faith requires in order to give it some weight. If this is true then it would imply that the Bible is wrong, because the creation of Adam and Eve leaves no room for an evolutionary process to take place in terms of their origins. However, it is without doubt clearly taught in the Bible that both Adam and Eve were brought into existence by God's awesome miraculous creative power when they were formed out of the dust of the ground and he breathed into them the breath of life. They weren't born as a result of human sexual reproduction (which evolution faith requires) but were created by God. Is it not therefore evident that should one believe in evolution then it would conflict with what the Bible teaches and therefore infer that the Bible is wrong.
From what I have seeing in the Bible, the ancient Hebrew was 'not' wrong about the shape of the earth. In Isaiah 40:22 the Bible refers to circle, disk, globe and arch in some of the translations. Psalm 34:7 shows that the concept of a circular shape was well known. Ellen White wrote by the inspiration of God and her faith which was founded on the teachings of the Word of God included the aceptance and belief of a catastrophic worldwide flood which undeniably had a huge effect on the geology of our planet. All evolutionists, including those with some variations in their belief in evolution, will deny the Biblical Flood in order to make their assumptions concerning evolution fit their geology: or their geology fit their evolution – take your pick.
Rocks don't come with a date and time stamp on them and science has absolutely no empirical proof of knowing firsthand what the exact conditions were at the time these rocks were formed and the exact conditions when they were changed. No eye witnesses to observe and study the rocks before and after formation and document the rate of formation and when whatever contaminants formed part of it nor the rate of change and effect during any subsequent catastrophic events that may have had an effect on them. Geology is the last outpost evolutionists have turned to in a desperate attempt to give evolution some credibility. But these same rocks show not a single transitional fossil among the many fossils that have been found, hence Darwin's (Evolution's) Great Disappointment. It is a well known fact that geologists use certain assumptions based on particular worldviews which are fed into the dating of rocks. They exclude (for obvious reasons) a recent catastrophic worldwide flood. Ellen White accepted the worldwide flood as revealed to us in the Bible. So do I. Infidel geologists in her day and today don't (won't).
22oct1844,
Do you have any scientific evidence to support a recent (say <10,000 years ago) catastrophic worldwide flood? I am not here asking for evidence of a catastrophic worldwide flood, but evidence that it was recent.
(This is a question – not an assertion.)
There is a great deal of evidence that the Flood, and the fossil record, was recent – at least much more recent than mainstream scientists claim. Here's just a few examples:
Sean,
Unfortunately your links did not come through. Not being able to read them and drawing on other sources that I have read (and that do not rely on radio-isotope dating which is a whole different topic), it is very hard to postulate a global catastrophic flood less than about 100,000 to 1,000,000 years ago (as an order of magnitude) using scientific observations. Biblical literalists would choke on these kinds of ages (too ancient) as would materialistic scientists (too recent). On the other hand there is evidence of more recent regional (as opposed to global) flooding.
Do you have any sources that would speak to glaciation, ice ages in the Northern Hemisphere (including rates of formation and erosion), number of strata in continental ice cap cores and coral reefs, etc?
Also I am wondering whether you have any scientific answer to whether the Platypus ever lived anywhere other than Australia (or its immediate environs), and whether Platypus fossils would reflect pre-global flood vs post-global flood conditions?
Hi Jim,
While absolute evidence cannot be given, the weight of evidence is quite clearly opposed to the neo-Darwinian perspective and does not falsify the Biblical perspective – i.e., is much more consistent with the Biblical model of origins.
As far as ice-core dating, I have written a fairly extensive article on this most interesting topic if you are interested:
http://www.detectingdesign.com/ancientice.html
Coral reefs in the fossil record below the Tertiary are not intact, but appear to be catastrophically deposited. Ariel Roth has some papers on this.
As far a the Platypus is concerned, a Paleocene (Tertiary) platypus tooth (Monotrematum) was recovered from Argentina (Pascual et al. 1992).
http://www.academia.edu/1324355/The_first_Non-Australian_Monotreme_an_Early_Paleocene_South_American_Ornithorhynchid
I believe that Tertiary sedimentary layers are post-Flood layers. So, clearly, there is some evidence, although rare, that the platypus did exist outside of Australia after the Flood.
Sean,
So far you have offered me one link to a source other than your own web sites. Could you please provide me with a specific source for each of your assertions above so that I can can study them?
I am aware of the work of Ariel Roth. I was referring in my question to apparently undisturbed coral reefs now living which presumably (if I understand your response correctly) would be post-flood?
Can I assume from your answer regarding monotremes you would concede that before the flood (as you have identified it) monotreme fossils are only found in or nearby Australia? Or during the flood did they all somehow accumulate in the same region where the surviving monotremes reside?
(I will read your article re ancient ice.)
The links are listed on my website at:
http://www.detectingdesign.com/geologiccolumn.html#Counter
As far as undisturbed coral reefs that are currently alive, yes, these are all post-Flood.
As far as monotreme fossils are concerned, I'm not aware of any pre-Tertiary (pre-Flood) remains. The remains found in Argentina (and Australia) are post-Flood remains.
So were there monotremes on the Ark and did most of them wander off to Australia where they left their fossils, but a few of them got lost and ended-up almost halfway around the world in South America where they left us one fossil to further confuse us? Or (horror of horrors) did monotremes evolve after the flood? Or were they so scarce that none of them left fossils during or before the flood? Or perhaps being excellent swimmers they did not need to go into the ark and were able to successfully tread water over what became Australia, save for a few that were swept-off in the currents to South America? Or were they widely dispersed after the flood but quickly devoured by predators in most places before they could leave us fossils beyond Australia?
Similar questions could be asked about the marsupials. Fossil marsupials have been found beyond Australia, but have kangaroo and wallaby fossils been found elsewhere? Pre- or post-flood and where?
Of course if the Ark landed in Australia and few of the monotremes and marsupials made it elsewhere whereas most other species ditched from Australia, then we could conconct a different set of scenarios. But this gets tougher if the Ark landed somewhere in the general vicinity of Northeastern Anatolia.
You have to admire Sean’s heroic efforts in listing his 11 talking points, each of which have been addressed over and over again to different degrees in different places, but continue to get brought out by fundamentalists in the hope that they will impress someone who does not know the data.
You have the interesting situation of where there are hundreds of thousands—perhaps even millions—of scientific data points that strongly support one conclusion (that the earth and life forms upon it are billions of years old and that there was no recent world-wide flood) and 10 to 20 data points which may, if you extrapolate some of them to extreme lengths, point to another conclusion (that life forms on this planet are less than 10,000 years old and there was a recent world-wide flood). Which conclusion would you think a reasonable person would accept as scientifically valid?
Each point that Sean raises as “evidence” for a recent creation and world-wide flood requires the expertise of a different scientific specialization to rebut. Since most practicing scientists don’t have the time to waste on responding to questions that have been asked and answered so many other times that they typically just ignore what now are considered crank questions.
As an example, Sean’s listed “finding radiocarbon in fossil organics.” I know a little bit about radiocarbon dating and it turns out that fundamentalists even quote one of my published papers to support their views. The explanation is a simple one which has to do with a technology—accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) —now widely used to measure radiocarbon concentrations in samples. It turns out that what fundamentalists point to as evidence for finding radiocarbon in fossil organics is an artifact of the very small background counts that are measured in AMS instruments. It would take many pages of technical explanation to unpack what is going on. I and several colleagues have gotten so tired of reading the misinformation on this point that we are writing a paper to explain in lay terms why the fundamentalist arguments are entirely bogus. I will be happy to send Sean a copy of the paper when it is published.
If Sean and other fundamentalists want to believe in life being only 10,000 years old or less and a recent world-wide flood, they certainly can do so in an intellectually honest manner by stating that their religious world view prevents them from accepting the overwheling weight of the scientific evidence. But please don’t insult the intelligence of educated individuals by insisting that the scientific evidence supports their theological conclusions.
There is a touch of desperation, even pain, revealed by Sean, that resonates with my distant past. I too, once, tried to defend the tortuous literalist ground because my whole being, my faith, seemed at risk if I gave an inch to those demented "rationalists." But when I finally made the move there was relief. I no longer had to construct balsa wood battlements to stem the invasion of truth. Yes, faith had to be redefined, and that took some time. Simpler really is better, it turns out.
Well I was that brash little boy who asked "crank questions" of my church school and Sabbath School teachers and many PhDs in various academic and industrial disciplines. I guess I just never got over that particular bad habit. I have seen and read and heard too much hand-waving from both sides of this disagreement re origins. I have considerable respect for practicing scientists (and also practicing theologians). My questions are not intended to "insult the intelligence of educated individuals". But you will not convince thinking people by dismissing honest questions with a patronizing "sorry but I don't have time to answer you" or "sorry but you would not be able to understand." People with nothing to hide should not be offended by honest questions. If you already have read or published a good answer then a pointer to an accessible publication is an appropriate response.
In my career I have been paid a lot of money to investigate all kinds of claims from well-qualified researchers regarding their results and advise my employers or clients whether to invest their own or their shareholders' (or in a few cases taxpayers') money. I can smell bad science when I see it, hear it or read it. Like bad exegesis and bad history, there is no shortage of bad science floating around. Sorry but I am no more inclined to accept "trust me" as an answer from a scientist than from a preacher or a used-car salesman. That is why I asked Sean to supply the Missing Links to his sources and why I hope that when and if I get to read the promised paper from Ervin it will include links to accessible sources for whatever claims it makes.
I will continue to search for and ask for answers. And I will continue to read for myself papers from outside my primary field of expertise (including the footnotes which I habitually read more carefully than the referring text). And I will continue to ask questions of those who do not agree with me because I am as or more likely to learn something new from them than from those who do.
Disclaimer – I excluded "rely on radio-isotope dating which is a whole different topic" because I probably have better sources on that topic than I would expect to find from Educate Truth based on my initial perusal of their web site. Any physics student learns that there is background radiation (as well as thermal and electro-magnetic and quantum noise etc) everywhere, that affects sensitive measurements. The challenge is how to extract useful information from the background noise (sort of like this web site 8-). I still want to see if Sean can provide any sources or arguments that I have not already seen or considered regarding his other assertions that do not argue from nuclear physics.
Hi Erv,
Perhaps I've read more than you might think I have on the topic of AMS technology and radiocarbon dating? I've been to two of your lectures on 14C dating. I've even read your 2007 paper with John Southon! – on the "Use of natural diamonds to monitor 14C AMS instrument backgrounds". And, as you know, I've discussed this with you personally before in E-mail exchanges on this topic. I've also read Dr. Giem's review of your arguments. The problem, of course, is that the level of 14C within fossil coal, oil and other non-fossilized remains of fossils that should have no 14C is far higher than that which can be explained by your contamination arguments. I think that Dr. Giem does a nice job reviewing these contamination arguments in his 2007 Origins paper. In his paper Giem argues that not just "some coals" as you claim, have significantly excess 14C, but nearly all coal and fossil oil have too much 14C in a uniform distribution regardless of location within the fossil record. You argue, of course, that this excess 14C is the result of "bacterial contamination". As Dr. Giem asked, how can this contamination be so widespread and uniform? – even in very deeply buried coal and oil beds?
Also, in your own paper, you acknowledge in the first paragraph of your introduction the 14C ages of 47.9 ka for a marble sample and 52.1 ka for a Pliocene wood sample, both far below the AMS 100,000-year detection limit you mention in your first sentence. Why didn't you attribute this discrepancy to any one of the six possible explanations you list later in the article? – or even try to provide an explanation for this finding? – especially since the 14C level in the marble sample is 546 times the detection limit of their AMS system.
There are also those who argue that, "One needs almost to be an AMS insider to be aware how routine it is to measure the sixth item in Taylor and Southon’s list, instrument background, and hence to realize that the 14C values they report represent intrinsic 14C in the diamonds themselves and not instrument background."
Now, I do understand that AMS technology has various problems of contamination. I also understand that these problems can be understood and even controlled to a reasonable degree using careful techniques. Given these techniques, it seems to me like my original points and observations still stand – i.e., that most samples of coal, oil, and non-fossilized remains of fossils contain levels of 14C that are in fact above the level of that can reasonably be attributed to the AMS technology itself. In other words, there is real 14C in most of these particular types of specimens.
The point is that regardless of if diamonds do or do not have trace amounts of 14C, the issue remains on how to explain the presence of real 14C in most samples of coal and oil and other organic remains of fossils. It seems like we are back to square one with the usual counter argument being "in situ contamination". As noted by Dr. Paul Giem in his 2001 Origins paper, Carbon-14 Content of Fossil Carbon, the common argument of 14C production by Uranium within or near the coal sample releasing neutrons over time is not reasonable given the degree of 14C "contamination". The amount of original radioactive material would have been prohibitive. And, perhaps the most striking problem, as noted by Dr. Giem, is:
Therefore, the levels of 14C "contamination" that are generally observed could not reasonably be explained by in situ production of 14C – right? So, where does this leave us? with your in situ contamination argument…
There seems to be at least some validity to this argument, but how does one explain the nearly universal nature of this in situ contamination? As Dr. Giem notes, "It is difficult to imagine a nature process contaminating wood, whale bone, petroleum and coal, all roughly to the same extent. It is especially difficult to imagine all parts of a coal seam being contaminated equally."
So, it seems to me, at least for now, that the weight of evidence seems to favor the creationist position when it comes to radiocarbon dating – to include the use of AMS technology. However, any further comments and education from someone of your expertise in this area would be most welcome.
Sean Pitman
http://www.DetectingDesign.com
Regarding this topic, it is also very interesting to note that high levels of radiocarbon have been found, by the AMS technique, in dinosaur bones whenever they have been tested – producing ages ranging from 16,000 to 32,000 years. In fact, this age range is essentially the same as that for mammoths and mastodons.
"Recently Triceratops and Hadrosaur femur bones in excellent condition were discovered in Glendive Montana and our group received permission to saw them in half and collect samples for Carbon 14 testing. Both bones were tested by a licensed lab for presence of collagen. Both bones did in fact contain some collagen! The best process ( Accelerator Mass Spectrometry ) was used. Total organic carbon and dinosaur bio-apatite was then extracted and pretreated to remove potential contaminants and concordant radiocarbon dates were obtained, all of which were similar to radiocarbon dates for ice age megafauna such as Siberian mammoths, saber tooth tigers of the Los Angeles LaBrea Tarpits, sloth dung and giant bison."
http://www.dinosaurc14ages.com/carbondating.htm
This is interesting because, since the 1990s, scientists, like Mary Schweitzer in particular, have discovered elastic soft tissues, antigentically active proteins, and even DNA fragments, in dinosaur bones that are supposed to be older than 65 Ma. This alone is unbelievable from a Darwinian perspective since all actual experiental studies and evidence for kinetic chemistry strongly suggest that no antigenically intact proteins or DNA fragments should exist, at ambient temperatures, beyond a few tens of thousand of years. Even so, Schweitzer and her collegues have consistently refused to subject these tissues to radiocarbon dating by AMS. What are they afraid of? – having to publish results that completely counter the Darwinian notion of the origin of life on this planet?
Could someone provide us with accessible links to the respective papers by Ervin Taylor and Paul Giem?
Erv Taylor's 2007 paper:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168583X07002443
Paul Giem's 2001 paper:
http://www.grisda.org/origins/51006.pdf
Paul Giem's 2010 response to Taylor and Southon:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/182089684/Carbon-14-in-Diamonds-The-UCI-Data
Also, if Erv will give his permission, I have his full 2007 paper as well and could make it available, for free, on Scribd…
I would be more than happy to give permission for Sean to make it available to anyone who would wish to read it..
Thanks Erv. Here's the link to the full Taylor and Southon 2007 paper:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/182086583/Taylor-Southon-NI-M-B-2007-pdf
Thanks!
Sean<
"Worldwide paleocurrent patterns: < 1 year" – does this refer to your claimed duration for the flood or how long ago said flood occurred? The presentation I have seen on this subject (and I have the handouts) shows evidence for a global catastrophic flood in certain strata but says little about either the duration or the dating of said flood. What I asked for was scientific evidence (not involving radio-isotope dating) for a recent flood. One year is a lot more recent than I would expect – I must have slept through the whole thing 8-).
Mr. Hamstra is exactly on point when he suggests that "People with nothing to hide should not be offended by honest questions." The important phase here is "honest questions.'" Mr. Hamstra is asking those kinds of questions. My interactions with fundamentalists has demonstrated that they are not. Their "questions" typically are not directed at obtaining new information. They already are absoutely certain that they know the "truth" that the scientifically-based conclusions must be false. Why? Because their religious ideology tells them so. For them, the issues that need to be addressed are theologiical not scientific.
I think you could be a bit more generous here Erv when it comes to your judgement of my honesty. For example, I may disagree with you on many things, but I do not think to question your honesty or integrity. Perhaps you could extend the same courtesy to me?
We all have our personal biases and religious or philosophical backgrounds. Like it or not, neo-Darwinism is a philosophical, even a religious, position more than it is a scientific position. People become indoctrinated in the Darwinian mindset and ideology practically from birth. And, most are preapred to bend their observations and interpretations to fit within this paradigm – even if done subconsciously. And, most do not understand key, even fundamental, elements of neo-Darwinian claims. They simply trust to the authority of others that these claims simply must be valid…
This doesn't make the neo-Darwinian position wrong. However, it does mean that it isn't free of its own biases, subjective motivations and passions – just like any other group of religious or philosophical fundamentalists.
Hi Jim,
You said,
"What I asked for was scientific evidence (not involving radio-isotope dating) for a recent flood. One year is a lot more recent than I would expect – I must have slept through the whole thing."
The paleocurrent observations, primarily by Arthur Chadwick from SWAU, do not suggest when the Flood happened, but how long it took to lay down the fossil record. These paleocurrents cover entire continents and even multiple continents around the world – all flowing in essentially the same direction within given layers of the fossil/geologic record. Such universal or nearly universal currents suggest a very very rapid catastrophic formation of most of the fossil record – completely inconsistent with the mainstream notion that the fossil record covers hundreds of millions of years of time.
Could you provide me with an accessible reference for this work? In my own attendance at a presentation on this subject (and in the handouts) I saw plots of the orientation of paleocurrents in different lcoations and strata. I recall nothing about rates of deposition.
Probably the best you can do is to contact Dr. Arthur Chadwick directly at SWAU and ask him for the information.
Beyond this, the reason why paleocurrents suggest a time limit is because it is very hard to imagine water going the same direction, over entire continents, for millions of years… or even a few years.
If the short-time hypothesis is an inference you have drawn from Chadwick's work then I think I will not find anything more than I have already seen.
From what I have seen of the plots, the water did not move in a single direction over multiple continents, there were lots of local variations as one would expect from eddy currents as one would expect.
For those who have not thought carefully about this – faster-moving waters tend to carry their sediments in suspension, whereas slow-moving waters allow them to precipitate out of suspension. And we are not confronting only water here but also mud flows. One must postulate mud flows over tens of thousand of miles to get the general (but by no means absolute) conformity of sediments we observe today, or alternatively that the continents themselves drifted apart rather rapidly after these mud flows subsided.
Under any of the global flood scenarios that I have seen the location of many current life forms in the same general vicinity where their fossil remains are found poses an interesting challenge for the Ark story. That is why I ask about monotremes and marsupials. How did the same massive flows of water and mud (or of whole continents) that transported many species for tens of thosuands of miles, deposit others gently in rather localized sediments where their relatives now reside? One could also ask about dinousaur nests apparently buried in situ in Montana. One has to postulate an interesting combination of massive motions and local eddies to try to arrive at the currently observed results in a very short time.
Not absolutely inconceivable but not entirely obvious either.
Jim, your generous spirit is misdirected with this discussion. Yes, one can learn from divergent points of view, but generosity has its limits, I believe. The literalists are not generally open to learning, unless the exercise feeds their attempt to bolster the impossible. Best to let them wander off into solitary wonderland because their mindset is not open to learning. A version of propaganda, because that is what they rely on, feeds their eternal hope that some kind of magical big bang of evidence will deliver them from their illusions and enlighten you with a "see, I told you do."
Well there is no shortage of propaganda being bandied-about by everyone who has an axe to grind. So I will just have to sift through the pile of rubbish for myself and see what information of value I can recover. No teacher, preacher, ex-teacher or ex-preacher has ever made much headway by telling me what I should NOT read. I can usually figure out fairly quickly once I start reading something how much value I am likely to derive. However I reserve the right to make that decision for myself.
I think yours is a very good attitude. There's no point in letting others, even "experts" do your thinking for you – especially on topics of significant personal interest…
Hi Jim,
There is no doubt that the Flood was a complicated event or even series of many closely-spaced events. During the Flood water rose and fell with repeated waves of sediment deposition interspered between periods of exposure. It is very interesting though that the general pattern of paleocurrents is in the same direction, worldwide, for a given section of the geologic column – and that this direction occasionally reverses itself, worldwide, as one considers different layers.
As far as dinosaur eggs and nests are concerned, these are excellent examples of catastrophic conditions and burial:
http://www.detectingdesign.com/fossilrecord.html#Eggs
All the best.
Sean
Dr. Southon and I and another colleague are working on a detailed paper that when published following peer review, we will more than happy to provide links to where it can be read. It will provide for general readers an explanation of why Sean and other fundamentalists misunderstand the implications of the presense of 14C backgrounds in AMS-based measurements.
I would be most interested. Send me an E-mail when you have it ready…
Thank you for the good information Sean. Don't allow anyone to bully you here.
Don't worry about me. I've been doing this a long time now…
Larry, your hypothesis that a person being born without being exposed to knowledge of the Bible, or any religious thought but w/the maturity to make wise decisions were to wake up in the morning, and exposed to scientific knowledge, would most definitely ever be a agnostic or atheist, Correct me if i have fleshed this out beyond your version. This hypothesis is of course impossible, but here is an answer. What if our tyro hero entered consciousness at Sunset, and sat gazing into the heavens until 4:00 A.M. with no lights on in his locale.What would probably be his lifelong understanding of the world's origins?? The 19th Psalm avers "The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament showeth His handy work"; i believe my example would be a more realistic result. Think a moment of those who have never seen a book, down through history, all have stories of God or gods involved in their world. The Bushmen, the aboriginal tribes, etc.
My hypothesis was a bit different. Mine was based on a grown person who knew the science behind today's knowledge, but had no recollection of any religious explanations. However, as an explanation of the process of self creativity of the universe there would be no need of dreaming up a "creator." What is happening is adequately explained by scientific knowledge.
My conclusion and yours are not necessarily in conflict to the extent of awe! And though I, too, love the poetry of the 19th Psalm, a scientific mind would quickly ascertain the physics of the phenomenon without need for alternative, deistic explanations.
The human need for gods has been based on two things. First, human fixation on a "beginning." The second, actually related to it, the problem posed by death. The first is solved, there is no "beginning." The second not so much solved, either by science or religious explanations. Hope (religious) is all there is for the second vexation, although quantum theory wanders off into metaphysics revealing strange scenarios and possibilities.
Atheist and agnostic are pejorative terms, not applicable to my model. He is not a believer in something or nothing. He just knows science, physics and astronomy.
When it comes to the universe and its function, religious belief is an unnecessary artifact.
Well Bugs-Larry,
Almost all cosmologists agree that the Big Bang was the beginning for both space and time as wee know them. It is interesting that in the early days of the formation of this theory, cosmologists from India accused Western cosmologists of introducing their religious biases into their science by postulating that the universe had a beginning.
Are you sure that your assertion that there was no beginning comes from science?
The concept of beginnings and endings is religiously imposed on reality. The Indians are correct. It appears there is a recycling system at the core of the universe that is an endless process where the concept of beginnings and endings is a moot point. The Big Bang is just part of it. Some cosmologist are now proposing the Big Bang used material already in circulation, (whatever that means!).
Jim, as an engineer, your knowledge is the size of the sun compared to my grain of sand. I love physics, the scientific field, but I am mostly interested in the meaning of it all, since I missed the knowledge boat when I detoured from physics to preaching! I'll admit to being a wobbly dilettante in your field.
I don't think Christianity has yet awakened to the affect that current scientific knowledge has on religious discourse. The divide between the two is now unbridgeable. The presumptions, mental and verbal foundations from thousands of years past are now invalidated. Christianity is truly allegory, myth. The Super Guy concept of God, the creator of heaven and earth, all the language of Christianity is now caput, except as faith, another term for myth. (Myth, not as falsehood, but as a way of encountering the unexplainable).
As radical as this is, cosmology isn't really important to Christianity, anyway. Dying, that's the real problem. If we didn't die, there would be no religion, no reason for it. It's religion that provides the hoped for antidote for mortality. In that arena, no harm has been done to religious discourse by scientific advancements. Hope is not founded on facts, but belief. Concrete concepts aren't operative there.
So, Christianity is not injured by its divorce from cosmology. It can concentrate on what it does best, providing allegories and metaphors for meaning and rescue from our death spiral. That is where I think Christ's revelation about God is love is so powerful. No cosmology there, just an experience by every human of the divine, and the hope and trust that Love has some satisfactory remedy for us doomed ones.
Bugs-Larry,
To bad you didn't stick with engineering – I think we would have enjoyed working together 8-).
I agree with you that the big question is death. Unfortunately there is in the material world no lack of scientific evidence for death and zero scientific evidence for an afterlife. On that I think we can agree.
Beyond that if the claims of the Resurrection of Christ are a hoax then I must agree with Paul that we Christians are a most pitiable lot of delusional fanatics. There is also anecdotal evidence near at-hand that at least some who believe in said Resurrection might be delusional fanatics 8-).
Given your edcational background and my proclaimed religious affinity I think you know how I view death. How do you view it? Do you see any reasonable hope or evidence for an afterlife?
If there is an afterlife without death, there would be no time, would there? In death there is no time, apparently. Is death actually the afterlife? Would eternal life be interesting? Our bodies would require modification in that realm. Wouldn't that remove the familiar from our being? Since relationships, are based partly on anticipated grief because of death, would they have the same, or any value without time? I know Paul's answer: "Our eyes hasn't seen or ears heard what God has in store…"
There are times in life when one has to "act as if" something valuable is true. One's wife, or husband, creates moments such that, to maintain a relationship, a spouse has to "act as if" philos and eros are not in abeyance until normalcy returns. Mother Teresa, who was consumed with doubt about God over at least during the last half of her ministry wrote: “Where is my faith? Even deep down there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. If there be a God — please forgive me.” She also wrote: "Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear." (sources supplied on request). But she "acted is if" and ministered awesomely until her death.
Paul raised the issue, acknowledge it (your words, the possibility of us being delusional fanatics), which indicated a taint of doubt in his belief, but spent his life "acting as if" the story of Christ was true untainted with apprehension.
I don't know if the resurrected Christ is a hoax. But I "act as if" it is true and so it is my "belief." I like the story, which I think is the operation for all "belief." Preference is the real reason for all religious belief, not facts.
I apply the same "act as if" paradigm to the afterlife, in spite of the angst of my opening statement. I think there is a larger meaning to being alive, because I like the idea. There is no supporting evidence.
Had I become an engineer, I would have to "act as if" I was good with math!
Not everything that has a beginning has an end. There are ordered sets that are bounded on one and and open on the other. For the Christian eternal life has a begionning but not an end.
Arguing which comes first, beleif or action, is like arguing about the chicken and the egg. In physical therapy a muscle can be trained to act in a certain manner before the patient is able to control that action. In engineering this is called a positive feedback loop – action reinforces belief and belief reinforces action. Of course there are also negative feedback loops. Spiritual abuse (among other things) can trigger negative feedback loops.
Acknowledging there is room for doubt can actually reinforce faith if one chooses to act on one's faith rather than one's doubts.
I think the more accurate way to despict the dependencies in a healthy Christian experience would be the following feedback system:
Know God -> Believe God
Believe God -> Obey God
Obey God -> Know God
Following the arrows in the forward direction builds your Christian experience. Following in the reverse direction destroys your Christian experience. It does not matter where in the cycle you start. What matters is moving in the forward direction.
To say that the cosmos as we can observe it had a beginning is not to say that God or heaven or anything else that exists outside of said cosmos, had a beginning. Whether and how the observable cosmos will end (absent external intervention) is still very much an open question.
According to Revelation the New Heaven and New Earth will have a beginning but no end. As will the lives of the creatures that inhabit the place.
The mental gymnastics, stretched interpretations, endless manipulation of shreds of information, parsing of inane minutiae into ever smaller particles, are the "methodology" of the literal, creationists. Like the gold prospector who has spent fifty years of his life in gold quest, always enlivened by the feeling that the mother load could be inches away, the believers keep crawling along, shovels scratching the ground of knowledge, but with the gold miners result, always disappointment! Even worse, the science moves on while this static study petrifies.
Genesis is a wonderful story written in an era of cosmological ignorance. To convet it into reality is nothing but a left handed monkey wrench quest.
Truth is, the world of faith doesn't crumble with acceptance of a universe fourteen billion years old, a solar system, and it's bitty planet earth, created as are billions, or probably trillions of others, all in the same manor, by a round robin process of gravity-active death and resurrection. Whatever God might be, he'll never show up at the end of a creationist expedition. I like the God that Jesus revealed. God is Love. That is simple, doesn't require ancient mythical cosmology to operate.
Well as it happens they actually do make left-handed monkey wrenches, but the right-handed ones are far more widely sold and used, so you will really have to search very carefully to find a left-handed one 8-). (The difference is the pivot point on the lower jaw.)
I very much like the God that Jesus revealed (once agan we agree 8-). I do believe He is much more widely available than left-handed monkey wrenches if we are willing to look for Him. And that He is actually looking for us even more carefully than we can ever look for Him.
In John 1 it says that all things were made by Him (Jesus) but it doesn't say when or how. Also in reading the Bible through perhaps a dozen times in its entirety, and key passages how many more times, I have never found the verse that says how old the earth is, or the stars. Or when or how He created bacteria or quasi-stellar objects. Or direct answers to many other interesting human questions.
I try really hard not to make the Bible say either more or less than it actually says.
Well, they shouldn't make left handed monkey wrenches because it soils my metaphor/example.
Jim you have been conned. I should have known better after spending fifteen years in construction, I know wrenches. A manufactured left handed wrench is a joke. Clearly you don't know what a monkey wrench is. It is symmetrical, you can call it left or right handed, it is still the same. There is no jaw difference. My question to you now, is are you being conned by a religious system that relies on simple minded, dubious concepts?
Bugs-Larry,
I trust you understand that the "handed-ness" of a wrench or spanner is a description of the tool and not of the user? I first saw a left-handed monkey wrench as a boy when some adults on a scavenger hunt actually found one. The other team claimed it was a hoax but my dad (who built houses and boats and radios before he became a pastor) showed them the differences in the design of the two monkey wrenches.
As it happens I have five pipe wrenches with traveling jaws (strictly these are Stillman wrenches rather than Moncky spanners) in my tool chest – four of the conventional kind usually sold in your local hardware store, plus one with a rather different arrangement of the handle and the jaw that is hard to describe here (and that I inherited from my dad who possibly inherited it from his dad). I thought of the latter as a "left-handed" wrench but that is probably not an accurate description. Whether or not they still make this particular kind of pipe wrench I do not know but I have not been able to find one online. Here is a photo of various types of moving-jaw wrenches and spanners but the one I have is not pictured:
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd3/buswrench/ervin-2007/1041-1056.jpg
In doing further reseach I have found that the "handed-ness" of a wrench or spanner with a traveling jaw refers to the direction of the threads on the jaw carriage. This affects which direction you turn the thumb screw (or whatever) to open or close the wrench. I have not been able to determine whether left-handed pipe wrenches are still being made but left-handed crescent wrenches are still being made. If you read carefully through this web page you can learn more about these things:
http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=63395&mid=447540
I am open to further enlightenment on this and other subjects 8-).
Jim, you are forcing me to a fall back position (God bless your dad's success in demythologizing one of the most power metaphors, I think that is what it is, of all time, at least for you!) to assert the example is still good since so few know the dubious, arguable, fishy equivocal, problematic, shady, disputable, and other "facts" you marshal. Can't we all just get along?
Would you like photos of my collection of pipe wrenches?
Then you can decide for yourself whether the one I inherited from my dad was a forgery or mythology or whether I or my father simply invented this "fact". You would have no trouble recognizing it in the picture. First I invented my older brother, then I invented the left-handed monkey wrench? Am I really that clever? Should I also include a photo of my older brother?
Did you bother to read the link above that explains left-handed and right-handed crescent wrenches? Or did I make that one up as well? It has been said that if something can be built then it probably has been or will be built.
I said that Jesus is far more widely accessible than left-handed monkey wrenches. I certainly did not invent Jesus.
Well after posting the preceding comment I went back to my tool chest and pulled-out a 24" conventional pipe wrench and the 18" "left-handed" one. The latter one has a different relationship between the handle, the traveling jaw and the thumb screw. If I hold the handle of each of the above in my left hand with the thumb screw facing my right hand, then indeed I need to turn the thumb screw on the "left-handed" wrench in the opposite direction to open the jaw. And in this orientation the jaw is facing in the opposite direction (to the right) than on the conventional pipe wrench (jaw facing to the left). If the conventional pipe wrench is "right-handed" then the other one is "left-handed" by my reckoning. I guess being un-conventional just runs in my family, in a left-handed (sinisteros) kind of way?
Larry: “I like the God that Jesus revealed. God is Love. That is simple, doesn't require ancient mythical cosmology to operate.”
Huh? The God that Jesus revealed was Love ONLY because He gave His Son to die for the sins of mankind.
To accept that Jesus revealed this God is to accept whatever else Jesus said as the truth; "like" it or not.
Jesus used hyperbole, stories (parables), sermon illustrations, double speak, metaphors, analogies, Hebrew scriptural quotations, swear words (not the kind that violates the ten commandments), mythical stories, and other devices used by skilled orators, to convey the knowledge that God is Love.
And the God that Jesus revealed, Love, is not the Super Guy, a mental creation of God by man. Super Guy is the God of fear, grandpa at his worst, unlovable, capricious. God of Jesus cannot be anthropomorphized, He is beyond physics. He is not the God of the head but the God of the Heart, probably touching every human that has ever lived at some time, or in some way, or another.
Years ago, as an Academy Bible teacher, I was describing this God of Love, when it got so quiet, something that virtually never happens in a classroom, that I became aware of only the wind blowing across the window sills, and a whisper from a girl in the back row wafted to me, "I could almost love a God like that." Today, I have more than thirty of those past students as my friends on FaceBook. As far as I can tell, most of them are still SDA. I never once believed you have to leave the SDA church to know that revealed God, even though I did, for my own reasons, and it is very clear on my FB page that I am not associated with the church.
At another time I preached a fill-in assignment for a pastor at a large church in that state about this God, as they came out the door, several people had tears in their eyes, but one guy came out with words of disgust, "we need to hear more about sin and judgment." Which group are you in, Stephen? It doesn't matter to me, which. I know the one I like!
What is there about the God revealed by Jesus you think "I don't like?"
Would it be safe to assume that the majority of "former SdAs" left the church because they were tired of hearing about sin and judgment and so little of a God of love?
A safe bet.
The God that Jesus revealed is BIGGER than any box of mine or yours. You have seemingly answered your own question in that you appear to prefer the amorphous Love God to the Super Guy. Yet it is undeniable that Jesus revealed God to be the (anthropomorphized) Father who gave His only Son to spare humanity. He/God did this because He loves us.
I would like to think that I am in the group that believes this.
Yes Stephen, God made in my image, or yours, which is what Super Guy is, has no nothing going for him. One can't be quite sure if he is good or bad. We don't know what kind guy he is, since he is based on a super version of us. And that imbues him with a pretty flimsy character. What evidence do you have that he is good? Jesus doesn't go there. He called God his Father and said he was like Him: "I and my Father are one."
I know of not one place where Christ sat down and taught rules and regulations to anyone. Reread the Sermon on the Mount. He appealed to hearts, the abode of love, with Love, that is God. The "amorphous" God was his example and his message.
Please explain how you can "anthropomorphize" Love, a concept that has no human characteristics.
Stephen and Bugs-Larry,
You are both right. The same popular Jesus who preached the Sermon on the Mount and healed all of their diseases, said some rather unpopular things:
"Yet not my will but yours be done." (Matthew 26:39, Mark 14:36, Luke 22:42) To Super Guy?
"Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' " (Matthew 7:23) To people who prophesied and did miracles in His name?
He didn't seem to cold conmen (liars) in high esteem!
Bugs-Larry,
Your last comment is pushing the limits of the Comment Guidlelines.
Simply because someone says something that you have not heard of before does not make them a liar. Especially when they are prepared to offer evidence in support of their claims. If you will send me your email address I will forward photos and other evidence in support of my claims that you have twice accused me of falsifying. Meanwhile I suggest that you desist from the name-calling as it is totally inappropriate.
I also do not hold liars in very high esteem. If you can refute the evidence I have already posted and the additional evidence I am prepared to offer, then I will happily admit to my errors. I have learned many things form being wrong in the past and I am willing to learn even more. However being an empiricist by inclination I am generally more convinced by evidence than by rhetoric. I last talked to my older brother on Sunday. I last looked at my "left-handed" pipe wrench today. To me these are very convincing evidence if not absolute proof of their existence.
Bugs, and all, who are cynical of GOD'S reality as presented in the NT, your future eons are dependant on your reference of God as "superguy". If presented in a derogatory sense of His Godhood Almighty presence, you would be at high risk of forfeiture of His gracious offering, by choice. You have by confession, here, accepted the concept of love. Supposedly you love your spouse, your children,your friends,your pets,should you have any; and accept all that you meet, if they present a loving or gracious manner.Now, it is most difficult for me to comprehend that your current belief system excludes Jesus Christ as God, the Almighty Creator of all, including the SUPERNATURAL GIFT of LOVE.
Love, is the eternal character of Jesus Christ. It could not be a moral gift of an imoral world. Impossible. And you know, i'm certain, that we live in an imoral world, and it always has been. All generations of Earth's history have given theirchildren to be tortured and annihilated to the Earth god's of the season. Jesus brought heavenly Godly LOVE to Earth. The atmosphere of the heavens operates on the universality of LOVE. It overcomes and transends all evil and death.
i plead with you. Leave the door open to JESUS CHRIST.
I have always been amused when religious writings are screaming with CAPITALS, HIGHLITHED capitals colored lettering, rambling phrasing, and underlining. I assume the purpose is to capture, in this case, my attention where I am supposed to understand the high importance of the message, and be awakened to the death threat to my poor soul. Earl, it makes me laugh out loud (LOL) because it reminds me of a rainbow trout being lifted from the water whose hysterical wriggling is an effort to free it from the hook. Yes, I think I have snagged you! Your histrionics, feigned concern for my "high risk of forfeiture of His gracious offering, by choice," reveals an inability on your part to gracefully accept other view points. Remember the first commandment? You violate it by becoming Judge, in place of the deity, when think you know what others ought to do. (Yes, it is the most ignored commandment and probably the most violated).
This is not a personal attack, you violator, you! 8):
Rev3:19,As many as I love,I rebuke and chasten:be zealous therefore and REPENT
verse :20, BEHOLD, I STAND AT THE DOOR, AND KNOCK: if any one hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in, and will sup with you, and you with me. LEAVE THE DOOR TO YOUR HEART OPEN, EVEN …… JUST A LITTLE BIT.
That you would choose this metaphor scuttles your point, Earl. You have bastardized it with the implication He is going to be the great reproacher, Super Guy, whose goal is to get his foot in your door so he can get you to "repent" of your evil ways. What I see there is opposite of that, rather an offer to have a nice meal together, not a period for a kick in the butt behind closed doors. In human relationships eating together is the ultimate social moment and this story plugs into that. As He sits for a meal He would be, by His presence, the Word, the revelation of God as Love, the ultimate love feast!
Christ never scolded good people. And he seldom rebuked "bad" ones. He defended them. "I am the way, the truth and the life," he said. To be his follower didn't entail commandments, rules, regulations. Love, what God is, brings out the best in people, elevates intentions, directs performance, and marks one as a disciple of Christ. Shorty Zacchaeus, the despicable tax collector, according to the story, volunteered to repair his ways, not by a stern lecture from Jesus, but by the power of His presence.
The wooing power of God as love is more powerful than the four forces known to physics combined. That's my story and I like it!
Speaking of "world views"–May I suggests that Mr. Calahan and Bugs (with whom I mostly identify) are coming at the subject of religion and spirituality from very different points of view with very different assumptions. The vocabulary used by both "sides" gives it away. Can we just agree that we have varying perspectives and experiences and celebrate our differences? Or is it necessary to use bold letters? Is this the written version of shouting?
Erv, bold language, bold printing, by 20th century denizens (old schoolled four score plus generation), are not meant to be an insult to sensitive souls, who in the 21st century, have accepted the political correctness theme. Peace, no intent to malign.
As I posted to Jim a few paragraphs ago on another topic, "Can't we all just get along?" OK, I confess, I borrowed that quote form Rodney.
Larry, you may be having fun, but I absolutely challenge anyone reading this to make sense of what you are saying: Interpret it for the rest of us. That is an open challenge to anyone.
You say that “the God that Jesus revealed, Love, is not the Super Guy, a mental creation of God by man. Super Guy is the God of fear, grandpa at his worst, unlovable, capricious. God of Jesus cannot be anthropomorphized.” This is, with all respect, a prima facie baseless statement, since Jesus revealed God to be The Super Guy who answers prayer and who, in love, sent His son to die in order that sinful humans can live forever with Him in paradise. So on the basis of what, Larry, do you conclude that “God made in my image, or yours, which is what Super Guy is, has nothing going for him”? How in the world is the Father that Jesus revealed made in our image? We would not think to sacrifice our Son on behalf those who disregard/dislike us.
I mean really dude, you need to explain how “One can’t be quite sure if he is good or bad.” Beyond that, how can you ask “What evidence do you have that he is good? Jesus doesn’t go there”? What gives bro?! You have read Mark 10:18; haven’t you?
Seriously man, you aren’t making enough sense. I solicit an explanation from someone/anyone else.
Bugs, i believe what i express, love for my fellows. My motivation in respect to you is i've never known another who publicly exhibits rancor, pours contempt on, and ridicules the name God. By continuing to pursue that endeavour is a real puzzler to me. i also no speaka witha forkead tongaa. Me thinks you have a bigga burra under your rear end that rubs your hemmaroid unmercifully. Respectfully, what is your anger all about? It appears someone, or something has treated you beyond unfairness, and you have a relentless involuntary drive to vengeance. Please pardon my intrusion into your space. But, they sure could use your spirited high humour, and colorful comedic phrasing, in heaven, since they lost their high tenor so long ago. Cheers.
It is such picayune squabbling about God and his characteristics that gives all Christianity a wide berth.
It's descended to "My god is more loving than your god; and you refuse to believe in miracles, i.e, reject God."
God save us from such believers!
Stephen, when I saw your prima fascia statement I was worried. Worse, really scared when I saw Earl's charge that I speaka with forka tongua and obviously have a biggga burrra irritation beneath my saddle pounding on my heeeeemrooooidddas and the resulting vengeful potential outrage resulting in what? "High spirited humor!" But then Earl introduced the absent castrati, heavenly, performer, a role he implies that I might somehow fill. What's with that? Ewwww. If I get to heaven it would be as the celestial humorist and high tenor? There is prima fascia something goin on round hear that leaves me aghast!
If you cannot relinquish faulty religious concepts and images and adjust your thinking to the new reality, you have the option to continue the mythical thinking as a way of explaining the unexplainable. But you must also accept that belief, even intense belief, doesn't create facts.
What I propose is radical. It starts where our cosmological and physical knowledge is in our time. It is no longer possible to somehow shape realty to conform to contradictory belief. Yes, the concept of God as Love is not dissectible, definable. God is not dead. He is just much more than we ever thought and totally free from the limits of Super Guy. I like the Love God, I can't figure Him out, I have a vision of his scope, thanks to Christ the Word (thanks, John). if I could he would be a neo Super Guy.
Oh, and Stephen, God is Good, Love is Good, Super Guy is the question mark.
i knew you were a tenor. In heaven as a celebe, you would stand out, be recognized for your tabrets (bass, alto, tenor, soprana, castrati) performances of praise; while the non celebes just blend into the golden streets, while the specially honored, formerly oxygen breathing females, of all universes habitable planets, will support the thrones, and be signaled out as the Pearled gates.
Larry you have made my day of days, as your confession that God is not dead,the God of universal love, and Christ the Word. Your statement #7 is not correct because for 2 millenium, the love God's message has encompassed the globe, and is the only WV of V's, that can unite all mankind to equality. #5 could not be acceptable, as contempt is judging, and incompatible with WV of love.
Thankful that all will be spiritually preserved for the heavenly experience. Some may be brought in kicking and screaming, but a few eons in a padded cell and they will come around.
May I say that Bugs makes a lot of sense. If you don't or can't understand what he is saying, you may not have looked carefully at the nature of the vast majority of religious systems. The "problem" with Bugs that he refuses to play the Holy Word Games of much of contemporary, not only traditional Adventism, but also of much of evangelical Christianity.
With all respect to you, Dr. Taylor, you have not taken up the challenge of explaining what Larry is talking about. You say he is making “a lot of sense,” so please elaborate on what he means by saying that even “Jesus doesn’t go there” on the question of whether God is good or not good. Please elaborate on how it makes sense that, on the one hand, Larry ‘likes’ and accepts the God that Jesus revealed, yet rejects the Father/God that sent Jesus (who revealed Him) in the first place.
These are not word games, my man. These are Larry’s words that I’m questioning. Now, you say he is making sense; so please explain what he is saying. (Does Jesus now come a la carte?)
Stephen,
Why can't you and I understand that not only Jesus but everything else mentioned in the Bible comes a la carte?
One is reminded of 2 Timothy 4:2-4. Now if those of us who still like to read our Bibles could agree on what is "sound doctrine"8-).
Not only does Jesus come a la carte for post-Christian post-Adventists, but in order to anchor their Picassoesque moral pictures in some kind of coherent, historical reality, they must deconstruct Christ and remake Him in their image.
Nathan, your Piscassoesque mini emotional tirade barely deserves a reply. Shouting will not remove the problem for Christianity created by the death of traditional cosmology. Christian discourse has been "deconstructed" by knowledge, not by "post Christian, post Adventist" bogeymen. It is now known that the universe is a kind of perpetual machine of creation, destruction, and recreation of planets and stars. The earth is not unique, but one of probably trillions of planets that comes and go without end thanks to gravity.
How is Christian discourse affected? It is inescapably tied to ancient, now debunked cosmology, and throttled by the shared language. The ancients were wrong because they were ignorant. They had no way of knowing what we know, so they created an interpretation that fit their perception. Religion was the science of the time. The historical rise of scientific cosmology has, even to this day, been resisted by the guardians of the old cosmology because of the creeping invalidation of the language. For example, the scientific steps from a geocentric model to our understanding today was only grudgingly accepted by most church fathers over the centuries because it was seen as a serious threat to orthodoxy.
What now? Time out, hysteria! Super Guy is dead. God lives! Christian belief and cosmology have a final divorce decree! Christian belief no longer has to create Rube Goldberg devices, imaginative complex forms of whirligigs, to attempt the contortion of modern cosmology into a faith based model.
The world is several billion years old, planet earth eventually be French Fried by the sun, Noah, Job, Adam and Eve are a few of the wonderful Biblical allegories that enrich our wisdom.
Christ was very much a product of his time during a tumultuous period in the Judean province of the Roman Empire. Was he born of a virgin, did he die and go to heaven after a resurrection, was He the Son of God, did he say all the things he said in the Gospels? I don't know, you don't really know. Intense, profound, impassioned belief doesn't change that.
Without Super Guy, and the other defunct verbiage and images, what is left? The ultimate God, the one revealed by Christ, "He who loves not knows not God, for God is love." His life was the "Word," the living illustration of that statement.
How then, can I affirm my belief in Christ, his death, and resurrection as a "post Christian, post Adventist" heretic? Because I like the story. Every believer opts in to his faith. He chooses it because he "likes" it (including you, Nathan).
Paul said, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen." I like that!
The fact is Larry, the more you say the less sense you are making.
The fatal flaw of course is the rejection, or doubting of the “Super Guy.” Only a Super Guy can resurrect Himself, much less anybody else (for that matter).
The a la carte model just doesn’t cut it with the Jesus Christ character. You “like” His death, burial, and resurrection, and the God-is-love concept; while having trouble with the Super Guy who sent Jesus, who Jesus represented, and who Jesus Is. By the way, it was John, wasn’t it, who said that God is love. Jesus revealed God as Heavenly Father—because He sent His Son—and Super Lover (which is why He sent His Son).
So far, no one has taken me up on the challenge of explaining, interpreting, or translating what you are (perhaps?) saying. Maybe if you think of Him as Super Intelligence, He might be more ‘acceptable.’
Nathan, it is God, the Ancient of Ages that has been deconstructed, Not Jesus.
Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Supercession?? Are we beginning to see more clearly, of the Trinity??
Note the following texts:
Luke 2:49, I must be about my Father's business. (Why is the Father not seeing about His own business responsibilities??) He is, in the person of Jesus Christ.
John 5:43, Iam, come in my Father's name.
John 6:30, All that the Father giveth to Me shall come to Me.
John 10:30, I and My Father are one.
John 14:6,Iam the truth and the life:no man cometh unto the Father, but by me
John 14:9, He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father!! Why ask, show me the Father??
John 16:15, All things that the Father hath are mine.
John 16:25, These things have I spoken to you in proverbs: but the time cometh when I shall shew you plainly of the Father!!. (not a dark glass.)
Hmmmmm. i have questions? Is it that the Godhead did not see the end, from the formative planning of Planet Earth?? It appears that He failed to see the rebellion of Lucifer…..And He dearly loves Lucifer, for God is love. If God planned the destruction of Lucifer when Lucifer was exiled, why has He, God, not carried out the sentence?? Why has God permitted Lucifer to contaminate Planet Earth, and it's inhabitants?? Man is worth many "sparrows". Is Lucifer worth many God created souls? for a season? after which, all will be reconciled with ressurection of the spirit souls, after….. Lucifer repents?????????
Was the first Covenant faulty, as God is love, made the same mistake with Adam???? Has God, in the person of Jesus Christ (wholly Father/Son/Holy Ghost) amended His plan for Mankind, by His second Covenant of pure love?
We must appreciate that God has many Universes under His auspices to rule.
"Only a Super Guy canresurrect himself."
There were many stories of resurrection in Greek history: Achilles, Aristeas, and Menelaus–of which Herodotus, the first historian wrote
In Hinduism there are resurrection stories.
In Judaism, before Christ's resurrection there was Elijah's raising the boy.
Buddhism also has stories of resurrection.
Most of these were BEFORE Christ's resurrection. The only difference: which to choose to believe.
Truth is more to be desired, than fiction or doubt. Truth is more precious and desirable than gold, and precious gems. More rewarding than Earth life.
Jesus Christ is Truth.
Earl, you imply that you know what truth is. Wow, would you share that final conclusion? I have been in search of it for about sixty years. I always end up with more questions than the "truth" can handle, it seems. Forgive me, please, I am being a bit sarcastic, an element of my humorist, high tenor proclivity (re: previous post)! My point is that "fiction and doubt" are several of the fundamental mental crucibles on the journey toward truth. Truth is ever a goal, never a golden prize.
Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ. Your proclamation of what he is belongs to you. It has meaning only to you, no application beyond your mind. It is belief that you like.
"Seek the company of those who are searching for truth. Run from those who have found it." Vaclav Havel.
Thank you Elaine. That is the best way of dealing with those who are so sure that have Truth as if it is a thing that you can put into a little box and give it a name.
Well then I suppose that some of you would surely flee from one who dares to claim that "I AM the way, the truth and the life" (John 14:6)?
I understand that you may doubt that He actually said those words – someone just made-up the story. So you are not actually fleeing from Him but rather from His followers who make such outrageous claims. After all it is rather difficult to flee from someone you cannot find.
I certainly do not have the Truth (not even in a little bos or a little book) but I know someone who is the Truth.
Where this breaks down Elaine is that some folks choose to believe or accept some of the Christ stuff, which is a logically indefensible and intellectually untenable position. Jesus is an all or nothing proposition. (He either is God or he isn’t.)
Needless to say, one can believe that it is all mythological imagery, or complete nonsense; which, if nothing else, is consistent. But the a la carte approach doesn’t make any sense, and you know it.
Since Jesus claimed to be the Truth, Havel’s quote in this context is nonsense for anyone claiming Christianity as part of their personal belief system and/or philosophical approach.
Stephen,
You seem to be unaware that nowhere in the Bible will you find that Jesus is God. This was not adopted as Christian doctrine until long after the canon was closed. This is just one of many traditions that the church has accepted that are unable to derive only from Scripture. The disciples never addressed Jesus as God, nor earlier NT writers but this is "Christian tradition."
Elaine,
Have your read John 1:1? Not to mention many other parts of the same book? The Word that was God is the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us. It requires only very simple logic to conclude that God became flesh from this chapter. Of course then you would have to accept that all things were made by Him 8-).
I realize that you might wish to exclude John from your cafeteria tray because it was written many years later and you do not know who wrote it and therefore you cannot even know whether it is part of the Bible. Sounds like a la carte to me.
Jim, your simple logic is flawed. The writer begins with mystical statements that are statements of faith. Wouldn't the phrase "without him was not made anything that was made," follow in the same vein, a faith statement? Science, cosmology wasn't his game. In his world, the book of Genesis ruled, and it provided an adequate explanation of the universe as it was known then. The God of Love is way to big to be tinkering around with atoms, protons, planets, and stars. That's the imaginary job for Super Guy, the handyman novice sent for the left handed monkey wrench (or for the hurl stretcher, an old broom factory fools errand).
Well my simple question is whether the writer of John 1 claims that Jesus is God?
In every translation and in two languages where I have read this seems pretty clear to me. Of course this is a statement of faith! After all this is the same book where Jesus is quoted as saying that none of His followers have actually seen God but if they have seen Him then they have seen the Father. That before Abraham was I AM. So God was His Father, He was God's Son, but He was not God? The Word was God but He was not the Word? The Word was made Flesh but He was not Flesh? He existed before Abraham but He was not God? The writer intentionally and deliberately ties all of these claims together to leave no wiggle-room for Gnostics or Agnostics alike.
Maybe I am just not as skilled as some of the rest of you at de-constructing the Bible to remove every vestige of information, evidence, myth and allegory. Leaving – what? Only faith? Faith in what? Faith in God or faith in nothing or faith in nonsense?
Where is the logic in this? I will take my simple logic over the total absence of logic I see in some of these rhetorical whirligigs (see teacher – I learned a new word 8-).
Elaine, not everyone in the Christian world recognizes Him as God. And they have pretty good arguments for their position.
Elaine, the notion that the Bible doesn’t identify Jesus as God is not really worthy of argumentation (which again, is something with which I’m sure you’re already familiar). As you know, John 1:1-3, 14 makes it unambiguously clear that Jesus was God.
I’ve used this before, but again, my late great Dad (who passed away two weeks ago at age 94) was Foster. I happen to be the eldest of his three children (and two sons). Dad was no more a Foster than are any of his sons or his daughter. He was Foster, his children are Foster.
God is God. God’s Son is God.
If Mr. Foster means by "a la carte" that one decides which allegations of "having the truth" is true and which is false, then "a la carte" does make a lot of sense. For example, do you believe that Joseph Smith, Jr had visions from God and Ellen G. White did not? Or is it the other way around? Obviously, then you are not approaching "Truth" from a "a la carte" perspective?
There is no other way for faith to exercise except for "a la carte." In my words, choosing what you like for your beliefs. The most ardent, conservative, Christians, the despisers of atheists, liberals, agnostics, post Christian and all other non believing scum (!) are the most committed practitioners of selecting beliefs based on their righteous "a la carte" parameters.
You’re scrambling Larry; instead of a la carte, how about a la Fran Tarkenton? You must recall that we are talking about the God who John said is love and the Jesus who rose from the dead. You know; the God and/or the Jesus that is acceptable to you.
The options of independently and freely choosing the particular belief system to which one relates/subscribes is, of course, 'from the menu.' However, stating that Jesus the Person revealed God, while holding that God the Person is a question mark is totally nonsensical.
This is not fair to Fran Tarkenton. He actually threw a lot of touchdown passes. Perhaps a la Joey Harrington?
Maybe I'm a Tim Tebow with actual NFL level talent! I do "tebow" when I score some points against my critics! OK, I'll anticipate the barbs, I do get tackled behind the lines sometimes, but my "injuries" are either temporary or feigneed.
Larry,
Stop digging! Or to keep the scrambling analogy, stop going backwards and just accept the sack; and try to make up some yardage on the next down. Tim Tebow with NFL talent you say? Like I said, the more you say, the less sense you tend to make:)
"A Tim Tebow", I said, a better version! Don't forget, the real one took Denver to the playoffs not long ago. And maybe someday you will block for me as I run into the end zone and then I will make sense to you! Nuevo Timmy can dream, can't he?
Dr. Taylor,
You miss the point entirely. Jesus is the Truth; (which is) irrespective of what either Ellen White did or Joseph Smith did not receive from God.
Yes, yes Bugs-Larry. By faith and belief ; no argument.
John 4:23, "Jesus: "worship the Father in spirit and in truth". verse 24: "God is a Spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth".
8:32 Jesus: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free".
1 John 5:6, "it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth".
" 5:7, "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
So Larry, Truth is God!!!, and is revealed to us by the person of God the Holy Spirit.
William Noel is like a John the Baptist, he is daily out in the wilderness sharing the truth of God Jesus, revealed to him by the God the Holy Ghost.
i am thankful to be among those who are the scum, of loving the truth, God.
Take the world, but give me Jesus. ,
Earl, I think you missed the point about my "scum" statement. Sorry, you are not qualified, please reread.
Touche, mine ami.