Charles

There is only one catch in your logic--The SDA Church endorses E.G.White as the "Spirit of Prophecy" She endorses a young earth view not dissimilar to that of Ussher's hypothesis. You can't hold on to the boat and the dock without getting wet. I happen to agree with you position that a young earth view is not essential to creationists.

I disagree that E. G. White had special messages from God.
Unless one agrees that God can be wrong half the time. Tom

Adventist landmarks matter—if anything goes, faithfulness will go—but the ultra-suspicious frame of mind is forbidden. The pioneers themselves forbade it: Ellen White said fear of “new questions” and “difference of opinion” is a recipe for spiritual decline; James White opposed a “creed,” saying it would be enmity against the Holy Spirit. As for the Statement of Fundamental Beliefs, its preamble clearly teaches us to expect that, under the Spirit’s guidance, our beliefs will undergo revision.
**************************************************************

Chuck...

I believe that if you apply this mindset from the pioneers to their own views of literal young earth creation vs. evolutionary or naturalistic theory, there is a disconnect. They believed that Darwinism, or any other naturalistic alternative was flat out heresy, period. And, I don't believe that they believed that young earth creationism was something that would be overthrown by new light, just like they viewed the unchangability of 1844. IOW, their ideas of progressive light in general, did not embrace this issue in particular.

That could mean that either they didn't fully understand the implications of their advocacy of progressive light, or, that we often wrongly apply it to issues that to them were as immutable as the Ten Commandments. Or, that the whole idea of progressive light is a creation of the Adventist pioneers to be applied to certain select issues...this, in there eyes, not being one of them.

Thanks...

Frank

"The Adventist Statement of Fundamental Beliefs does not entail young-earth creationism."

The Devil is in the details. In their expansion of this belief, it states:

"The Creation Days. The days of the Bi8ble's Creation account signify literal 24-hour periods."

How to correlate those two apparent contradictions?

How to correlate those two apparent contradictions?

**************************************************************

Just seems like another instance of wanting to "hold onto the boat and the dock without getting wet," as Tom stated. The church should just be clear that it officialy endorses literal, YEC. That is what every official publication teaches...from the SS to the Review, which probably represents the great majority of mainline Adventist thought on the subject throughout the world. Then talk about it from that point, without picking and parsing different statements to bolster one's view of what the church endorses or even allows on the table.

Thanks...

Frank

Mr Scriven
I can understand that retreating from EGW's and Usher's 6000 years provides a bit of a breather but that retreat is itself a concession to the very science you deplore. Once you grant that science trumps Biblical literalism on the issue of chronology, even though it be by only a few thousand years at first, you will spend the rest of your life retreating from the advances of science.

You speak of the theory of evolution as if if took measure of itself to be a theory of everything. Obviously a lot of people treat it as such, but in and of itself it only sets out to describe what is known about organic evolution on planet earth.

Science works on basis of what Ron Numbers in a recent conversation of this website called "functional materialism," i.e. working on basis of verifiable facts. That, however, does not tell you anything about whether the individual scientist believes or not in a spiritual realm, only that scientists work within the limitations of science.

You also speak of evolution as if it were a theory crafted to meet certain ideological parameters, as if America were a concept dreamed up by European explorers in search of a different type of world. The theory of evolution is the sum of our discoveries. It was not dreamed up by malevolent academics to spite believers.

Chuck,

Nice to meet you and Alex at FLC, Orlando this past weekend.

Question- Is there in your view a "young creation" of mankind? How do you deal with the "fall" and the multiple reciprocities of scripture that are dependent on it? Is that insignificant?

regards,
pat

A wife once plead with us not to, as she put it, ‘alienate people in the church’ with our stand on the ‘non-essentials in Genesis.’ She explained that her husband would love to bring some people to our seminar to hear the message of creation. However, because we insisted on six literal days, a young Earth and so on, even though they agreed with our stand against evolution, they could not support the seminar.
‘Why can’t we just agree on the essentials so we can work together without this division?’ she exclaimed!
‘What do you mean by the essentials?’ I asked.
‘Well, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that he died on the cross for our sin, and was raised from the dead.’ She replied.
I then asked her an important question: ‘Why did Jesus die on the cross?’ For our sins,’ she answered. I said, ‘Please explain to me what you mean by the word "sin”.’ Well, sin is rebellion against God,’ she replied.’ How do you know this—what is the origin of this rebellion?’ I continued. She seemed to think for a moment, and then exclaimed, ‘OHHHH! I know what you’re trying to do!’
‘Yes, of course,’ I answered. ‘I’m trying to get you to see that unless there was a historical event in a real garden with a literal man, serpent, and fruit, as recorded in Genesis, then there is no origin for sin.’
There is a growing emphasis in the church today for a tolerance of everyone’s beliefs. That sounds attractive on the surface, but in reality it is not just a request to put aside minor differences. Rather, it is being used to counter any challenge from the church concerning serious departure from the teaching of Scripture in major, foundational areas.

(1 Corinthians 15:21–22) The whole reason Jesus (the ‘Second Adam’) died for us was because of the sin nature the human race inherited from the (literal) first Adam. Jesus rose from (physical) death to conquer (physical) death, which the Bible calls the ‘last enemy’ (v.26). If the long geological ages view was correct, God has sanctioned billions of years of death and suffering. How then could death be an ‘enemy’? And why would God call His creation ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31) if the ‘last enemy’ was an integral part of it?
(Mark 10:6–9) Jesus refers to the creation of a literal Adam and Eve—from the beginning of the creation, not millions of years later.
Acts 3:21; Revelation 21:4, 22:3) In the long geological ages view, death and suffering were there all along. All things can’t be restored back to a sinless, deathless world if there never was such a world in the first place.

Chuck said:

"Objection One: The ideology of evolution crowns and miters itself the final arbiter of truth, but fails to see that scientific methodology can neither verify materialism nor explain why anything at all actually exists. It puts forward as fact what is a metaphysical bias."

I have to quibble with this a bit.

Let me start by saying that I think, while you are careful to keep talking about the ideology of evolution rather than the biological theory of evolution, you are also still mixing the concepts of materialism and evolution. Evolution is a biological theory, not an ideology. I don't even know what the ideology of evolution is. Either evolution, as an actual physical process happened and we have to figure out how to deal with the theological ramifications, or it didn't.

I don't know how the ideology of evolution crowns and miters itself the final arbiter of truth either - partly because there is no ideology of evolution (do you mean materialism?) but also because I haven't heard any proponents of either materialism, evolution or "new atheists" claim anything about being the final arbiter of truth. They claim that there is no compelling reason to think there is anything beyond the material (speaking for the new atheists now) because there isn't any evidence for it. Even Dawkins, the favorite boogy man, allows for the possibility of being wrong though. He just hasn't seen the evidence one would expect if there was a supernatural being acting on the material world. Making sweeping truth claims and insisting opinion is fact is done much more by those on the religious side of things I tend to think.

Finally, I would add that nothing we know so far can explain why anything exists at all, even theology. It is a weakness shared by all, not just materialism.

Nic Samojluk
www.sdaforum.com
An Independent Web site
Not Associated With the Association of Adventist Forums

According to the story of Generis we were created in God's image, while evolutionism teaches that we were made in the image of apes. The Bible tells us that Jesus came to restore God's image in humanity. If there were no literal Adam and Eve, then there was no fall, and the Plan of Redemption makes no sense. We have done quite well on our way to continuous progress, and our future is quite promising. Look how far we have come thanks to natural selection and genetic mutation. What do we need Jesus for?

The Bible is crystal clear that there was rebellion in heaven, which spread to our planet as a result of Adam's sin. The theory of evolution is inimical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no way to reconcile the teachings of evolution with the pure message we find in the sacred pages of Holy Writ. The theory of evolution is based on fiction instead of pure science.

There is no evidence that bacteria has ever transformed itself into some higher form of life. After centuries of investigation, there is no evidence that finches, moths, cats, elephants, or giraffes have ceased to be what they have always been. God created them with the capacity to adapt to the environment, but they continue to be identified as belonging to the same kind of living organisms.

"There is a growing emphasis in the church today for a tolerance of everyone’s beliefs. That sounds attractive on the surface, but in reality it is not just a request to put aside minor differences. Rather, it is being used to counter any challenge from the church concerning serious departure from the teaching of Scripture in major, foundational areas."

I would say rather that there is growing support from certain intellectuals in the church for pluralism. A pick and choose sort of theology where there exists little or no certainty. One big happy club endorsing everything but consequentially nothing. A schism would be the result as many of us refuse to sacrifice Truth on the altar of compromise.

Chuck:

Are you sidestepping the issue of a 7-day creation or including it in the concept of a young earth creation?

David Hamstra
apokalupto

Here are a few of the many egregious errors, IMO.

1. There is no substantive advantage to young-earth creationism. Simple faith in God will do.

Maybe simple faith in A god? What God might that be? Certainly not the God of Adam & Eve, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul. Was there literally an Adam? An Abraham? A Noah? Moses? David? Where does the not-literal end and the literal begin? Could you add your idea for this point in the Bible chronology?

Objection One: .... The conversation about these matters did not provoke attempts to expel proponents, on either side, from full participation in the life of the church.

Falacious appeal to authority. They didn't try to expel Sunday-worshippers either. They also argued for a flat earth because the rain would have to fall upwards on the other side and Jesus would have had to die twice.

Objection Two: “Authentic” is not invariably synonymous with “literal.”

You're saying that Santa coming down the chimney could be the authentic account of how Christmas presents come to be. Ad Hoc.

Objection Three: Whether you are a young-earth creationist or a believer who takes modern science seriously....

Should read "Whether you are a young-earth creationist or a believer who takes modern evolutionary and geologic science seriously". Or, could read, "Whether you are a creationist or a believer who takes modern evolutionary science seriously"

All believers take MOST science dead-seriously but reject SOME science which refutes one of the few still-believed, testable claims about the of the Hebrew's God (most of the beliefs of the goat herders about the cosmology of the earth were discarded centuries ago). Believers in the dogma of a Creator God believe modern science that planes can fly, bacteria (both good and bad) exist and evolves, atoms exist, the earth is a sphere which orbits the sun (well, most take this seriously), radio waves can transmit data, electricity can be controlled, its possible to forecast short term hurricane direction and other meteorological events, etc ad infinitum.

At the farthest remove from young earth creationism is the ideology of evolution. Here I may be more precise, and say that I have in mind a two-fold dogma.

Dogma is a belief which cannot be doubted. A dogma of the SDA Church is that Ellen White was The Spirit of Prophecy- God's messenger to the Remnant Church. Another dogma is that the Seventh-day Sabbath is still God's special commandment which was shrouded in a special light when Ellen went on one of her many trips to Heaven. A dogma for all christians is the belief that Jesus will come (in Paul's words), or will return, in modern christian-speak. Another dogma which must be believed by non-gnostic christians is that Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected LITERALLY on the surface of this planet, specifically in and around Jerusalem.

On the other hand, there is no dogma for scientists save the rule that miraculous events cannot be inserted to make your theory or equation work. Science is a way of knowing, not a set of dogmatic beliefs. As Dawkins has stated, the discovery of fossil mammals in Precambrian rocks would "completely blow evolution out of the water." If airplanes started falling out of the sky tomorrow, or were crashing at the end of runways due to the failure of the principle of lift generated by the curvature of the wings, there would be an instant renouncement of this theory. Scientists love to attempt to disprove any theory.

The other is the claim to superiority not only in knowledge of the world but also in knowledge of morality. This ideology leaps beyond science to say that with the advent of Darwinian investigation, no account of reality, beyond what science can provide, is either plausible or helpful. The world is matter, nothing more, and for all useful purposes, God is dead. Religion is at once irrelevant and pernicious.

I would recommend a clearer line between evolutionary theory and science in general. Science is the study of objective reality. The reality that "pushes back" as Stenger says. Its measurable, testable, etc. This in no way started with Darwin's theory of the origin of species. By definition, if God is transcendent, He is not a part of objective reality. He may exist in theory, or your mind, but not in reality. If there is a plausible natural explanation for everything then the implausible notion of a supernatural deity is not necessary or rational.

Objection One: The ideology of evolution crowns and miters itself the final arbiter of truth [That assertion is false on its face] but fails to see that scientific methodology can neither verify materialism nor explain why anything at all actually exists.

Evolutionary theory has NOTHING to do with why anything exists, the origin of matter or the origin of the universe or the origin of life. Chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, quantum mechanics, etc study those topics. (I assume from your confused statements so far that you are fairly ignorant about what evolutionary scientists actually study).

Objection Two: The ideology rests on the assumption that all natural development is a function of chance under the iron sway of physical law. That is a nonsensical, redundant statement. By qualifying development with "natural" it, by definition, would be what you then assert. This suggests that human freedom is, at best, a useful illusion. Natural development in physical reality does not have anything to do with SOCIAL development. It thus makes little sense to say (and really mean) that wise choices matter, or that love and justice refer to anything remotely like what we take them to be in ordinary life.

Objection Three: The ideology assumes that nature can support a moral vision of human dignity and human rights. The theory of evolution makes no claims about society, civilization, political systems, etc. But as David Bentley Hart says, “nature admits of no moral principles at all, and so can provide none.” Certainly it cannot be the basis for the preciousness of every human life, or for deliverance from the tribalism that undergirds so much of human violence. Primates display morals, tribalism, and the preciousness of the life of their offspring.

Objection Four: The ideology demonizes the religion of the Bible when that religion (for all its hypocrisy and fraud) constitutes history’s single most effective revolution—against resignation, against oppressive power, against indifference to suffering and injustice. The ideology of evolution fails to comprehend what Nietzsche saw and (to his discredit) celebrated: when God is dead, mercy, sooner or later, must lose sway before the willfulness of power.

Democracy is history's single most effective social revolution. Against the church (Paine, Hume, Jefferson, Franklin, Adam Smith) and against the Biblical theory of the Divine Right of Kings. The God of the Bible was dead to the Founding Fathers of this country as they were mainly Deists ( a god started something a long time ago but was not involved in the functioning of the earth, nature, or the progress of humanity). Darwin, after reading the great Capitalist Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations saw the same natural forces at work in plant and animal life.

Nietsche was wrong as Buddhism has no god yet is one of the most pacifist, merciful philosophies on the face of this planet.

After those errors I guess I would have to say that the whole piece, from the opening line, is egregiously in error.

**** Nietsche is spelled Nietzsche.

****While writing this response I see that Beth has posted a piece covering some of what I say. Sorry for the redundancy.

Superb. Chuck, you strike at the heart of the issue in a way that is both gracious and honest.

"If we were to minimize divisive and pointless internecine squabbles, we’d bear a better witness. Why don’t we?"

Let's do it.

Charles Scriven

I’ll chime in two or three times this weekend. Sorry about the length of this, and thanks to you contributors.

What about Ellen White, and other Adventist pioneers, with their young-earth creationism?

Well, the church got past the shut-door theory. Out of respect for the Holy Spirit’s illuminative power, the pioneers resisted devotion to creeds. So why continue to assume that theological rigidity belongs to the essence of Adventism? To both Adventist fundamentalists, and to critics who have little or no stake in Adventism’s future, the rigidity thesis somehow remains attractive. But in theory if not often in practice, the thesis is false.

The 28 points document speaks of (and thus the church officially endorses) “literal 24-hour days”? Why does this myth persist? I have pasted in, below, belief # 6, which alludes to the Genesis 1 story, but nowhere says “literal.”

6. Creation:
God is Creator of all things, and has revealed in Scripture the authentic account of His creative activity. In six days the Lord made "the heaven and the earth" and all living things upon the earth, and rested on the seventh day of that first week. Thus He established the Sabbath as a perpetual memorial of His completed creative work. The first man and woman were made in the image of God as the crowning work of Creation, given dominion over the world, and charged with responsibility to care for it. When the world was finished it was ``very good,'' declaring the glory of God. (Gen. 1; 2; Ex. 20:8-11; Ps. 19:1-6; 33:6, 9; 104; Heb. 11:3.)

I spoke of evolution as if it were a theory of everything? No, I spoke of an “ideology” of evolution that leaps past what science can demonstrate. I think we should take science seriously, just as Adventist dentists and engineers do when they are on the job. But we should refuse to cave in to the RELIGION of science. Many, perhaps most, scientists would agree with this.

You can’t square evolution with Holy Writ? Neither can you square the idea of a spherical earth with Holy Writ’s remarks about the earth’s four corners. When you consider the Bible’s purpose, isn’t the proper answer to the question “So what?”

Don’t I advocate pick-and-choose theology? And won’t that mean “endorsing everything but consequentially nothing”? Yes, I advocate focusing of what has true priority. But that is quite the opposite of endorsing nothing.

Am I “sidestepping” the 7-day creation issue? That’s exactly what I am NOT sidestepping. Many Adventists are literalists. Some Adventists embrace creation while allowing that the Genesis story could be a figurative way of saying something that is beyond human understanding. At the church’s start, both people who leaned in one of these directions, and people who leaned in the other, followed Jesus. The same is true today. And following Jesus as a response to grace is what matters. On the judgment day, there’s no quiz, none whatsoever, on the how and when of creation.

Nietzsche is misspelled? Come on, it’s mis-TYPED. (Or that’s what I’d LIKE to believe.)

Chuck,

Why do we need Jesus and Grace? Where did sin enter as per my earlier post?

We don't need details? So... Mrs. Lincoln other than that... how was the play?

regards,
pat

I'm glad you clarified about the ideology of evolution as being an over extension of the theory of evolution, and that most scientists would disavow the "religion" of science. I believe that this "ideology of evolution" mainly exists in the minds of conservative christians, and they attack and disagree with the theory of evolution on the grounds of this so called ideology.

Charles

you wrote that ... some, like Origen, took creation to be fundamental, yet rejected Genesis literalism.

Could you provide a reference for this assertion?

I had never gotten that impression from the Origen I had read and was able to quickly pull this up:

"After these statements, Celsus, from a secret desire to cast discredit upon the Mosaic account of the creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that, while concealing his wish, intimates his agreement with those who hold that the world is uncreated. For, maintaining that there have been, from all eternity, many conflagrations and many deluges, and that the flood which lately took place in the time of Deucalion is comparatively modern, he clearly demonstrates to those who are able to understand him, that, in his opinion, the world was uncreated. But let this assailant of the Christian faith tell us by what arguments he was compelled to accept the statement that there have been many conflagrations and many cataclysms, and that the flood which occurred in the time of Deucalion, and the conflagration in that of Phaethon, were more recent than any others."

Contra Celsum (Against Celsus) 1.19, Ante-Nicene Fathers4:404."

http://creation.com/id-theorist-blunders-on-bible-response-to-dembski#fa...

Thanks

This is a good article. I have one suggestion.

Since your article is in two parts, and since the first paragraph is made up of two short sentences (the first sentence summarizing the first part of your piece), could not the second sentence be as clear/ provocative in summarizing the second part of your article also?

For example,
There is no substantive advantage to young-earth creationism. Simple faith in God will do. Evolution's cosmogony arcs away from God in ways destructive of Christianity.

Chuck, perhaps I have an outdated book (?) listing the 27 Fundamental Beliefs of SDAs. As I wrote above, in the several pages following the brief statement of Fundamental 6, it clearly states:

"The days of the Bible's Creation account signify literal 24-hour periods."

Was the "signify" added to soften the "literal"? What else could a 24-hour period be called?

If it has been changed, please inform me that my book, and the church, has modified a position.

I'd like to set the record straight on Nietzsche.

Mr. Scriven writes, "The ideology of evolution fails to comprehend what Nietzsche saw and (to his discredit) celebrated: when God is dead, mercy, sooner or later, must lose sway before the willfulness of power."

On the contrary, it was Nietzsche's view that mercy was an inevitable consequence of the will to power. Nietzsche views punishment--"justice"--as a kind of righteous revenge (though he does not relate to the term righteous), and sees the revenge instinct as a hallmark of the weak. The Superman overcomes his need to exact justice. Nietzsche spells this out explicitly in The Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Section 10. If this wasn't a comment field I would quote it in it's entirety (just go and read it, it's not that long), but I'll satisfy myself with a tiny quote: "This self-overcoming of justice: one knows the beautiful name it has given itself--mercy; it goes without saying that mercy remains the privilege of the most powerful man, or better, his--beyond the law."

There are many other examples along these lines. (I would be happy to provide more upon request.) I will give one more from Thus Spake Zarathustra, second part, XXIX "The Tarantulas". Again, you should read the entire (short) section, but in case you won't: "Because, for man to be redeemed from revenge--that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms." (p66, in my Dover edition).

In fact, one of the central themes in Nietzsche's critique of and disgust for Christianity is his claim that Christianity lacks mercy. There are copious examples of this in his writings, particularly in The Anti-Christ (which we studied in Honors Seminar at Southern--w00t!). See, for one example, section 40 of The Anti-Christ. Or we can return to The Genealogy of Morals, first essay, section 15 (go ahead and read it, too), where Nietzsche, in utter disbelief and disgust, provides a lengthy passage of Tertullian's in which joy and exultation are elicited from the thought of the eternal torture of the non-Christian. One could easily multiply these examples. (Again, I would be happy to upon request.)

It is true, however, that for Nietzsche, pity is an emotion of the weak which the powerful have no use for. But pity ain't mercy.

There are several possibilities for Mr. Scriven's allusion to Nietzche. The first is, of course, that he drew his conclusion based solely on the Parable of the Madman, the single page of Nietzsche's writings most of us have read--or worse (heaven forbid!), from the mere three words most people can with any confidence attribute to Nietzsche: God is dead. It's unfortunately common in our world (the Adventist world) to hear something negative attributed to Nietzsche and just assume it's true without a moment's hesitation, because as we all know he was pals with Hitler, right? Another explanation is that Scriven read some passage that did indeed say what he's claiming. Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann reports that Karl Jaspers "counseled Nietzsche's readers never to rest content until they had also found passages contradicting those found first." I prefer to believe this second explanation even if any such passage eludes me.

Chuck, Good words. However, I think you are being somewhat disingenuous in suggesting flexibility in Adventist orthodoxy regarding geochronology. The Church--that is the public, institutional entity--does not accept the evidence of science regarding the age of life on earth. (Interestingly, even James White allowed for an "old earth," even while insisting on a young biosphere.)

Instead of looking for a non-existent flexibility regarding the age of life on earth, we should perhaps highlight the dubious distinction allowed for by all of the leading conservative Adventist theologians between a literal reading of the words of Genesis One regarding the biosphere and a non-literal reading of the words of Genesis One regarding the lithosphere of earth and the sun, moon and stars.

John McLarty

Objection Three: Whether you are a young-earth creationist or a believer who takes modern science seriously, the Bible’s stories and affirmations regarding creation have the same practical significance: the earth is good, we are meant to be God’s junior partners, the Sabbath is a gift for everyone.

Chuck, you do talk about "restructuring Adventism," so let's just be candid here that you are pulling the linchpin out of the whole edifice of Adventist theology and eschatology.

You can't banish the whole Adventist worldview with a cursory wave of the hand and, "Can't we all just get along?"

People are bound to notice. :)

WHITE’S IMAGO DEI AND EARTH HISTORY

The theme of Ellen White’s educational model is imago Dei, restoration in humanity of the holistic image of God.

The challenge to the accomplishment of that anthropological center of purpose is found in her larger framework: the conflict between Christ and Satan.

Central to this framework is the authority of Scripture, which declares (1) Christ as Creator of all, (2) the Sabbath as the culminating commemoration of the six literal day Creation event, (3) the complete restoration of Eden in the second dominion, including unveiled God/humanity communication, absence of death and predation, and (4) the continuance of 7th day Sabbath memorials to God’s creation initiative.

In White’s great controversy framework, Satan continues with increasing intensity his diabolical efforts to thwart those purposes.

Because this model is central to all of Ellen G. White’s writings, it is impossible to remove one segment of the structure without seriously compromising the integrity of all her writings.

Ellen G. White’s theological authority hinges on maintaining the framework of her primary purpose.

Even as Skinner’s philosophy crumbles with the removal of behaviorism and Descartes’ theories capsize without the paradigm of doubt, Ellen White cannot be correct in her salvific doctrines if she does not correctly define the nature of the Creator and the Creation account.

As Christ is either the incarnate God, as He claimed, or He is a liar, Ellen White cannot be merely a pious writer of platitudes on education and devotional life. Her entire ministry hangs or falls on the acceptance or rejection of her central model.

http://www.whiteestate.org/issues/genesis.html

It could certainly be argued that you are the one bringing "strange blood" to a long-established body.

This is truly a foundational issue.

It can hardly be called a "pointless internecine squabble," while maintaining respect for those who have every right to disagree, it seems to me.

I read this several times and a few thoughts kept coming to mind. One is that this article is confusing as to the main point. Except, possibly, that it seems that it emphasizes that this issue should not be made an issue (while it is making it an issue!)

Also, it indicates how people loose focus of the real issues of the gospel by getting hung up debating this issue (while again this article is bringing up the issue and making it a debate).

It seems the article contradicts the very supposition it is trying to promote. Did I miss something?

I just finishing doing location studies in several different States recounting the evidences on both sides of the age of the Earth and the flood story. In doing, so my faith has been strengthened in God and His creative and even re-creative power. Also I have come to understand that some like to hide their insecurities behind a type of intellectualism.

I do not have anything to prove to anyone. Let each be persuaded in his own mind what is right. But as for me, I well hold onto my simple faith in a creator God, love those around me, and allow God to use His re-creative powers in my heart, as well as share that love to those around me.

Chuck

"We got past the Shut Door" Yes by sweeping it under the rug.
Like--
The Oldie: God held His hand over an important date so Wm Miller's first calculations were wrong!"

Let's blame God, He can take it, E.G. White can't! There is always a Kroc in there someplace. Tom

By Maggie:

Chuck Scriven said:

Faith in God as our Maker matters deeply. And that is why fighting with one another over how or when creation happens is like fiddling while Rome burns: it is a distraction, a neglect of our larger responsibility to bear witness for God.

Again, I don't see how one can call the theological foundations upon which Adventism historically rests a "distraction," while holding one's worthy opponents in respect. Surely they believe you are truncating God's last message for the world, and are therefore the one who is fiddling while Rome burns.

At least we all agree that Rome is burning.

The Great Controversy Theme

All significant theologies have an organizing principle.

Many scholars have identified Ellen White’s unifying principle as the Great Controversy Theme. This provided a coherent framework for her theological thought as well as for her principles in education, health, missiology, social issues, and environmental topics.

Not that she single-handedly devised these interacting thought patterns, but she was the conceptual nurturer, urging study, noting errors, always exhorting freshness, not novelty.

Along with nurturing, her own writings helped to form a core of Biblical understanding that provided integrity to the development of Adventist thought.

George Knight, church historian, suggests that by focusing on the Great Controversy Theme “we can tell when we are on center or chasing stray geese near the edges of what is really important.”

In pointing to what Ellen White calls the “grand central theme” of the Bible, Knight wrote that “in such passages we find our marching orders for the reading of both the Bible and the writings of Ellen White. . . .

All our reading takes place within that context, and those issues closest to the grand central theme are obviously of more importance than those near its edges.”

http://www.whiteestate.org/books/mol/Chapt22.html

Conservative Adventists would argue that they are bearing witness for God in the highest possible way through emphasizing The Great Controversy Theme, central to which is the Creation in six literal days.

It seems impractical, not to mention unfair, to expect them to erase the slate, or their minds.

Perhaps they should all just go away?

But...don't they have first dibs?

The SDA church was founded by radicals who believed it was ok to have different opinions to the elders of your denomination. They read widely, based their health beliefs on the leading edge science of the day, and changed their minds about 'critical' issues regularly.

They understood that prophets were fallible - and certainly did not regard EGW statements as settling anything

This is the mindset that has first dibs!

Just as Israel tolerates the orthodox Jews, SDA should tolerate the conservatives, but it doesn't have to yield to them - and tolerating someone does not include letting them push you around

I agree with Chuck - the war is doing more damage than good, but it is better than yielding to the conservatives

/bevin

"Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann reports that Karl Jaspers "counseled Nietzsche's readers never to rest content until they had also found passages contradicting those found first." I prefer to believe this second explanation even if any such passage eludes me.

Posted by: Robert Jacobson (not verified) | 18 September 2009 at 5:30

Quoting a brief passage from an author and from that making the deduction that it is the central theme is what has always been practiced by Adventists: forming a doctrine from one short text, yet the Bible is replete with contradictions throughout its pages, no less than Nietzsche.

Sorry, guys, Maggie has pointed out the great dichotomy of trying to switch horses midstream: it ain't gonna work! The Great Controversy has been extolled by Adventism for too many years, and
absolutely essential to that is the 6-day literal creation.

As for this, which I have read many times and cringed: "Nietzsche, in utter disbelief and disgust, provides a lengthy passage of Tertullian's in which joy and exultation are elicited from the thought of the eternal torture of the non-Christian." How does that differ from the horrible scenes so vividly described by EGW in the Great Controvery if the saints will be watching while millions are destroyed? If some "last longer than others" how could we enjoy the bliss of heaven while friends, loved ones, even relatives are consumed?

If this is God's mercy, spare me the enthusiasm.

Chuck,
I'm going to push a little more here because I think what you are saying about the ideology of evolution is still misleading. I also think it is a very important point that many people get wrong.

There are many outspoken atheists right now who advocate materialism. Some are also evolutionary biologists. They all use the biological theory of evolution to support the idea that there is no supernatural being that interferes in the natural world. (Most agree that there could be a supernatural being who does not interfere but also agree, why bother?)

Evolution is one piece of evidence in the argument that it is the most reasonable conclusion (not fact) that there is nothing more than the material world. They use evolution because it explains the diversity of life without needing a god - something that before pretty much had to rely on a supernatural explanation. But evolution is only a part of the argument for materialism.

Your fight is with materialism, not evolution (even a misuse) and to call what you are arguing against, an overextension of evolution is not accurate. It's an overextension of materialism. Most people reading your article will see the word evolution and think you are making a point about evolution which you are not - at least you shouldn't be.

Maybe it would make more sense explaining it this way. All of these new atheists would agree with a distinction between evolution and materialism. They are not the ones saying anything about an ideology of evolution. Those attacking the materialism of the new atheists are, but they are either calling it evolution (wrong) or a misuse of evolution (strawman).

I think you should call it what it is - materialism and leave evolution out of it. Or at least be more clear about the distinction. But hey, it's your article and I'm not the one having to come up with columns for every edition ;)

Bevin,

You and I have kind of agreed to disagree on some things, and I don't want to cover old territory. I am happy that we are brothers in Christ. I could easily pray with you and I hope we could worship God together.

What I do want to ask you is, what do you actually mean when you say "yielding to the conservatives."?

What outcomes of this 'war' do you hope for? Both of us have been in the trenches long enough. You don't tolerate the status quo, as you obviously want change. So, what sort of changes do you really hope to see?

Regardless of our different beliefs, I would hope that I could listen and understand what you are asking for.

Bevin

Leading edge science of the day? Ellen took her kids to phrenologists and claimed masturbation caused your head to cave in. She enjoyed the company of the wealthy at the european style spas and tried to duplicate them with the adventist sanitariums in order to save the moral degradation of associating with card players at the secular spas. Her diet ideas were from the Bible, supported by what Scriven is now claiming to be mythical but "authentic" tales. The temperance movement that she caught the tail end of was against alcohol so, contrary to the Bible, she demanded complete abstinence (exception for her own near death withdrawal from "vinegar"). The temperance movement was not based on leading edge science of the day. It was, in part, a backlash by christian conservatives against the enlightenment ideas from the hard drinking likes of Hume in the scottish vanguard. The leading 'scientist', Kellogg, was banished over a personality difference.

The label of "conservative" is relative. A "liberal" or "progressive" Christian is still a conservative in society. The leading edge science of today is atheistic because that's where the evidence leads. European society tolerates the religious among them. Palin did more for atheism in this country than anything I have ever seen before. Now that the roaches have come out into the light of day for their tea-parties its a sight to behold the ignorance and violent rhetoric of the "conservatives".

This country was founded by radicals who believed it was intolerable to have Kings, supported by priests & the church, hold tyrannical sway of freedom of thought, the press, assembly, and choice of religion or no religion.

> what do you actually mean when you say "yielding to the conservatives."?

Allowing the conservatives to dictate

1. who is elected to the Conference, Union, Division, and GC posts
2. what the Fundamentals are
3. what the church's official statements to the press say
4. who teaches in the SDA educational establishments
5. who publishes in the official publications
6. who preaches from the pulpit
7. who teaches in the SS classes
8. what the evangelists say

This latest outbreak is because a set of conservatives don't like what has been going on in La Sierra Uni for years, and what is apparently allowed by the people who are paying the bills.

They are moaning that their position is the only position, that their money is the only money, and that these teachers should be beholden to them for what is taught.

As I pointed out in my reply to that thread, people like me (a) were accepted by the SDA denomination for decades - certainly from between 1977 when I became an SDA and 2000 when Goldstein started his anti-evolution witch hunt, (b) jointly paid huge amounts of money into these systems

Only since 2000 has the SDA denomination been an uncomfortable for SDA, and this attack on La Sierra has been the last straw for many liberal SDA, who are finally beginning to find their voice.

They could have found it in 2000, when the witch hunt began.

The conservatives have finally managed to get the 'accept the possibility of long age life on earth' SDA riled up enough to begin to threaten the real mission of the church.

/Bevin

Phrenology, masturbation, corn-flakes, etc. were all main-stream science of her day.

I even found the water+limestone = volcanoes geology in a geology textbook from the late 1800's

/Bevin

Sermonette #432 by Maggie:

Chuck Scriven said:

If we were to minimize divisive and pointless internecine squabbles, we’d bear a better witness. Why don’t we?

I suggest that, since the whole world has access to this discussion, the best way to "bear a better witness," right this very minute, is for the participants to hold each others viewpoints, and the right to have them, in respect. We are members one of another.

IOW, instead of projecting all undesirable traits to "the others," be able to make an honest, cogent case for the other side in your own mind and hold those poles in creative tension inside yourself.

Then, speak from that.

I think that will supercharge SDA evolution.

Phrenology, masturbation, corn-flakes, etc. were all main-stream science of her day.

Pseudoscience, maybe. Speculation & wild theories backed by a lack of evidence and no predictive power at all. Its not science without predictive power. That's the problem AIG & the DI have today- no predictive power and not a shred of evidence for any creation event. All creationists do is run around surveying the increasingly large mountain of evidence for evolution and cry that a stone here or their is not firm.

For example, after reading the Bible we should be able to predict that when scientists drill ice cores that all will have annual layers totaling less than 10,000 years. Problem is, there are 100,000 layers visible to the naked eye and another 700,000 layers evident with chemical analysis. Genesis fails to make that prediction or any other prediction. Nothing but a total failure in archeology (much longer history than the Bible claims), geology, astronomy, etc. In fact, every single field contradicts the claim of the comparatively ignorant nomads of the Bible. God could have easily told them the earth was old, we evolved from apes, the earth was a sphere, etc. They believed you could remove mold from your house by wringing a bird's neck and that men were whisked up to the dome over the flat earth. Certainly it would be easier to believe that the earth was old.

Genesis was not the best science of even ITS day- it was the best theory or best story and most definitely has no indication of being the actual account of anything that ever occurred in reality.

Popular science more than pseudo-science, and (as you rightly point out) ideas that did not survive the impact of the incredibly powerful statistical techniques and instruments that have since been developed.

Certainly by the mid-1800's, a literal reading of Genesis was under serious attack by those who had access to lots of facts and who weren't strongly wedded to the literal reading.

It was not until the 1960's that continental drift got firmly demonstrated.

The advances in the evidence for evolution in my lifetime, and especially since 1970, are amazing. I am not surprised to see Tom Z's reluctance to accept them - most have happened well after he learnt most of his science.

I was intrigued to find Henry Thoreau, in his book about walking Cape Cod, coming down heavily against smoking!

But the real point about EGW's writings is this - neither she nor her contemporaries regarded them as definitive history or theology. It was late in her life, and especially after her death, that the SDA church started clinging to them as a stolid landmark, and the White Estate was more than happy to go along - and to this day the White Estate is fighting a rearguard action of deliberate and continuous misinformation to distract people from the truth which they themselves publish on the more obscure parts of their own website.

/Bevin

By Maggie:

/Bevin said:

But the real point about EGW's writings is this - neither she nor her contemporaries regarded them as definitive history or theology.

It was late in her life, and especially after her death, that the SDA church started clinging to them as a stolid landmark, and the White Estate was more than happy to go along - and to this day the White Estate is fighting a rearguard action of deliberate and continuous misinformation to distract people from the truth which they themselves publish on the more obscure parts of their own website.

If only it were as simple as blaming those dastardly demagogues of demonry (not really) at the White Estate. Alas, I think not....

SELECTED MESSAGES, Book 3, page 31, paragraph 4

Chapter Title: The Primacy of the Word; Ellen White Enabled to Clearly Define Truth and Error.

At that time [after the 1844 disappointment] one error after another pressed in upon us; ministers and doctors brought in new doctrines.

We would search the Scriptures with much prayer, and the Holy Spirit would bring the truth to our minds. Sometimes whole nights would be devoted to searching the Scriptures and earnestly asking God for guidance. Companies of devoted men and women assembled for this purpose.

The power of God would come upon me, and I was enabled clearly to define what is truth and what is error.

I could go on, and on, and on, and on. And on.

You really need me to do that?

As "landmarks" go, they don't get much more "stolid" than "clearly defining what is truth and what is error."

MaggieB

In line with your point. The Shut Door came out of the same group and the same mind-set as the investigative Judgment--and thus the entire line of doctrinal reasoning unique to Adventism.

Their line of reasoning from beginning to end is tainted with the self justification for their enthusiasm over Oct 22,1844.

The Great Disappointment of Oct. 23, 1844 merely set in motion a search for vindication not as some would have the world believe a search for "New Truth!"

Chuck really opened a can of worms when he attempted to justify abandoning a young earth view as merely a renovation of the doctrinal shift from a shut door to an open door manouver.

Better to go all the way back to John Wesley than trying to cut and paste E. G. White to a fashionable size.
Tom

Today, with the internet and open and instant communication, no longer can a "cover-up" be accepted.

We have heard more than a century of self-justification for the "truth" proclaimed by Adventism. It no longer will wash. Those who wish to defend the indefensible should be prepared to battle those with massive evidence to the contrary.

Charles, your thinking on this issue is schizophrenic. You're arguing that philosophical naturalism or materialism is a mistake when applied outside of the narrow focus of origins geology and biology. But you are reconciled to philosophical naturalism within origins research in biology and geology. This doesn't make any sense.

Either strict naturalism is a philosophical mistake, or it isn't. If it is a mistake, then it is a mistake to apply it to origins research. If it isn't a mistake, then why shouldn't it be applied to all aspects of human experience? So chance and time were sufficient to create the world, but God recently showed up to gives our lives meaning?? If God is around now to give meaning to human existence, then why couldn't He have created the world in the way He says He did?

Obviously, any Christian must believe that strict philosophical naturalism is wrong, or she could not even be a theist, much less a Christian. That being the case, why must we apply philosophical naturalism to origins research? Why can't we assume instead that the Bible is truthful when it teaches a creation in six literal days about six or eight thousand years ago? Why shouldn't we base our origins science on that assumption?

There are two competing, mutually inconsistent philosophies here, and you're trying to marry them, just as the early church fathers to whom you refer tried to marry pagan Greek philosophy with the Biblical worldview.

Charles, I like your "strange blood" analogy: "In Adventism, we fight over the details of creation. But such fighting, though it may energize the disputatious, is a kind of strange blood, and we end up paying too little sustained and cooperative attention to the threats that really matter."

But the "strange blood" is not the fight, but the Darwinism that has crept into the church and caused the fight. I think the fight is very much worth having and should have been fought long ago. Regarding the fight I wrote piece on 12/9/06 here entitled "A plea for Intolerance," which is posted here:
http://www.clarioncallbooks.com/page6.html. In which I wrote:

Currently, the long-ages camp is a tiny minority of SDAs, largely limited to the professors and assorted other "intellectuals" around our college campuses. But if this group is "tolerated," as Carr advocates, it sends a signal to other members that their views are accepted, and are just as acceptable as the biblical creationist views held by the majority, and that views about origins are simply not important. If this group is allowed to preach and teach their long-ages views without rebuke, their numbers will grow. The views of this group are already presented in our college classrooms; how long will it be before they demand inclusion of their views in Sabbath School quarterlies and other official publications of the church?

Eventually, their numbers and influence will grow to the point where they may be in a position to force the biblical creationists out of the church. If it comes to a contest, one side must prevail not by convincing the other with arguments from inspired writings--which the long-ages camp does not accept as authoritative--but simply by political force.

The way to avoid a political power struggle in the future is to enforce doctrinal discipline now. We must ask the small minority of long-ages creationists within the Adventist Church to join one of the many Christian fellowships where such views are already established doctrine (or simply to follow the time-honored Protestant custom of starting their own church). Such a hard line will hit our colleges and universities hardest. You won't hear this from official church channels, but I'll clue you in to an inconvenient truth: The majority of our college instructors in the relevant sciences are Darwinists. Our college administrators will object that if Darwinists and long-ages geologists are purged, there will not be enough instructors left to teach the required classes in biology and geology. That may be true, but it would be better not to teach these subjects than to teach them from a Darwinian perspective.

The calls for "tolerance" and "unity" are very seductive to the Christian ear. (You can imagine the same dialogue taking place in the early centuries of the Christian era, as one pagan practice after another was allowed into the Church in the name of unity and peaceful co-existence.) But in the long run, maintaining doctrinal purity is the only way to protect the Seventh-day Adventist Church's unique mission and its reason for existence.

"any Christian must believe that strict philosophical naturalism is wrong, or she could not even be a theist, much less a Christian. That being the case,"

Sorry, a fallacy is presented: any human who has chosen to identify "Christian," and therefor calling anyone not agreeing to that position has no authority.

Except for the Pope, and those Christians who obey the Pope, who is adhering to any individual who claims to define who is a Christian?

Just so we're clear, which ones need to leave?

Those who believe:

a) that the universe and the rocks are old, but the earth is much (read 6,000 years) newer.

b) that the universe, the rocks, and all life are only about 6,000 years old.

c) that the universe, the rocks, and all life are probably closer to being about 10,000 years old.

d) that the known universe and the rocks and life on this planet seem to have been around for a very long time based on evidence we observe from astronomy, geology, biology, etc.

e) all of d and some of c.

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts, that the very people arguing about the ones who should leave would turn on each other once the group they oppose did leave. And then what?

Charles, Elaine takes issue with my contention that a Christian must believe in God. For her, Christianity is only an ethical system, not a faith system. Is this also a "pointless internecine squabble" that prevents us paying attention to "the threats that really matter"??

I'm really curious about this, because to me, belief in God is foundational to Christianity. But then, I also believe that the literal creation week, which is the rationale for the Fourth Commandment, which is, in turn, the rationale for our marquee doctrine of Sabbath sacredness--which is part of our name--is foundational to Seventh-day Adventism. So my judgment is suspect, and I need a second opinion: Is belief in God necessary to Christianity?

David wrote > Currently, the long-ages camp is a tiny minority of SDAs, largely limited to the professors and assorted other "intellectuals" around our college campuses.

David, quote your survey - where is the data that backs this statement?

Or is it just another of your beliefs for which you don't have evidence?
/Bevin

Maggie wrote>

If only it were as simple as blaming those dastardly demagogues of demonry (not really) at the White Estate. Alas, I think not....

SELECTED MESSAGES, Book 3, page 31, paragraph 4

Chapter Title: The Primacy of the Word; Ellen White Enabled to Clearly Define Truth and Error.

The key observation here is "SELECTED MESSAGES". Selected BY WHOM?

The 1919 Bible Conference minutes should be required reading for every SDA...

/Bevin

Genesis makes clear that the earth was in existence before creation week. "God's Spirit was moving over the water." Genesis 1:1 (NCV). "Then God said, 'Let the water under the sky be gathered together so he dry land will appear." Genesis 1:9 (NCV).

How long was this water-covered earth in existence before the events of Genesis 1 & 2? We don't know.

We do know it was in chaos and God created order out of the chaos.

The belief that evolution is science and creation is religion is false. Scientists can no more "prove" evolution than creationists can "prove" creation. Humans don't live long enough to see evolution in action (and transitional organisms are non-existent). And God isn't about to come down from heaven and show us how the divinely-spoken word turned energy into matter.

So, it appears that the issue is not science versus faith. It's about faith - period. Which takes more faith? Belief in a random process that at some point produced creatures that we call human beings and that we are all just a grand cosmic accident? Or belief that an Intelligent Being has and continues to create order out of chaos?

To quote another (I forget who), I don't have enough faith to be an evolutionist.

Bevin, I assume you are no longer a church member. I assume that because every single post of yours that I've ever read is extremely hostile to Adventist beliefs and philosophy. Another reason I assume that is because, although your posts are hostile to Adventism, they don't betray any obvious mental illness. But for someone with your beliefs to want to stay in a church that embraces Ellen White as an inspired prophet of God and believes in a literal six-day creation in the recent past would be insane. So I assume that you are not a member.

Likewise, I assume that the Seventh-day Darwinians are a tiny minority of our membership, because I refuse to believe that something approaching or exceeding half the members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church are insane. If I'm wrong about that, where is your survey?

By Maggie:

Chuck Scriven said:

The physician’s point was that medicine should develop strategies for minimizing the use of blood transfusions.

In the contex of Adventism's part of the Body of Christ, that would involve strategies for shutting down conversation of unpopular material by those with more numbers and/or power, it seems to me. What else could it mean?

Actually, I think that was tried back in 1980 in a lovely camp in Colorado, with spotty results, according to some.

One modern commentator calls Glacier View "Adventist shorthand for pain, dissension and division".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_View_controversy

Hmmm...maybe there's a better way?

Hey, I've got an idea...I just checked the banner on this site again to make sure.

Yup--it says:

Community Through Conversation...SPECTRUM

Spectrum?

b. A broad sequence or range of related qualities, ideas, or activities: the whole spectrum of [Adventist?] thought.

Please understand, I don't have in mind what David said here: "The calls for "tolerance" and "unity" are very seductive to the Christian ear."

Ham and eggs: a day's work for a chicken, a lifetime commitment for a pig.

Yeah, David--nobody wants to be the pig in this breakfast scenario, understandably.

Let me just say this: y'all are up a crick, you do know that don't you? You can't get there from here, you are stuck on high center, you are stalemated, you are becalmed on highseas, and furthermore, your dog won't hunt.

Oh, yeah, I meant to add..."if there's no God."

Let me put it another way, maybe you are like an erratic little school of fish in the Big Ocean.

Nobody owns the Ocean (!), so maybe that's not a good topic for fishy debate, but its good to learn to swim together--there's safety in numbers.

PS: Tom--great post, IMO--I want to get back to you on that. Thanks. :)

Beth--I agree with you.

/Bevin--betcha we've all read the 1919 Bible Conference Minutes.

David commented> Bevin, I assume you are no longer a church member...

Correct. About 5 years I read yet another of Goldstein's anti-evolution diatribes in the Review, and sat down and composed my letter of resignation.

My experience with SDA churches here in New Hampshire suggests that 80%-90% of their church members are YEC's, but tolerant of SDA who think that evolution may account for life on Earth, less than 10% are inclined to think evolution accounts for life on Earth, and less than 5% are inclined to ask the 10% to leave.

I have given my reasons for leaving before

World Wide - the SDA positions on evolution, 1844, EGW's writings, tithe, women ministers, and gays are wrong. Genesis is not literal. There are no Bible prophecies that plausibly point to 1844, EGW used many sources and assistants, nowhere does the Bible teach a 10% tithe to fund a central organisation, nowhere does the Bible proscribe 20C US women from being ordained, and the SDA church is inordinately homophobic way beyond any reading of scripture.

NAD - the caucasian NAD is utterly out of touch with society as a whole, and doing very little useful for the society - furthermore it is so out of touch it doesn't even realize that it needs to change (although it does pay lip-service to the concept). Often its actions are more harmful than good.

My church at the time - the head elder used the communion prayer as a place to attack me, the pastor was so ignorant of Biblical history that he thought that there are literal numeric AD dates in the NT, and the congregation thought that coffee drinking is a major sin. Why on earth would I want to go there?

However, you describe me as being completely opposed to SDA doctrine. I am not. I believe in (amongst other things)

(a) The bottom-up power structure

(b) The general concept of the Great Controversy

(c) The dead are sleeping

(d) Healthy living is important, and it includes avoiding alcohol and tobacco

(e) Salvation by faith, manifest in good works

(f) Sabbath is a gift - a day a week away from your regular job and getting in touch with God is a good idea

(g) Using my time and money to help spread the gospel and benefit my community

(h) Religious liberty

(i) EGW was a sincere and righteous woman, but she made serious errors herself and has been badly misrepresented by the EGW Estate and the SDA denomination. At this late date it is impossible to decide what, if anything, was truely given to her by God as a prophet.

/Bevin

No one can determine origins. We can quite readity determine age aback about 20,000 years. Biomass, Ice/Water, man.

We can also determine the sorry state of the human condition.

We can verify the essentials of the Christ Event.

Paul makes a very convincing case.

E. G. Whte Does not.

Thus, I believe Romans 5. and its sequela

Therefore I am a Christian with a faith in the creative power and redemptive love of God as displayed before the Universe by Jesus Christ, my Lord and Master.

I am not troubled by shut doors, investigations, retribution.
I am satisfied that I have an Advocate with the Father and a hope in His soon return but willing to sleep with my fathers.
Knowing that God has indeed won His case.

I don't have to revise my belief system every time some one turns over another rock. "I know in whom I have believed and I am persuaded that He is able!"

The who, the when, and the why of the history of the catastrophic events and palentological anomolies of earth can wait for a clear explanation from the Master Himself.

The Great Controversy is over you and me. The rest is just side show to the main event.

Frankly, I am more interested in Hubble that in the hubbub of one more link. Tom

Tom wrote > I don't have to revise my belief system every time some one turns over another rock. "I know in whom I have believed and I am persuaded that He is able!"

Neither do I. Chuck is right - the creation/evolution debate is not worth the candle - until the YEC's start trying to force everything to go their way. I can tolerate being in the same church with them - but it appears some of them can't tolerate the reverse.

/Bevin

Lots of comments here, I haven't read them all yet but in his first comment Chuck says:

-
The 28 points document speaks of (and thus the church officially endorses) “literal 24-hour days”? Why does this myth persist? I have pasted in, below, belief # 6, which alludes to the Genesis 1 story, but nowhere says “literal.”
--

Once you grant the "authority" of the Adventist creed as the 28 fundamental beliefs you lose the argument. I as an Adventist did not vote on that creed, I had no part in even selecting a representative that attended the session that voted on it. I am not bound by it as an Adventist nor has the Adventist church required that I agree with that creed. But if you think the answer is to seek help from the fact that in the paragraph statement it does not say "literal" you are going to lose. Because you are accepting the traditional Adventist viewpoint while saying "well you did not say literal day so it does not have to be literal day any kind of day will do". Of course since there was no sun until day 4 the first 3 days could not have been literal as a day, as it is defined (The period during which the earth completes one rotation on its axis.) but literal does not stop them from assuming 24 hours involved in the day which is the time it takes to orbit the sun which was not there.

So really how can you think dwelling on the non existent word literal in the belief will do anything?

Edited to fix the meaning of day. Thanks David
Ron

Ron, a day is the time it takes the earth to revolve on its own axis. A year is the time it takes the earth to orbit around the sun. Those are two different things. You should be clear on the astronomical facts, even if a prophetic day is a year of literal time.

Regarding your objection, God said "let there be light" on the first day, so the sun was not necessary to have 24-hour days. As long as the earth was spinning on its axis and there was a fixed source of light outside the earth, there would have been "evening and morning" for the first three days.

Further Man wasnt created till the end of the week so how would he know how many days previous God had been creating?

Well God could have told Adam and Eve but he knew thousands of years later you'd never believe it with out a certified letter or Adam coming back to life to testify.
It could have been everyone else on earth that were the contempoaries of Adams immediate family that knew the same thing.
Seth made it until shortly before the flood.
Or we could just go with the account that God wrote with his own finger when he gave the 10 commandments to Moses, but you probably wont accept a copy since the origionals were thrown down and broken...
I guess theres not much hope for you then...

Charles Scriven

Origen on creation? Numerous articles (many discoverable on the web) say that Origen rejected Genesis literalism. You can see this, too, in the classic history of early church doctrine, GND Kelley’s “Early Church doctrine.”
Nietzsche on “mercy”?

Keafan takes us to Nietzsche’s sneering suggestion that “mercy” can only be an offering of those who actually have power. But that little claim is not my main point, and I suppose I made a mistake in using the word “mercy.” I will be careful in the published editorial to use the word “compassion,” and make appropriate revisions in the sentence. Nietzsche clearly had negative views about compassion.

It’s “disingenuous” to suggest that there can be “flexibility” regarding geochronology? Well, my point is that age-of-the-earth anality, leading as it does to fighting about the details of doctrine, distracts us from the Gospel to call to ACTION. We need to affirm that God is our maker, but outgrow the blustery quarreling over what is, after all, OVER OUR HEADS. I love and accept the Bible—as passionately, perhaps, as David Read does—but I understand that in the interpretation of the Bible we ought to remain humble. We ought to remain humble, that is, before the simple truth (Isa 55) that God’s thoughts and ways are higher even than the thoughts and ways of Bible authors.

We swept the Shut Door theory under the rug? I didn’t. What someone, or some group, did years ago is not the whole story of Adventism, any more than the crusades are the whole story of medieval Christianity, or slavery the whole story of America. We have much to be ashamed of, but no reason to wallow in that shame.

My fight is “with materialism, not evolution”? It’s correct to say materialism is the fundamental challenge. But I am trying to use language that will resonate with people inside of Adventism. And by the phrase “ideology of evolution” I mean the position of the New Atheists, who go past, on the metaphysical front, what science demonstrate, and then presume, in addition, to occupy the moral high road. Something like this has been gaining ground in North Atlantic civilization, and I am suggesting that the trend is disastrous.

Why not simply “assume…that the Bible is truthful when it teaches a creation in six literal days about six or eight thousand years ago?” I do not ARGUE that this assumption is wrong. Nor do I object to give-and-take about Genesis versus either evolution or so-called “theistic evolution.”. What I do object to is judgmentalism on either side. The literal-creation-week claim is NOT the heart of the Gospel, and when arguments about it divide us, those arguments serve no Christian purpose.

“Enforce doctrinal discipline now”? Yes, doctrine matters, but practice—discipleship—is the point. David Read cannot show a single reason why devotion to a literal creation week makes better disciples than simple faith that frets not over the when and how of creation.

Refrain, if need be, from teaching “biology and geology”? Well, then Adventism will turn into the “convert church” some think it has become already. Those who have suffered for lack of education, and have little practice in critical thinking, would continue to come in; but many of those who achieve true excellence in knowledge and creativity (and Adventism produces such) would continue to go out.

The literal creation week is the foundation of the Sabbath? Why, David Read, do you not even acknowledge the point (in the post) about Abraham Joshua Heschel? Or why do you not even consider that Jesus’ personal practice would constitute an adequate foundation for the Sabbath? (I grant, of course, that Adventists have usually THOUGHT the literal creation week is the foundation of the Sabbath.)

Enough until at least Sunday. Thanks for continuing to be provocative.

The Jews do not need a literal creation week to serve as foundation for sabbath observance. It is enough for them that YHWH gifted them the sabbath when they were freshly freed. It is enough that Ezekiel described it as a distinctive sign between YHWH and Israel, in the same way that circumcision was a distinctive sign between YHWH and Abram and his male descendants.

For Adventists who would rather teach that the sabbath is a sign between God and all humankind and especially marks His chosen (Christian) people, a pre-Exodus explanation must be found. We have found it in Genesis.

Adventists can't be satisfied with Jews' explanation of their Law because we are not satisfied with their explanation of who that Law was given to, or why it was given. Heschel and other rabbis are therefore only useful when they agree with us.

Sermonette #432 by Maggie:

Chuck Scriven said:

If we were to minimize divisive and pointless internecine squabbles, we’d bear a better witness. Why don’t we?

I suggest that, since the whole world has access to this discussion, the best way to "bear a better witness," right this very minute, is for the participants to hold each others viewpoints, and the right to have them, in respect. We are members one of another.

IOW, instead of projecting all undesirable traits to "the others," be able to make an honest, cogent case for the other side in your own mind and hold those poles in creative tension inside yourself.

Then, speak from that.

I think that will supercharge SDA evolution.
Posted by: MaggieB (not verified) | 18 September 2009 at 5:18

*******
Well done, Maggie.

I have been reading these threads on the conflict between origins and the foundational beliefs of the SDA Church now for several months.

I find it sad and pathetic. And I will admit there was a day not so long ago [25 years ago] that I was as ardent a believer in YEC as any could be. And yes, I was finishing a terminal PHD in a hard-core, biological science at a major land-grant university. My course work was based on the application of existing science. But my professors used example after example of the observed processes of evolutionary change to support the biochemistry involved. [I was an elder in our local SDA church, and I knew there were a group of other SDA graduate students who would periodically meet 'somewhere' for an 'Adventist Forum' meeting. I was never invited, included, or even told when or where they would meet. I found out later they all thought I was too conservative and would not understand!]

At that time, I would just grit my teeth . . . let my professors believe their reality.

But that is not the only reason I can no longer identify myself as a Seventh-day Adventist. It is from a decade of reading the scholarship of the "higher criticism" folks. The story behind the story. And the frightening tale that really is.

Just this morning, I was reading from a provocative commentary about the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles. Another epiphany for me. How this Chronicles chronology is the "utopian" or uchronian literature rendition of that Hebrew Deuteronomistic History recorded in Joshua through 2 Kings. That Chronicles is in the genre of science fiction. My undergraduate days at WWC in the 60's limited my exposure of things "English Literature-wise" to the intensive study of Milton's "Paradise Lost." To read science fiction or fiction was to sin. And so I am a still, sadly to admit, a functional illiterate when it comes to the essence of a true liberal arts education to include such things as what constitutes the genre of science fiction, utopian story telling or uchronian literature. And as such, I was a true believer in the aura of "Merry Olde England" as as true a history of England as the marching around Jericho was to the Hebrews. And as a little example of just how utopian the chronicler of Chronicles was, the dimensions of the temple have the vestibule being six times as high as its width. As far as utopian literature itself is concerned, it makes for a stunning symbol of a raised phallus with a set of balls at the base! A thrust upward like a new Tower of Babel that stresses the vertical dimension of Chronicler theocracy. But the footnotes for 2 Chronicles 3:4 will generally state that that verse has been corrupted somewhere along the way. Nevertheless, the narrative of the Chronicles, in sharp contrast to the narrative in the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua through 2 Kings), provides a classic example of the breakdown between descriptive language in the realm of utopian construction.

And to realize the how and the why of these narratives of the Hebrew Bible, and how they came about, is to realize how totally unstable these narratives are on which to base absolute theological premises.

For those who are willing to allow themselves the freedom to explore this scholarship, there is an unshackling from fundamentalism that is, for me at least, life giving and life sustaining.

To understand the how and the why of the Genesis story as to its origin, is to respect its intended purpose. Never, ever, was it to be science. It was to provide that uchronian history of the Hebrew identity. And the Deuteronomistic History was written during and after the Babylonian exile to explain their plight . . . and to prevent it from ever happening again . . . the xenophobia . . . the separateness . . . the "other" . . . the purity . . . the ceremonial isolation. The story of their god, their Yahweh. And the conflict between Yahweh and the tribal gods of their neighbors.

But what does this all have to do with "Fiddling While Rome Burns?"

It has everything to do with it. For one's origin is one's identity. And one's identity is a precious thing indeed. Just go to one of the ubiquitous Scottish Games festivals and see how people line up their origins with a "clan." And take the tribalism throughout the world. The "us" versus "other" mentality. Now I am in no position to criticize the Hebrew god Yahweh, but I think he [yes, male, cause he had a consort Asherah identified in 2 Kings] made a hell of a mistake at the Tower of Babel.

But getting past the tribalism and ethnicity-ism of homo sapiens, so often the argument is made: "My origin is in a special creation direct from God, it is most definitely not from a monkey. And if you want to claim that you descended from some monkey's uncle . . . well, pity you."

And so that becomes the reality for that person. A direct link to wet mud on a stream bank in Eden, animated by the breath of Yahweh, perfect, sinless . . . then apostate, lost, a seeker of redemption.

When dealing with an Alzheimer's patient, one must live "their" reality. To do otherwise, is to bring hurt and frustration and anger and guilt onto one's self. For it is their reality that is real. It is their reality that MUST be lived. It is their reality that simply must be accepted. You can deal with your hurt and frustration of the condition of the one that you love in other ways. But one must still love their Alzheimer's patient, protect them from hurting themselves, protect them from hurting others or damaging property. But for peace and sanity to reign, one must simply live the Alzheimer's patient's reality.

In the most understanding and kind way that I can think of, interacting with people who staunchly believe impossible things of religion and will not or cannot believe possible things of science is analogous to interacting with the Alzheimer's patient. One must just let them believe their reality. There can be no other way.

kdj

For one's origin is one's identity. And one's identity is a precious thing indeed. Just go to one of the ubiquitous Scottish Games festivals and see how people line up their origins with a "clan." And take the tribalism throughout the world. The "us" versus "other" mentality.

Posted by: kdj (not verified) | 19 September 2009 at 5:05

*******

Thanks for this point, kdj. One of the earlier posters pointed to it in inverse: we can't accept x-claim because if we thread back far enough we come to a contradiction of our church name and self-identification.

And if we remember the early stories, identity was the reason for choosing the name "Seventh-day Adventist" versus "Church of God." Vive la différence! :)

It's a good way to interpret the intensity of these and similar discussions.

"My fight is “with materialism, not evolution”? It’s correct to say materialism is the fundamental challenge. But I am trying to use language that will resonate with people inside of Adventism."

Chuck the reason your language will resonate with people inside Adventism is because probably 95% of them don't have even a basic understanding of what evolution actually means (perhaps the Spectrum readership would be a generous 85%). You could tell them evolutionary biologists want everyone to quit believing in God and the majority would probably believe you.

So why add to the misunderstanding?

The new atheists are materialists who happen to - like the vast majority of other scientists and philosophers, materialists and nonmaterialists alike - accept evolution. They use it in their arguments but that does not make it an evolutionist argument.

Charles says: "Yes, doctrine matters, but practice—discipleship—is the point. David Read cannot show a single reason why devotion to a literal creation week makes better disciples than simple faith that frets not over the when and how of creation."

A "disciple" who doesn't believe what his master says is a funny kind of disciple.

If this were only about origins, then maybe you're right that it isn't worth fighting about. But it isn't about origins or even science; it is about theological liberalism. I can't go along with you because I've seen where this leads. It leads to Elaine. For Elaine, "discipleship" means only ethical behavior, "Christian" behavior stripped of any belief in God, Jesus as the Son of God, the supernatural, etc. You'll start by saying that theories of origins don't matter, and you'll end by trying to hang on to the resurrection, which you won't be able to do, because you long ago surendered the only principle that would enable you to do so, namely, that the Bible's miraculous claims, its supernatural claims, trump philosophical naturalism.

I think Chuck's essential point is very worthwhile and so I appreciate his draft editorial for our reflection. But I see very good things from those who seem to disagree somewhat vehemently with him on some things. For example, it has to be true that there is a limit to what can believe or disbelieve and still be "Christian" or "Seventh-day Adventist". There is a point that holding tight to two contradictions is both not healthy and not logically possible. So here is how I look at this general issue.

Reality is whatever it really is. Whether I know reality or, upon knowing, believe it or not is irrelevant to whether it is the way things truly are. Some people have thought that the Bible taught the Earth was the center of the solar system, or even the universe. It is now almoswt universally held that this was a "misinterpretation" of the Bible. In the meantime the reality continued regardless if how folks understood the Bible. Some have said that the Bible teaches a certain date or very close approximate date for the earth to be brought into existence from nothing. I personally do not find this teaching in the Bible. I understand there is an Ussher's chronology and an argument to be made, based on various assumptions about the perfection of the record of "begats" and how long Adam and Eve were alive before begetting Seth, etc. But there is no statement in the Bible I am aware of that purports to concretely set forth a specific date. Thus, even very strict YECs seem to have some flexibilty for their interpretation of such dates. I also agree that it probably was EGW's view that this date was right around 6,000 years ago, but that is a different subject.

Then there is the issue of whether the time for the "creation" of the Earth relates to everything in the universe or whether there was something already "here" just not in the form we now see. Someone raised this issue as well in terms of it apearing that the Spirit was brooding over something and then created. Furthermore, every Adventist that I have ever talked with about this understands that whatever creation was going on regarding Earth there was something already in existence whether this was heaven only with angels or even other worlds with their beings already in place. Thus, the creation of the Earth was not the initial creative act, and therefore the universe is older than the Earth and the Bible has nothing at all to say about that age that I know of. I do not think that those who could be called YEC advocates say that the entire universe was created simultaneously with the Earth about 6,000 years ago, although I will perhaps learn something from responses to this.

Thus, whether the universe was created 14 billion years ago, or 1 million or 50,000 makes no theological difference to me. It does make a big difference that God created it whenever it was, and I find the idea of the Big Bang conceptually consistent with God's creative act -- lots of energy being used to create matter. It also is not particularly problematic if a rock on Earth is said to be 4 billion years old or 50,000 since it seems to me it is consistent with something being here before plants, animals and humans. Reality is whatever it is and someday I will know the reality and it is fine if I have to wait for that certainty in this area of knowledge. It is also is perfectly fine for others with interest in geology, for example, to investigate and explore the world and find out what they can about this.

It makes a very great difference, however, whether God is the Creator or not, it seems to me. If God cannot create, then I don't see how He can recreate or resurrect, and re-creation and resurrection seem to be foundational to Christianity. Does it matter if the reality is that God created in a special way on Earth 6,000 years ago or 1 million years ago? I think not. My inclination is that the special creation was on the "younger" end of things, but whatever the true reality is for age does not disturb me if God actually did it. The current hardcore neo-Darwinian, materialistic naturalism totally rejects this creator God and I find it to be impossible to simultaneously accept this view and the Creator God view. They are completely alternate ways of thinking about "reality". Should Christians love them as Christ loves each human being? Absolutely and unequivocally. Should Christians support "freedom of conscience" for such people to believe what they will? Absolutely and unequivocally. Should we employ and direct those with such views to teach as reality their views to students in SDA-owned and operated schools? Should we hire Richard Dawkins as a professor at La Sierra? I think not. Could we invite him as a guest lecturer or workshop leader to broaden the horizons of students at Pacific Union College? Sure. Truth does not need to fear exposure to criticism or questioning.

I think Chuck's core point is that if we are spending out time, attention and energy as a community of disciples fighting over whether the original creation was 13 billion yeras ago or 1 million, or the special creation of life on Earth was 6,000 years ago or significantly longer ago, then we are spending our limited personal resources in a somewhat useless way in an area of endeavor that the Bible does not actually "answer" and we are not doing what the Bible actually enjoins us to do in spreading the Good News about God. We major in minors and create a lot of heat but no light.

The issue of creating in 7, 24-hour days is something else. This is not necessarily related to a Young Earth chronology. In other words, if in reality God acted in the 7 days and did it 6,000 years ago or 10 million years ago he could have still acted in 7 days. So it seems to me that Young Earth is different than 7 day creation and I often see them conflated in these discussions.

My understanding of the Bible teaching is that God certainly "could" create in 7 days given his attributes. I also would not be surprised to learn that most Bible believers thought the Bible meant to teach that in fact He did create in 7 days. That's what it says to me when I read it. To me it also makes the sense in the context of a Great Controversy and free moral agency and the Fall. But the issue is whether, if reality is something else, could it be that we have misunderstood the Bible on this and it was meant as poetry or something and God just created in a different way? Maybe. And that answer is a huige difference to me.

Although I can conceive theoretically that this whole Bible and God thing could be totally wrong and different than reality, I have chosen to strongly believe otherwise for what I think are good reasons. If I am wrong then it is a crucial and fudamental error which shatters my worldview (which won't actually matter since I will be dead and gone. Period.) Whether God chose to create in 7 days or some other time period is not the same magnitude of importance. It will not shatter my fundamental worldview if the reality is 7 days or a billion years. I can make my arguments, encourage others to make their conclusions and move on in Christian brotherhood with someone who has a different view on this topic. The list of Bevin's beliefs strikes me as fertile common ground on many really important things about the Good News leading to brotherhood in Christ. It sounds as though he and I could disagree on the exact role of "evolution" and the time period for these things, perhaps the role of Noah's flood, but it seems as though the common beliefs might be more important than the differences on timing, partly because I can hold in my mind the idea that I might be wrong in my interpretation of that topic. I suspect there might be a longer list of common ground with David, but perhaps other areas of some disagreement, still leading to brotherhood in Christ.

Thanks, Chuck, for encouraging us to prioritize our thinking so that the most important things take precedence.

Ken is right that none of us is in a position to know how the world came to be, if and when it was created, and how long ago it was created, if it was created. These are matters upon which we cannot have any certainty in this life. We just don't know, and we cannot know this side of eternity. That being the case, why don't I take a more laissez-faire, live-and-let live approach to this issue? Why am I such a hardliner?

Two reasons. First, we ARE in a position to know what the Bible says about this. The Bible says that the world was created in six days and, using the chrono-genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 and other biblical data (and allowing for different numerical data between the Septuagint and the Masoretic), we can calculate that this was between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. (This straightforward reading of Scripture was repeatedly endorsed by Ellen White--whom many of us believe was an inspired prophet or messenger of God--over the course of more than 50 years.)

Second, why would anyone doubt the biblical version of earth history? Again, we ARE in a position to know the answer to that question. Western civilization has developed a science that is methodologically naturalistic, meaning that appeals to the supernatural are ruled out, a priori. Appeals to the supernatural are "against the rules of science." Science has applied this naturalistic method to the interpretation of data, such as rocks and fossils, that bear on the issue of origins. Applying naturalistic assumptions and interpretations to these data, science has developed a theory of origins that posits that life evolved over the course of hundreds of millions of years. This theory seems impressive to many Christians because they are naive regarding the extent to which philosophical presuppositions influence the interpretation of data. People naively assume that the data give rise to the theory, when the reality is that the theory creates the data.

So we have two ways of "knowing" about origins, or, more accurately, forming beliefs about origins. One way is to believe the Bible, the other way is to believe a theory arrived at by applying functionally atheistic assumptions to interpret data bearing on the issue. So we have a choice between theism and atheism. But if you're a Christian believer (not you Elaine), haven't you already chosen theism? Are you now going to try to tack an atheistic origins theory onto your theistic/biblical worldview? It doesn't make any sense! Why would it even occur to anyone to try to join atheism to theism, naturalism to supernaturalism? A phrase like "theistic evolution" is an oxymoron, because it really means "supernaturalistic naturalism."

That is why I take such a hard line on this issue. Because it is an attempt marry radically opposing and mutually inconsistent philosophies. It is an attempt to water down a biblically based system of doctrines with an atheistic doctrine of origins. And if it stopped with origins, that would be one thing, but of course IT DOES NOT STOP WITH ORIGINS!!

The experience of every liberal denomination is that once Darwinism was accepted, the floodgates were opened. The high view of Scripture was lost. The authority of Scripture was cast down. Every miracle in the Bible is unacceptable to modern science for the exactly the same reason that a creation and worldwide flood are unacceptable, to wit, because they depend upon acceptance of the supernatural. They depend upon belief in a God who acts in history, and who will act in the future, with the second coming, the resurrection of the dead, and the world made new. Once we accept Darwinism, it is all gone. All of it. Here is what Richard Lewontin famously said about methodological naturalism:

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, . . . in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

I take the converse position. We cannot allow an atheistic foot in the door of Adventism. Because if we ever admit that atheistic science is right and the Bible is wrong, IT IS ALL GONE. There is no principled stopping place. Once we've let go of the literal ark, we have no metaphorical ark to carry us safely through the flood. The universal acid of naturalism will sweep everything before it.

The initial issue was: Should not Seventh-day Adventist colleges and universities be totally transparent as to what they teach? Nobody within or without the Corporate Body of Adventism is willing to tackle that issue. Chuck is President of one such institution. Why doesn't he step up the the plate and hit that one out of the ball park instead of trying to renovate E.G. White's young earth testimony. His forth coming essay is just going to cast more doubt on the basic issue.

Why not simply tell the truth.

1. Nobody knows either the age of the earth as a sphere or as the base for a highly diverse biomass.

2. The Chronology of the Bible suggests about 6000 years.

3. Ussher presents a hypothesis that the earth is about 6000 years old and Christ will return and the Sabbath 1000 years will be spent in heaven. That is simply one man's opinion.

4. E. G. White supports a young earth view--based upon her claim to special revelation as God's messenger to an end-time generation.

5. Physical Evidence suggests that the last Ice Age in the Northern Hemisphere was about 10,000 years ago.

6. Human remains and artifacts suggest that humans occupied North American immediately after the last ice age.

7. Radioactive isotopies suggest a very old physical sphere---many good scientists thus insist that fossils and artifacts found within, next to, or infused with these isotopies are also very very old.

8. The present array of species could not have fit in Noah's ark in the numbers suggested in the Genesis narrative.

9. The Chinese culture appears to have existed as long or longer than the Genesis narrative of the Tower of Babal.

10. There is no biological evidence for progressive evolution--only mutation and adaptation as seen and recorded by Darwin.

11. There are cryptic passages in the Genesis narrative that suggest unnatural couplings that induced God to cleanse the earth with a flood.

12. Geology suggests a massive catastrophic event or events since a biomass was first present on earth. Sea floors high in mountains. Biomass buried thousands of feet below the present earth surface as coal, oil, and/or gas. Massive limestone and salt deposits. Huge movements of land masses over thousands of miles.

13. Any dating of the earth or its contents is based upon assumptions untestable by experimentation.

14. Pick a hypothesis, believe in its validity and you have taken a step in faith not science.

15. As for me and my house, we believe in the Creation at a time unknown and the fall of man also at a time unknown. We also believe in the Christ event at a time known for a reason also known. So by faith we believe in a Creation by fiat and Redemption by and through the Substitutionary Sacrifice of Jesus Christ the Lamb slain from the foundations of the earth.

As the poet said: "Our times are in His hands who said; A whole I planned. See all nor be afraid." Tom

I do not think that those who could be called YEC advocates say that the entire universe was created simultaneously with the Earth about 6,000 years ago, although I will perhaps learn something from responses to this.

Ken

Ask and ye shall receive. ;-)

Genesis 1:16 (KJV) And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

The center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is about 26,000 light-years away from earth.

The Triangulum Galaxy is the most distant object visible to the naked eye at more than 3,000,000 light-years away.

Therefore, even if you were to accept the goat herders theories and dispute their genealogy and the evidence of modern telescopes, creation would have occurred a minimum of more than 3 million years ago.

A more basic question is: Most every SDA accepts the idea of Moses having composed the Torah. Problem is, the Persian Calendar was not used in the ANE until after the fall of Babylon yet, ~800 years prior to the exploits of Cyrus, Moses is supposedly telling the Israelites to begin the High Holy Days in the 7th month of the Persian Calendar.

The mythical 10 Commandments event is much more shattering to the SDA Church than the quibble over the level of ignorance (or delusion) required to believe a magic creation 6,000 years ago.

..."13. Any dating of the earth or its contents is based upon assumptions untestable by experimentation"...

unfortunately this statement seems not to be completely true....

there are myriads of ways one can reach the conclusion that the earth is far older than Ussher and EGW's interpretations of the Old Test allow.

separate branches of the meshweb of science are constantly "proving" other branches.

check out the errant boulders not far from AUC on my post here:

http://www.atomorrow.net/discus/messages/16/236.html?1252415305

the half lives of radioactive materials can be ascertained by experimentation....and then the method can be useful in establishing age "ranges", invariably exceeding Ussher's limits.

Cosquers Cave listed in the link above proves that the "waters" have come UP, not gone down as described in the Old Test after Noah's alleged flood.

that rise can be dated. and the oceans rise to cover the entrance to Cosquers Cave stopped access to it for paleo painters, limiting the age of the paintings to ages prior to the oceans rise.

the flooding of the Bering Land Bridge can be dated, and surprise, it coincides with a change in the climate as wooly Mammoths become frozen as cold Arctic waters now can flood south.

The course of the Yellowstone Super Volcano from along the Snake River Valley to its present position as the N.American continent grinds west over the "hotspot" can be proven by geology and radio dating.... and the goatherders who wrote the ancient texts knew nothing of that...neither did Sister White who surmised that volcanos and quakes were caused by underground coal fires...possibly from a horse and buggy ride thru parts of Pennsy where that may have been the local case!!!

the movement of the Hawaiian islands toward the NW can now be proven, and wonder of wonders!!! the time-distance computation from the hotspot under theBig Island which has created the archepelego, coincides with the radio dating of the volcanic material the islands are made of. The increasing friability of the rocks as one moves away from the Big Island proves the increasing age of the rocks as erosion and weathering act upon the rocks. And precise GPS located on the sites of some of the worlds greates telescopes act to prove the whole interconnected story.

this type of interconnected information is no longer in dispute, only the details needing to be woked out.

the story of the Hawaiian Islands is all the proof anybody should need to disprove Ussher and EGW's version of the goatherders legends!!!

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/haw_formation.html

The erosion of Niagara Falls up river can serve to date the melting of the ice ages..back to 10-15,000 yrs....but it does take interpretation and interpolation to date and understand the multi-hundred million year age of alternating layers of limestone and shales which form the bedrock the falls cut their way thru.

and all the salt under Lake Erie? how do creationists explain that other than a miracle? how about layers of halite at the bottom of the Med..which are only formed by the evaporation of salt water? which geology meshes with the Town of Saltzburg, Austria,,,,where there are layers of halite salt inside the mountains!!!

fossil corals confirm that millions of years ago, the daily tides were more often than today, which astronomy predicts would have happened from the 3-4 Billion year ago impact of a planetesimal into earth, creating our moon which was much closer to earth, making for the faster tides... which is recorded in the fossil corals.

and while the statement #13 at the top which provoked my comment could be seen as partly correct...that many of the items we now understand cannot be directly tested by experimentation, that concept is misleading because there is such an interrelated web of scientific information now available that only the uneducated, or the wishfully ignorant, or the religio-Oldtimers patients would choose to ignore it.

While we do not know details as precisely as scientists would like to understand things, the big picture unfortunately is NOT what we were taught.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/contents.html

and continuing to require belief in scientific falsehoods as a prerequisite to acceptance in the church will negatively affect the church's membership as people vote with their feet thru the back door, and severly limit any 3rd world "growth" to the scientifically uneducated, the intellectually non curious, and the wilfully ignorant.

and that is the basic problem with religion in general...
it is almost impossible to admit that any current or past belief is wrong..because that admission might call into question the validity of other beliefs.

while in science, new research is always looking to prove or disprove current theories...which process seems to result in the best understanding of the truth available...and promises to provide the most likely best answers based on common sense and research...

while religion too often rests on its ancient tales and laurels and unon-common sense (talking snakes, floating axe heads, guys surviving underwater for daze in the belly of a giant fish, or for "40" daze in a desert without food or water, etc) and promises to have their deity punish if not kill non believers.

and while science does not promise me a life in the hereafter, where lions teeth will have to be be modified to chew grass next to the sheep they become friends with, it does help me understand how things work in the here and now.

David says

1. Western civilization has developed a science that is methodologically naturalistic, meaning that appeals to the supernatural are ruled out, a priori. Appeals to the supernatural are "against the rules of science."

This is not quite correct, and the distortion pervades the rest of David's reasoning. Science does NOT rule out the supernatural.

Science merely requires that scientific rules give statistical repeatability - that there be things that you measure, formulae you apply to predict results, and the results statistically meet the predictions. This does NOT exclude the possibility of occassional divine intervention.

He continues

1. Science has applied this naturalistic method to the interpretation of data, such as rocks and fossils, that bear on the issue of origins. Applying naturalistic assumptions and interpretations to these data, science has developed a theory of origins that posits that life evolved over the course of hundreds of millions of years.

Science has developed a set of data and formulae that correctly predict what will be found when we look inside the cell and inside the rock. These data and formulae are consistent with what we see happening in the world around us today.

Now he begins to inject his own biases, and goes WAY off the rails

1. This theory seems impressive to many Christians because they are naive regarding the extent to which philosophical presuppositions influence the interpretation of data. People naively assume that the data give rise to the theory, when the reality is that the theory creates the data.

To put in bluntly, this is slanderously wrong. The data are repeatable field and lab measurements that anyone can do, and which the YEC's have utterly failed to find a valid alternative explanation.

The fact of the matter is the Earth and life on it look old. The only YEC explanation for this is God created a huge lie.

There are Nobel prizes and other honors awaiting anyone who can find data that invalidates any major portion of the theory of evolution. There are people who are trying to do it every day. And they are failing.

David the says

1. So we have two ways of "knowing" about origins, or, more accurately, forming beliefs about origins. One way is to believe the Bible, the other way is to believe a theory arrived at by applying functionally atheistic assumptions to interpret data bearing on the issue. So we have a choice between theism and atheism.

This is NOT the choice. The choice is a three way choice between

(1) An literal reading of the OT that goes way beyond the literal reading of it by the society that produced it, which fails to account for the known internal and external inconsistencies in it.

(2) An understanding of the OT as people's capturing of other peoples stories of God's involvement in their lives, with the expected inaccuracies that such human recording entails.

(3) The same as (2) but denying or downplaying God's involvement and stressing the ability for humans to invent such stories

By creating a false equivalence of YEC=theism Evolution=atheism, David is deliberately omitting the choice taken by huge numbers of Christians, and claiming that this huge number are atheists.

Nonsense.

/Bevin

Bevin

Most Christians are atheistic when it comes to the God of the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). They are also atheistic concerning the Greek Gods Zeus and Apollo. They are theistic only when it comes to Jesus.

Lets say we do away with the claims about their God of the OT. The claim that El Elyon, El, or Yahweh Created the universe, including this earth and all life forms on this earth 5,770 years ago (I believe the Jewish New Year began last evening). The claim that there was a Tree of Life. The claim that there was a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The talking snake claime. The claim that God caused a drought for 3 years and ended it when David gave the male descendants of Saul up for a human sacrifice (to be hung before the LORD). The claim that Yahweh led them out of Egypt to the Promised Land. The claim that Yahweh met moses on the mount and gave him the 10 C's. The claim that El Elyon instructed Noah about the impossible boat. The claim about the deluge. Etc, ad infinitum.

Get the picture?

Now, let's toss out the claim about the Virgin Birth. The claim about the Dove at Jesus' baptism and the Voice from Heaven. The claim about the Resurrection. The claim about the Coming that all eyes shall see. The claim about the ascension to Heaven.

You can be atheistic about the God of the OT and still be a Christian. These Christians were known as Gnostics. They said the God of the OT was the Demiurge. The literalist conservatives 1800 years ago won that battle and destroyed the gnostics along with almost all of their texts.

Now, most Christians have basically evolved into Gnostics. The God of the OT was evil. God is love. Therefore they dismiss the God of the OT like the gnostics. At least the evil traits of that God El Elyon.

Now, if someone believes that the Resurrection and Ascension were not literal events would you call them Christian? Was Paul a Christian?

Take away the first 5 books of the NT which were written later and accepted by the conservative literalists of the day and you can hardly find a passage which can be twisted by the best apologist to mean that Christ was anything more than a Spiritual being and event.

Get rid of the Literal Genesis and the whole edifice falls down on the Literalist Conservative Church of which you are a member.

but what if David is right about this:

..."if we ever admit that atheistic science is right and the Bible is wrong, IT IS ALL GONE. There is no principled stopping place. Once we've let go of the literal ark, we have no metaphorical ark to carry us safely through the flood. The universal acid of naturalism will sweep everything before it"...

meaning, once one's slide begins, all creation seems greased for the occasion.

but the good news? giving it all up means.... one can begin

1) drinking tea
2) enjoy an occasional glass of wine
3) go skiing on sabbath, even you're in the medical profession, in which case you could instead work and take a paycheck anyway even under the oldtimers rules
4) one can begin to re-read the old stuff, and understand it for what it is...
5) and accept a lot of what sciences sez, including that volcanoes are NOT caused by underground coal fires,
and accept that
6) amalgamation is not how the dinos or the "other races" got here,
and accept that
7) we probably will never find tall, majestic people living presumably on jupiter without sin...
and learn how
8)rising ocean levels due to global warming caused long ago by natural forces well before Al Bore got involved caused Cosquers Cave, and flooded the Bering land Bridge, and melting glaciers are beyond our control, so lets keep drilling for oil and consider nuke plants until science perfects fusion tech.

lets not wait for believers in ancient goatherders tech to help solve the climate, energy and social issues.... maybe now that he's gone, we can put up windmills off Cape Cod which Teddie opposed despite his official liberal status (not in my front yard!!)...might also be worthwhile remembering that fewer people have died in nuke accidents in this country than in his upturned Oldsmobile

but giving up our interpretation of the ancient stories, especially the wild end time tales, might suggest we could stop telling people they are gonna die...then be raised up, be shown what they missed the first time, by not listening to us... then be killed again!!!

by our Loving God.

and maybe we could get on with making this a better place in the here and now, instead of threatening a divine death to those who disagree.

As Chuck might say, I mis-TYPED!

"At least the evil traits of that God El Elyon" should read "At least the evil traits of that God Yahweh".

And a good quote for the progressive SDA's (Yahweh atheists)

“Science advances one funeral at a time.” --- Max Planck's succinct view of academic flexibility.

The statement could be usurped and read as : “Religion advances one funeral at a time.”

Fellows

I don't intend to respond to each point made in rebuttal.

I didn't say that the earth was 6000 years old nor did I say that God created the universe at the same time as He created a biosphere out of the earth.

I believe that the earth is at least as old as the solar system and even the Milky Way in which resides. I do suggest that the Sun, Moon, and Stars became visible from earth during the creation of the biosphere in the "dividing of the waters from the waters." Never-the-less one certainly can not make the Genesis narrative walk on all fours.

At a much later date: The biospherre was introduced to the earth which here to fore was a barren as Mars or the moon.

Dating is very exact science within serious limits. The problem is the extrapolations made secondarily to the dating.

One must agree that the Old Testament came to us out of Alexandra, Egypt during the Greek period. They made use of a vast library of materials collected. They certainly adjusted the pre-flood dating to correspond to the Egyptian history which was 1000 years longer than typical Hebrew history. They simply added one hundred years to each generation.

Also the Book of Daniel is a compilation of at least two if not three manuscripts. It was written as an object lesson to the young men in Jerusalem who were adopting the Greek life style. The contrast was sharp between Daniel and his buddies in their captivity and the young Jewish men of the Hellenistic period.

I still stand by my position that both the creation story and the evolution hypothesis are an exercise in faith not science.

The Redemption story is built upon much sounder ground.

Tom

John wrote:

"the basic problem with religion in general...
it is almost impossible to admit that any current or past belief is wrong."

This is a most important point: Never saying "I was wrong," is
an admission of fallibility and an honest confession between two people. Why is it not a million times worse when it is the position of a religious institution and its millions of constituents? It infers the idea that the "church can do no wrong; it is always right."

Neither the church nor humans are perfect or inallible or inerrant. To pretend to that state is to claim no authority received from God; unless the Adventist church wishes to emulate the Roman Catholic Church in its papal encyclicals. If that is the
type of church people are seeking, it's doors are still open.
That church, however, did confess to being wrong about the Galileo affair--only 400 years later. Will there be an Adventist church 400 years from now?

Elaine, if you dismantle the Bible and declare it false, you have nothing. Elainism maybe, but who wants that? What do you have to offer separate from the Bible. The Bible has declared in Christ is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. To dismantle the very vechicle that tells of that hidden knowledge is taking on a lot personally, Elaine.

Col 2:1I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. 2My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, 3in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. 5For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.

Teaching common ancestry in our schools would inevidibly mess with the Salvation and all things salvific. Science is what it is, as far as it has gone. Recognize the extrapolations and speculation for what it is. Start with this statement by Stephen Gould, noted evolutionist in the magazine Nature in 2000 about Ernst Haeckel's work:

""Haeckel’s forceful, eminently comprehensible, if not always accurate, books appeared in all major languages and surely exerted more influence than the works of any other scientist, including Darwin…in convincing people throughout the world about the validity of evolution... Haeckel had exaggerated the similarities [between embryos of different species] by idealizations and omissions. He also, in some cases — in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent — simply copied the same figure over and over again.…Haeckel’s drawings never fooled expert embryologists, who recognized his fudgings right from the start. Haeckel’s drawings, despite their noted inaccuracies, entered into the most impenetrable and permanent of all quasi-scientific literatures: standard student textbooks of biology... Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because…textbooks copy from previous texts.... [W]e do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks!"[1] "

http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_Evolution_and_Cases_of_Fraud,_Hoa...

The claim that El Elyon, El, or Yahweh Created the universe, including this earth and all life forms on this earth 5,770 years ago (I believe the Jewish New Year began last evening).

Posted by: keafan (not verified) | 19 September 2009 at 4:33

*******
Keafan, I commented on this point the other day; perhaps you missed it. Yes, Year 5770 began yesterday. The Jews do not universally hold that we are 5,770 years out from the beginning of the universe, or from the beginning of Earth, or the beginning of life here. The number simply marks the start of the Adamic story; nothing more, nothing less.

Within Judaism, there are 1,000 years or more of writings and teachings responding to the questions raised by this, including the possibility of prior creations, prior catastrophes, and lots of mythic events. In collapsing this rich tradition into "The Bible says exactly what I believe now and this means X" we are missing a lot about the community that gifted us their scriptures and stories.

One of the recurring problems in Christianity is misapprehension of its Hebrew foundations. I'd encourage you to revisit your own assumptions about those foundations.

By Maggie:

Chuck Scriven said:

Well, my point is that age-of-the-earth ANALITY, leading as it does to fighting about the details of doctrine, distracts us from the Gospel to call to ACTION.

Here is the dictionary.com definition of anality:

noun, plural -ties. Psychoanalysis. the condition or quality of having an anal CHARACTER; collectively, the personality traits characteristic of the anal stage of psychosexual development.

In the same post, Chuck Scriven said:

What I do object to is judgmentalism on either side.

Chuck, how do you respond when people suggest your character is "anal?" And the "they started it" argument is not worthy of you or Spectrum. I'm sorry.

The only "solution" that you seem to be suggesting is that the "anal" people go away, or, at least, be quiet so the rest of you can "serve God."

This does not strike me as an elegant solution.

This is not a science/doctrine problem, it is a people problem, it seems to me.

People problems are not solved by silencing or steamrolling the "problem" people.

The science issues have just served to open up the fountains of the deep and allowed the Leviathan of the real attitudes of the people involved to come up...for healing.

If you plow people under (Glacier View redux), your "service to God" will be marred by the muffled cries of those you have buried in shallow graves.

Has Adventism learned nothing in 30 years?

One last attempt.

A theologian, nameless to me, stated, "The Old Testament states He is expected. The Gospels tell He came, lived, and died. The Epistles tells us He lives and claims us as His own. The Revelation tells us He reigns."

To me, the Old Testament tells me the condition of man. The Gospels tells me the Character of God, the Epistles tells me faith in His accomplishments makes us children of the King. The Book of Revelation describes the grand reunion.

With that I am content. Thank you Moses, John, Paul and all those who kept the faith in spite of mystics, dogma, and hersey and personal agenda.

I am the son of a farmer/bulder. I live in the concrete not the abstract. Jesus Christ is Lord. To the extent that others give that testimony I share fellowship and expectation. Amen.

Tom

KM

I read your post a while back when you mentioned the rabbinic tradition and the various levels of literalism among jewish people today. I didn't respond at the time because I believe that what some jews today believe about their tribal documents has no relevance to the subject at hand. Some jews believe, like the OT states, that the physical dirt in the area described in the Torah is holy and belongs to their tribal god Yahweh. They are the only humans that are entitled, by Yahweh, to occupy that parcel of dirt. Yahweh CHOSE them, over ALL other people, to be HIS PEOPLE to occupy HIS INHERITANCE from The Most High God, El Elyon. El Elyon had 69 other sons who each received a different piece of dirt on earth. But Yahweh got the title to their land and they are His People. Period. Full Stop.

Its the Literalist (non-Gnostic) Christians that began this teaching that the Bible is LITERALLY the Word of God. If its the Word of God it implies that, since God is never wrong, then the Hebrew Bible is not wrong. That's what caused the problem with Galileo and the subsequent adoption of the "wrong interpretation" excuse.

I know of rabbis that are so conservative they have written that its ok to kill a gentile if a jew needs one of their organs. Gentiles are dogs or some lesser form of life than a jew. And yes, you can drift all the way to the Kabbala movement and their attempt to explain the relationship between an infinite, eternal and essentially unknowable Creator with the finite and mortal universe of His creation.

The Babylonians took the jewish leaders into captivity. When Cyrus freed them many, if not most, stayed (who would want to go back to that backward country after being born and raised in Babylon?). A LOT of material, including the Torah, seems to have come from Babylon or been based on Babylonian stories. I can't help it if the Catholic church wanted to cement into stone the ramblings of Genesis based on a few words from preachers in the NT. Not my problem at all. But, to now appeal to the current thinking and writing of a minority of rabbis about Genesis is a cop-out when coming from the hand of an (I assume) SDA.

IMO, of course. The SDA church was founded on Sola Scriptura, not the Bible plus whatever knowledge is forthcoming down the satanic scientific pipe. Ellen says that geologists who come up with ages longer than the Biblical account were taught by Satan. Now, the students of Satan are teaching at LSU and elsewhere. THAT seems to be the difficulty in the current hurricane sweeping through the SDA Campuses.

I determined several years before Ford that Miss Ellen, the reigning Queen of Adventism, was a brain damaged, mentally ill, false teacher. I left. I stand up and call BS when I see it. The less honorable way is to sit around and maybe quit paying tithes and offerings while keeping your names on the books, the Adventist health care jobs, and enjoying the Saturday pot lucks while crying and complaining that the church won't stop viewing Genesis as literal.

You are not genetically an Adventist like a jew is genetically jewish. Jewish is a religion but is larger as a race or tribe or clan or whatever you want to call them. Personally, I know a jew that is an atheist, married to an Egyptian Arab. Another jewish friend is a beautiful woman with red hair and blue eyes like a good Irish person. They come in all physical combinations and situations AND beliefs concerning the book handed down from their ancestors.

They come in all physical combinations and situations AND beliefs concerning the book handed down from their ancestors.

Posted by: keafan (not verified) | 19 September 2009 at 7:07

******
I absolutely agree, and this is why I often object when discussions are predicated on assuming that Jews speak with one voice, or have ever done so, or that such a (nonexistent) univocal stance supports or refutes Adventist doctrine.

Nor am I referring solely to 20th or 21st Century opinions on this. There has been vibrant debate for millennia.

Thanks for the engagement.

By Maggie:

Keafan said:

You are not genetically an Adventist like a jew is genetically jewish.

But to be historically, Adventist carries its own set of imperatives as forceful as any gene pool, it seems to me.

One cannot run history backward, or jump out of it, in my view. "Accepting history" is the only realistic choice, it seems to me.

The difference between process historical thinkers and most other empiricists may be analogous to the difference between Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein: while both are empiricists, Bohr sees physical change as a function of unrepeatable quantum events, while Einstein sees change as a function of enduring relativity principles.

Einstein’s world is regular enough to be run backwards; Bohr’s is not. Bohr looks at unrepeatable accidents, random events, and decisions in all their exceptionality, unrepeatability, and irreversibility.

It is this Bohr-like focus on the exceptional that distinguishes historical process thinkers. (...)

...some people at least, must learn literally to sense the whole from a particular community’s location, and to see that sensibility as revising a chain of sensibilities that, together, form the history of a spiritual culture.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2999

The term "atheist" was first used by Romans against the early Christians. They would not worship the Roman gods, so were a-theists." The early Christians where the first atheists.

All Christians are "atheists" when compared with Hindism, animism, and all other non-monotheist religions. It is only a derogatory term by the one who uses it about "other" religious beliefs.

Since my post I haev had a pleasant day walking around Dublin, Ireland. I would like to comment on some comments made by David just after my earlier post.

You say that we know what the Bible has to say about when the Earth was created and that it is about 6,000-10,000 years ago. Ellen White, however, does not endorse 10,000 years, or 9,000 years, or 8,000 years or 7,000 years. As you correctly point out, she consistently talked about 6,000 years ago. IF you can handle that it might have been up to 10,000 years ago you are already out of harmony with Mrs. White's understanding. However, you completely support my position that the Bible does not anywhere make a concrete statement about when the creation occured. As you agree, in order to come up with the "Young Earth" age from the Bible we have to make many assumptions such as that the chronoligies meant to be and were totally accurate and did not leave out any generation from the beginning. That may be a reasonabel assumption, but it is not something the Bible explcitly teaches and it would also not be out of harmony with any Bible concrete teaching to assume there could have been generations that were not included for many reasons. If you yourself cannot say for sure that it is 6,000 years by agreeing with Ussher and White, then you must admit that the Bible does NOT actually teach a specific and exact date. I have come to this view: that the Bible does not purport to speak exactly to this date and that Mrs. White was a product of her environment on this point and God did not unequivocally tell her something that He had not revealed in His Word.

This does not mean that I have accepted materialistic naturalism as a fully sufficient means of explaining everything. It simply means I am not dogmatic about something that the Bible was not dogmatic about itself.

I totally agree with you that the preconceptions and philosophical worldview that someone has influences the way they can perceive and assimilate "data". On the other hand I disagree with your final statement:"Because if we ever admit that atheistic science is right and the Bible is wrong, IT IS ALL GONE. But "atheistic science" is right ABOUT SOME THINGS. That is, we can calculate the force of gravity and vectors and velocity so that without reference to God "a-theistic" we can launch a spacecraft and land it on the moon or put the 2 ball in the side pocket. The problem is when it arrogates to itself more than can be known. One possible example: I can agree that we can now figure out the half-life of some radioactive processes under conditions that we observe. What I think is too mcuh is to then ASSUME that conditions have always and only been as they now are. The "always" refers to uniformitarianism. The "only" refers to something else. For thousands of years people could observe that "heavy" objects fell down when no longer suspended. Eventually Newton came up with laws of motion and gravity. But today I saw the law of gravity being "broken" as a heavy thing remained suspended in air and moved forward. Of course I am talking about an airplane. What happened was that we discovered that gravity was not the only thing influencing stuff and something else could "overcome" the effects of gravity, not by "breaking the law" but by finding how it in reality interacted with other things that were not fully known early on.

I often enjoy Tom's view and I agree with him in believing that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." I agree with you that neo-Darwinian, materialistic naturalism does not provide an accurate understanding and the understanding it posits is anathema to Christianity.

Elaine, trouble is you need to use your vocabulary in the modern context. And it means something different today and you know what that is.

Chuck, evolution and chance needs "deep time". YEC does not. Could God create instantly millions or billions of years ago? Sure. But you do not talk of the errant dating systems that Old Earther use. The flaws in these systems are legendary. Yet you want to dismiss it by saying YEC is a distraction to the real issue of God as creator. Is it?? The billions of years are one of the main arguements of Evolutionists, not a sidebar discussion.

God, our creator doesn't need billions of years to have the Bible be true. We just need scientists to be truthful about the errors in how they got to OLD Earth. I for one am not convinced that you or anyone else need to slide to billions of years to pacify the scientist, but point confidently to the error of their tools used to get to billions of years, give or take a million or 5 million years.

Dear Mr. Scriven,

I have some additional comments regarding Nietzsche and your response to me. You write:
---snip---
"Keafan takes us to Nietzsche’s sneering suggestion that 'mercy' can only be an offering of those who actually have power. But that little claim is not my main point, and I suppose I made a mistake in using the word 'mercy.' I will be careful in the published editorial to use the word 'compassion,' and make appropriate revisions in the sentence. Nietzsche clearly had negative views about compassion."
---snip---

My first comment is that it is me, Robert Jacobson, and not Keafan that you are responding to. As far as I can tell, Keafan agrees with your original claim of what Nietzsche says but disagrees with its content.

Secondly, I did NOT claim that Nietzsche says mercy is only an offering of those who have power. Rather, I argued that for Nietzsche, mercy emerges naturally from the will to power. Moreover, if you look at the passages I referenced you will find that for Nietzsche, mercy is a self-overcoming of the compulsion to vengeance. Self-overcoming is a hallmark of the powerful but, as far as I can tell, is not limited to those who have power. In fact, "having power" isn't a phrase I would use in describing what Nietzsche meant by power, because in Nietzsche's view a peasant ascetic can be "powerful", whereas "having power" implies a certain political/military power that is not necessary. I hope this is a clear distinction.

Thirdly, about your proposed correction: I think exchanging 'compassion' for 'mercy' is not sufficient. What Nietzsche denigrates is pity. The word compassion has the connotation of a moral imperative which Nietzsche certainly does not intend. Indeed, even for native English speakers unfamiliar with Nietzsche's thought, compassion and mercy are synonyms--or at least near synonyms--and so if your goal is to communicate what Nietzsche actually says then I think compassion is a poor choice. Otherwise, people will get the impression that Nietzsche says something which is the exact opposite of what he says (as I earlier argued).

Finally, I see nothing "sneering" about Nietzsche's philosophy of mercy. I mean, there are so very many real examples of him sneering. Why invent one? And there are so many things in his writing that are indeed "to his discredit", why pick this one little thing that isn't?

I agree that your one little comment about Nietzsche is not even relevant to your point in the article, and so I acknowledge that it's stupid to "pick a fight" about it. I hope you do not interpret my comments as attacking your article. It's just that I think that the comment is a factual mistake that's worthy of correcting. I'm sorry if I have come across as "attacking" in any way.

Sincerely,

Robert Jacobson

Has anyone read new article about the fossil discovery of a Raptorex a pint-size version of T Rex?
It turns out that this discovery has completely overturned present opinion regarding the evolution of T. Rex. Here is the honest statement of Dr Brusatte one of the scientists on the team:
"In short, much of what we thought we know about tyrannosaur evolution turns out to be either simplistic or out-and-out wrong."
I wonder how many more wrong opinions are there in the evolution theory.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8259902.stm

My "simple faith in God" requires that I trust His Word. His Word is very clear that the 7 days of creation were around 6,000 years ago...and that He made all plants and animals, including humans, within a one-week period of time.

Humans can argue amongst themselves all day...but I just want to have a "simple faith in God".

Tom,

"With that I am content."... with that macro view...me too!

Elaine, "The term "atheist" was first used by Romans against the early Christians. They would not worship the Roman gods, so were a-theists." The early Christians where the first atheists."

Good! On this we agree! They/Christians claimed there was no other God for salvation other than Christ and thus were "atheist" to the Roman's Pluralism. I suggest they would reject "RELIGIOUS inclusivism and pluralism" that is passed off by many today...they certainly would not have needed to die if they had accepted other "gods" and opinions...including the Judaizers.

regards,
pat

All that may be known about god is based on human culture.

Life is a perception.

Why do we bite and kill each other over these perceptions as Paul asks.

Life is an experience to be lived.

Conflict is the device that drives us forward but too bad we have go to such drastic lengths as killing each other.
over our perceptions

We become like th deity we worship and admire.

By Maggie:

Robert Jacobson said:

I'm sorry if I have come across as "attacking" in any way.

I also am sorry if I have come across as attacking in any way, Mr. Scriven. (I don't know what you prefer to be called.)

However, what seem like implicit assumptions in your article and posts are very unsettling to me, and put me in apprehension of an unfortunate rupture, to the extent that they indicate wider trends.

I hope I've misread your intentions.

At first I was alarmed that you seemingly lightly brushed aside the whole construct of Adventist theology in your Objection Three to YEC.

I was further alarmed when you used the word "anality" to describe those who hold to traditional Adventist theology, and suggested they just "outgrow" it and become humble.

So those who oppose your thinking are anal, immature and not humble? Seriously?

I believe that is called "poisoning the well" in the genre of ad hominem logical fallacies.

I'm at a loss to know how constructive dialogue can ensue with people so labeled, though the responses to your article and remarks have been very civil and well thought-out, it seems to me.

I should probably just go away and be quiet, but it seems to me that the measure of Adventism's impact on the world will be the measure of the its own internal social depth.

There are no shortcuts to solving Adventism's "people problem," as Glacier View stands reminding us.

I am loathe to believe that you would consider it a positive development if conservative SDAs would capitulate, or go away en masse, allowing the rest of you to continue with God's imperatives, whatever you envision them to be.

I hope you will share your vision of how those backward Adventists should overcome being anal, immature and not humble in a way that serves the whole fellowship, as well as their own best interests.

Loomer advanced the idea of stature in the late ‘70s, near the end of his life, partly in an effort to answer the spiritual emptiness of the idea of process per se, which, by itself was for him just another abstraction, often improperly worshipped.

Stature was a person’s capacity to hold together, within his or her interior life, ideas and affections contrasting so widely that, if they were any wider, they would destroy that person’s unity as a person.

Loomer was impressed by the strength of character required to take within oneself fundamental contradictions, particularly contradictions to all that one cherishes.

For him, to do this was to live, and to live in the most strenuous and rewarding way. It was to acquire the grounds for creativity and to experience God, because God was whatever it is in the world that encourages one to absorb and reconcile the most destructive contrasts, to embrace the enemy, to bring the enemy within oneself.

To do this was not to leave history and its wildness, but to envision and to take into oneself the whole, including its wildness.

Further, stature was for Loomer an aesthetic reality and was rewarding enough to let one face the difficulty of living through a wild history.

It was rich and rewarding enough to counterbalance, without denying, the pain of historical responsibility and historical solitude. Given its rootage in a sense of the whole, it provided even a measure of religious consolation.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2999

Thanks for considering.

Over forty years earlier John Dewey had reveled, instead, in what Loomer neglected.

For Dewey, "the Great Community" was, we might say, the community with stature.

It was a society able to feel its own interior life, to appreciate its enormous and apparently irreconcilable internal differences, even its spiritual differences, and to harmonize those differences without diminishing that the Ideas or symbols that could provide such harmony were visions of whole, comprehensive enough to digest a society’s differences in worldview, and to begin to move those different worldviews toward a common vision.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2999

> Has anyone read new article about the fossil discovery of a Raptorex a pint-size version of T Rex? ... I wonder how many more wrong opinions are there in the evolution theory.

Don't read too much into this.

The Theory of Evolution is like big dictionary, where people have been adding words as they discover them, and other people are trying to put in definitions of the words. Every so often, a set of related words has to have their definition changed - and that looks like a big deal ot the people who specialize in those words, but from the point of view of an outsider, there is no significant change.

Jay,

"All that may be known about god is based on human culture.
Life is a perception."
--------
Is there any reason I should accept your perception? Do we not know anything and should we just celibrate mystery and what we don't know?

It is true we do not know everything. It is not true that we do not know anything but "perception" IF we accept the "words" of scripture.

Deut.29:29 “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law."

Deut.30:11-14.-"For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. 12 “It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ 13 “Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ 14 “But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it."

"For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,And the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.”
1 Cor.1:18.

regards,
pat

Chuck wrote in his essay:

"There is no evidence of aggressive, young-earth creationism among the early church theologians."

Nor did the early church even consider hundreds of problems that concern the 21st century: abortion, contraception, homosexuality,
women's freedome and many, many more which have been made issues by the Christian church today. Their worldview was no different than all their contemporaries: their "world" consisted only of the Mediterranean area, and their knowledge was quite limited as literacy was approximately only 5% of the population.

They adopted a simple gospel for a simple life. There is repeated comparisons made between a church 2 millennia ago and bemoaming why it cannot function and accept ideology that was rational at that time.

Better that the church should approach the problems today and not continue to compare with an early church that was in its birth pangs. There have been many additions made to the church in the intervening millenia and they are the problems faced today, not at all the same as yesteryears.

They did, however, have problems at the church's initiation, of accepting those who wished to maintain the status quo of the many Jewish practices, and the Gentiles, who were willing to give up their pagan gods, were castigated for not adopting all the Jewish rituals. Ironic? Which group made the more drastic changes?
The solution adopted, was to pluralism: the Jews were allowed to observe their old rituals and practices, while the new gentile believers were not made to accept new practices such as circumcision, a specific worship day, and the dietary restrictions.
We should learn from them that the ideal is to learn to live together without forcing all into the same mold--which is the crux of the problems seen today. Like the Jews, it s the young earthers, not the old earthers who are raising the most objections--like the Jews of Jesus' time: they had held these belief for so long that the new ideas presented by the gentile believers "rocked their world" and they were the ones objecting.

Elaine said:

"The solution adopted, was to pluralism: the Jews were allowed to observe their old rituals and practices, while the new gentile believers were not made to accept new practices such as circumcision, a specific worship day, and the dietary restrictions.
We should learn from them that the ideal is to learn to live together without forcing all into the same mold--which is the crux of the problems seen today. Like the Jews, it s the young earthers, not the old earthers who are raising the most objections--like the Jews of Jesus' time: they had held these belief for so long that the new ideas presented by the gentile believers "rocked their world" and they were the ones objecting.
"

Elaine, this statement may be true of how to help run a secular society which could be based on any concept, book or principle that offers the least amount of conflict, but salvation has a single path through Jesus Christ as Biblically stated, which in one place promises a sword, not peace. Be clear, are you attempting to create a smooth running secular, finite society/societies that come and go, or trying to teach individuals how to be saved and the principles surrounding that, which will last for eternity. Evolution confuses salvific issues. Compromise can help smooth contention in a secular society, but one has to return to absolute principles when salvation is discussed.

Charles Scriven writes: “Faith in God as our Maker matters deeply. And that is why fighting with one another over how or when creation happens is like fiddling while Rome burns: it is a distraction, a neglect of our larger responsibility to bear witness for God….In Adventism, we fight over the details of creation….If we were to minimize divisive and pointless internecine squabbles, we’d bear a better witness. Why don’t we?”

Sounds like a “can’t we all just get along” kind of speech. Unfortunately, it downplays what is to many of those involved a critical issue that has been buried too often and needs to be resolved both personally and corporately if we are to effectively witness. After all, what should we bear witness to if we have compartmentalized our thinking (the faith/Adventist side, the science/skeptic side) and when these divisions are mirrored in the deep, fundamental divides within the church? What “God” is it that we are to bear witness to? What Truth? How are we to approach other people—must it be to “win” them (the heathen!)? Or is it sufficient to “merely” express love? There are so many differences between the two major factions in Adventism today that it is difficult to even agree on what is the essence of Adventist belief or what practices are necessary/proscribed.

While disagreeing with much of what Samuel Koranteng-Pipim writes, I can at least agree with the underlying premise that the approach one takes to biblical interpretation is decisive in the many other issues we debate (origins, women’s ordination, homosexuality, etc.). This was patently obvious in the recent Faith & Science conferences. And while I disagree with Clifford Goldstein’s views on what those who disagree with him on evolution should do with their church membership, I can agree with him that there are indeed many implications that arise from how we understand Genesis.

It is a fact—that Charles Scriven knows well—that there is a divide within Adventism (and even within Christianity) between those who take the Bible to be the inspired very word of God, to be accepted by faith as an accurate account of history, science, etc., and those who have a “lower” view of biblical inspiration, understanding the Bible to be the product of editorial assembly of strands from oral tradition, myths, stories and laws from neighboring countries, etc. This difference, i.e., the battle over the fundamentals, is not unique to Adventism nor is it something so trivial as to just be swept under the carpet or ignored so that we can get on about the business of witnessing for God.

Debates over YEC and evolution are useful to proponents of both sides of the biblical interpretation debate partly because there are a lot of data that can be brought to bear in the discussion. There is scientific and historical evidence that is compelling to one side, and the other side is fond of bringing up “God’s tiny mysteries” that they think refutes that evidence. Even though the debate can’t be won because the two sides argue with different assumptions and thus one can never convince the other, the debate is a convenient proxy for the larger battle over interpretation.

As I think Beth mentioned in another blog discussion months ago, we lack a compelling Adventist theology for those who feel compelled by evidence to discount the historical and scientific accuracy of the early chapters of Genesis. Koranteng-Pipim, Goldstein, et al. (and several of the above posters) have argued that if you believe in evolution then you have no basis to continue to believe in… (fill in a long string of beliefs from the Sabbath to Christ’s redemptive sacrifice). While the evidence of millions of Christians in other denominations and in books by Miller, Collins, Falk, etc. testify to the possibility of being a Christian and also an evolutionist, outside of their theistic evolutionary arguments (which don’t sound like Adventism), it is hard to find coherent and comprehensive treatments (at least in the popular press; I’m not a scholar in this field) that reconcile evolution with a personal God of the type popularly understood in more fundamentalist churches. Certainly, there is no such treatment within Adventism.

The absence of such a reconciliation of Adventist theology to contemporary scientific understanding and historical/linguistic analysis of biblical content is understandable. Anyone tackling this would risk their employment, credentials and even membership. Witness the LSU attacks. But I think such a theology is sorely needed. Until someone develops it, how is it even possible to say that the debates over origins are needless distractions? Could it be, in fact, that these debates are essential birth pains out of which a more coherent and contemporaneously relevant Adventism can emerge? An Adventism that has the power to hold our young people and draw thinking people to it, rather than spitting them out the top of the elevator (per Bull and Lockhart)? Couldn’t it be that the Truth IS important, and that only when we have individual and corporate integrity (as in “integral”; having a coherent view of scientific, historical and theological truth, rather than this view that we take the Bible as it reads and argue in the face of massive evidence that science and historical evidence are wrong because the Bible says so) will we even get to the point where we can testify to the Truth of anything?

So, Charles, my challenge to you and other non-fundamentalist theologians in Adventism is to develop an Adventist theology that is true to science and also reflects our Adventist heritage. A systematic theology textbook that is true to science and true to textual criticism, archaeological evidence, etc., while remaining recognizably Adventist. The text should accurately reflect current scholarship without being trumped by concerns over church adminstrators’ views. Or do you think Goldstein, Read, et al. are right, and this is impossible, and the rest of us should just leave?

------ A couple other points follow -----

1. You define the most extreme form of evolutionist viewpoint (your second-fold dogma related to “new atheists”), that in going beyond science proclaims, “The world is matter, nothing more, and for all useful purposes, God is dead. Religion is at once irrelevant and pernicious.” You then list four objections that these evolutionists can’t answer. You conclude by saying that we shouldn’t be arguing in the church over origins. But the fact is that “new atheists” are not the evolutionists making the argument IN the church; it is theistic evolutionists or some other God-believing stripe. Thus, it seems a bit of a straw man to list objections for the extremists rather than those within the church. (I see after writing this that Beth posted some comments along the same line, with which I agree).

2. You also wrote: “The 28 points document speaks of (and thus the church officially endorses) ‘literal 24-hour days’? Why does this myth persist? I have pasted in, below, belief # 6, which alludes to the Genesis 1 story, but nowhere says ‘literal.’” While not (yet) voted at GC session, such a clarification of FB#6 WAS voted by the annual council or GC executive committee (I forget which) after the Faith & Science meetings. I’m sure if pressed, it would get voted at a GC session. The primary reason not to would be to hold the church together, but I don’t see any sign on the fundamentalist side that they see value in that. (Elaine—the pages in the “Adventists Believe” book expound on #6 but aren’t the official position of the church. The explanatory text is not voted doctrine, simply the views of the authors/committee that wrote the book. However, they probably accurately reflect the majority view of members, if not theologians and scientists).

David Read,

Thanks for posting from your 2006 article, “A Plea for Intolerance”. I already thought you were on a witch hunt; now I know the playbook you are following. Your quoted paragraphs clearly show the political strategy you are following with the aim of driving away “Darwinian Adventists” before they can have enough influence in the church to make life uncomfortable for the fundamentalists. This makes it much easier to understand why you later claimed that Adventist Darwinians are “insane”. Dialogue is clearly not what you come to this forum for. Rather, you are trying to stir the pot to upset as many “liberals” as possible in hopes of driving them from the church (and inflaming other conservatives to do the same). Remarkable!

I checked out your blog on Islam today. http://myislamwatch.com/ Interesting. You cite approvingly those in Western Europe who are speaking out for a European first amendment and protection of free speech. In your post on Geert Wilders’ speech in New York, the point is made that if Europeans do nothing about the threat of Islam, the rights of gays and women will be sacrificed. Wilders says that the Islamic immigrants are taking advantage of the freedoms in Europe and the weakness of the multicultural left to embed themselves and eventually take over.

It strikes me as ironic that you are so stridently against the Islamists on that website, yet are against freedom of speech within the church (at least by church employees) and borrow the alleged tactics of the Islamists by inserting yourself into the Spectrum blog, using its “weakness” of plurality and tolerance to promote your intolerant and purgative agenda! You are obviously a student of history and politics and are willing to use power to achieve your aims. It will be interesting to watch the effect you and your allies have in the church over the coming years. Given the demographic shifts, there is every reason to believe you will “win”, much as the Islamists are projected to in Europe, and for similar reasons. I guess by then I’ll be on the outside looking in.

RT
I appreciated your well-written plea for an SDA theology that considers more deeply some of these issues. I hate to say that it might be asking too much because it sure is needed.

"There is no evidence of aggressive, young-earth creationism among the early church theologians."

There did not need to be any aggressive young-earth creationism as it was not an issue. The old-earth theology never became an issue till later dates. Some Greeks had a philosophical notion of descent with modification. Darwin and others revolutionized the idea in the mid-1800s.

I have the book Origin of the Species sitting here on my desk as I am rereading it. Interestingly, the original title is not too politically correct. It is "On the Origin of Species by mean of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life" ummmm, no wonder the book paved the way for making slaves of the black race. Or fueling the fires of Nazi Germany. Or lending fuel to Karl Marx.

Yes, this issue was not the focus of the early church. It was not an issue....

RT said:

Could it be, in fact, that these debates are essential birth pains out of which a more coherent and contemporaneously relevant Adventism can emerge?

I believe that is exactly what it is, or could be, if handled prayerfully, but nothing is guaranteed.

Dismissing the discussion of the deeply held beliefs of a sizeable portion of the church as "pointless" is certain to be productive of further division and social pain, as well as loss of coherence and function of any message Adventism might have had, it seems to me.

If this goes down as a turf war, the spoils won't be worth having.

Read many things today, but the last thing that's caught my eye, and which I'll be reflecting on overnight is a 1922 quote from Harry Fosdick Emerson.

"If some young, fresh mind here this morning is holding new ideas, has fought his way through, it may be by intellectual and spiritual struggle, to novel positions, and is tempted to be intolerant about old opinions, offensively to condescend to those who hold them and to be harsh in judgment on them, he may well remember that people who held those old opinions have given the world some of the noblest character and the most rememberable service that it ever has been blessed with, and that we of the younger generation will prove our case best, not by controversial intolerance, but by producing, with our new opinions, something of the depth and strength, nobility and beauty of character that in other times were associated with other thoughts."

The sermon that this statement was a part of contains appeals to simplicity similar to those in Chuck's OP, which only tells me that the Church at large has been torn apart by questions of community health and who should sling out who for which beliefs for the longest time. Breaks my heart.

Larry Geraty, in 1974, wrote an article published in Spectrum. It was entitled, “The Genesis Genealogies as an Index of Time.” He quotes William Green, a fundamentalist. Green speculates that the Genesis chronologies were written to illustrate the shortening of life spans after the flood; consequently, they only needed to be complete enough to make that point. He says,” If this hypothesis correct, it would be a mistake to try to make the numbers serve a chronological purpose.”

The hypothesis, upon which we are to dismiss the Genesis chronology, is speculation on his part as to the purpose of the chronology. Is a hypothesis, based on speculation, adequate to dismiss the veracity of Scripture?

The chronologies in Genesis bear witness to a young earth, no question. Certainly, they are, in some respects, incomplete. Genesis 5:3,4 says simply that Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old. Nothing is said about either Cain or Abel. Other sons and daughters of Adam are also introduced.

While we can conclude from this passage that the chronology is incomplete, enough information is given to produce an accurate chronological record. Contrary to Green, I could just as easily say that the chronology was intended to provide a continuum from Adam to Noah to Abraham to the children of Israel.

According to the Genesis record, Adam was born 1948 years after Adam was created. Abraham was contemporary with both Noah and Shem who were contemporaries of Methuselah who was contemporary with both Adam and Seth.

The Genesis chronologies become unclear with the birth of Joseph. Jacob died in 2255, after his family settled in Egypt. We have plain testimony in 1 Kings 6:1 that Solomon’s temple was started 480 years after the Exodus.

While intending no disrespect to Dr Geraty, it appears that the foundations for the dismissal of the veracity of the Scriptural chronologies, regarding the age of man, were being laid more than 30 years ago, right here in Spectrum.

I'll close off commenting here on Spectrum now, but I just want to say this (just one person's opinion): I think Adventism is a culture of humiliation. Humiliation and counter-humiliation.

This is human nature, it seems, and in Adventism, Ellen White's personality seems to play this dynamic out as well, institutionalizing it, I think.

She humiliated people with her Testimonies, and her followers have used her words through the years to humiliate and control others. Whatever good she accomplished was marred by this unfortunate tendency, it seems to me.

Some of Adventism's most strident critics are the formerly humiliated. I've certainly played this role.

A poignant line from Desmond Ford's son Luke's diary at Glacier View:

I went swimming. Someone asked me who I was. "The son of the heretic," I answered.

Glacier View was a landmark humiliation, and though I haven't thought there would be a pay-back, now I'm not so sure.

Reading Chuck Scriven's article makes me wonder. It's easy to be distracted by the anti-evolution portion, which seems to be refuting "the new atheists." I wonder how many atheists join, or stay in a church like SDA. I have to think the salient issue is the casual, but ominous, IMO, writing off of conservative SDA thought as "pointless."

He says "the landmarks matter," but the landmarks don't hold without the Creation Week in traditional Adventist thinking. The landmarks are gutted if you take away Creation Week, and the structure collapses for a large portion of SDAs.

People may think I am overdrawing this, but I don't think I am. The structure of the article makes it almost inscrutable, as some have pointed out. That fact alone makes me pay more attention to what is being said, and not being said.

A schism, i.e, hostile takeover, would heal nothing, and cause untold harm, I believe, and would render Adventism useless for the foreseeable future.

I'm not saying Mr. Scriven is advocating schism, but writing off "the other side," is certainly a prerequisite, I think. It lays track.

It is said that Germany's humiliation after WWI incubated Hitler's takeover, in part, at least. People can't live with humiliation forever. There is something in us that seeks balance.

Rather than blaming anyone, which is useless because this is endemic, I hope Adventism can transcend this pattern. I believe it's possible, with prayer.

Granted, conservative attitudes have done harm, but as Arthur Patrick said, let us not forget the rock from which we were hewn. I believe there is a richness in Adventist symbolism that can be greatly developed and be a true gift to the world.

The kids deserve a healthy church family, and Adventism has so very much to offer.

I hope you stay together. I hope you make it work. I guess it's none of my business, but I can't help caring, and I have family in the church.

I wish you all the best.

... no wonder the book paved the way for making slaves of the black race. Or fueling the fires of Nazi Germany. Or lending fuel to Karl Marx.

Jeff

Slavery was in its death-throes when the book on your desk was first published. In fact, slavery had been outlawed in most of western civilization prior to the publishing of On Origins.

Hitler relied on the economic theory of Thomas R. Malthus. The 'Malthusian' theory that population would continue to grow (He was a minister and thought it was God's will) was the basis for Hitler looking at different alternatives to supply the food and space for what Hitler said was a "new army" each year of 900,000 Germans. He settled on getting rid of the undesirables (Luther was the biggest influence) by exterminating Jews, homosexuals, etc (to reduce the 900,000 annual increase) and to expand the borders of Germany so there would be more land to grow food. Hitler was opposed to the liberty loving west and the communist east.

Karl Marx, along with Engells, wrote The Communist Manifesto 11 years BEFORE 'On Origins' was published. The Manifesto was written for The Communsit League, founded 11 years erlier (1836) as The League of the Just. The League of The Just, whose motto translates to "All Men are Brothers" had as its goals "the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth, based on the ideals of love of one's neighbour, equality and justice" (The Basics of Marxist-Leninist Theory, G.N. Volkov et al., 1979, Progress Publishers). Study the Book of Acts and the writings of Paul.

Christianity paved the way for communism. The OT paved the way for slavery. Protestantism, via Luther's own "On The Jews and Their Lies", paved the way for the Holocaust.

You and I have both read Darwin's On Origins. I have also read the three volume, unabridged "Das Kapital" by Karl Marx. I am unable to think of a passage in Das Kapital which relies on Darwin's evolution of species' theory . The slavery assertion is false on its face as any non-ignorant human knows, and Hitler relied on Malthus, Luther (mentioned by name even in Mein Kampf), and his christian faith to entice millions of soldiers to their death while wearing belt buckles with "Gott Mit Uns", or God With Us.

Correction: Should read, Abraham [not Adam] was born 1948 years after Adam was created.

First of all, great discussion. And aside from a few ideologues, some good points, and remarkably civil forum.
A few observations.
First of all, the question, "Who's fiddling?", and "is fiddling necessarily crowding out effective witness?" Is it those who have been involved in this forum? Is it those who are pushing for the purification of La Sierra's Biology Dept? Is it those who are pushing back? Is it a fair fight? Is it a worthwhile and necessary fight?
I will stick my neck out and contend that the vast majority of Adventism is oblivious to the controversy and would tend to side with the fiddlers who are attacking La Sierra if they knew. In this respect, Chuck is preaching to the choir, because the audience of fiddlers who constitute Spectrum's enthusiasts and who are alarmed by the goings on at La Sierra, would dearly love that there were not this controversy, and that they would be accepted with open arms into the greater body of Adventism. So, it seems to me that the more important audience for this message would be those leaders and followers of the movement behind Educate Truth, and the church at large.
Secondly, while I applaud the calls for the development of a theology which accounts for the findings of science and an understanding of God. It still seems that, while the "science" of evolution makes no claims regarding God's role in this business, the implications of evolution would require a radical rethinking of God's role in humanity. It is one thing to claim that evolution is God's method of creation, but quite another to understand that man is descended from apes. This I'm still working out in my own mind. There are those who will claim it is impossible to reconcile. I have not given up and am still working on it.

Charles Scriven

First, thanks, and then a final go at some comments.

Thanks for helping me think (as I hope) more clearly. The revised version, which I turn in today for publication in the magazine, will be quite like, but not exactly like, the one you read. But I am trying to say more clearly that I am not here attacking science but attacking an ideology that goes beyond science. I am trying to acknowledge more convincingly that I do not myself know the answers or comprehend the mysteries. And I am also trying to take some of the edge off the language I use, so as to minimize the unhappy effect on those who disagree with me.

I suppose I will fall short in all three of these efforts. But I have tried. I know that what matters most is that in our efforts to be faithful, we learn to live at peace.

Again, thanks.

Now some last comments.

Does minimizing divisive squabble entail shutting down conversation? No. I am perfectly content with the very provocative David Read (and his many sympathizers) advancing his arguments. I want to shut down all refusals to acknowledge that people on both sides can, so long as they affirm God as our Maker, be welcome participants in church life. Arrogance on either side is sheer poison.

I never once granted authority (as one person thought) to the “creed” of 28 beliefs. It may (and I’m afraid it does) function that way in many minds, but the statement is not a creed. It is simply a (revisable) summary of Adventist conviction.

David Read acknowledges that he cannot show why young earth creationism produces disciples whose lives and deeds are better. For him it’s all about doctrine, but overlooks the fact that biblical pictures of divine judgment focus on HOW WE LIVE, not on difficult doctrinal disputes. Remember when the disciples reported that someone was casting out demons in Jesus’ name but was not following THEM?I Jesus said words David should consider: “Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.' (Mark 9)
Ken, thanks for make the my point so succinctly: “We major in minors and create a lot of heat but no light.”
John says the “basic problem with religion in general” is that it cannot admit mistakes. That, of course, is an unwarranted generalization. Jesus disagreed with past religious belief. Martin Luther did. Ellen White did. But his point still has a creepy resonance: fundamentalists (Christian, Islamic and otherwise) do find it practically impossible to admit that they are wrong. I suppose this is about fear (see David Read’s constant fretting over the slippery slope), and it would be good for him and all of us to take in the point Herold Weiss made in his post this week: the OPPOSITE of faith if fear.
People continues to say the landmarks are gutted if you take away the (literal interpretation of) the creation week. There’s no way I can stop you from saying so, but bigger minds than any of ours (I think against of Abraham Joshua Heschel) simply disagree. And why should we disagree if there would be a chance that in so doing we could build up the unity of the church?

As I recall, no one even tried to gainsay my claim the Statement of Fundamental Beliefs forbids the ultra-suspicious frame of mind is forbidden. Nor did anyone take on Ellen White’s assertion said fear of “new questions” and “difference of opinion” would lead to spiritual decline, or James White’s belief that a “creed” would offend the Holy Spirit. The church’s current official position is that we may expect that we will adjust our beliefs under the Spirit’s guidance.

This means any semblance of fundamentalism inauthentic Adventism.

As for Keafan’s interest in the pathway to Naziism, I have, first, no claim against his indictment of Luther. But even though it would be vulgar to say Nietzsche CAUSED the Holocaust, it is certainly a mistake to minimize the unhappy consequences, in Germany, of Nietzsche’s atheism.

Elaine, you do it again. You confuse the development of a peaceful, harmonious secular society with Salvation, which has an objectively stated formula which can not be messed with. Make sure, maybe at the front of your posts you state your objective so we can follow along!!!

"Slavery was in its death-throes when the book on your desk was first published. In fact, slavery had been outlawed in most of western civilization prior to the publishing of On Origins."

Not to mention that Darwin was appalled at the institution of slavery and was an ardent abolitionist. The "races" referred to in his book title does not mean races of people.

As for Luther, Darwin and Nazis I always loved the reply I saw in a blog to a Baptist who was harping about Darwin and Nazis:

"Those who live in Protestant houses shouldn't throw Nazis."

Thank you Chuck for putting your article up for "editorial review." I hope we have stimulated some ideas for you. It can be hard to listen to the feedback openly and politely since these are your ideas put on display (without the opportunity for the more in depth explanation that conversation brings) and I appreciate your willingness to do so.

I agree with these earlier comments by Tom:
Chuck
"We got past the Shut Door" Yes by sweeping it under the rug.
....

Posted by: Tom Zwemer | 18 September 2009 at 7:35

MaggieB

In line with your point. The Shut Door came out of the same group and the same mind-set as the investigative Judgment--and thus the entire line of doctrinal reasoning unique to Adventism.

Their line of reasoning from beginning to end is tainted with the self justification for their enthusiasm over Oct 22,1844.

The Great Disappointment of Oct. 23, 1844 merely set in motion a search for vindication not as some would have the world believe a search for "New Truth!"

Chuck really opened a can of worms when he attempted to justify abandoning a young earth view as merely a renovation of the doctrinal shift from a shut door to an open door manouver. ...
Tom

First came Miller's temporally focused time-setting theory
for the Advent "about the Jewish year 1843", then Snow's specific "Karaite calendar" date of Oct. 22, 1844 ( yet all Jews and Karaites celebrated the Day of Atonement in 1844 on Sept 23!). Then the Great Disappointment (after a whole series
of lesser disappointments in 1843-44). Then the "little flock"
who called themselves "the Sabbath and shut door," who viewed themselves as living in an "historicized parable" of the Ten virgins, bought into Hirum Edson's cornfield "vision" on Oct.
23, 1844 that "spiritualized" the Great Disappointment as a
HEAVENLY rather than an EARTHLY Advent when Christ "came to His Father in heaven" rather than an Advent to earth. This
"spiritualized" heavenly coming can never be literally confirmed or disconfirmed as other valid theories can be,
so it is "safe" from testing (except biblically). This idea
later evolved in the late 1850's into the Investigative
Judgment and attendant 1844 theology that is the only teachings "unique" to SDA's. This "unique" 1844 theology
directly evolved out of Miller's unbiblical time-setting
theory. Adventists teach that time-setting the 2nd Advent is wrong now, and it was wrong for 1800 years between the 1st
century and 1843, but it was OK for Miller to do it in 1843-44. Oh consistency, thou art a rare jewel! The current attempts of some Adventists to equate the orthodox Pre-Advent Judgment with the "Investigative Judgment" is deceptive,
because the Pre-Advent Judgment has never been tied to any
specific date as the IJ is tied to 1844, nor are the saints
on trial in this judgment. Jesus said there are two resurrections, "the resurrection of the just" and "the resurrection of the unjust" and they are separated by the
millennium. Before the "just" saints are raised they must
be justified, but this is nowhere in the Bible tied to the
specific date of 1844. Jesus said the poor publican "went down to his home justified while the self-righteous Pharisee didn't. Justification can take place in every generation,
and it depends on our relationship with Christ.John makes it simple. "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life." 1 John 5:12. Jesus makes the Gospel (Good News) simple. "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh to the Father but by me." John 14:6. "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already...." See John 3:15-21. "And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." John 5:40. "I am the resurrection, and the life:he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live

Mr. Scriven writes:
"But even though it would be vulgar to say Nietzsche CAUSED the Holocaust, it is certainly a mistake to minimize the unhappy consequences, in Germany, of Nietzsche’s atheism."

It is a strange experience for me to always be defending Nietzsche. There is so much in his thought that I disagree with, so much that is contrary to my (Adventist) world-view. But here I am again, sticking up for that arrogant snot, explicating the anti-Christian views of a self-identified antiChrist.

What is it about Nietzsche that makes it acceptable for us--liberal and conservative alike--to attach his name to any and every despicable philosophical notion or catastrophic historical event that comes along without the slightest justification? Has the community we grew up in become so confident in its collective conception of who Nietzsche is (nevermind the truth) that, almost to the man, we as individuals are instantly willing--without giving it a moment's thought--of abandoning our deeply held commitment to academic rigor, to checking our facts and being concerned that what we say is actually true? "I don't need to read his writings--I already know what they say!"

Did the Nazis use Nietzsche to further their causes? Yes, of course. But in a highly edited and controlled form. You just can't read, say, The Gay Science and then write that Nietzsche's atheism prepared the path for Nazism. You just can fit Nietzsche's atheist philosophy with Hitler or the Nazis. It just doesn't work. And remember that it was Germany's Christianity that Nietzsche was reacting to--it was Germany's churches that had become "tombs and sepulchers of God". Could it be that the sheople-quality of 19th century German Christians contributed more to the Third Reich than did Nietzsche? Could it be that Nietzsche really was on to something in his criticism of 19th century German Christianity, of 19th century German nationalism and anti-semitism? And even if so, can we bring ourselves to acknowledge publicly that this atheist antiChrist might have been right about anything at all?

I am not a historian. I make no claims to any historical acumen. It might be that atheism contributed to the rise of the Third Reich. But certainly not Nietzsche's atheism. Good grief, not Nietzsche's.

The “everlasting gospel” includes a final eschatological worldwide apocalyptic prophetic call to return to the worship of the Creator-God who made heaven and earth (Rev. 14:7).
A last-day apostasy from the original primeval faith in the Creator-God is thus implied.
Faith in a literal Creation was fundamental to early Christian theology. See Andrew Louth, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, O.T, Vol. 1, Introduction, pp. xxxix-lii..

“What benefits do we derive from believing that He is the Beginning? We become ourselves what we believe our beginning to be.”
“…if the whole body is ever deprived of its head, that is, separated from its creator, there would be an insane and empty chaos.” –Bishop Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-394 AD); Ambrosiaster (fl. c. 366-384), quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary On Scripture (ACCS), 2000, NT, Vol. IX, pp 19, 17.

“Why, Theodore [of Mopsuestia, d. 428 AD] asks, would God become incarnate if the events related in the initial chapters of Genesis have no historical basis? ‘What were those events in the distant past to which he [Paul] refers…if the historical account relating them does not signify real events…. What room is left for the Apostle’s words, … [2 Cor. 11:3], if there was no serpent, no Eve, nor any seduction involving Adam?’” –Christopher A. Hall, Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers, 1998, p. 166.

“This view that the narrative is historical does not forbid our assuming that the trees of life and of knowledge were symbols of spiritual truths, while at the same time they were outward realities. … The tree of life was symbol of the fact that ‘life is to be sought, not from within, from himself, in his [Adam’s] own powers or faculties; but from that which is without him, even from Him who hath life in Himself.’” –Augustus Strong, Systematic Theology (1907), p. 583.

“Historically, whoever has controlled cosmology has specified the underlying world-view of peoples and civilizations, and so directly influenced the religious faith, philosophy, politics, socio-economic order, and the self-perception of the populace. The battle to control modern cosmology has similar stakes.” --Lee F. Greer, “The New Ptolemaic System….,” presentation before the San Diego Association of Adventist Forums, March 8, 2003.

What is it about Nietzsche that makes it acceptable for us--liberal and conservative alike--to attach his name to any and every despicable philosophical notion or catastrophic historical event that comes along without the slightest justification? Has the community we grew up in become so confident in its collective conception of who Nietzsche is (nevermind the truth) that, almost to the man, we as individuals are instantly willing--without giving it a moment's thought--of abandoning our deeply held commitment to academic rigor, to checking our facts and being concerned that what we say is actually true? "I don't need to read his writings--I already know what they say!"

Posted by: Robert Jacobson (not verified) | 20 September 2009 at 8:13

*******
Robert, you may enjoy the writing of Marilynne Robinson. She makes a similar point with regard to some other writers and historical figures in the essay collection The Death of Adam.

Sorry to be late in catching all the conversation....David Read's calling those SDA's who disagree with him "insane" really makes further dialogue with him pointless. How can a meaningful dialogue continue under the shadows of such a label?

Those of you who are appalled to find Nietzche a whipping boy might want to reconsider the status of Luther among Adventists. Many people think of him as a beer swilling Sundaykeeper whose antiSemitism laid the foundations for the Holocaust. It seems strange to find one of the greatest Christians of the modern world in bed with an atheist, yet that is the perception of many SDAs.

Unfortunately, certain pastors promote this view because the antinomian gospel Luther set forth in works like "Christian Liberty" would destroy legalistic Adventism.

Charles, I find it hilariously ironic that you minimize my concerns as "constant fretting over the slippery slope" when the second half of your article is devoted to trying to prevent us slipping down the slope once we've accepted Darwinism. Sadly, I don't think you intended the irony.

What's more, you don't do a very convincing job of trying to stop the avalanche that you are so sanguine about allowing to start. You write, "Objection one: The ideology of evolution crowns and miters itself the final arbiter of truth, but fails to see that scientific methodology can neither verify materialism nor explain why anything at all actually exists. It puts forward as fact what is a metaphysical bias."

Well, yes, that is true, but if that is a valid criticism of the "ideology of evolution" it is an equally valid criticism of the origins science of evolution. And if it isn't a valid criticism of origins science, it isn't a valid criticism of "the ideology of evolution," either.

Frankly, I would have to agree that if atheistic science is right about origins, and the Bible wrong, then atheistic science is in fact "the final arbiter of truth." It trumps the Bible, so the Bible cannot be the final arbiter, and who else is a contestant --the Pope?

"Objection Two: The ideology rests on the assumption that all natural development is a function of chance under the iron sway of physical law." Yes, and so does Darwinist origins science. If this assumption is wrong when applied outside of origins science, then it is wrong in origins science, as well.

"This suggests that human freedom is, at best, a useful illusion. It thus makes little sense to say (and really mean) that wise choices matter, or that love and justice refer to anything remotely like what we take them to be in ordinary life." Exactly so. If Darwinism is true, then human freedom is an illusion. Every logically consistent Darwinist must be a determinist, and many of them are. Most of them are smart enough to downplay the fact that if their philosophy were really acted upon we couldn't have a criminal justice system, because that system depends on the truth of human freedom, choice, and moral repsonsibility.

"Objection Three: The ideology assumes that nature can support a moral vision of human dignity and human rights." This objection is inconsistent with the assertions you made in connection with objection two, in which you noted that if Darwinism is true, a moral vision, human dignity, and human rights are at best an illusion. The fact that right and wrong, morality and immorality, justice and injustice are so real to us suggests that the thoroughly materialistic, atheistic assumptions underlying both Darwinism and what you call the "ideology of evolution" are simply wrong. But if atheism is wrong when applied to the ideology of evolution, it is also wrong when applied to origins science.

"Objection Four: The ideology demonizes the religion of the Bible when that religion (for all its hypocrisy and fraud) constitutes history’s single most effective revolution—against resignation, against oppressive power, against indifference to suffering and injustice. The ideology of evolution fails to comprehend what Nietzsche saw and (to his discredit) celebrated: when God is dead, mercy, sooner or later, must lose sway before the willfulness of power."

Here, you're going beyond what can plausibly be attributed to the "idology of evolution." The ideology of evolution doesn't "demonize" Christianity; Darwinists do not believe in demons. Christopher Hitchens does not like organized religion and he slanders it severely (but he cheats by calling communism, which was explicitly atheistic, and Nazism, which was effectively atheistic, religions, and thereby attributing the evils of the 20th century's non-religious ideologies to "religion").

What the ideology of evolution actually teaches about religion is that belief in God and organized religions have had adaptive utility or have somehow enhanced the differential survival of believing humans. Because of its adaptive utility, theism and religion have grown with the human race. So it is wrong to say the ideology of evolution "demonizes" religion; in a way, it pays religion a compliment. Same thing about mercy. The fact that almost everyone sees mercy as a desirable attribute must mean that it, too, had some adaptive utility.

It goes without saying that in Darwinism there is no God, or angels, or demons, or life after death, or eternal punishment or reward, or tooth fairies, or Santa Claus. So obviously the ideology of evolution can never admit the truth of religious beliefs, but that is very different from saying it demonizes religion. A consistent Darwinist would have to admit that religious beliefs, although obviously not factually true, have their utility in helping to create societies that enhance the survivability of the human species (Christopher Hitchens and his ilk are childish and inconsistent).

So I don't think you've made a very convincing effort of arguing that a Darwinized Adventism would not slip down the slippery slope. I suggest you not ridicule my efforts to prevent the church stepping out onto the slope.

Carmen, I haven't called anyone insane, and certainly not "anyone who disagrees with me." I do think the Seventh-day Darwinians, if there are any, have a brain so severely compartmentlized that it might qualify as schizophrenia, but I don't think they really exist.

For all I know, they are completely apocryphal. Bevin isn't one; he took his name off the books years ago. Elaine isn't one, either; she hasn't been a member for about 25 years. She isn't even a theist. Most of the folks who post on Spectrum, like Keafan and John Alfke, haven't been members for years. I don't think Charles Scriven is a Darwinist, either, he just wants everyone to get along. He just wants to be one of the cool kids, a hip, with it intellectual, a righteous dude, not a fundamentalist (ugh, the shivers of horror that word evokes).

Can we have a show of hands? How many out there not only have their name on the church rolls, but also believe the SDA Church's doctrines, including that Ellen White was an inspired messenger of God, and also believe in Darwinism? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

MaggieB wrote:

"I'll close off commenting here on Spectrum now, but I just want to say this (just one person's opinion): I think Adventism is a culture of humiliation. Humiliation and counter-humiliation.
.......
.........
I wish you all the best.
Posted by: MaggieB (not verified) | 20 September 2009 at 11:11 "

**********
MaggieB,

Whatever you are planning to do, please don't stop writing to this blog!

Just some hours ago a (IMO) leading writer to the biggest (at least I do not know any bigger forum) Finnish net forum Suomi24 in a subsection "Adventismi" introduced this Spectrum blog to its readers.
BTW, the writer was not me, and in addition to that, I do not know his identity.

But at any rate, in many parts of the world people are just starting to read this Spectrum blog.

IMO, the writings of you and Elaine have been most interesting to me and to many others.

The idea expressed by Peter come irresistibly to my mind:

"Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

Just exchange the word "Lord" to the words "dear ladies", and you have got the feeling of being an orphan...

David

It isn't the slippery slope that is troubling "Israel" it is the termites eating away at the foundation, unseen, unheard, one termite can eat about the same amount of foundation wood as one would find in a wooden clothes pin. Just a little at a time.

Years ago, Des Ford came at the foundation with a bulldozer.
Captain Midnight took him out with one blow--all the termites gave a sigh of relief and kept on eating.

Now Chuck ate through to daylight. Ellen White's testimony is vulnerable--just look at the shut-door. Well they only opened it a crack big enough for termites.

The Captain Midnights are afraid to look or to even poke.

Only the Treasurer is willing to admit, things aren't plumb or square anymore.

It is not the termites nor the Captain Midnights that trouble me. It is the thousands and thousands of souls who have bought the line. What about them? To be set adrift without even a compass, an oar, or sail--that is the rub.

Where do they turn in their clunker?

How often did God give Ellen a false lead?
Her best stuff, she stole. When she said: "I saw": She made it up. When she said: "I was shown", Willie told her.

Now Chuck would add--Oh it was just part of that early enthusiasm--well the Investigative Judgment was part of that package also.

I have only two concerns. The income of those who honestly gave their lives to the "work"; and all those poor trusting souls without a home or a clue. It is worse by far that the Enron scam.

Having taken my name off the books 25 or more years ago, I now can visit my Adventist friends on Sabbath Afternoon by visiting the Mall. So maybe all is not lost. Tom

David writes > It goes without saying that in Darwinism there is no God, or angels, or demons, or life after death, or eternal punishment or reward, or tooth fairies, or Santa Claus.

David is repeatedly casting evolution in the worst possible light, always false light, to discredit it. As such he brings discredit on his own position.

Acceptance of evolution as the likely origin of life on Earth IS COMPATIBLE with belief in God, angels, demons, etc. Does not require it, but is compatible with it.

David writes> How many out there not only have their name on the church rolls, but also believe the SDA Church's doctrines, including that Ellen White was an inspired messenger of God, and also believe in Darwinism? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Ironic - given that the start of the current fracas was the teaching of evolution by SDA members teaching at La Sierra Uni

I know many - but it is not my place to invade their privacy by naming them here

/Bevin

Chuck,
I give you as Exhibit A, David Read's subsequent comments for the point I was trying to make. Not that I think he'd appreciate the distinctions I'm pointing out but still, there are others who might.

David,
The way you characterize and define "Darwinists" (and SDAs for that matter), I'm sure you are right, there aren't any SDA "Darwinists" on this blog or maybe even in the church.

David Read's earlier post in this thread---"Likewise, I assume that the Seventh-day Darwinians are a tiny minority of our membership, because I refuse to believe that something approaching or exceeding half the members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church are insane."

This does seem to imply that you call those who disagree with you on the point of how to interpret the Genesis account of creation are insane. Also, the label Seventh-day Darwinians (thanks Mr. Goldstein) is very polemic--is this labeling necessary and useful to conversation and searching for new truths in this complex world?

Bevin, I'm not so sure the current fracas was started by science teachers. As I pointed out above, Adventist Biblical scholars were, thirty years ago, "giving permission" for scientists to go down the deep time road. If the Biblical chronologies are not reliable time frames to measure life on earth, why not science?

The scientists may be just hatching the egg laid by theologians.

David Read,

The EGW Estate itself has published extensive documentation of the extent of EGW's borrowing (see their website), and it is well known that even some of her "I was shown" statements are borrowed (euphemism for plagiarized?). So, can I answer your question positively? Yes, so long as we accept that a broader view of what constitutes "inspired messenger" must entail, given the evidence. The same applies for some of the other doctrines--we must understand them with recognition of the implications of current research.

So to your question, the answer is yes. I am a Darwinist (meaning I believe evolution occurred and provides the best explanation of the diversity of life around us, that the earth and life on it dates to billions of years, etc.) and also believe the doctrines of the SDA church. In some areas my understanding no doubt differs significantly from yours.

As for another definition of SDA, I still accept the baptismal vows I made years ago (though understanding them differently today, and more tentatively than in the past, questioning some of them but not feeling confident in alternatives either), I faithfully return tithe to the conference (not to independent ministries like some of my fundamentalist church friends do), and I am active in my local church and have served in various roles from SS teacher to elder to treasurer (though recently those activities have been reduced as my fellow congregants are increasingly shifting towards the fundamentalist direction under influence of 3ABN and other media).

In short, you'd consider me "insane" or "schizophrenic". I know of several other SDAs, including in my local church, who are also Darwinists (independent of any influence on my part; like the gays, I guess we Darwinists are reluctant to come out of the closet in the church!). The diversity of views became quite evident a few years ago when we had the Goldstein SS quarterly on creation.

As noted previously, I DO think there is a gap in theological development within Adventism regarding the incoherence between traditional Adventism and contemporary scientific and historical understanding/evidence. I think you are correct in pointing out that there are problems in reconciling Darwinism with a **fundamentalist** Adventist understanding. But I think you are in error when you suggest that there can't be a reconciliation with Adventism period. An Adventist understanding that is not based in fundamentalism and its assertions about the nature of inspiration and inspired writings can be reconciled with evolution, I believe. I wish that people like you didn't act as you do, so that instead, a spirit of investigation and intellectual adventure could permeate our universities and instead of being intimidated into working in "safe" areas, more theologians (together with scientists) would tackle this subject and provide a comprehensive treatment of evolution and theology in an SDA context.

OK, now that I've answered your personal question and shown your assumption to be incorrect, why don't you answer me a few of mine?
1. Are you a member of an SDA congregation? Do you serve your congregation's members or community in any service capacity?
2. Do you return a faithful tithe (10% of your income) to your conference? Do you provide support to independent ministries that accept tithe from others?
3. Do you believe the Bible constitutes the ONLY rule of faith and practice for the Christian? (Or do you believe it is the Bible PLUS EGW?)
4. Do you believe the ten commandments are still binding upon Christians, including the commandment to not bear false witness against your neighbor (that would include LSU professors, Adventist scientists, "liberal" theologians, Spectrum editors and bloggers, etc.), and do you purpose to keep this law?
5. Do you believe in church organization, and is it your purpose to support the church by your personal effort, and influence? (Wouldn't that include administrators of church institutions such as LSU?)
6. What is your real agenda? Is it not to drive the "liberals" (evolutionists) out of the church (per your linked article above, a plea for intolerance)? You have a gift for writing. Why don't you write clearly and enumerate exactly what you hope to achieve?

The word Creed means statement of belief. Thus the Fundamental Beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is an expanded creedal statement. That statement includes the God inspired role of Ellen G. White. Chuck's position paper, while
evidentially true, flys in the face of "God inspired statements." according to the SDA Creed just as much as does an IJ or now pre-advent judgment.

Irrefutable evidence against a host of "Spirit of Prophecy" statements have surfaced from time to time in Spectrum authored or commissioned by the editorial board. Yet the Journal and its Web-site insists on the "God inspired role of Ellen White".

This cherry picking by apologists is no better than the alleged cherry picking by critics.

I have absolutely no idea how long a biomass has existed on earth--but I do know that it is a lot longer than the chronology endorsed by E. G. White. The other thing I know for sure is that God knows exactly when He placed life forms on the sphere we call earth. If God knew, why not E. G. White given the gifts she is alleged to have in abundance?

Thus Chuck's paper raises far more difficult questions than it answers. Tom

By Maggie:

Posted by: Tom Zwemer | 18 September 2009 at 9:51

Their line of reasoning from beginning to end is tainted with the self justification for their enthusiasm over Oct 22,1844.

I cannot disagree with you, Tom. This is a classic case of cognitive dissonance in action, it seems to me, and is even tragicomically repeated in more recent times:

Cognitive dissonance has been called "the mind controller's best friend" (Levine 2003: 202). Yet, a cursory examination of cognitive dissonance reveals that it is not the dissonance, but how people deal with it, that would be of interest to someone trying to control others when the evidence seems against them.

For example, Marian Keech was the leader of a UFO cult in the 1950s. She claimed to get messages from extraterrestrials, known as The Guardians, through automatic writing. Like the Heaven's Gate folks forty years later, Keech and her followers, known as The Seekers or The Brotherhood of the Seven Rays, were waiting to be picked up by flying saucers.

In Keech's prophecy, her group of eleven was to be saved just before the earth was to be destroyed by a massive flood on December 21, 1954. When it became evident that there would be no flood and the Guardians weren't stopping by to pick them up, Keech

became elated. She said she'd just received a telepathic message from the Guardians saying that her group of believers had spread so much light with their unflagging faith that God had spared the world from the cataclysm (Levine 2003: 206).

More important, the Seekers didn't abandon her. Most became more devoted after the failed prophecy. (Only two left the cult when the world didn't end.)

"Most disciples not only stayed but, having made that decision, were now even more convinced than before that Keech had been right all along....Being wrong turned them into true believers (ibid.)."

Some people will go to bizarre lengths to avoid inconsistency between their cherished beliefs and the facts.

http://www.skepdic.com/cognitivedissonance.html

So...why am I not reductionistic about the SDA story? Why don't I say with Chuck Scriven that they should just grow up and get over their anality, stop their constarned fiddling while Rome burns?

Well, cuz I think there's more to all this than the reductionistic explanation, true and satisfying though it might be.

PS: Pauli, you get me every time with that orphan line. I'm such a wimp....

"In Darwinism there is no God, or angels, or demons, or life after death, or eternal punishment or reward, or tooth fairies, or Santa Claus."

You have to go to Christianity to find most of them; perhaps excluding the last two. But why not also believe in them? How are they also not subjective beliefs? Just as small children believe in tooth faires and Santa Claus, millions believe in unseen angels and demons; and expect others to have the same delusions.

When anyone says their visions come from God, run for the door! It is an entirely subjective illusion, just as dreams or always individual and others do not have the same dreams--which emanate only frome one brain. It is called a "vision from the Lord" only by those who accept that the shaman, oracle reader or one who is a divinator all have authenticity. A prophet only earns that reputation when others, the more the better, also acknowledges it.
EGW could not have gained status as a prophet without a community who, at that time, were looking for "some word from the Lord" and instantly accepted it. Such folks are still with us in the world, and millions want so badly to believe, these "prophets" gather eager followers.

Pauli, do stick around, we enjoy immensely your contributions.

Yes, Pauli--I immensely enjoy your contributions also--come talk. :)

>>>> Pauli, do stick around, we enjoy immensely your contributions.
Posted by: Elaine (not verified) | 21 September 2009 at 5:32>>>>

Elaine,

I do, I do!

There is so much I'd like to ask you about some topics, but if I'got it right,

one is supposed to limit oneself to the title of the conversation.

IOW, I believe that this forum is different from aToday or aTomorrow in this respect.

>>> PS: Pauli, you get me every time with that orphan line. I'm such a wimp....
Posted by: MaggieB (not verified) | 21 September 2009 at 5:08 >>>

Maggie,

" Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27, NIV

I trusted that you godliness is including the idea of looking after us orphans, too.

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Hebrews 11:1

So, as you can see, my faith was not in vain...

Pauli

You have a way with the Bible, Pauli. :)

Ppauli, I hope you discover that this is a very "open" forum--any that allows Maggie, me and other ex-SDAs can't be all bad!

Responding to Bevin's comment date stamped 21 September 2009 at 12:50. Bevin wrote: "Acceptance of evolution as the likely origin of life on Earth IS COMPATIBLE with belief in God, angels, demons, etc. Does not require it, but is compatible with it."

"Evolution" as defined by Richard Dawkins is incompatible as I understand it. Thus, you are speaking about some other evolution. Bevin, would you please define the kind of "evolution as the likely origin of life on Earth" that you think is compatible?

Thank you.

Bevin, pointing out that science is methodologically naturalistic is not casting it in a negative light. Scientists do not consider it false or slanderous; to the contrary, as indicated by my quote from Richard Lewontin about "not letting a Divine Foot in the door," they are proud of it. They consider it an indispensible philosophical foundation of their endeavors.

And frankly I agree with them. I wouldn't want a scientific researcher saying, "I can't figure out what is going on with these cancer cells. I think God must be causing cancer as a punishment on the wicked." No. I would want the cancer researcher to keep searching for naturalistic, mechanistic causation, not throwing his hands in the air and saying "God did it." In my belief system, it is possible that God might have done it, but I would not want a scientific researcher making such an assumption as part of his science. So I'm not slandering science or casting it in a false light by saying that the scientific method is naturalistic and, in effect, atheistic.

It is a problem for me, however, when science turns this same atheistic method of truth-seeking on the issue of origins. Because in that instance, God has told me through His word in broad outline how He went about creating the world. He created it in six days, and the biblical evidence indicates that it wasn't that long ago. So a true science of origins must take into account what God said in His word about the creation and the universal Flood. Hence, the existence of the much maligned, ridiculed, and sneered at creation science. On the subject of origins, I will not allow the normal atheistic methodology of science to determine what is truth. Because a science employing methodological naturalism to determine what is truth with regard to origins must necessarily reach conclusions very different from those of Biblical Christianity. (Again, I don't think it is slanderous or puts science or Darwinism in a false light to point this out.)

The problem under discussion in Charles Scriven's piece is how to accept the origins science of evolution, which Scriven believes can be safely incorporated into Adventism, without also accepting what Scriven calls "the ideology of evolution," which would rule out all theistic belief. I just disagree with him at the outset that evolution can be engrafted into Adventism, because it is atheistic and Adventism is theistic. They come from two competing, mutually exclusive philosophies.

RT, Thanks for your response; I now have evidence of the actual existence of the Seventh-day Darwinian. Let me answer your specific questions first, and then respond to your purported embrace of both Darwinism and Adventism.

1. I am a member of an SDA congregation and teach Sabbath School twice a month and have, on very rare occasions, preached. At my previous church I was a regular lay preacher, an elder, a member of the church board, and chairman of the school board. At my current church I have not accepted any heavy responsibilities, but have invested thousands of hours in my book, "Dinosaurs - an Adventist View," which is now available at your local ABC or through Amazon.com.
2. I do return a faithful tithe and offering, and sometimes give to independent ministries like the Carter Report, but not in lieu of conference-directed tithe.
3. I do believe the Bible constitutes the only rule of faith and practice; I do not consider the inspiration of Ellen White to be different from that of the Bible writers, nor do I find her writings to be in conflict with Scripture, but inspired by the same Spirit that inspired the Bible writers.
4. The ten commandments are still binding upon Christians, and I'm curious to know how you think I'm breaking them.
5. I believe in and support a church organization that supports the mission of the church, which is, inter alia, to preach the Fourth Commandment and Sabbath sacredness and the First Angel's message. I do not support administrators of church institutions who passively allow, or actively support, the undermining of the Church's historic and biblically-based position on origins. Such administrators should be removed, and/or their institutions closed.
6. My "real agenda" is outlined above.

Now, if you really are a Darwinist, you cannot subscribe to fundamental beliefs 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 18, 20, and 23, and most of the others don't make much, if any, sense without these. For example, 9 and 10 are curious, because without a literal Adam and Eve and a literal Fall into sin, there is no need of salvation; what was Christ doing on the cross? Also strange is 11, because our instincts and tendencies are presumably survival skills that natural selection equipped us with, not sinfulness to be overcome through prayer. 13 is truncated because it cannot include our traditional understanding of the first angel's message. 14 is much tougher because, since Scripture is not the final authority, we cannot unite as a church behind the word of God. 19 is weakened, because in the middle of the Fourth Commandment, God was just messing with us about how He created the world. The teaching about the earth made new, No. 28, doesn't make any sense: is God going to do it quickly this time, or take another billion years? And exactly what about the earth needs to be made new, if death, predation, carnivory, disease and suffering were all part of God's original method of creating the earth, that he called "very good"?

I can understand that certain aspects of Adventist life are congenial to you, but you must be dealing with intense cognitive dissonance trying to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time.

>>> "Acceptance of evolution as the likely origin of life on Earth IS COMPATIBLE with belief in God, angels, demons, etc. Does not require it, but is compatible with it."

Evolution is a theory that the physical processes we see here on Earth, can and have resulted in the living organisms we see around us - and in the traces of ancient ancestors of those organisms being detectable in the rocks.

Nothing about this theory is incompatible with the concept of a God behind the rules, and a God/angels/etc. who break the rules.

Science does not say "miracles can't happen". What it says is "show me a repeatable experiment, and we'll work together on developing some rules that predict waht variations of it will do". Once such experiment is the large scale experiment that says "almost everything we see around us can understood using the rules we have developed".

Guess what - they are right! Nobody has yet found a repeatable experiment, or even gathered strong evidence of a 1-shot event, that violates those rules.

>>> Bevin, pointing out that science is methodologically naturalistic is not casting it in a negative light.

David, that is NOT WHAT YOU DID. What you said was "It goes without saying that in Darwinism there is no God, or angels, or demons, or life after death, or eternal punishment or reward, or tooth fairies, or Santa Claus."

You were wrong - and now you are trying to avoid admitting that you were wrong. I see this behavior from flamboyant debaters like yourself all the time - make an outrageous claim as a basis for attacking something, if you get away with it fine, if someone calls you on it, pretend it is not what you meant.

Evolution does not require atheism - unfortunately for you, because that incorrect assertion is the vaporous foundation of your teetering tower.

Notice another example of your nonsense.

>>> without a literal Adam and Eve and a literal Fall into sin, there is no need of salvation

This statement is down-right silly. The need for salvation comes purely and simply from the fact that we are mortal. For all have sinned ... the wages of sin are death. Doesn't need Adam. I am a sinner, and born into a sinful world.

>>> Because in that instance, God has told me through His word in broad outline how He went about creating the world.

No, He didn't. Your Bible is a translation of a copy of a copy of an editted copy of an editted copy of a capture of an oral history passed down for millenia by nomads.

For you to describe this process as "God has told me through his word" is a huge leap to a conclusion by you. A step that you yourself acknowledge is contrary to the physical evidence.

/Bevin

a true science of origins must take into account what God said in His word about the creation and the universal Flood. Hence, the existence of the much maligned, ridiculed, and sneered at creation science.

David

"Creation science" is an oxymoron and, by definition, cannot exist because if "creation" was a supernatural event a scientist, following the scientific method, would never be able to make a theory, test, and replicate the test. If science COULD, then the supernatural event was not supernatural but natural.

Creation science entails the throwing of theoretical pebbles at the mountain of physical evidence for evolution. As critics of science they are able to create doubts among the ignorant. As pseudo-scientists, they only create one failure after another to prove anything compatible with the story of Creation written by the goat herders.

Even Dr. Leonard Brand of LLU hides behind the long-age names for rock formations in his 'peer-reviewed' articles. Leonard should quit wasting money digging up whale and turtle bones and start proving the dome separating the water on land from the blue ocean of water in the sky which God spent the second day of creation 'creating'.

Nothing about this theory is incompatible with the concept of a God behind the rules, and a God/angels/etc. who break the rules.

Bevin

That is a true statement. Its compatible with the concept of A god, but the theory of evolution IS incompatible with God as found in the Bible.

If there was no Adam, then the theory of salvation as taught by Paul is false. If there was no Noah, then Jesus is false. If there was no Moses and exodus from Egypt then the whole book is junk as far as hope for an after-life. Good literature and meaningful to the jews of today but worthless as the source document for any truth or religion.

David

Your post earlier (22 September 2009 at 1:18) is 'spot on'. A non-literal Genesis makes a mockery of Jesus, Paul, Ellen, the Fundamentals, and the whole SDA theology.

Thanks for the effort in that post.

Bevin, I can't believe you're taking issue with the fact that modern science including Darwinian science is methodologically naturalistic. I really think you're being obtuse just to annoy me.

I'd like to see a working scientist try to publish a peer-reviewed paper that relies on a miracle, or miracles, or anything supernatural. Rotsa ruck. Or as Dr. Phil might say "How's that workin' out for you?" Well, Dr. Phil, its not working out. I lost my job, I can't get laboratory access, and I can't get grant funding.

You say that "Science does not say 'miracles can't happen.' What it says is 'show me a repeatable experiment, and we'll work together on developing some rules that predict what variations of it will do.'" But if something is repeatable, i.e., it happens the same way every time you do the experiment in the same way, what sort of "miracle" is that? It's obviously a natural phenomenon, unless you think that God or angels or demons are absolutely controllable and regular.

Is that what you meant when you wrote, "Guess what - they are right! Nobody has yet found a repeatable experiment, or even gathered strong evidence of a 1-shot event, that violates those rules."? In other words, there are no miracles. So there are no miracles, but science is ready and willing to accept them if there were any? Is that what you're trying to say? You're being disengenuous. Science is not ready to accept the miraculous, they are not, as Richard Lewontin said, ready to let a Divine Foot in the door.

When I wrote, "It goes without saying that in Darwinism there is no God, or angels, or demons, or life after death, or eternal punishment or reward, or tooth fairies, or Santa Claus" I was referring to what Charles called "the ideology of evolution," not Darwinian origins science. Check the context and you'll see I'm right. However, it is also a true statement in that these things are not part of Darwinian origins science, either. But I will concede your point that a person can believe in Darwinian origins and also believe in God, angels and demons; there is nothing logically impossible in that. (It's just a weird position to take, because if God really does exist, then he could have done the hard work of creation and not leave it up to time and chance.)

But you should also concede my point that theism or supernaturalism played and plays no role in the theory of evolution, but rather that theory was arrived at using naturalistic assumptions. I never wrote that "evolution requires atheism," what I keep trying to explain to you, thus far without success, is that evolution is a theory arrived at by the use of a naturalistic, materialistic (a/k/a atheistic) methodology. You can always try to engraft in onto a theistic worldview, but it was developed precisely to obviate such a worldview. Joining it to a Biblical worldview will require some rewriting of various passages of the Bible, like Genesis 1:1, which will henceforth need to read, "In the beginning, God sat around on His backside for billions of years, waiting for time and chance to create the heavens and the earth."

By Maggie:

Posted by: David Read (not verified) | 22 September 2009 at 6:14

But I will concede your point that a person can believe in Darwinian origins and also believe in God, angels and demons; there is nothing logically impossible in that.

(It's just a weird position to take, because if God really does exist, then he could have done the hard work of creation and not leave it up to time and chance.)

David, I'm not sure what Bevin is taking exception to. You clearly are distinguishing between philosophical and methodological materialism, it seems to me.

And regarding it being weird to believe in theistic evolution, Darwin said:

It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.

http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-12041.html

Regarding why God wouldn't just "do the hard work of creation and not leave it up to time and chance," it seems to me that if God made a universe with billions of galaxies, He must revel in variety.

What better way to create an interesting variety of forms than to make an iterative system that expresses both order and contingency?

Just look at the gene pool!

I tend to think the whole universe runs on a sort of quantum xerox principle, i.e., the laws at work in star-generation are at work in DNA. Wouldn't that be elegant, and so like an infinite God to figure out?

In any case, I think before too long, we'll have an evolutionary theory that contains teleology, because, for one thing, the depth of complexity is going to bump into the age of the universe as knowledge keeps increasing, it seems to (ignorant) me.

And also, epigenetic plasticity may require changes to evolutionary theory.

And I think we'll see the universe as a plasma field (Hannes Alfvén), and reason from there, at some point.

Stuart Kaufman is doing some interesting work, from what I've read.

Reinventing the Sacred (Stuart Kauffman)

Stuart A. Kauffman’s Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion recapitulates many of the ideas about the role of emergence in biology that were worked out in Kauffman’s earlier books (At Home in the Universe and Investigations), but also tries to place these ideas within a broader philosophical focus.

Ultimately, Kauffman hopes to repair the breach between reason and emotion, or between science and culture, or between a naturalistic worldview and one that emphasizes spirituality. (...)

Kauffman is thus one of the few scientists who challenges the neodarwinist consensus that is endorsed by the overwhelming majority of contemporary biologists.

http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=636

I have every hope that science and faith are compatible, but then, I view the Bible more poetically than some, I realize.

Maggie, I don't know much about physics or astronomy, but I think you're really onto something with regard to epigenetics. As I researched the issue for my book, it became very apparent that there must be some genetic mechanism, other than mere random mutations, responsible for the evolutionary changes that even creationists believed happened.

Even whithin a creationist model, there has been a great deal of evolution, and the idea that it is all just random DNA copying errors is a non-starter. There must be poorly understood or completely unsuspected genetic mechanisms at work. I think epigenetics is part of it. There must be some sort of environmental feedback mechanism that causes the type of genetic change that the organism needs and will find useful.

This is not inconsistent with creationism, because when we discover what these genetic mechanisms are, it will only increase the already stupendous complexity and obvious design of living systems and render the hypothesis of self-organization even more incredible.

David, I know nothing about any of this--I'm just playing with my intuition.

I think we will never have a Theory of Everything until we start factoring in consciousness as fundamental, in the exact same sense we consider the laws of physics fundamental, i.e., irreducible.

David Chalmers says, "once we have a fundamental theory of consciousness to accompany a fundamental theory in physics, we may truly have a theory of everything."

If consciousness is fundamental, self-organization is on the way to making more sense, I think.

And, if consciousness is fundamental, and not an epiphenomenon of neural activity, then God is on the way to making more sense also, I think.

That may be some time off.

In the meantime, I believe, with Einstein,

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

On Nietzsche. My position is a commonplace. As I am not myself an expert in Nietzsche, I will not say more except for this: please show us how Nietzsche's writings align with the prophetic bias for underdogs.

I do NOT here make a case for the whole Darwinian package. I simply mean to suggest that we who have not worn the moccasins of those who have study the evidence to the point of earning doctorates in science should seek to sympathize with their struggle. Let's TOGETHER work out ways of dealing, in the spirit of Scripture, with the evidence our senses place before us. Perhaps we will someday, after the Lord's return, agree that the best way is David's way. But for the present, he sees through a glass darkly. Too.

Again, I want us to embrace a conversation, not think anyone (least of all I) has settled the issues. David, and to a degree Tom, want to characterize me as someone who knows the answers, or thinks he does. I don't. I think I can make a plausible case for or against some things, but I don't think I have final answers.

What I abhor (and here I would pretty closely, I expect, with Tom) is the kind of rigidity that shuts out scientists who really want to be Christ's disciples.

Chuck

"... obvious design of living systems and render the hypothesis of self-organization even more incredible."

David

Each year scientists make a prediction about the likely strain(s) of flu which will be dominant that winter. Most years they get it correct. Are they able to predict the action of God's hand in evolution?

Also, your terminology of "random mutations" seems to imply that genetic drift has no influence. A story- the last 2 days I have been helping a friend. He is disabled from scoliosis. Some forms seem to be inherited. When he was younger he was married, then went into the military (1970's). During his medical exam the scoliosis was diagnosed and he was discharged. He returned home and on telling his wife about the scoliosis she left him. He has been unable to find another mate. He was handsome, 5' 8", blue eyes, full head of hair, etc. Just the curve of the spine, and likely that it would be passed to his children. No woman wanted to risk their potential children getting his 'condition'. This is a real-life example of genetic drift.

Negative mutations survive less often than neutral or positive mutations. Mutations which are beneficial, whether stronger physical traits, higher intellectual ability, increased life-span, etc tend to survive. Negative mutations many times lead to spontaneous abortions, short life-span, or traits undesirable in a mate such as scoliosis.

Recently I read about a family in San Fransisco that had a baby with 6 functional fingers on each hand. Other relatives had six but not necessarily functional and had been surgically removed. If this trait were to lead to some advantage and a meaningfully higher birth rate it would be possible that all humans could have 6 fingers in X thousands of years. I have blue eyes, and the current research concludes that this mutation occurred ~10,000 years ago in Eastern Europe. Can I see better because of the color? Not that I know of. I DO know that women find it attractive, therefore it is a mutation which has been successfully passed on. Red hair is a mutation- a birth defect, basically. Your premise, implying that mutations are bad and survive at a high rate is flawed.

Keafan, your friend's sad tale is an illustration of artificial selection, not genetic drift. Ditto for your eye color example. (Although I'm not ready to concede that blue eye color was created by a mutation--how do we know it wasn't in the original created gene pool, the original palette of eye colors that God created us with?)

It stands to reason that, because of sexual selection, individuals with poor genetic characteristics tend to leave fewer offspring. But I don't know of any creationist who doubts the ability of natural selection to weed out defective genes, thus protecting a breeding population from the rapid degeneration it would otherwise suffer. So neither I nor any creationist of which I am aware argues that natural selection has no effect.

I just don't believe that random DNA copying errors create useful genetic information to be selected by natural selection. I don't believe there is such a thing as a "positive mutation." So natural selection works only to weed out the bad mutations, not to propagate the good ones, because there are no good mutations. (Don't bother me with insects/insecticides and bacteria/antibiotics: those mutations are bad, too.)

BTW, the six-fingered hand is not as rare as people would imagine. It crops up regularly and is mentioned at least once in the Bible.

Chuck

You read me wrong. I have no beaf with Scientists. Only those who claim to hold to the Spirit of Prophecy and champion other contrary positions. I simply say--you can't have it both ways and be honest to students or to God. I believe in a young earth in the context of Dawkins. I believe in an older earth in the context of Ussher/White.

I believe in Creation by fiat. I believe in Salvation by faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

I fashion my life as a citizen of God's New Society.

I repect a person's right to differ. I do not repect a person who tries to straddle the fence.

I have recruited to a State University tenured faculty who were Seventh-day Adventists, Latter Day Saints, Presbyterians, Methodists, Luthers, agnostics and athesists, Jews, Greek Orthodox, Unitarian, Islam, and Roman Catholic. Each was vetted as to their competence, honesty, and work ethic. Their belief system in religion or politics was never an issue in employment, in advancement, salary, rank, or in fellowship. We worked together to produce the best graduate possible. Our graduates always ranked in the top 20% in the nation and several times number one in the nation on national boards and specialty boards. Several have gone on to high office in their professional organizations.

It is not a man's beliefs that trouble me. It is his fidelity to those beliefs and not a cherry picker while claiming orthodoxy. Tom

It stands to reason that, because of sexual selection, individuals with poor genetic characteristics tend to leave fewer offspring.
Posted by: David Read (not verified) | 23 September 2009 at 1:50

Actually David I would have to disagree here.
In some situations it has been documented that the less intelligent indiscriminately breed and produce offspring that are beyond the resources available.
My point being that more offspring can actually be the source of regional extinctions.

Among the Amish, intermarriage is the rule. They also have large families. The perpetuation of genetic anomalies has already been studied and is a fact. Below:

Bethesda, Maryland — An international team, led by researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), has discovered the genetic cause for a rare form of microcephaly, a devastating brain disorder that has stricken infants among the Older Order Amish for nine generations.

The study, published in the September issue of Nature Genetics, describes the gene mutation that underlies Amish microcephaly (MCPHA), a birth defect marked by a profoundly small head and brain size. Over the past 40 years, 61 babies with MCPHA have been born to 23 nuclear families in the Old Order Amish community in Lancaster County, Pa. None of the children has lived beyond the age of 14 months, and most die between 4-6 months.

There are many additional articles of autism and other gentic anomalies in the Amish community.

... those mutations are bad, too.

I guess if you are willing to be so intellectually dishonest as to claim that a genetic trait which reduces the likelihood of offspring to be "artificial selection", and the ability of bacteria to proliferate a mutation which gives them the ability to survive current antibiotics to be a "bad" mutation, then its obvious you are not even worth trying to reason with.

David,

Your claims about speciation are simply false.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

Account for this...

http://www.cricyt.edu.ar/institutos/iadiza/ojeda/grecia%202000.htm

"Apparently instantaneous speciation then is also possible in mammals, and the role of genome duplications in triggering evolutionary novelties is stressed by this unique rodent. "

/Bevin

David wrote "So natural selection works only to weed out the bad mutations, not to propagate the good ones, because there are no good mutations."

ROFLOL.

The good ones propagate because they outbreed the bad ones.

"There are no good mutations" is an article of your faith, and it is absolutely absurd.

Every year mutated flu viruses spread rapidly through the world precisely because they have had a good (for them) mutation.

Humans have spread from Africa throughout the world, and changed

> their skin color
> their body shape
> their eye socket shape
> their hair
> their ability to drink milk

by good mutations.

The human population of the world is not starving today because of beneficial mutations to grasses.

Dogs and cats are successful domestic animals because of good mutations.

The populare flowers are the shape and color they are because of good mutations.

No good mutations - what a joke.

/Bevin

Elaine

The incidence of clefts of the lip and palate are also higher among the plain people. The mountain people of Tenn and Kentucky are filled with anomolies. Interesting inbreeding doesn't lead to improved strains.

Recall the Europeans were comparatively immune to measles etc so they infected the native Americans who had no immunity to kill them off. "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations!" They came to build a new city of God and then behaved like hell itself. Tom

Tom:

In my last post I left out a word:

"What I abhor (and here I would ALIGN pretty closely, I expect, with Tom) is the kind of rigidity that shuts out scientists who really want to be Christ's disciples."

I was careless, but did I (given the correction)really "read you wrong"? I would have thought we might be pretty close with respect to our attitude to science.

Chuck

Michael, there's a counter-example for everything under the sun. I have no special brief for natural selection. I was just pointing out that its effects, if any, are conservative, not tending toward creating novelty but conserving the species as it is.

Elaine, I certainly don't disagree about the negative effects of inbreeding, if that was your point. They are well studied and documented. In a sense, inbreeding is a form of artificial selection that is almost the opposite of natural selection: people choosing mates on the basis of something like royal bloodlines (causing increased instances of hemophilia) or religious orthodoxy, as with the Amish (causing increased instances of microcephaly), rather than on the basis of the genetic strengths they would normally be sexually attracted to.

Keafan, your friend's story is certainly an example of artificial or natural selection, whichever term you prefer. You told of females choosing not to mate with him because of a genetic problem he had that they did not want to pass on to their offspring. When a breeding pair is selected because of traits that the breeder wants to see manifested in the offspring, we call that artificial selection. Humans have been doing this for thousands of years with many different domestic species. I guess you could call it natural selection when a human female rejects a potential mate because of genetic characteristics, but you could also call it artificial selection because a human intelligence is making a decision about a breeding pair. But whether you call it natural or artificial selection, it is an example of sexual selection, not genetic drift.

And yes, even mutations that save bacteria from anti-biotics are bad mutations. Mycin-type antibiotics, for example, work when the mycin attaches to a matching site on the ribosome of a bacterium and prevents the bacterium from assembling necessary amino acids. As a result, the bacterium makes the wrong proteins and cannot grow, divide, or propagate. If the bacterium has a mutation that alters the site where the mycin would normally bind, the drug can no longer interfere with protein production, and the bacterium has become resistant to mycin. But scientists have found that mutations that make bacteria resistant to mycin degrade their ribosomes. The mutation makes the ribosome less specific and slower in translating RNA codons into protein.

Bevin, I didn't make any claims about speciation. To what claims are you referring?

"There are good mutations" is an article of faith, and very counterintuitive because mutations are DNA copying errors. It is like arguing that typos and printer errors in "Tom Sawyer" make it a better book. Unlikely.

You're putting the rabbit in the hat by assuming that humans really did come "out of Africa"; it isn't hard to come to the conclusion that Darwinism is true if you begin by assuming that Darwinism is true. Grasses, domestic animals, and flowers are examples not of mutations but of thousands of generations of artificial selection, as humans bred them to get them to manifest the genetic characteristics that humans wanted.

Chuck.

There is science: Testable hypotheses and there are speculations and extrapulations of scientists based upon their culture, their history, their ambitions, and their next project.

By any observable measurable technic the earth's biomass is older than Ussher's hypothesis and E.G. White's endorsement.

Never-the-less, as I am sure you can tell, I am creationist. That doesn't mean that I treat evolutionists as buffoons or E.G. White as a prophet.

I simply find it impossible to accept the Spirit of Prophecy as anymore divinely inspired that I do consider Darwin's observations cogent to any hypothesis of origins.

The mysteries of God are past finding out. The Genesis story is a man's eye view of the Word of God speaking into existance a biomass on a here to fore inert sphere. The Great Controversy is a tension of dominion--once given to Adam, usurped by Satan and retrieved by Jesus. Babylon has fallen!

We are invited to worship Jesus as our Creator and our Redeemer and to accept adoption as His own.

Since, I don't accept E.G.White having received any messages from God period, let alone the age of the earth, I have no difficulty in finding Biblical chronology blurred at best.

At the same time, I find it mathematically impossible for life forms to have emerged by trial and error even over the billions of years Carl Sagan suggested.

There is much unknown about God's creative power or intentions. There is much more unknown about the possibility of any alternative theory.

My discontent is over those who would hold on to the Charismatic gifts of Ellen White while cherry picking her failures and misfires, excusing them and then blithely setting one's own course as a tested and true Seventh-day Adventist.

Change the creedal statement and have your fling or step aside and speak Truth to power. Tom

> "There are good mutations" is an article of faith, and very counterintuitive because mutations are DNA copying errors. It is like arguing that typos and printer errors in "Tom Sawyer" make it a better book. Unlikely.

Nonsense - I listed a whole lot of them

> You're putting the rabbit in the hat by assuming that humans really did come "out of Africa"

Nonsense - there is LOTS of evidence based on DNA studies and archaeology that study the spread of homo-sapiens out of Africa. Even literalist Universal Flood believers think that humanity spread from a small group in middle east

> Grasses, domestic animals, and flowers are examples not of mutations but of thousands of generations of artificial selection, as humans bred them to get them to manifest the genetic characteristics that humans wanted.

Such a position could have been argued for BEFORE DNA sequencing, but now we can read the entire DNA of species we can see that your position is yet more nonsense, because we can see that the mythical DNA that you claim we are selecting for ain't there.

/Bevin

Tom,

You wrote: "The mysteries of God are past finding out. The Genesis story is a man's eye view of the Word of God speaking" the creation "into existance."

You also wrote: "There is much unknown about God's creative power or intentions. There is much more unknown about the possibility of any alternative theory."

I identify with both of those sentences. I also take Ellen White to be fallible and human. Perhaps I have more admiration for you moral and spiritual vision than you evince in youur most recent post, although we'd need to talk more.

Thanks.

Chuck

Admimation (more careless typing) for HER moral and spiritual vision.

Chuck

David

I agree that there is such a thing as "artificial selection". In fact, I have used the domestication of animals and breeding of dogs in debates before. Scientists are still debating whether artificial selection occurs, but my view is that when a 3rd party decides the selection of mates on the basis of physical traits then the selection is 'artificial'. If a prospective wife's parents put the kabosh on her marrying my friend its artificial. If she rejects him as a mate herself due to undesirable physical traits its 'natural' selection as his genes will end when he dies.

That said, your denial of the existence of good mutations is delusional, IMO. The ability to digest milk and milk products, as noted by Bevin, is the result of a mutation. The mutation on chromosome 2 which causes adults to be lactose tolerant is a bad mutation because.... oh, its a good mutation? Or do you believe the mutation is bad because Ellen was against cheese and butter and milk so the mutation is obviously the work of the devil in order to make Ellen look bad?

Or do you have another reason?

Thanks Chuck

Tom.

Keafan, I'm glad you mentioned the lactose tolerance issue, because it forced me to do some research. Here's what I came up with. As infants, all mammals have the ability to produce lactase and break down lactose. We're called mammals because as infants we feed on milk from our mothers' mammary glands. So the gene that codes for lactase is basically universal among mammals, and the DNA sequence of the lactase gene itself is identical in both the lactose tolerant and intolerant. The difference is apparently in the regulation of gene expression; in the lactose intolerant, production of lactase shuts down after childhood (lactase nonpersistence), in the lactose tolerant, it continues into adulthood (lactase persistence).

There are several variations (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) in the DNA sequence that apparently regulates expression of the lactase gene. The variant that has the nucleotide thyamine at position 13910 upstream to the gene coding for lactase on chromosome 2 appears to cause lactase persistence.

Darwinists believe that thyamine at this location represents a point mutation, because primates have cytosine at this location, and hence cytosine is assumed to be the ancestral condition. Hence, Darwinists believe that the continued production of lactase in adulthood is the result of a point mutation that substituted thyamine for cytosine at that location on chromosome 2 in one northern European, and the mutation spread throughout all populations that regularly use dairy products, because it conveyed an advantage in those populations.

Well, I'll grant you that this is a fairly plausible instance of Darwinian storytelling, but it is still storytelling, not fact. One argument against that scenario is that most mutations cause their genes to be, in Mendelian terms, recessive, whereas the lactase persistence regulatory sequence is dominant. One argument in favor of that scenario is that in all other mammals, lactase non-persistence is the normal condition.

From a creationist persective, I would argue that we were not created to consume dairy products in adulthood, but rather the Edenic diet of fruits, nuts, and grains. We were created to consume mother's milk, and then cease consuming any kind of milk, and that we would be healthier if we followed that plan (as, you noted, Ellen White pointed out). So from that perspective, lactase persistence can be viewed as a malfunction in the automatic shutdown of lactase production after childhood. So yes, it would be a negative mutation, an error, a malfunction. I've already admitted there can be negative, non-information adding mutations that have positive side-effects in certain circumstances, e.g. mutation of the mycin-bonding site in the presence mycin-type anti-biotics, the sickle-cell allele in the presence of malaria, etc.

On the other hand, I could argue that God created us with the genetic potential of lactase persistence arising from an extremely minor genetic change (a point mutation) because He knew that in a ruined post-flood world, many of us would need to consume dairy products in adulthood, would not be able to return to the Edenic diet, at least not for a very long time. The fact that the lactase persistence variant is dominant in Mendelian terms supports this interpretation.

From a creationist perspective, I would argue that we were not created to consume dairy products in adulthood, but rather the Edenic diet of fruits, nuts, and grains.

So, we have evidence of a mutation but you assert that its Darwinist storytelling yet we have no evidence of any creation (actually, its been falsified due to the absence of the dome and ocean above the dome of the 2nd day), no evidence of any literal Eden, the Noahic flood ~4,300 years ago has been falsified, and you call that an interpretation or perspective. Its quite apparent who is doing the "storytelling".

David, are you a Newtonist? An Eisteinist? A Galileoist? An Ellenist? FYI, there is no such thing (in reality) as a "Darwinist".

for the lactose tolerant.... they must still be careful not to partake of any milk from anybody other than their own mother, if one believes "EGW"....

you should not let your kids suckle from a nursemaid because....the babies will take on the temper and temperament of the nurse.!!!!!

http://www.truthorfables.com/EGW_Crazy_Quotes.htm

crazy quote:

A stranger performs the duties of the mother and gives from her breast the food to sustain life. Nor is this all. She also imparts her temper and her temperament to the nursing child. The child's life is linked to hers. If the hireling is a coarse type of woman, passionate, and unreasonable; if she is not careful in her morals, the nursling will be, in all probability, of the same, or a similar type. The same coarse quality of blood, coursing in the veins of the hireling nurse, is in that of the child.

...The Health Reformer, September 1, 1871, paragraph 7.
end quote

so the bad news is that if the above inspired counsel is true as it must be according to one of the 27-28 fundies, then we should NOT give cows milk to our kids either, because they might grow udders, or start mooing...or wandering the fields eating grass instead of just smoking it like the ancients probably did.

and soy milk? probably also bad as it might cause kids to grow tall and straight like a bean pole.

ggg

so Davids problem is that some of the experts he relies on for his science may not have understood what they are writing about!!!

dinos went extinct 65 million years ago, David... unless you count your chickens as they hatch (as dinos).... Dinos left long before any tales about an ark, or amalgamation, or the Paluxy man-dino tracks now admitted as only dino tracks...

David : you seem to be defending the alamo....apparently to the death, instead of trying to work out a compromise with the overwhelming majority whom you want to expel from your corner of a rapidly decaying "fortress"....

have you tried posting your wild ideas about dinos and EGW amalgamation to Wiki?
I bet you would get laughed off the site!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur

John, as a Texan, I'm very flattered by your comparison of me to the defenders of the Alamo. I don't imagine my situation to be quite as dire as that of Travis, Bowie and Crockett, but if it is, this issue is absolutely worth a fight to the death. As Jim Gilley, the president of 3ABN, posted over at educate truth.com, this is a hill worth dying on.

Apparently the firmament is thicker for some than it is for others.

Funny there ain't no genes for eating Worthington products.
I love peanut butter. My dad wouldn't touch the stuff. He said that while he was at E.M.C. 1918-1921 they even put peanut butter in the drinking water.

We had two sayings at the table: One a carry over from Grandpa Zwemer: "Let your vettles stp your noise!" "Clean your plate Tom there are a lot of little boys going hungry." I always clean my plate except for eggplant. Tom

David thinks his position is "a hill worth dying on."

I understand and admire courage, and I am by no means as able as David is to carry on a conversation with people who know evolution. (I thought, incidentally, that the wiki challenge was a pretty good one -- perhaps a sobering one -- for David, and he should certainly try it out; maybe he has.)

But is it not doubtful (an even stronger word would do) to suppose that the risen Christ expects all genuine disciples to master David's arguments? And to hold on to them, in all their detail, against the overwhelming consensus of science? (Remember, I take issue what what I called the IDEOLOGY of science--not the same thing as the knowledge, such as it is, that comes from laboratories.)

I suppose, indeed, that David himself does not expect children and less well educated Adventists to face damnation unless they understand and agree with all of his recondite argumentation.

Many of the most influential and admired Christians--I bet C. S. Lewis would be a good example--seek to AFFIRM the doctrine of creation without denying that Genesis 1 has poetic elements. The chapter is SO inspiring; it just seems to wronghead to insist on putting obstacles in the way of appreciating it.

By the way, David: Where is the dome?

Now I must think about all this--and work on a post, for down the road, that addresses the purpose of doctrine. I think that purpose is to facilitate faithfulness, and that when it gets in the way of faithfulness, it has gone somehow wrong.

I'll look into whether the Bible supports that.

Chuck

Chuck, I don't believe the risen Christ expects all genuine disciples to master my arguments, but if you cave in to "the overwhelming consensus of science" there is no risen Christ. Last time I checked, the overwhelming consensus of science is that peoople do not rise from the dead.

So we are expected to believe in the supernatural, the objections of modern science notwithstanding, and this starts with creation. The overwhelming consensus of science is that God, if there is a God, played no role whatsoever in the creation of the world and the universe. It was all chance and time. This is what science teaches: It isn't that Genesis is poetic or metaphorical, God had nothing whatsoever to do with creation, in any way, shape, or form.

As Phillip Johnson states, "The modern neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is fundamentally inconsistent with any meaningful theism—with any meaningful God who acts as creator of the world."

The Darwinist Will Provine states it this way: "Liberal religious leaders and theologians, who also proclaim the compatibility of religion and evolution, achieve this unlikely position by two routes. First, they retreat from traditional interpretations of God’s presence in the world, some to the extent of becoming effective atheists. Second, they simply refuse to understand modern evolutionary biology and continue to believe that evolution is a purposive process."

So you have to oppose science. You may not have to accept and master my arguments, but if you yield to "the overwhelming consensus of science," you cannot be a theist in any meaningful sense, much less a Christian.

I agree that the purpose of doctrine is to facilitate faithfulness. Darwinian doctrine does not facilitate faithfulness, it facilitates infidelity and atheism.

David

You make some strong arguments. Thank you. There is so much about religion to scoff at, it is not unreasonable that science gets carried away with its own trimuphalism. Neither creationism nor Darwinism could pass a statistical probability test. Both are articles of faith and/or ego.

Tom.

So you have to oppose science.

I'd be interested to see you back that up with actions. When you or a loved one has a heart attack, start praying. Surely you don't want to call 911 and have somebody trained in evolutionary biology work on them/you. Do you? Prostate cancer? Pray, man. Brain tumor? Pray, man. Irregular heartbeat? No pacesetter for David, just prayer!

Flu shots? Not. If you were inoculated as a child don't you know that the vaccines were propagated in cells from aborted fetuses from the UK in the 1960's?

Unless you walk or ride a donkey everywhere like Jesus did and grow your own food with a horse and a plow I'd say you live a science-based life. Your conversations on this forum, on the internet developed by SCIENCE, is proof that you do not practice what you preach.

Even a casual reading of Genesis tells us of an orginal creation in some indistinct past and a water covered orb with out life as we know it.
The it was prepared by God for habitation and life maybe in a solar week maybe not and a completed ecosystem at the end of the cycle including mankind male and female. we have no way of knowing how much time past between the events of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 because the Bible does not tell us. But God in His wisdom saw the need for farmers and so created Adam for that express purpose.

Being defined in Scripture as "the son of God" Adam appears to be different from the earlier humanoid creatures and so required a special creation of a help mate. Once again the Bible does not tell us how long adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden but it could have been ages.

And apparently life and death was a common occurance out side of Eden as the pair would have to have some understanding of the concept of death for God's warmimg to have any validity.

So from the Bible it is entirely possible to have a world of unknown antiquity.

The other thing we lose sight off is the effect of the Deluge. The apostle Peter says that the old world "overcome with water perished.To try to understand the ideas of creation looking at the world today is absurd.Obviously there was a major castrophe with the Deluge possibly the whole solar system was affected and rearranged.

And on top of that the Bible records other physical and geologic changes that most of us fail to recognise.

In spite of the proponents of evolution there are no intermediate fossils between the species. A bird is a bird and a mammal a mammsal.The platypus notwithstanding.

However if the SDA church believes in a young age earth no matter how unreasonable that view maybe then the professors who don't believe it should have the decency to resign their positions and move on.It is despicable that they take their salaries from the church and teach what the denomination does not endorse.

Old Abe

Keafan,

Can anyone PRACTICE doctrinaire evolutionism? Can a person live in the belief that chance plus time explains all natural development--and hold (consistently) that any human being is ACCOUNTABLE for anything?

I suppose doctrinaire evolutionists still do hold people in judgment if they commit rape or rob a bank or (as under some totalitarians regimes) say something critical about the government? I suppose many doctrinaire evolutionists admire compassion, or work for greater justice.

But as my post put it: If human freedom is, at best, a "useful illusion," it makes "little sense to say (and really mean) that wise choices matter, or that love and justice refer to anything remotely like what we take them to be in ordinary life."

How do doctrinaire evolutionists (I am NOT calling you one) handle this kind of question?

Chuck

Keafan, you aren't the first to argue that if one rejects Darwinism, one must also reject the whole complex of modern science. This is a non sequiter that has grown tedious through frequent repitition.

I have already explained, in my post on 9/21 at 11:53, that I do not have a problem with ordinary, everyday science, or even the methodological naturalism of everyday science. I just have a problem when methodological naturalism is applied to origins research in an exclusive manner, ruling out God's creation of, and intervention in, the material world. I choose to accept the truth of God's word regarding how the world came to be. If that makes me inconsistent, then so be it; a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.

Historically, biblical faith was not inconsistent with science. Most of the founders of modern science were Christians and creationists, including Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Newton, Pascal, Leeuwenhoek, Steno, Linnaeus, Cuvier, Owen, and Agassiz.

David wrote: >>> "if you cave in to "the overwhelming consensus of science" there is no risen Christ. Last time I checked, the overwhelming consensus of science is that peoople do not rise from the dead"

Again, you are talking nonsense. Creating false pairs of alternatives and missing the obvious alternatives.

You are right - scientific experiments clearly establish that most people don't rise from the dead and walk around talking to their family again. However there is no experimental evidence about Jesus, Son of God rising from the dead. Since Christian's claim he was not merely a human, experiments based on mere humans don't apply to Him.

Furthermore science clearly does show that many people who appear to be dead return to active life.

Furthermore science clearly does show that lots of societies have lots of myths about people coming back from the dead.

David wrote: >>> "The overwhelming consensus of science is that God, if there is a God, played no role whatsoever in the creation of the world and the universe. It was all chance and time. This is what science teaches"

Wrong again. It is hard to see how anyone who has studied the topic can be so wrong. The consensus is that the big picture is that rules we understand, acting on an environment that meets those rules, could produce a universe, an earth, and life forms like those we see.

Science does not say (a) why those rules exist, or (b) that those rules can not be broken. It is quite compatible with science to say that God made the rules, and that He has caused changes in this universe that violate those rules.

David wrote: >>> "Darwinian doctrine does not facilitate faithfulness, it facilitates infidelity and atheism."

Nonsense such as you push here certainly promotes infidelity and atheism.

/Bevin

Chuck,
I'm not keafan but your question is interesting to me.

I guess I don't understand why time and chance have to equal no accountability for human behavior. Why couldn't we have evolved an ability to make choices about our behavior?

Bevin, you act as though I were arbitrarily making up inconvenient facts. I'm not. I'm quoting the experts. I'm quoting Will Provine, Richard Lewontin, and Phillip Johnson. They've studied the science. Provine and Johnson have debated several times, and they agree that Darwinism is a theory of origins that does not involve God in any way; it is not consistent with any meaningful theism. Lewontin says that science "cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

According to his Wikipedia page, Provine consistently follows the logic of his position to determinism and denies free will. According to his Wikipedia page, Richard Lewontin does not subscribe to what Charles has called the "ideology of Darwinism" and is critical of Wilson and Dawkins and concepts like sociobiology and determinism. But both Provine and Lewontin agree that there is no room in science for any theism whatsoever.

The same would be true of Stephen Jay Gould, who in his 1989 book "Wonderful Life" wrote, "Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay." In other words, evolution is not God's way of getting to human beings; to the contrary, we are the result of random chance, and if the tape were rewound to the Cambrian, evolution would almost certainly NOT produce humanity again.

I'm really not making this up, Bevin. I wish you were right, but you're not.

David,

Quoting experts is good, but in turn one could quote John Polkinghorne, Dennis Alexander, Charles Foster, Simon Conway- Morris (and I could go on) who are theistic evolutionists. These are men who are experts in their field and understand biology in a way that is far beyond what I would ever be capable of. They have had to reconcile their christianity with their understanding of science without denying both....

Who is right?

Adrian

Adrian, I'm not familiar with Foster or Alexander. Polkinghorne is an Anglican priest (and a physicist), so he has a bit of a conflict of interest.

The most interesting case is Simon Conway Morris. He was quoted in an article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6444811.stm.
saying, "The human is extraordinarily well designed. The whole arrangement is actually designed for a particular mode of life, which, as you can see looking around us, is incredibly successful." But he doesn't actually believe in intelligent design. Alas, the language of design is extremely difficult for even the most dyed-in-the-wool Darwinist to avoid, because nature screams design as loudly as it can.

But what are we to make of someone who says things like "the human is extraordinarily well designed," but when it comes to his professional life, does not believe it? Can we expect systematic thinking from such a person?

Here, he is interviewed by the Baylor Lariat: http://www.baylor.edu/Lariat/news.php?action=story&story=45459.

The Baylor story states:

If the world were thrown back in time and evolved again, human intelligence would inevitably reappear, meaning that there may be more to evolution than time and chance. That's the idea that Dr. Simon Conway Morris, a professor of paleontology at the University of Cambridge, will present in his lecture titled "Darwin's Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation," from 7 to 9 p.m. today in 110 Baylor Sciences Building. "It has nothing to do with intelligent design at all," Morris said. "It's arguing that the selectionality of evolution as set out by Darwin is not as restrictive as considered by our colleagues ... which is almost completely determinate." While not a proponent of intelligent design, Morris reacts strongly against materialism, and he believes in an orthodox Christian perspective that says God both created and sustains creation. "There is no reason an evolutionary biologist could not subscribe to something transcendent," Morris said. "It would be a mistake to assume that all scientists are materialists, and they are not."

To which I respond: It is hard to logically unpack these statements, because, frankly, they do not make sense. The idea that human intelligence would inevitably reappear is not "scientific." It is a statement of faith. It is also hugely ironic because Stephen Jay Gould, in his book "Wonderful Life" took the opposite point of view, based largely upon Burgess Shale work done by Conway Morris and his colleagues.

And how to parse the statement "the selectionality of evolution as set out by Darwin is not as restrictive as considered by our colleagues . . . which is almost completely determinate"? One wants to be charitable, but this statement appears devoid of meaning. To the extent words have any meaning, it is Conway Morris, not his colleagues, who is arguing that evoluion is "determinate" and was determined to produce human intelligence. It is Gould who argues precisely that evolution is "indeterminate," and probably would not have produced human intelligence twice.

Conway Morris does not seem to handle language well, which is very unusual for an Englishman. The real problem, I fear, is not with his command of language, but with his thinking, which is muddled, and must necessarily remain so as long as he tries to believe two contradictory things. And Conway Morris certainly does believe two contradictory things, because he is a fairly orthodox Christian, but has a professional commitment to Darwinism.

In another article, Conway Morris is quoted as having said:

"It is the knowledge and experience of the Incarnation, the wisdom and warnings given by Jesus in the Gospels, and not least the Resurrection that in the final analysis are all that matters."

Someone who believes in the Incarnation and the Resurrection should have no trouble believing in a special Creation.

"The wisdom and warnings given by Jesus in the Gospels" are indeed important, and they include, "And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all." Luke 17:26-27; Mat. 24:37-39. And also, "If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” John 5:46, 47 (RSV). I guess some of Jesus' wisdom and warnings are less important than others.

On what rational basis are some of Scripture's miraculous, supernatural claims believed and others rejected? Compromising Christians inevitably comdemn themselves to the realm of logically indefensible inconsistancy.

David Read writes of Conway Morris, who is at once a "fairly orthodox Christian" and a scientist with a "professional commitment to Darwinism": "Someone who believes in the Incarnation and the Resurrection should have no trouble believing in a special Creation."

Yes, but the fact that creation may be special does not entail that Genesis 1 is an historical or factual account--does not, in other words, entail literalism. It might mean that Genesis 1 is a breathtakingly lovely and insightful evocation of something we cannot fully fathom, for the reason that we (and all biblical writers) see through a glass darkly.

Beth writes (of a question I posed): "I guess I don't understand why time and chance have to equal no accountability for human behavior. Why couldn't we have evolved an ability to make choices about our behavior?"

If all things happen under the iron sway of physical law (if materialism is true, and the world we know is a function of mere luck) then I may think I am making a choice, but I am really just responding to external stimuli, as a robot might. I may have the illusion that words such as "I love you" mean more coming from me than they would coming from a robot, but I would be kidding myself. The words "I love you," or, for that matter, "I choose to kill you," are really no more than grunts.

But if God is the creator and sustainer of all things, then it could be true that the development of nature has led to the existence of real (as opposed to merely apparent) choice. (I do no claim to know exactly HOW this could be true; I allow for mystery, whereas the most doctrinaire versions of atheistic scientism imagine that WE [sic] may someday discover the true theory of everything.)

I'm exploring here. Thanks to both of you.

Chuck

David,

Both Foster and Alexander have written books that attempt to reconcile the science and the religon of origins (The Selfless Gene, Creation or Evolution).

You are correct in saying that Gould disagrees with Morris - Morris has been/is a critic of Gould. Morris's research has led him to believe that there is an inevitability to some of the structures we see today, eg, he alleges that there are several pathways to the 'basic' structure of the eye for instance.

However, it is the cognitive dissonance he has to contend with that is relevant to this debate. His scientific research is telling him one thing, a literal approach to Genesis would tell him another. He has to adapt one in the face of the other. So are you asking him to admit that his research is fatally flawed for instance?

Adrian

David,

you made some statements

I showed those statements were wrong

You said "don't blame me, I'm just quoting those guys"

If you don't understand and accept responsibility for the statements, then don't make them.

For instance, let's deal with Steven Gould

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html

Gould writes " We all left satisfied, but I certainly felt bemused by the anomaly of my role as a Jewish agnostic, trying to reassure a group of Catholic priests that evolution remained both true and entirely consistent with religious belief."

Gould says he is AGNOSTIC - not atheist.

Gould says "evolution [is] entirely consistent with religious belief."

So don't go quoting Gould to show science is not compatible with God's existence.

/Bevin

It is also interesting that Gould's NOMA principle suggests that neither magesteria can answer the other's questions, which is the approach suggested by those who see Genesis primarily as a theology book and not a science book.

Chuck

Thanks for the questions.

Can anyone PRACTICE doctrinaire evolutionism?

I have never heard of "doctrinaire evolutionism" but will assume, for my response, that you mean (from your next sentence) "the belief that chance plus time explains all natural development".

Yes. However, the natural development of physical systems (planets, life, ecological systems, etc) is separate from the systems of politics, law, social systems, even civilizations.

Can a person live in the belief that chance plus time explains all natural development--and hold (consistently) that any human being is ACCOUNTABLE for anything?

Again, how life evolved to what we see today, and the acceptance of evidence for that fact, doesn't have anything to do with social systems of groups or civilizations.

Can a person that accepts evolution hold that humans are accountable for anything? Most certainly. Even on a basic level I have never heard of any uncivilized tribe from the most remote regions of this planet that did not have some basic accountability for members of the group which stole from other members or took another members wife to bed or killed a member of the group without a claim to self-defense. The rules based on ethics, morality, or common interest of a group have, historically, been enforced by a person or government in power through selection by the group, by force, or by the claim to some authority from the gods or spirits irregardless of any beliefs about their particular origin stories or theories. The most atheistic countries of Europe put the Bible Belt to shame in abortion rate, homicide rate, divorce rate, teen pregnancy, life expectancy etc.

Telling a person that they have to believe a religious theory about a supernatural god or ELSE is to use the fallacy of threat of force. "If you don't do what my god says and believe like I do then my god is going to.... (cause boils, make you infertile, cause you to get sick and die, wake you up after you die and kill you again, etc). Any time a person or group of people try to influence the actions of others it is manipulation. There is good manipulation (penalties for drunk driving or other actions that put people at risk) and bad manipulation (political propaganda to entice the public to support an illegal or aggressive goal of the government).

I suppose doctrinaire evolutionists still do hold people in judgment if they commit rape or rob a bank or (as under some totalitarians regimes) say something critical about the government? I suppose many doctrinaire evolutionists admire compassion, or work for greater justice.

The Church used to have the power to put people to death for saying something critical of religion. They were/are totalitarian. I don't see any scientists out putting people to death for criticizing their theories & conclusions. There are still quite a few states with statutes on the books requiring belief in the Biblical God in order to hold public office. The Church in Europe had laws that enabled them to take all the property of a convicted nonbeliever. If you wanted a new monastery just cry out that the owner of the castle was a pagan, torture him, execute him, kick his family out, and move in. Easy.

The New Testament invented thought crime with the theory that you no longer needed to actually COMMIT an act to be guilty in the eyes of God but just think a wrong thought. This is what Stalin et al put into action. How more totalitarian can you get? Didn't Danny divorce his wife by finding some kangaroo court to hold that his wife had committed some type of mental infidelity?

Bill Gates vaccinates whole countries. He is atheist. New York & California, both very "progressive/liberal", have strong support systems for the less fortunate among them. I think an evolutionist is more likely to be compassionate because they would not be inclined to believe that a person's misery is a test from God (Mother Teresa or the SDA book writer from Australia that prays "Crisis Prayers" for his kids to bring them closer to God), or is some punishment for some sin. Personally, I trust atheists more than any religious person because I can be more certain of their future decisions. A christian has an easy out- "The Devil made me do it!". They ask for forgiveness and prayers, then want to go on like they should not be accountable. (See Ernie Knolls right now for a classic example). Those that want to hold them accountable are then criticized for "not forgiving".

But as my post put it: If human freedom is, at best, a "useful illusion," it makes "little sense to say (and really mean) that wise choices matter, or that love and justice refer to anything remotely like what we take them to be in ordinary life."

How do doctrinaire evolutionists (I am NOT calling you one) handle this kind of question?

I'd like to refer to your complete statement first: Objection Two: The ideology rests on the assumption that all natural development is a function of chance under the iron sway of physical law. This suggests that human freedom is, at best, a useful illusion. It thus makes little sense to say (and really mean) that wise choices matter, or that love and justice refer to anything remotely like what we take them to be in ordinary life.

Your assumption seems to include more than just biological evolutionary theory and implies assumptions about belief systems of individuals who are evolutionists. Political/religious systems are not related to evolutionary biology, the Big Bang Theory or Plate Tectonics. David Hume, a leading influence on the Founding Fathers of the USA, went back and researched political systems from the Greeks and Romans, the Feudal System of Europe, and the progression of frreedom in Scotland and England. The democratic ideas of the Greeks were destroyed by the totalitarian system of the Church. The New Testament philosophy that those that are not for Jesus are against him has caused more loss of freedom than any religious thought that I know of. Is it "justice" to kill people because they don't think or believe like you? "Moses" is quite clear:

Deut 13:6-10 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and after-wards the hand of all the people.
And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

Paul wouldn't eat with nonbelievers of HIS system. Jesus called the woman from a different tribe a dog. There is nothing about freedom in the Bible like we know it today. It was revived from the Greeks. The Bible is like the Islam of today that christians complain about as being a barbaric, degenerate faith. I say they are the only Abrahamic faith system that is sticking to their religion.

Human freedom in a Bible based religion is the one that is an "illusion". What happens when a person dies, and theories about that, do not affect the freedom or lack thereof of humans. Its the humans that feel they have some authority to condemn, criticize, ostracize, or kill because of a person's belief about post-death opportunities that is shocking.

I would never ostracize any of my immediate family if the were to become followers of some religion. From personal experience, the Bible based attacks I have been the recipient of personally are the result of the attempt to restrict freedom, make love conditional on some belief system, and are immoral.

Biblical, but immoral to this atheist who happens to believe that natural evolution led to what we call "life" today.

Chuck, I learned about evolution long after I had personally come to the conclusion that the Gods of the Bible, and Ellen White, were factually false. I came to my conclusions first from testing Ellen against the philosophy of the Bible. After reading the Bible cover to cover many times it became clearer each time through that she was good at storytelling and self-promotion but was not the recipient of any special messages from God. In fact, contradicts Jesus' own actions. I, personally, couldn't care less whether evolution is correct in the strictest sense of the term. It works. Period. Humanity is making huge strides because of this theory. Creation doesn't work. It lends no help to anything, and in fact is a drag on our progress as a civilization. China does not have the ball-and-chain of creation filling the minds of its youth with falsehoods. I expect that Japan/Taiwan/China will be a driving force for innovation in the scientific field in the future.

My question to you would be: How can you sit by while children are taught falsehoods? The evidence refutes the Bible at every turn of the spade, yet children are told they will be punished by some sky god for not believing the tales from the Iron Age. I find that to be immoral and unethical to say the least and I believe that is the basis for some of the motivation be hind those like Dawkins that speak out against the stupidity that is being passed off as fact.

Again, thanks for the questions.

The difference between believing in an incarnation or resurrection and a special creation (at least a strict creationist view) is that there is direct, clear contradictory evidence against a recent, 7 day creation. That evidence against is so compelling that you aren't going to find ANY scientist arguing that life appeared all together suddenly on this earth, unless that scientist believes his/her religion demands that he/she believe it.

There is no evidence against some sort of other special creation in theory - but there is against the one described in Genesis. It's not a matter of believing something that leaves little/no evidence in the material world like an incarnation or resurrection.

It's true that believing in a special creation - God created and sustains throughout - is not incompatible with evolution. The reality that we cannot detect God sustaining and intervening is troubling theologically - why wouldn't a God who wants everyone to believe in Him and be saved be more apparent? - but still it is not theoretically incompatible with evolution.

David I just don't get your beef with science explaining things without God since you yourself talked earlier about why that is a good thing. Trying to bring a god into scientific explanations and research would be a disaster. Whose god? How would we know we are correct? How could a Hindu and a Christian currently working together on genetics figure that one out? How would peer review decide the evidence?

for David, and the literalists, (what a name for a Christian rock band!!) it all seems to boil down to this:

quote:
I choose to accept the truth of God's word regarding how the world came to be.
end quote

surprising that a rational, legally trained mind would so readily allow itself to base everything on unproveable faith instead of demonstrable fact.

choose = David believes he has the choice, to accept which evidence he wants..right or wrong, he does have a choice.

accept = means he has the right to "accept" what ever he wants, and to reject evidence which may disagree with his chosen belief... such as rejecting the evidence that there is NO DOME overhead as described in Genesis, and he has the right to "accept" what he wants to believe ...such as the importance of "7" being God's 7th day of rest, and not the sum of the 5 visible planets combined with the sun and moon which the ancients mistakenly thought represented 7 gods "wandering" (planeta, in greek) up under the dome after which they named the days of the week.

truth = what he wants it to be....without realising that he honors a day named after the God Saturn.

God's word = how does one "prove" that the Bible is God's word, orher than its own claim that it is? where is the external evidence? and if it is God's word, why does it make God out to be the biggest mass killer in history?

so in Davids statement of faith, he admits that his belief (in creation) is based on unproveable blind acceptance of ancient stories as true and as written by God with no external evidence available or even needed to back it up.

that's faith, man!!!

remember the alamo!!!

didn't they all die? except for the messenger who escaped!!! to tell the world about the lost cause for which so many gave all.

the call: "Houston..we've got a problem" may have saved Apollo 13, but it didn't save the alamo

and texting..."SIlver Springs..we've got a problem"
will fall on deaf cell phones as they likewise may not recognize any problem...other than worrying where the money will come from in the future to pay for their sustentation as educated people in the developed world walk out the back door with their tithe, while the uneducated, unemployed and unable to pay tithe in actual dollars are welcomed in the front.

David...if the earth is so young, created in only 7 literal solar daze, how do you explain this?

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/7755/ancientproof/impactcraters.h...

it seems that God may have bowled space rocks at the earth millions of years ago, leaving pock marks in the then surface, like the face of the moon, which may have been later sumberged under a shallow sea, then covered with the calcarous shells and dead bodies of giga beyons and beyons of tiny marine animals making hundreds of feet of layers of limestone,(yep..life before the "fall"), then later covered with more sediments, then later raised up to become upstate NY...all this in EGW's version of truth just to fool infidel geologists into denying the faith.

how did the divinely inspired writer(s) of Genesis miss that part? all that death...limestone...before the fall?

how did they miss the halite deposits (which only come from the prolonged and complete drying out of a salt sea) under Lake Erie? and in Saltzburg, Austria...and thousands of feet under Kansas?

it takes huge amounts of time to dry out seas to create hundreds of feet of halite....

then erosion of nearby mountains takes time to cover the halite....

then the land with the halite under it got submerged under another sea, which laid down limestone around the Niagara Falls area..

then the Niagara River took 10-15000 yrs to erode its way upriver to the present location of the Falls....

how did God do all this in the biblical time frame apparently allowed by "his word" in Genesis?

ya, ya, I get it: you don't have to 'splaine it... cause...you
"choose to accept".

Beth, you say "it's true that believing in a special creation - God created and sustains throughout - is not incompatible with evolution" but Will Provine and many others say it is incompatible. He says that liberal religious leaders "simply refuse to understand modern evolutionary biology and continue to believe that evolution is a purposive process" when, as the Gould quote I referenced above indicates, it is not a purposive process, and would not necessarily, nor even likely, lead to human beings again. In a totally non-directed process, in what sense does God create and sustain??

But wait a minute, Simon Conway Morris says that evolution would lead to man, every time. He interprets the numerous examples of convergent evolution as evidence that evolution is being directed. And he's a scientist, too, and there are alot of scientists who believe that God must have guided evolution. Who's right, Provine, Lewontin, Gould, or Conway Morris and other theistic evolutionists?

It is easy to diagnose what is going on here. People interpret the data of science according to their religious presuppositions. We all have the same data, how we interpret the data is our religion. Provine is an atheist, hence he interprets the data of science from an atheistic perspective. Conway Morris is a Christian, so he interprets the data of science as showing that God works through evolution. I (and thousands of others like me) am a biblical creationist, so I interpet the data of science through the lens of the recent six day creation and the worldwide Flood.

The religious choice comes first, then we interpret the data. The data do not interpret themselves. The data have to be interpreted. Those people who claim the facts force one to believe that there is no God, or that God works through evolution, or that there was a special creation, simply are not skilled at separating fact from interpretation. We pick one of those choices and then interpret the data to fit our choice.

What the data say to you is determined by the religious lens through which you view and interpret the data. That being the case, it is very frustrating for me as a Bible believer to be told that I must modify my beliefs based upon conclusions about origins arrived at by interpreting the data with atheistic presuppositions. This is why I keep repeating, over and over, that I will not accept a science of origins based upon strict naturalism.

That's also why it is frustrating trying to dialog with Bevin: he doesn't recognize the role of interpretation in science, and says I'm being slanderous for pointing it out. I think Bevin is naive about science, especially origins science. John Alfke is another who simply cannot imagine a different interpretation of the data than the conventional long-ages interpretation, but that is a failure of his imagination that I don't find at all compelling.

John

It seems everyone has trouble with time. Creationists have too much time to explain away. Evolutionists don't have enough time to process inatimate to natimate.

God doesn't have a problem with time. He is from everlasting to everlasting.

The Bible story has two major problems with time.

1. antediluvian chronology

2. From the flood to the Tower of Babel and From the Tower of Babel to Abraham. (Now we are in the historical era) We can now match time to event.

All have a problem with the moral decay of man. Only those who have a faith in a Creator/Redeemer God have a basis for rejoicing even in a rebellious self-centered world bent upon self destruction.

God has two problems to deal with:

1. The religious ego-centrics
2. The anti-relgious ego-centrics

Left to their own devices--man will certainly destroy himself and all about him: most likely over belief systems.

Therefore, "My hope is built on nothing less that Jesus Blood and Righteousness."

Thus the salt under Lake Erie isn't a problem it is an economic blessing. By the way, that salk adds nothing to evolutionary evidence--it merely suggests a time problem for the young earth adherents. Thus, Adventism has the problem of how to deal with an alleged Prophet who supports a young earth as God given information.

I can exalt in an Everlasting Creator/Redeemer God while zealots of all breeds continue to verbally abuse one another. Tom

David,
When it comes to questions like whether the process of evolution is purposeful or not, you are getting into issues that could be open to more interpretation. The data certainly seems to lean more towards no direction but a case probably could be made that there might be direction that is just really really hard to detect.

Evolution, like most areas of science are full of these arguments where the data isn't clear. (I would argue that in the case of direction and purposefulness, the data certainly leans strongly against.) But everything is not based on interpretation. There is a reality that interpretation must go up against.

Can we say that the earth is flat or the earth is round - just depends on how you interpret the data? The moon is rock or the moon is cheese - just depends on your interpretation? Of course not. Every interpretation is not valid, no matter how much we want it to be so. Interpreting data to support a young earth/sudden young creation requires so much denial, ignoring, distortion etc that it is no longer even a cousin of science. It's simply apologetics.

A scientologist might interpret our origin data as supporting the idea of aliens and thetans. Doesn't mean it is a helpful addition to our understanding of the world.

David,
I would add that no one is saying you have to accept evolution. You can simply say, I don't believe it.

Where you are messing up IMO is trying to say that science supports something different if you just interpret it through a religious framework (not coincidentally your religious framework.) I, and I think the others, are trying to say then it is no longer science. Science directly contradicts a young earth, sudden young creation. It just does, I'm sorry. Now you can say that this science is incompatible with your theology and I wouldn't give a peep of protest. You can say I'm choosing my faith over the findings of science and I'll salute your honesty. But try and make science into something it is not to try and make science support your theology is going to make me jump up and down.

Thanks, Keafan, for your thoughtful response.

Some of what you said suggested that you thought I had raised the question of political freedom--freedom of speech, etc. The issue that concerns me most it that of whether a materialist universe is compatible with NON-determinism.

On another front, my beef is that you seem somewhat naive (I may, of course, be wrong)about history. I recommend the theologian David Bentley Hart (Atheist Delusions, Yale U Press) and the British Literary critic Terry Eagleton (Reason, Faith, and Revolution, also Yale U Press). I also recommend the sociologist Rodney Stark's The Rise of Christianity (whose publisher I just now forget).

The former two authors are brilliant in their criticism of the New Atheists who seem quite clueless about moral impact of paganism vs Christianity, or of Christianity versus msodern secularism. (Both would assume some version of scientific atheism to be true.)

Stark shows how just how Christianity's eventual defeat (well, more or less) of paganism was the result of perfectly rational analysis by those who converted.

The papers today say that the Russian educational establishment has started to "rehabilitate" Stalin--to present him to school children as a fine leader. I suppose you would not applaud this as good news.

Christianity has been a fully repugnant failure a good bit of the time (although its crimes have typically been through alignment with the STATE; even the Inquisition was substantially a function of the state). But no campaign of Christian / state bloodshed has equaled, in its devastation, what you saw in Hitler (who did not, by the way, spend his days fingering the Rosary), or in Stalin, or in Pol Pot. I am married to a Chinese woman, so I know, too, that Mao was no Mother Teresa.

Chuck

David writes>>> "That's also why it is frustrating trying to dialog with Bevin: he doesn't recognize the role of interpretation in science, and says I'm being slanderous for pointing it out."

You keep shifting your ground, and failing to refute the points I raise. This is a strong indication of a person whose belief's can't withstand the heat of detailed questioning.

You claim acceptance evolution is incompatible with belief in a Christian God. I disprove it. You claim "it's not me who said it, its those guys". I disprove it. You drop the topic and try something different.

I fully understand the importance of (a) getting as much evidence as possible, then (b) trying to find a set of equations that predict that evidence, and lastly (c) trying to find evidence that doesn't match the predictions.

You fail at all three steps
(a) you select your data, and ignore anything that doesn't match your preconceptions, (b) you don't even try to produce equations - just hand-waves about the Bible being literally true except when it isn't, then (c) you don't look for evidence that tests the Bible's literal accuracy.

It is well over 50 years past when you could reasonably claim that the evidence could be matched by both YEC and evolution. The evidence has been flooding in, and the evolutionary model is winning hands down, and the YEC model has failed utterly to produce a plausible explanation.

This is why you are resorting to ad-hominem "evolutionists are atheists" nonsense that, whenever I have questioned you on it, you have failed to provide any reasonable basis for.

You are being slanderous.

(a) You are slandering all evolutionists as atheists

(b) You are slandering all evolutionary scientists as fools and liars

(c) You are slandering God by claiming He has made a world that looks like it is old, even though it is new

/Bevin

Beth, you argue that I can simply say, "I don't believe it", but if what I don't believe is comparable to the fact that the earth is spherical, not flat, and the moon is made of rock, not cheese, that kind of makes me insane, doesn't it?

But, I'm telling you, I believe in a recent creation in six days, and I'm perfectly comfortable that I'm not denying any provable facts. There's more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy, or Bevin's, or John Alfke's. You simply do not understand the extent to which current "science" has been shaped by interpretation. And it is not your fault. In science class, they teach you the facts and the intepretations together, and strongly imply that it is all fact. It is presented as one body of knowledge, and they don't tell you that it integrates huge, enormous amounts of interpretation. They don't teach you how to separate fact from interpretation and assumption, because they don't know themselves. You have to have developed that skill by doing something else (typically, by practicing law).

When I was being interviewed at 3ABN about my book "Dinosaurs: An Adventist View" the interviewer said that he was reading the first three chapters on the history of the discovery of dinosaurs, and then as he continued reading he realized the whole book is history. And he was right. The whole book is history, because you cannot understand where origins science is today without understanding the assumptions they incorporated into it almost two centuries ago, and have built upon ever since. You have to understand about Lyell, and the principle of uniformity that he insited on, and convinced the scientific world of his time to insist on.

I urge you to get the book and read it. Chapter Four explains how we got to where we are with old earth geology. I also have an appendix on radiometric dating, part of which I believe Shane Hilde is going to post on EducateTruth.com. I have another chapter that deals with "Early Man - the Darwinian View." This is a case where the theory literally created the data. When Darwin published "The Descent of Man" in 1871, arguing that man had descended from an ape-like creature, there was not one fossil that supported that thesis. Not one. Acting on the assumption that humans evolved from apes, scientists went out searching, indefatigably searching, for plausibly intermediate forms. But they were not finding them fast enough, so the invented one: Piltdown Man.

Although the Piltdown skull was from a fully modern human, virtually every anthropologist imagined that it had apelike features. And although the jaw was fully orangutan, the trained eyes of these men discerned important human characteristics. "The Piltdown skull, when properly reconstructed, is found to possess strongly simian peculiarities," noted Sir Grafton Elliot Smith. "In respect of these features it harmonizes completely with the jaw, the simian form of which has not only been admitted, but also exaggerated by most writers."

Isn’t it interesting that a trained anthropologist could discern "strongly simian peculiarities" in a modern human skullcap? Isn’t it revealing that he could accuse others of exaggerating the ape-like characteristics of a fully orangutan jawbone?

How is it that trained men, the greatest experts of their day, could look at a set of modern human bones—the cranial fragments—and "see" a clear simian signature in them; and "see" in an ape’s jaw the unmistakable signs of humanity? The scientific establishment believes that humans evolved from apes, which is why anthropologists “see” things in the fossils that confirm their belief. Clearly, the model is more important than the data, because the theory literally creates the data.

But Bevin says, "there's no interpretation involved, it's all just measurement." Fine, here's an example where they measured it carefully, yet they their theory overruled their measurements:

A fragment of an upper arm bone found in Kanapoi, Kenya, cataloged as KP-271, is thought to be around 4.5 million years old, yet detailed morphological and metrical comparisons with humans, chimpanzees, and an Australopithecine indicated that it was human. "In these diagnostic measurements Kanapoi Hominoid 1 is strikingly close to the means [averages] of the human sample," wrote Patterson and Howells. "There are individuals in our sample of man on whom measurements . . . of Kanapoi Hominoid I can be duplicated almost exactly."

So scientists found a human bone that is dated almost five million years old, but theory holds that no humans were around five million years ago; we hadn't evolved yet. So despite its human morphology--as determined by measurment, not eyeballing--no scientist has been willing to state that KP-271 is human. Howells admits this:

"The humeral fragment from Kanapoi, with a date of about 4.4 million, could not be distinguished from Homo sapiens morphologically or by multivariate analysis by Patterson and myself in 1967 (or by much more searching analysis by others since then). We suggested that it might represent Australopithecus because at that time allocation to Homo seemed preposterous, although it would be the correct one without the time element."

KP-271 is not a case, like Piltdown, where theory has influenced researchers to "see" ape-like characteristics that objectively were not present in the bone. The researcher’s eyes were wide open to the fact that this bone was not ape-like; the measurements were well within the range of human morphology, in fact, close to the averages of the human sample. The specimen was deemed australopithecine in spite of its morphology, based solely upon theoretical considerations. Obviously, theory is more important than fact, because the theory creates the "facts."

See, Bevin, they measured it, and it was human. Science is measurment, right? But because theory told them humans were not around 4.5 million years ago, they said it must be an australopithecine. Measurments that conflict with Darwinian theory are thrown out.

"Stark shows how just how Christianity's eventual defeat (well, more or less) of paganism was the result of perfectly rational analysis by those who converted."

Having read three of Stark's books, it is true that it was Christianity's care for the neglected that gave them such power in converting pagans to that belief.

However, as Will Durant expresses it: "Rome died in giving birth to the Curch; the Church matured by inheriting and accepting the responsibilites of Rome. Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. The Greek mysteries passed down into the impressive mystery of the Mass. From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity, the Last Judgment, and a personal immortality of reward and punishment; from Egypt the adoration of the Mother and Child, and the mysic theosophy that made Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and obscured the Christian creed. From Phrygia came the worship of the Great Mother; from Syria the resurrection drama of Adonis; from Thrace, perhaps, the cult of Dionysus, the dying and saving god. From Persia came millennarianism, the 'ages of the world,' the 'final conflagration,' the dualism of Satan and God, of Darkness and Light; already in the Fourth Gospel Christ is the 'light shining in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out" The Mithraic ritual so closely resembled the eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass that Christian fathers charged the Devil in inventing these similarites to mislead frail minds. Christinity was the last grean creation of the ancient pagan world."

From "Caesar and Christ" by Will Durant

quote: I'm telling you, I believe in a recent creation in six days, and I'm perfectly comfortable that I'm not denying any provable facts.
end quote

weeeelll...lets take another look at this rock of the ages....linked below since I can't post pics here... and see if there are any interesting if not proveable facts therefrom to be gleaned:

http://www.atomorrow.net/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?tpc=16&post=5817#POST58...

all this created in 6 solar daze? even before the sun was creaed? and less than 10kya?

here are the data for us to understand before making up our minds:

the rounded rock on top pictured at the ATommorrow web site is granite... beautiful, headstone monument quality stuff... extruded somewhere up in NH geologists say... it is composed of mica (the little black bits) , feldspar (the glue stuff which after weathering turns to mud!!!) and quartz (which upon erosion and weathering, turns into sand!!! the same sand we see on CapeCod...or LongIsland...thought to have been bulldozed there by advancing glaciers)

The top rock has been rounded by some force...thought to have been the action of being rolled in a stream bed? pushed there by a melting glacier?

The granite rock was once molten magma, and as a hot rock, semi-liquid, had potassium in it which (at a know rate) decays into the gas argon.... but while it was molton rock, most of the argon gas would have dissipated..bubbled out of the rock....but after cooling and turning into crystal, the argon gas coming from the decay of potassium would have been trapped. So what scientists do today is grind up the rock, measure the amount of argon gas, and knowing the rate at which it is produced, they can estimate the age of the rock.... this is called radiometric dating, and it gives absolutely approximate ages in the millions of years for most
granites....absolute because the age does not need to be confirmed by fossils, but approximate because of known
issues which need to be calculated.

the underlying rock is NOT granite, however... and this is where the young age of the earth and the schist hit the fan.

the almost flat rock under the round boulder is native grey schist...common here in NE...this combo of balanced rock on bedrock is called a balance rock, or errant boulder. The round boulder is the "errant" part, having been rafted here on the back of a glacier moving thru the White Mts, loping off chunks which got rounded in the underlying stream beds...and deposited here...set down gently as the glacier melted...and in the pic, a round rock set down on top of a flat one!!! two guys could push the round rock over it is so precariously set in place...leading to the easy conclusion that a roaring, violent noah's flood could not have so gently balanced the combination together.

but schist!!! thats the real problem for young earthers.
It is formed by the weathering and erosion of mountain granites... mountains which took along time to rise up, as their "igneus rock" extruded from deep in the earth, rose into mountain shapes, cooled, and became the granits we know. Granites took even longer to weather... into muds and sands....which over long periods got washed into valleys, and over even longer time periods, became layered, and compressed, and cemented into mudstone, and sandstones....called sedimentary rocks.

from the ATomorrow web page, the googleearth link will take you to an ariel view!!! and to the east, or right in the view, are more bedrocks, exposed by the glacial action grinding over the surface of this farmers field.

but as the process of "creation" takes time and change, the layered mud and sand stone were buried deeply under more erosional layers deposited on top.... if buried deeply enuf, the overlying pressure, combined with the heat inside the earth, would "cook" the sand and mud stones into a semi liquid like waxy form...sometimes bending them into curved features as the earth moved tectonically...but leaving the layers visible.

this is called a "metamorphic rock"...changed by heat and pressure.

later, after being exposed at the surface by erosion of overlying layers, or stream bed erosion, the grey schist became the surface bedrock which we expect here in NE, about 10 miles from AUC....

all this did NOT happen in 6 literal daze!!! no matter what one "chooses" to believe.

and to base ones religious beliefs on such lack of scientific understanding is analogous to believing your local village witch doctors explanation of how to wring a birds neck, then sprinkle the blood on mold or leprosy to cure it.

millions of years had to be involved.

now bring on the glaciers, which break off protrusions and peaks of the White Mts, and conveyor belt them down to my area, then melt, and gently balance the round granite on top of the schist.

thousands of years of glacial history...millions of years of rock evolution.

even the very rocks cry out that they were NOT CREATED!!!
by their very formation they evolved...overlong periods of time.

same with limestone, but horrors of horrors...
limestone came from the massive death,layering, and compression of giga beyons and beyons of tiny marine animals and their calcareous shells, sacrificed to make rock when the earths magma would have sufficed!!!

Niagara Falls points to 10,000+ yrs of headward erosion up theriver, but it is eroding thru limestone which is estimated to be in the 200,000,000 year age range...

thats megadeath, billions of (albeit) tiny animals, hundreds of thousands of years before Eves alleged "deception" by a talking snake.

and not far from the layers of limestone, is halite..under Lake Erie... which only came about even earlier by the evaporation of a large body of salt water... over mega years to produce the huge amounts of salt used to melt ice on our winter roads and rust our cars.

those are the data and the facts which can be rationally deduced therefrom.

or you can choose to believe in talking snakes, complaining donkeys, guys living inside a fish, underwater, for daze,
and a god who kills kids... 42 in the name of Elisha, maybe 10'sof thousands in Egypt to impress the Pharaoh and "shew His works", and maybe millions of innocent kids and animals in a massively violent, swirling (alleged)world wide flood which could NOT have carefully balanced the pictured granite balance rock on top of the schist bedrock.

Now that I've seen the light of God's book of Nature,
I hate to admit that my bedrock has become schist, tho like you apparently still choose, I used to side with the talking snakes and donkeys.

sorry, David...now you know the truth...and it will either set you free, or make you sad.

your choice.

David,

No I wouldn't think you were insane if you thought the earth was flat because your faith demanded it. I don't think you are insane for thinking the earth is only a few thousand years old or that all of life appeared suddenly, recently either.

I am sympathetic to the philosophical problems evolution presents for traditional Christianity and even for theism. So what needs to give? I say our theology, you say you can accept the science that supports your theology and label the rest as misinterpreted. To each his own.

John, you write, with what I gather is a sneer:

"...or you can choose to believe in talking snakes, complaining donkeys, guys living inside a fish, underwater, for daze, and a god who kills kids... 42 in the name of Elisha..."

This makes you sound like a literalist yourself.

You could approach scripture sympathetically, and try to see past what might, on a literal reading, be implausible, in order to grasp the deeper, spiritual truth the Bible tells. The book of Jonah, to take one example, is an affirmation of the universal (as opposed to merely tribal) extent of divine grace. You don't have to trip over the fish story.

And as for God killing kids, such a passage as Hebrews 1:1-4 underscores the ideal of reading scripture through the lens provided by the Jesus story. When you do that, you see that the Bible take fundamental (and revolutionary) themes and tells the story of how Israel grappled with these themes, often misunderstanding them, until enough light dawned to reveal that every human face is holy. This latter is one essential meaning of Jesus--the Jesus who asked God to forgive his executioners.

And on Christian understanding, Jesus is God's TRUE HUMAN FACE on earth.

Chuck

Beth, your ethic of extreme tolerance notwithstanding, I would be insane if I thought the earth was flat. I don't think we can really say "to each his own" about the shape of the earth.

There are real facts that are undeniable, but you're grossly overestimating the role those type of facts play in Darwinian and Lyellian theories of origins, and grossly underestimating the role of interpretation.

David, you are engaging in another technique of the YEC's - attack the science of 150 years ago, because some of the details were wrong.

It is not the science of 150 years ago you have to answer. It is the many detailed independent measurements of the last 50 years you have to answer. Of course this evidence is unanswerable, so instead you engage in conspiracy theories and ad-hominem attacks disguised as 'a history lesson'.

Here is a partial list...

Facts
Rocks can be categorized by their chemicals and their structure. The major categories reflect their origin – igneous from volcanoes etc, sedimentary from depositions of eroded material, and metamorphic from the heat/pressure transformations of existing rocks.

Huge layers of rocks clearly show indications of being pushed, folded, crushed, eroded, and metamorphosed. Since sedimentary rocks have been metamorphosed by plate tectonics, and since those processes take millions of years, most metamorphosed sedimentary rocks can not have come from an event in the last ten thousand years.

To fold mountains requires high pressures AND high temperatures. There is not enough time in the short-age model for the mountains to have cooled down.

There are chains of volcanoes at various locations in the world, the Hawaiian Islands for example. These chains show more than ten thousand years of continental drift.

Coral atolls are the result of eroded islands and volcanos – the volcanic rock at Enewetak is now 1200 metres under coral!
http://research.calacademy.org/research/izg/CoralReefOrganisms/CoralReef...

The igneous rocks have magnetic fields imprinted in them. One such instance is the magnetic field in rocks around the Mid-Atlantic rift. These fields apparently come from more than ten thousand years of magnetic reversals. http://istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthmag/reversal.htm

Various radiometric measurements can be made in rocks, and can be used to estimate the age of the rock. http://www.asa3.org/aSA/resources/Wiens.html (covers other methods also)

There is strong correlated evidence of the steadily changing length of a day
http://www.cyberconf.org/~cynbe/facts/monthgrowth.html

There are 174 positively identified craters from meteors. They range from 15meters to 300 kilometers across. http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/

Meteorites are found all over the Earth, but they are easy to find and well-preserved in Antarctica. http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/antmet/index.cfm

There are rocks on the ocean floor around Antarctica, carried there by glaciers turning into icebergs. It would take hundreds of thousands of years to transport them there at the current rate.

There are many species on the Earth today – about 1.5 million currently named and classified. There are guesstimates of a further 2M – 50M not yet identified.

Fossils are found in sedimentary rocks and in metamorphic rock that came from sedimentary rocks

The fossil species appear in groupings in the rocks. These groupings are consistent with the patterns of deposition, erosion, folding, crushing, movement. These groupings are often common in the lower layers of rock from two different continents, but differ in the upper layers.

The White Cliffs of Dover are part of a huge chalk formation under all of the UK, into the North Sea, containing huge numbers of fossils. They are about 500 meters thick. The fossils in the lower layers differ in appearance from those in the top layers.
http://www.discoveringfossils.co.uk/chalkformationfossils.htm
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v8/i1/chalk.asp

Ice cores drilled from both Antarctic and Arctic ice show hundreds of thousands of distinct layers.

http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/earth_sciences/report-352... planetary motion changes can be detected in the geology

Glass – either man-made or natural volcanic – slowly absorbs water. The amount absorbed can thus be used to estimate the time elapsed since the glass was made.
http://archserve.id.ucsb.edu/Anth3/Courseware/Chronology/10_Obsidian_Hyd...

Archaeological sites contain ceramics. Heating these materials causes them to emit light. The amount of photons emitted is a measure of how long since the material was last heated. This can also be done to lava. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoluminescence

Archaeological sites contain charcoal. The carbon content of materials is made up of two major isotopes, with different half-lifes. The carbon in the atmosphere is affected by solar radiation, and has a different ratio of these two isotopes than we find in materials not so affected. We find in new materials made from atmospheric carbon have this same ratio, but old materials don’t. http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae403.cfm

DNA can be sequenced, and the sequences can be compared. There are many similarities between the DNA of similar appearing organisms, some between disparate organisms, and a wide range of DNA.

Very similar cell mechanisms are used for wildly different purposes – the result of evolution tinkering to create the new mechanism.

To be specific, even quoting Lyell is ludicrous. Geology has come a LONG way since the early 1800's

/Bevin

David,

To come back to you on your claims for KP-271

More recent research shows to quote:

'The claim that KP 271 was human has been one of the stronger creationist arguments because, although it had not been proven, neither was it demonstrably wrong (unlike almost every other creationist argument about human evolution). However a recent paper now strongly indicates that KP 271 is an australopithecine and not a human fossil.

Lague and Jungers (1996) conducted an extensive study of the lower humeri of apes, humans, and hominid fossils. They used multivariate analysis, a technique which is highly praised by creationists when it delivers results favorable to them. Lague and Jungers' results show convincingly that KP 271 lies well outside the range of human specimens. Instead, it clusters with a group of other hominid fossils so strongly that the probability that it belongs to the human sample, rather than fossil hominid group, is less than one thousandth (0.001). They conclude:

"The specimen is therefore reasonably attributable to A. anamensis (Leakey et al. 1995), although the results of this study indicate that the Kanapoi specimen is not much more "human-like" than any of the other australopithecine fossils, despite prior conclusions to the contrary" (Lague and Jungers 1996)

That's the problem with this area you so rightly point out, it is coloured by the approach you take; and that is true of both sides.

Adrian, that's exactly my point. It is colored by the approach you take.

I know about the later research; I read Talkorigins.com. The interesting point is not what KP-271 is (although I wonder why I'm supposed to give any more credit to Lague and Jungers than to Howells and Patterson), but that when it was measured and determined to be close to the average of the human samples, it was still ruled to be Australopithecine based upon its supposed age, i.e., where it was found in the stratigraphic pile. It is just a perfect example of theory creating the facts. (And for all I know, Lague and Jungers is another example.)

"although I wonder why I'm supposed to give any more credit to Lague and Jungers than to Howells and Patterson"

David, this is SCIENCE. You give credit to people when you understand what they did, and realize that it was a significant improvement on the previous experiment.

You don't give credit to people because they reach results that you like, or because they have previously done something unrelated but impressive. You look at and understand their technique.

/Bevin

Bevin..nice collection of easy to understand links above showing how far science has come in explaining our universe.

but I bet there are those who will wilfully ignore them.....
and fail to get the benefit of the most important one:

http://www.asa3.org/aSA/resources/Wiens.html

so let me clip/paste a few important points :

quote:
about the author:

Dr. Wiens received a bachelor's degree in Physics from Wheaton College and a PhD from the University of Minnesota, doing research on meteorites and moon rocks. He spent two years at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (La Jolla, CA) where he studied isotopes of helium, neon, argon, and nitrogen in terrestrial rocks. He worked seven years in the Geological and Planetary Sciences Division at Caltech, where he continued the study of meteorites and worked for NASA on the feasibility of a space mission to return solar wind samples to Earth for study. Dr. Wiens wrote the first edition of this paper while in Pasadena. In 1997 he joined the Space and Atmospheric Sciences group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he has been in charge of building and flying the payload for the solar-wind mission, as well as developing new instruments for other space missions. He has published over twenty scientific research papers and has also published articles in Christian magazines. Dr. Wiens became a Christian at a young age, and has been a member of Mennonite Brethren, General Conference Baptist, and Conservative Congregational, and Vineyard denominations. He does not see a conflict between science in its ideal form (the study of God's handiwork) and the Bible, or between miracles on the one hand, and an old Earth on the other.
end quote

so here we have a scientist, who specializes in what science does.... and who also is a Christian.....

shouldn't we listen to his explanation?
the details are in the web link, for those who really want to know, but for those who didn't plan to take the time to open the links and their minds, lets post a few salient points:

starting with the intro:

quote:
Radiometric dating--the process of determining the age of rocks from the decay of their radioactive elements--has been in widespread use for over half a century. There are over forty such techniques, each using a different radioactive element or a different way of measuring them. It has become increasingly clear that.....

.. these radiometric dating techniques agree with each other.. and as a whole, present a coherent picture in which ..

....the Earth was created a very long time ago.

Further evidence comes from the ....

...complete agreement between radiometric dates and other dating methods such as counting tree rings or glacier ice core layers.

Many Christians have been led to distrust radiometric dating and are completely unaware of the great number of laboratory measurements that have shown these methods to be consistent. Many are also unaware that Bible-believing Christians are among those actively involved in radiometric dating.

This paper describes in relatively simple terms how a number of the dating techniques work, how accurately the half-lives of the radioactive elements and the rock dates themselves are known, and how dates are checked with one another.

In the process the paper refutes a number of misconceptions prevalent among Christians today..
end quote

next the paper goes on to describe in terms any intelligent reader can grasp if not completely understand the math, how we know that the earth is far older than we once thought...

several methods described include radiometric dating, ice cores, and astronomy...all of which agree that the earth is far older than many young earth christians once believed.

but importantly for our readers, some of whom might still be hanging on to the old ideas , here is the conclusion:

quote:
Rightly Handling the Word of Truth

As Christians it is of great importance that we understand God's word correctly. Yet from the middle ages up until the 1700s people insisted that the Bible taught that the Earth, not the Sun, was the center of the solar system. It wasn't that people just thought it had to be that way; they actually quoted scriptures: "The Earth is firmly fixed; it shall not be moved" (Psalm 104:5), or "the sun stood still" (Joshua 10:13; why should it say the sun stood still if it is the Earth's rotation that causes day and night?), and many other passages.

I am afraid the debate over the age of the Earth has many similarities. But I am optimistic. Today there are many Christians who accept the reliability of geologic dating, but do not compromise the spiritual and historical inerrancy of God's word. While a full discussion of Genesis 1 is not given here, references are given below to a few books that deal with that issue.

As scientists, we deal daily with what God has revealed about Himself through the created universe. The psalmist marveled at how God, Creator of the universe, could care about humans: "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him?" (Psalm 8:3-4).

Near the beginning of the twenty-first century we can marvel all the more, knowing how vast the universe is, how ancient are the rocks and hills, and how carefully our environment has been designed. Truly God is more awesome than we can imagine!

end quote (on what things really are)

begin reflection (on what it all means)

Chuck wrote of John Alfke:
--
This makes you sound like a literalist yourself.

You could approach scripture sympathetically, and try to see past what might, on a literal reading, be implausible, in order to grasp the deeper, spiritual truth the Bible tells.
--

I have had this discussion with John before on Atomorrow.com now .net.

John is a fundamentalist in his understanding of Christians. When you get down to it your Christianity has three choices, to be a fundamentalist to dump the whole thing or to reinterpret the traditions. John dumped the whole thing and does not recognize the ability to reinterpret the whole thing. In reality that works well enough for him when he is talking to the fundamentalists but he can't understand the progressive Christians viewpoint so he always reverts to thinking the Christian viewpoint is the fundamentalist view.

John however is not alone in his dilemma the rest of us see it all the time in Adventist churches and media. The fundamentalist we call Traditional Adventists against the Progressive Adventists. It is not a healthy dynamic as some have proposed. John can't be persuaded to give Progressive Adventists a chance because he knows very well that they are a minority in Adventism so when he talks to Adventists he talks the language of the fundamentalist. After all they make up the majority.

I just did another blog article on "the shack" because at the end of August the Adventist Review came down on the fundamentalist side of the criticism of the book. Dealing with a letter in the Review which shows that there are Adventists that don't even know what the Gospel is. That kind of thinking is the result of not getting past fundamentalism or traditionalism. It will probably be an insurmountable problem for Adventism and perhaps that is best demonstrated by this recent brouhaha about evolution and creation. Because if you can't see the third way you either abandon or regress to traditions.

Ron

My take on John is that he is satirizing the many Adventists, as you confess, who ARE fundamentalists. If that is to be the predominant position in Adventism, constantly advocated by the official writers and publications, then he is ironically exposing the many arguments.

Whether he belives them, is not important; but that he is exposing the obvious contradictions between science and the Fundamentalist's positions only illustrates the great divide separating them.

There is more than one way to interpret Scripture. When the church and the Fundamentalists choose only one way, they are boxing themselves in a corner and ignoring overwhelming scientific evidence that they are unable to explain.

Why not dump the whole thing and accept Basic Christianity. A Good place to start would be with John R. W. Stott.

Try to build a theology out of a failed exegetic venture of over a 100 years ago--is incredible nonsense. Progressive or Fundamentalist--both are built upon shifting sands.

There is absolutely no hope for man except in the finished work of Jesus Christ plus nothing. It isn't in Dan 8:14; or Rev. 14, or the mystical powers of E.G. White.

Why not follow Wm Miller, he did the only sensable thing. He simply said, I was wrong and returned to Basic Christianity. What Jesus promised Adam, He promises me and each son and daugther of Adam. Nothing more and nothing less. That is the hope that burns within our hearts. Institutional loyalty is great if that institution is the bearer of the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone without dozens of add ons. Tom

How basic are you proposing, Tom?

Officially the SDA church is very basic in its teachings on salvation now.

It is the extensions beyond salvation to the set of choices that a congregation will accept into membership, and to the set of non-salvation-required beliefs advocated/reinforced in the publications where the disagreement is

What do you think the minimal requirements for SDA membership should be?

/Bevin

Chuck said:

"Christianity has been a fully repugnant failure a good bit of the time (although its crimes have typically been through alignment with the STATE; even the Inquisition was substantially a function of the state). But no campaign of Christian / state bloodshed has equaled, in its devastation, what you saw in Hitler (who did not, by the way, spend his days fingering the Rosary), or in Stalin, or in Pol Pot. I am married to a Chinese woman, so I know, too, that Mao was no Mother Teresa."

Pointing to Pol Pot or Stalin as examples of non-believers makes little sense because what made them so powerfully awful was not their atheism but their fervent ideology. Same with Hitler. And with Hitler we have a great example of how Christians both opposed him but even more so supported him because he met a need of theirs. Christians, given their theology, should behave much differently than they actually do and the situation with the Nazis is a prime example. They do not uphold the teachings of compassion any better than atheists do in reality.

I think we understand much more by dividing people into those who understand that every human life is valuable and every human has the right to live in dignity, and those who don't. Christians make up both sides of this every bit as much as non-believers. In fact, Christianity as practiced in the US would come down quite firmly in the latter camp as we saw by the survey that showed the stronger the identification with Christianity, the more likely the person was to support US torture. Those who identified as atheists were most likely to oppose it.

In industrialized countries, non-believers have a much higher percentage of people who are supportive of human rights than Christians. They tend to work harder against the systems that oppress people as well.

That isn't to say, again, that non-believers are good and Christians are bad. I just don't think it is a useful distinction to say Christianity provides a morally superior system. Maybe in the abstract but the abstract isn't what saves people from oppression. What saves them is boots on the ground and this is where one sees little difference. Which again, given the teachings of Jesus, is absolutely unexplainable. If atheism is so damaging compared to Christianity, why do we see so little difference in how those who hold these beliefs or lack of beliefs behave?

When push comes to shove and the world has needed compassionate people to stand up for right, compassionate people have done so but they have come from all sorts of faith and no faith traditions. Christianity, as a whole, has been utterly unreliable as a force against evil, especially more recently.

Basic Christianity, Yes.

But Stott--who is brilliant, I allow, and has done lots of good things for the Christian faith--is pretty much in the camp of Constantinian Christianity, or so I believe. (His theory of atonement is extremely dubious, and is like a gift to the Establishment for failing to really focus on the social, as well as the personal, meaning of the cross.)

So basic Radical Reformation, or Pre-Constantinian, Christianity, so I would argue,is the ideal to shoot for.

This is a whole new conversation and a very important one. (Thanks for getting it in front of us, Tom.) I think that basic Christianity, or basic Adventism, is exactly what we should be exploring. What's the kernel? What's the truth you're left with once you get past the propositional clutter?

But this may better fit a whole new thread. All the discussion of faith and evolution has been really insightful.

Chuck

..."What do you think the minimal requirements for SDA membership should be?"...

why should there be requirements?

because it is a club? (notice, I did not say...cult)
and you need to be a member to get in? need to prove your credentials to participate?

I am reminded of Rodney Dangerfields plaint that he didn't want to lower himself to be a member of any club which would take him!!!

why not accept all?
why not admit that we don't all have the same truths, and get together to share, study, research, provide support and potato salad if your last name is between A and M, beans if between N and Z....

like this:
http://www.uua.org/visitors/index.shtml

why do we draw such small circles?
to exclude others from the club?

my fave poet, Ogden Nash (RIP) penned this:

He drew a circle, to shut me out
a rebel, a heretic, someone to flout.

But love and I had the whit to win:
we drew a circle to take him in!!!

Chuck

Since its been a long day and is currently the middle of the night I will be brief.

Some of what you said suggested that you thought I had raised the question of political freedom--freedom of speech, etc. The issue that concerns me most it that of whether a materialist universe is compatible with NON-determinism.

Who, or what, has caused you to be concerned about the philosophical theory of determinism? The NT clearly talks of predestination, people that God "has chosen", the inability of the unchosen to even have the capability to understand the Gospel, etc. The idea that matter and life are the result of natural processes, and the current specific forms that matter and life appear are also the result of natural processes, does not lead to the conclusion that there are no choices to be made by sentient life. I had no say in the choice of mate my parents made when they chose each other. I had no opportunity to decide the timing of their love-making, nor the choice of which particular sperm won the race to the egg. I did not have a choice of gender which affects my physical makeup and the particular level of hormones and other chemicals in my body. We know for a fact that testosterone causes aggressiveness for one thing. Males make stupid decisions much more frequently than women. Those are examples of things that I, as an individual, could not control or affect.

The Biblical teaching that God controls the events on earth, raising up rulers and causing their downfall, is even mindful of sparrows, knows your thoughts, struck people dead in the NT because they withheld proceeds from a land sale, controls the weather, even to the alleged claim of the Jesus character that ALL power on earth had been given Him, is supposed to be believed by followers of christianity. THAT is deterministic. The scientific theory now getting some evidence behind it only goes as far as saying that our CONSCIOUS decisions are illusory because the subconscious has already made the choice before the conscious realizes it.

A decision to become educated will alter future thought processes and the resulting decisions. I have never heard an atheist say they believed in a strict determinism. I have heard many MANY times religious people say, effectively, that God is in charge of everything EXCEPT their own single choice of accepting Jesus as their saviour.

On another front, my beef is that you seem somewhat naive (I may, of course, be wrong)about history.

I would be interested in a specific point that was incorrect. I tend to be a generalist, or big-picture, in the manner I try to convey thoughts. I go into minute detail when details are critical.

I recommend the theologian David Bentley Hart (Atheist Delusions, Yale U Press) and the British Literary critic Terry Eagleton (Reason, Faith, and Revolution, also Yale U Press). I also recommend the sociologist Rodney Stark's The Rise of Christianity (whose publisher I just now forget).

I have read Terry Eagleton's latest book that you noted. Personally I thought it was one of the least well written books I have ever read (actually a series of talks at Yale). He never states what christianity he believes yet says:

Many reflective people these days will see good reason to reject religious belief. But even if the account I have given of it is not literally true, it may still serve as an allegory of our political and historical condition. Besides, critics of the most enduring form of popular culture in human history have a moral obligation to confront the case at its most persuasive, rather than grabbing themselves a victory on the cheap by savaging it as so much garbage and gobbledygook. The mainstream Christian theology I have outlined here may well be false; but anyone who holds it is in my view deserving of respect.

He says christianity may not be LITERALLY true but people that don't believe it have a moral obligation to confront it? That is a load of- well, you know what I mean. The majority of humans on this planet dismiss christianity without ever even taking a look at it. Most of those that call themselves christian couldn't tell you why, or what it is they believe. Then he claims we have a moral obligation to assess it? That's idiotic.

Here are a few of his "points" about christianity:

"God, in short, is every bit as gloriously pointless as Ditchkins tells us he is. He is a kind of perpetual critique of instrumental reason."

"Jesus is a sick joke of a savior."

Then, Eagleton builds a straw man which he calls "Ditchkins" to argue against. At the end of the book he complains that there is not a hope in h**l that "Ditchkins" will read the book and have a Damascus Road epiphany. Nonexistent people don't read books so I'm sure Ditchkins will not read it.

I applaud the so-called New Atheists for standing up and being provocative. A couple of centuries ago Dawkins and Hitchens and Pat Condell and Victor Stenger etc would have been hung for speaking their mind like they are able to now. A little over 300 years ago the young Aikenhead was executed in Scotland by the Presbyterians for wishing, on a cold winter day, that he was in h*ll because at least it was warm there.

I have attended a weekend-long stadium event of Promise Keepers, dozens of Sanctuary Seminars by Elder Frazee at Wildwood, Revelation Seminars (in a THEATER), a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza, presentations by Victor Stenger, and have had a few beers with PZ Myers. The only ones that belong to rational civilization are the atheists. Eagleton, the Pope, or yourself may not like their style but its not possible to honestly dispute the evidence.

Stark shows ... just how Christianity's eventual defeat (well, more or less) of paganism was the result of perfectly rational analysis by those who converted.

Of course. Paul was a jew by race but a pagan by education. He states specifically that he proved his Jesus form the Hebrew Bible (what he called "scripture"). Of course, even though Jesus allegedly walked around Judea a few years before Paul wrote his letters he never appeals to the words or events/places that the Gospels quote or describe. Paul's spiritual Jesus is hard to correlate with the supposedly literal human Jesus. Augustine was a well educated pagan convert. He brought in so much Greek philosophy to christianity that, after he got finished, it would be hard to know a christian from a pagan except for whether they called God "El Elyon" or Zeus.

Christianity has been a fully repugnant failure a good bit of the time (although its crimes have typically been through alignment with the STATE; even the Inquisition was substantially a function of the state). But no campaign of Christian / state bloodshed has equaled, in its devastation, what you saw in Hitler (who did not, by the way, spend his days fingering the Rosary), or in Stalin, or in Pol Pot. I am married to a Chinese woman, so I know, too, that Mao was no Mother Teresa.

Christian dogma kills more people every year by starvation due to overpopulation than Hitler or any of the others listed did in their whole reign of terror. You can't go into a country, refuse to allow contraception, immunize the babies, and then not be held responsible for the ensuing mass starvation. Wasn't it just last year that Bush's envoy to the UN cast the only "No" vote (every other country voted Yes) on a resolution defining food as a "Right" for children? And that vote came after 8 years of refusing to allow US aid for family planning clinics in African and Asian countries? Not to mention the irrational and, IMO, criminal stance of the Catholics against contraception in developing countries.

(guess my response turned out to be longer than the planned "brief" one I was intending)

"I applaud the so-called New Atheists for standing up and being provocative."

Brave statement. Perhaps a dig at the 'old' atheists?

Would you applaud me if I wrote a book about the Santa Clause Delusion? If I was really 'provocative' about something that I did not even believe in? Rather than what they do believe in, it is their lack of belief that defines them. Like a grumpy old school teacher, "no, no, no, you are wrong." That is all you remember the grumpy school teachers for. They are perfectionists who enforce their world view onto others, just like any other religious Zealot. I saw Dawkin's admit he was at position 6 out of 7 on a scale towards atheism. They have no proof of the correctness of their position, but are willing to attack people's hope and faith knowing that they themselves might be wrong.

What's hilarious is when that sort of provocative behaviour comes from those that disagree with us, then we use words like fanaticism and fundamentalism. But when we see people who are zealous for things that we agree with, we are the cheering band.

PS. I have heard very few atheists argue that free will does not exist. I agree with you on that point. I think both sides make a lot of stupid claims, without listening to, or understanding the opposing point of view.

I would begin with the salvational truths in the Apostles Creed. Upon that foundation, I would refer to Paul's description of a new society such as found in Ephesians and illustrated in James. There would be no party spirit of judging others in food or drink, or day, or litergy. Worship, private or public,it would be a rational thanksgiving for God's Creative Power and Redemptive Love.

Study would be of the Christian duty in community. Not simply what would Jesus do? But what did Jesus do! To the extent that God has given us gifts and means let us do so also.

Remember the scene in the Longest Day in which the Free French were trapped in a building and the French nuns walked through gun fire to bind up the wounded? That is Christianity in action. Should someone have been binding up the wounds of the Germans. That comes next week.
Tom

Would you applaud me if I wrote a book about the Santa Clause Delusion?

If the marketers of Christmas toys had spent the last several centuries oppressing and killing Santa Deniers then I would certainly applaud your writing a book explaining how presents really appear on the annual rebirth of the sun. Since they don't, I wouldn't.

Rather than what they do believe in, it is their lack of belief that defines them.

That is false, IMO. They are firm believers in, and vocal advocates for, conclusions based on objective reality. If the Hebrew God were a part of objective reality I am certain the so-called "New Atheists" would be believers in Yahweh & His Asherah.

I saw Dawkins' admit he was at position 6 out of 7 on a scale towards atheism. They have no proof of the correctness of their position, but are willing to attack people's hope and faith knowing that they themselves might be wrong.

The burden of proof for the existence of God or Gods rests on the theists. Because religious belief is the source of much of the world's tension today, and the fact that a large number of children are taught that evidence-based scientific conclusions should be disbelieved in favor of ancient tales from nomadic tribes, theists should come up with some reason why they should continue to hold some privileged, reverential authority. Believers tend to demand that rational thinkers not only respect their RIGHT to believe (which I do), but also respect their BELIEFS (which I certainly do not). Its not attacking people's hope or faith, but attacking the demand that we respect their delusional hope or faith.

..."theists should come up with some reason why they should continue to hold some privileged, reverential authority"...

what? and hold people accountable for their beliefs and actions?

lets KISS it:

God is....He says so in His book.

The Bible is the inerrant word of God...it says so.

Paul, a defining "prophet", after being linded by the blight, said we all must die because our great, great, great, etc. grandparents were deceived. who are we to argue, even tho ancient Heeb law said that the children should NOT be punished for the sins of the parents...tho their God said that their kids unto the 10th generation could not enter the temple if their gonads were not intact. I always wondered how thaaat worked...
no gonads, few kids?

and the SDA Doc who gave me the unkindest cut of all after launching 4 fair swimmers into the gene pool, never told me about the side effects...that I could not go back to the temple.

Finally, SisterWhite is His latest profitess..she almost says so.

Tho I no longer believe that underground coal fires power volcanoes and earthquakes, She promises God is hammering out post and beam mansions in Heaven, just thru the hole in Orion.

I want mine....I deserve it, for all those years of keeping all those sabbaths from precisely sundown according to the Gleaner...modified for a few miles west of Beantown.

had to have the tub drained and cleaned as the sun slipped below Mt Wachusett, unplug the crock pot so there would be no fire on Saturns day eve (meaning more cold beans to celebrate creation at pot luck after sitting thru church hearing the preacher tell us how bad sin was,

could not call my relatives out on the Left Coast to find out how badly the Red Flops were losing to the D..n Yankees, or how well the Boston 5 White guys were thumping the well integrated Nicks on hardwood on friday nights...none of which I could listen to ....but they could....

Loved those family walks on Sabbath, but wished we could go deeper into the lake than our ankles, cause that would be swimming, and fun was outlawed...not the White Way to heaven.

only problem now? Orion is 1,600 light yrs away, and unless God subverts the laws of the universe, ie, the speed of light, like he did for Jacob (overcoming the laws of genetics to help cheat uncle laban), or for Gideon, (stopping the sun's circling around the earth so the Hebrews could kill more of their neighbors and take their land and "use" their virgins),

then I'll have to wait 1,600 yrs for my McManse to arrive...

meantime, the health message works for me, as long as I avoid animal flesh (except oysters and deer meat which I understand she okayed), limit all that salt in those Big Franks, and avoid the sugar in those Little Debbies, and dont swallow the bubble gum which has horses hooves as a major ingredient. But sometimes I do wonder why I cant sneak an occasional green tea, or white wine for taste if not health.

But thanks to Her health mess age and Kellogs Flakiness (without the acompanying coffee enemas, thank you, as in that great movie, the Road to Wellington, or whatever), I intend to live forever, or at least for those 1600 yrs til my new home gets here, and so far, its working.

thank god
good genes
and the White health mess
age.

John Very poor satire, but thoughts more widely held that anyone in power or near power is not likely to admit.

The problem is you mix Christianity with Adventism. We all see through a glass darkly, but please not smear the glass just because some 19th Century mystic got it all wrong.

We are either a high order of animal or we are potentially the adopted Sons of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. I prefer to take the latter view, thank you.

Just cause man has made a mess of things doesn't mean we need to blame God or even His servants.

The way of salvation is straight, narrow, plain, and simple.
It is only the preversion of man who has complicated the process. "He that cometh to Me, I will no way cast him out!"

What ever He is building is certainly better than what I have: Post and Beam or Silver and Gold. To be with Jesus and His friends for eternity: it could be of straw and clay.
Tom

P.S. I know well the feelings you express in controlled disgust--But that is only the place of beginning again. To see with clarity the Covenant of Redemption as did Paul, Augustine, Luther, Wesley. even Roy Anderson and my dear friend Graham Maxwell.

God won His Case and I not only approve, I fully accept it benifits. Even so come Lord Jesus. Where else can one go without fear or condemnation? Tom

> We are either a high order of animal or we are potentially the adopted Sons of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. I prefer to take the latter view, thank you.

False dichotomy - we can be both

/Bevin

keafan,

So, you claim that my Christian beliefs are a real problem, and are worth fighting against. But I am having trouble understanding which of them are the issue. Which Christian beliefs are really the problem?

I do believe that God understands science better than we do. So what is wrong with that? God has allowed us to discover new knowledge, I am not against science in any way, shape or form. In fact, I am a scientist and engineer, so the thought that I am against science is difficult for me to swallow.

I do believe that creation can not be falsified. For example, if you were there, say on day 8, and you saw fully mature humans walking around, you saw a fully developed ecosystem full of life, you saw stars in the night sky that were shining from millions of light-years away. I would respect your conclusion, that the theory of evolution is valid within it's own assumptions about causality. The difference does come down to untestable assumptions about the limits of causality and that relies on faith.

Both models expect to see an ecosystem that looks physically mature and fully developed! The appearance of age does not mean anything to most creationist believers. It's a straw man to suggest otherwise! It shows a lack of understanding of the creation model.

I do believe that all humans are of equal value, we do have inalienable rights, because we were all created equal. I go further as well, that regards to the natural kingdoms, we have neglected our 'God given' responsibility for as well.

An atheist who believes in the value of life, e.g. a Utilitarian Universalist, who believes in 'Goodness', they at least believe in a simple version of what is defined as God, i.e. a common faith in some of the significant attributes of God. So, we are squabbling about what is God, rather than His actual existence.

Personally, I rejoice to know that you are a believer in Goodness!

So an atheist who says that they do not believe in God, while actually demonstrating a belief in many attributes of God, better explain themselves, what do they really mean when they say that they do not believe in God? What's in the name?

1+1=2 is objectively unprovable, please explain on objective grounds why you believe that propositional statement?

There is rationale and reason for believing in God. The same propositional philosophy behind science can be used to demonstrate a case for the existence of God.

For example, causality is an apparently transcendental facet of our perception of reality. Causality is an attribute provided by God. Where else does causality come from? It's a perfectly reasonable and rational explanation. Einstein said that God does not play dice with the universe. The fine-tuning of the universe is also incredibly convincing to some of the existence of at least some attributes of God. The appearance of continued coherence in reality is convincing to me of God's existence.

Causality is a philosophical area, one that can not be objectively proven to exist. Causality itself is not established on any objective grounds. Actually, our understanding of truth even requires causality to exist. So, there is a catch 22. Causality, truth, sequence, logic, mathematics are all something that science assumes exist based on faith. Objective science is a subset of this faith! These gifts are further attributes provided by the existence of God. Even the faith to believe them also comes from God.

Objective science assumes some attributes of God to start with! Objectivity itself assumes attributes of God. Your faith in scientific objectivity demonstrates your faith in some attributes of God.

Here is another way of looking at the issue. Mathematical models that attempt to describe reality, i.e. our perception of reality, always break down because they get to where they have to pose different ideas about causality. E.g. entanglement, M theory/super-strings etc. Mathematics requires causality! So, how to model causality mathematically, needs a new type of mathematics, one that is actually objectively unprovable, and requires new propositional statements. And so more faith statements are introduced about reality, in order to describe reality. We are stuck inside it, but we can see some edges of the universe.

Logically, it appears that even time had a beginning, this means that causality, logic, sequence and mathematics, our understanding of truth, had a beginning as well, because they are constructs of the laws of time and space that we are constrained within.

Also, logically, there was never absolutely nothing. It is absurd to think that there was ever no construct at all. The laws of reality as we understand them, it is reasonable to assume, come into existence from higher laws. Hence the study of Stephen Hawking, trying to describe it with higher and newer mathematical laws.

Here the point I am also making, is that the case has only to be 'reasonable to assume'. You have to grant me that, because this is ultimately all of science's limitations, are things that become reasonable to assume. Nothing can be proven ultimately, if the listener does not want to believe it. Refusing to believe in God is just like refusing to believe that 1+1=2. They are both equally reasonable propositional truths. Except that believing in 1+1=2 assumes a faith also in an attribute provided by God.

And just as our known type of causality is provided, there is nothing saying that the provider of causality can not also intervene in that causality at any time. Only if it was nothingness (the absurd idea that true nothingness ever existed) that provided causality, could causality not be intervened with. But something sustains and provides the causality. So, if it can be provided, then there is no reason that it can't be intervened with from time to time either. We can't make statements that intervention is impossible while we still do not have an adequate understanding of causality to start with. I have seen atheists make that mistake.

I've gone a bit beyond what I was going to say, I guess your challenge of asking me 'why' I believe was a fair one, the onus is on us, the believers, to explain - when asked! So I tried to put some ideas down for you. So, now I ask you, why do you believe in many of the same attributes of God, but believe that God doesn't exist? Isn't it just the type of God that we are disagreeing on?

And more importantly, I reiterate, can you please expand on what it is about my Christian belief system that could cause so much problems that it is worth you fighting against, and championing those who are provocative about it? You have made a significant negative claim about my personal beliefs, so the onus now falls onto you to demonstrate your claim to me, and I will do my best to listen.

My suggestion is that the problems which you site, are not caused by the actual beliefs themselves. I would argue that the Christian beliefs that I hold can be used more for good than not. At least, that is how I understand it now - I will try and hear how you refute that. And, I believe it is human greed and selfishness that is the root cause of the problems of the world. Not caring for each-other as equally valuable, (regardless of belief) is the most important problem, and also not caring for creation seems to be a big issue as well.

Keafan,

You misread scripture if you suggest that its picture of God entails something rather like Determinism. Of all the peoples in the world that I'm aware of, none believe more fervently in human responsibility (freedom) than the Jews.

You say Eagleton is a bad writer, to which I say, Huh. He fails, no doubt, to measure up to Montaigne, or to G. K. Chesterton. But he's a witty and clever many by any ordinary standard, and has a mind-boggling familiarity with a wide range of literary, philosophical and theological thought. (Of course, "Ditchkins" would disagree with him, but that's another matter).

And is Eagleton's Christianity, by the way, entirely eccentric? I don't think so. He says, for example, that if Jesus' body is mingled with the dust of Palestine, Christianity is false. But what is also true, of course, is that his book is not just a devastation of Dawkins and Hitchens, but also a critique of less-than-truly-faithful Christianity.

"Christian dogma kills more people every year by starvation due to overpopulation than Hitler or any of the others listed did in their whole reign of terror." This pretty much seals the case, Keafan, that you are in the grip of a philosophical bias. Biblical Christianity says nothing to suggest that it is a call to overpopulate the world, and you know it. The fact that Catholic (and perhaps some other versions) of the Christian faith insist on doctrines of human sexuality you and I might disagree with is no indictment of the basic Christian vision.

Beth, you're channeling the New Atheists when you just dismiss the counterexamples--such as Stalin--to atheism's supposed record of moral superiority.

Here let me just say these few things:

1) I would be first in line to express admiration for the best of atheist humanitarians and visionaries, and there are many of them. (At the same time let's do consider: Where did opposition to infanticide come from? Where did relativization of state power come from? Who were the abolitionists?)

2) Atheism at its best is stunningly Galilean: Where else, than to the biblical revolution, would you go (I'm thinking now of the North Atlantic civilization) for precursors to the ideals of the best of today's atheists?

3) Modern violence, done as an expression of the modern (secular) state, is awful--and is very arguably worse than anything done by Christendom, or the church in league with the state? 4) And does this not at least raise the question of whether the Galilean ideals can flourish--over the long term--apart from the Galilean faith? Here's Charles Taylor's work on Secularism is worth the effort of reading.

Again, read Hart's Atheist Delusions, a brilliant dismantling of the take on moral history that the New Atheists presuppose. And consider that a large part of Eaglton's message is that a writer like Hitchens is, in effect, a lackey for capitalist excess.

I say again: there has been--in the West, at least--ONE human revolution. It is the revolution we associate with the risen Jesus Christ. Other so-called revolutions either build on, or betray, what Christ taught and personally embodied.

It is tragic, of course, and surely explains some of the hostility you see in, say, Keafan or Alfke, that the Christian church(es) HAVE betrayed Christ's vision so often. But it certainly doesn't follow from this that the solution is a morality rooted in some vision that must look to nature for its moral underpinnings, and live without reference to the transcendent.

Chuck

Chuck

Chuck,

Curious, I just googled David Hart, and came up with this:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9m2wm_christian-vs-david-hart-smith-ec...

Just had to share it.

> For example, if you were there, say on day 8, and you saw fully mature humans walking around, you saw a fully developed ecosystem full of life, you saw stars in the night sky that were shining from millions of light-years away. I would respect your conclusion, that the theory of evolution is valid within it's own assumptions about causality. The difference does come down to untestable assumptions about the limits of causality and that relies on faith.

And the ability to believe a loving God would create a death-free world showing strong evidence of the death of billions of animals - ie: create a huge lie

/Bevin

Bevin,

You still think it possible for God to lie? If you do not believe that is possible then you are not arguing fairly.

If I am wrong, and you are right, I couldn't ever say that God lied. I would just be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time that I have been wrong. So what, who cares? But to say that if you are wrong then God would be intentionally deceiving us, wow, nice one.

You have previously admitted to me the possibility of various scenarios, can't be ruled out. That there is theoretically the possibility that you are wrong, yet despite that, you still insist that if you are wrong, then God lied!

i.e. your perception of truth is above your perception of God. I think that you and I have some very different understanding of God in some areas.

There was a time in my life that I was very angry at God. My fight with God ended up breaking me, not God. That's the best thing that has ever happened to me. God is all that matters, I am dust, if the church or the book doesn't lead you to that, then try another path, the rocks themselves speak it.

This God lied argument is all built upon the misunderstanding brought on by people who claim that the Bible is the "word of God" thus if it says something than God said it. It has no basis in fact, it is a tradition that is not based upon what the Bible says or any king of reason.

For more see my recent articles:

http://cafesda.blogspot.com/2009/09/is-bible-really-word-of-god-part-2.h...

Ron

When will we stop claiming that the Bible is the "Word of God." Internal affirmation is the fallacy of circular reasoning: Because the Bible claims to be inspired, people have designated it as the absolute, authoritative Word of God, no exceptions. Regardless of some of the horrifying descriptions of God's acts, nevertheless, it is still the unquestioned word of God.

Once we recognize that such internal claims mean nothing, and studying the formation of Scripture with its many scribes copying, editing, redacting through the years, with no original manuscripts to verify, the claims fall through the floor. Was it the Word of God as originally orally told? Was it the Word of God in each separate copying or editing? If we do not have the originals, how can we know if the present Word of God is exactly like the original? We do know that there are several versions of the same event: The Creation, Flood, and many others. Which is the true one?

The Bible is only a compilation of oral transmissions recited for hundreds of years in a preliterate society long before writing was invented and these stories were written. None can be verified, and faith is the only subjective way to evaluate them.

Like many similar and contemporary literature, the Bible exhibits the perspective, beliefs, and traditions of the men who wrote it. Placing one's entire faith in such a document, while unable to validate the writers or stories, is truly a demonstration of faith in the world of the unknown.

History is filled with the awful results of misplaced faith, although innocently. Modern times such such as Jim Jones, Heaven's Gate, David Koresh and the Islamic Jihadist terrorist all are examples of faith. We should be wary of what we decide to put our faith in. If we followed the examples given in the Bible of those who had faith we would still have child sacrifices (Abraham's willingness), The 11th chapter of Hebrews extolling the faithful who were murderers, adulterers, deceivers, to mention a few.

If we are unable to separate the wheat from the chaff: the wheat being the timeless principles to guide our lives; and the chaff is all the extraneous "stuff" that has no affect on our lives today but is simply the Hebrews' attempt at embellishing their past as filled with both glory, and depravity. All nations have both but none are glorified as exemplary to the extent of the Hebrews in the Bible.

> You still think it possible for God to lie? If you do not believe that is possible then you are not arguing fairly.

No, Chris - I do not believe that God is a liar.

Simple application of Logic 101.

Your position requires God to be a liar.
God is not a liar.
Therefore your position is wrong.

/Bevin

rc,

You really think that Bevin was doing a parody of that? I thought he was making a genuine point about his own belief. I took him seriously.

Bevin,

I do try to take you in good faith.

Your argument:
Premise 1: My position requires God to be a liar.
Premise 2: God is not a liar.
Corollary: Therefore my position is wrong.

My problem is that your Premise 1 is false. My position does not 'require' God to be a liar!

You need to establish why my position necessarily requires God to be a liar. What are your reasons for your claim that my position means that God is a liar. Are there any other possibilities, for example we as mere humans are mistaken. If there are other possibilities, then your logic does not follow as necessarily true. You have admitted to me before that there are theoretically other possibilities.

Furthermore, if there are any other possibilities, AND if your Premise 2 is correct, which I believe it is, then your Premise 1 needs to be withdrawn from the table. Because your Premise 2 falsifies your Premise 1.

If you truly believed Premise 2, you would agree with me that NO position could ever require God to be a liar.

> If you truly believed Premise 2, you would agree with me that NO position could ever require God to be a liar.

Chris, learn to do logic.

The position "God is a liar" certainly requires God to be a liar, regardless of whether premise 2 is true or false. If I truely believed Premise 2, I would abandon this position.

Your position consists of

1. The world LOOKS LIKE it is controlled by physical laws
2. The world LOOKS old, as though it was made by those physical laws
3. The world IS young, and only looks old because the rules have profoundly changed
4. God makes the rules

The only conclusion from this argument is that God changed the rules and so the young looks old.

Your position requires God to be a liar.

You should abandon your position - not God, but merely the unfounded, demonstrably false, belief that the Bible's account of events prior to 1400BC is accurate scientifically.

/Bevin

Bevin,

Why are we going back over this old territory?

Here is what I really want to know about you. You prefer not to worship with us for various reasons. Your testimony makes me want to know what sorts of things that I can do. I mean really do. What sort of changes could I make, to help people like you want to worship together with us? We can argue about origins until the cows come home, if that tickles your fancy. If that stimulates you. But, my personal question is this: Is the way I think, part of what you see as the problem? Is there anything that you actually want me to do?

Is it because I believe in creation? Surely not, because you used to worship with us, knowing that we believed in creation. I used to believe in evolution too, that never bothered me about the church. I must admit, that when I read that paper by whatshisname, the one that triggered your final straw, I too was incensed and shamed by the approach in that article. I have spoken against that approach, and I will continue to do so.

Christ died to restore communion with God. The least we could do is put aside our differences of interpretation in order to commune with each-other. In the end, I pray that you get the fellowship that you need, no matter where it is. And I am saddened if it can't be with people like me.

My final post on this lying business.

I am not asking you to abandon your position on origins. I am asking you to rethink that my position requires God to be a liar. This is very different than me asking you to believe that my position is true.

All of this started by me saying that creation could not be falsified. Your falsification of creation is that if creation is true then God is lying. Taking a position of holy authority to falsify creation is not a very convincing falsification!

But the claim itself is still significant to me. As you can tell.

You say:
The only conclusion from this argument is that God changed the rules and so the young looks old.
Your position requires God to be a liar.

No, there are other possible conclusions, which you yourself have previously acknowledged. Have you changed your mind?

You have not established the lying part. You need to define what it means to lie. You need to establish that there is no other conclusion other than lying. But you have previously conceded that there are other possibilities. You have not addressed the example I gave, for example that humans are mistaken. You have not yet addressed this counter point.

You also say:
The position "God is a liar" certainly requires God to be a liar, regardless of whether premise 2 is true or false

So, that is tautological. But that was NOT your Premise 1. Your Premise 1 was that my position necessarily leads to God lying. You are making a jump between my position and God lying. You need to demonstrate how the position necessarily leads to God lying. My position does not say that God is lying.

If we take the creation story to be true, then the appearance of age is not a problem, because we were told of a different type of causality. So, we don't have to believe that the uniformitarian assumptions required by evolution are the only thing that we should expect. If creation was actually revealed to humans, that a different type of causality was used, then there is no lie! Only if our expectations were 'necessarily' lead towards uniformitarian assmptions, by God, then we could possibly argue that we were lead to believe the wrong thing. But the creation story does not lead us to believe in uniformitarian assumptions. Therefore, if in fact special intervention occurred, then there is no lie in the creation story. It is completely internally consistent. There is no reason to say that God lied if He did intervene.

1. The world LOOKS LIKE it is controlled by physical laws

I agree.

2. The world LOOKS old, as though it was made by those physical laws

No, I never said that it necessarily looked as though it 'was' made by those physical laws, although I don't say that those physical laws couldn't have done it either. It is one possibility, that it might look that way to some. It doesn't to everyone. Actually, we still do not have a complete understanding of reality, so the jury is still out on this one.

3. The world IS young, and only looks old because the rules have profoundly changed

No, I never said that the world is necessarily young. I said that the creation story can not be disproven because it does indicate that there would be an appearance of age.

4. God makes the rules

And I'm grateful that I don't :)

You should abandon your position - not God, but merely the unfounded, demonstrably false, belief that the Bible's account of events prior to 1400BC is accurate scientifically.

Don't worry, that is not my position. My statement was that the creation model could not be falsified.

I doubt Bevin is seriously claiming God lies....

hasn't he offered enuf of his quotes to show that he and a number of otherwise good Christian people share a justifiably unshakeable belief in what science, history, archeology, biology, oceanography, etc, all tell us about the earth and human life being far older than the 6ky of the KJV, or even the 8ky of the LXX.... whichever you choose to believe.

the problem could be that we wanted to be full participants in the religious communities in which we were raised..believing that we were not just authorised, but compelled to search for the truth....by our God given brains studying Gods Book of nature

....yet there are sincere people within the fold, often self nominated gatekeepers, still claiming that we and all of science, history, and logic are wrong, and that the writer of Genesis needs to be taken literally...on pain of a divine auto-da-fe later, but for now, we should at least be dismembered.

the three possible choices seem to be that God dissembled in Genesis about the age of the earth (and its 144 hr fiat lux creation) just 6kya, because His book of Rocks and Book of Life show otherwise:

or

the Book of Rocks and the Book of Life are wrong, meaning to
keep enjoying the potlucks, we must eschew most of what science and history show,

or

the self appointed gatekeepers of the truth need to consider the unwanted potential conclusion that:

much of the writings in Genesis and the rest of the Old Test could be mere musings of stone age people finally written down when they learned to read, write and "borrow" even older tales from their captors in the libraries of Babylon, and while there may be some good moral stories behind the stories (if we look hard enuf), along with the long lists of how many people God killed, the names, dates, and a few of the facts may have been changed, exaggerated, overlooked, or even made up to protect the innocent, fool the ignorant, and instill the fear of God in Hebrew kids around ancient campfires to make them understand how important they were in world history, and to justify killing their neighbors, taking their land and stuff, using their virgins: expecially the Moabites since they were the illegitimate SOB offspring of Lots drunken romp in the cave.

but if God created people only 6 or 10 kya, and then set out to make it look like it was older than that, in order to fool many people, thereby limiting the need for services in heaven, then He is not telling the whole truth....

thats the option I (and presumable Bevin) do not accept.

God didn't lie. But we have little or no way to prove the veracity of what the ancient nomads wrote.

But we DO see modern science proving itself practicaly daily thru interlocking meshwebs of crossbedded and independant discoveries...

John,

So much satire, it's hard for me to know when to take you in good faith. Your approach goes further than you admit. You dismiss the value that people see in the Bible. You only attack crayon Christianity. And you seem to not even pretend to understand the depth that believers get from their beliefs.

Read Michael Shermer's work on the power of belief. He is also an atheist, at least he might provide you with some perspective to respect other peoples beliefs. Even Daniel Dennet's work are more respectful than your tirades.

The main issue I am jumping up and down about is this bit, when you say: "in order to fool many people"

That is an unjustified comment.

You also said:
"on pain of a divine auto-da-fe later, but for now, we should at least be dismembered"

I am one who used to believe in evolution as an Adventist, I hope you understand my position on that is not as you describe in your posts.

Some of us enjoy John's satire. When we are unable to laugh at our
paradoxes, we've gone too far, IMO. Which is one reason I so enjoy Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert,they poke fun at the hypocrisy of whoever engages in it.

Why isn't it possible, even a good thing that millions of people believe in God and enjoy reading the Bible? but some read it for seeing the worldviews of people so long ago; others note the contradictions; and others try to choose the timeless principles that speak to the human condition.

Trying to make it "read" the same for everyone is an exercise in futility. Each reader must determine for herself what she wishes to read from the Bible. How else can it possibly be? Is there someone, or some institution that wishes to decide and determine for every reader that there can be only one interpretation of the entire Bible? Isn't this what John is satirizing?--The position of those who believe everything as written in the Bible was true then, and is true now. Any Bible reader will recognize the anachronistic ideas in the Bible were only those of that era, and cannot be verified as actually occurring today. No one has seen serpents or donkeys talk; no one has seen thousands killed by unexplainable plagues (the Black Death in Europe was unexplained for years, but modern science can now explain it--just as modern science can explain SOME things in the Bible, but by no means everything). Can anyone explain Elijah being "raptured" long before the First Advent?

God gave us commonsense. We should judiciously use it all the time, and not discard it when reading old literature. Commonsense should especially be used when reading the Bible. Or, do those who read the Bible as infallible and inerrant read the Gilgamesh Epic as being true in every detail? Or The Iliad and the Odyssey? Or Virgil's Divine Comedy? A good course in literary genre should be mandatory before proclaiming about the Bible.

So, you claim that my Christian beliefs are a real problem, and are worth fighting against. But I am having trouble understanding which of them are the issue. Which Christian beliefs are really the problem?

I said that religion is the source of much of the tension in the world, and teaches falsehoods to children. As far as your personal beliefs? I don't know much about your personal beliefs, but if you support missionaries going to the far reaches of this planet, the teaching to children that Adam, Eve, and Noah were literal people in history, and deny plausible theories of science with "God made everything" then I would say that you fit into the "problem".

... God understands science better than we do.

God has allowed us to discover new knowledge....

Do you have any evidence for those claims besides the circular logic of an old book?

I do believe that creation can not be falsified.

The creation of the Bible has been falsified.

For example, if ... you saw stars in the night sky that were shining from millions of light-years away.

The belief described in the Bible was that God created teeny little stars and hung them from the dome a few miles up in the sky.

The appearance of age does not mean anything to most creationist believers.

Up until about 200 years ago the story in the Bible was just as good as any other Origin Story from any culture or religion as far as age of the earth. Now that we know that the story in the Bible is false, creationist believers have only had to add "But God created it with the appearance of age!" to their long list of apologetic excuses. That is no problem for you or anybody that holds delusional beliefs.

It shows a lack of understanding of the creation model.

People that say they believe in the creation model are the ones that don't understand, or deny key parts, of the Biblical creation model.

I do believe that all humans are of equal value, we do have inalienable rights, because we were all created equal.

We are not created. We are alive because our parents had sex. If you want to believe that a sky deity was messing around in your parent's brain leading them to the bedroom, and then was involved in the natural processes in your mother's uterus, then go for it.

That said, I do believe that at birth we all are equal in theory (Prince William would argue otherwise). At any age after birth, we are not equal. A kid that hits 18 with a rap sheet 30 pages long is not equal to a studious student with a scholarship to Oxford. The concept of "equality" is different in communism than in a democracy. Likewise, its different in a monarchial system than in a democracy. A person on death row is not equal to the President of IBM. In our society people make decisions every day which affects their standing among the larger group whether its their family, their community, their work peers, etc. Jesus did not believe that the Samaritan woman was "created" equal to himself. She was the equivalent of a dog. The OT is a long story about why the Hebrews were superior to those that inhabited lands of the other 69 Sons of El Elyon besides Yahweh. They were SPECIAL.

... [W]e are squabbling about what is God, rather than His actual existence.

That is false. You now proceed to give your deity every attribute imaginable, then claim that we are only debating different attributes of your deity. You may as well claim that a special fish under the ice cap at the North Pole has all these attributes and your God is that fish. It might help to show how there actually is something that is not a natural event or "thing" and then we can discuss the attrinutes of that "thing".

1+1=2 is objectively unprovable, please explain on objective grounds why you believe that propositional statement?

There are axioms in mathematics as you know. All numbers in your equation are natural numbers. Each natural number has a successive(S) natural number. This successive natural number, by axiom, is n + 1= S(n). The natural number 2 is the successor number to the natural number 1, therefore, by definition, 1+1=2.

Refusing to believe in God is just like refusing to believe that 1+1=2. They are both equally reasonable propositional truths. Except that believing in 1+1=2 assumes a faith also in an attribute provided by God.

Accepting that 1+1=2 enables you to do more than 1st grade math. Actually, you would fail 1st grade math if you did not accept the fact that 1+1=2. Belief in the theory of the God described in the Bible is not a prerequisite to anything. Big difference. As far as the "attributes" of God- you can claim that your sky deity has every attribute known to modern humans but it doesn't add anything to the idea that this deity is a fiction of the writers from ancient times.

And more importantly, I reiterate, can you please expand on what it is about my Christian belief system that could cause so much problems that it is worth you fighting against, and championing those who are provocative about it?

Its the same as railing against voodoo, or African witch doctors. Its the promotion of ancient superstitions and beliefs which are reducing the intellect of our culture. It causes people to get up in the morning and pray for the destruction of every human on this planet except themselves and those that behave and believe exactly like they do. A natural disaster like Katrina actually gets the superstitious excited to the point that they believe its a sign that their deity is coming in the next week or two. They pray for disasters. They pray for people to get sick to bring them closer to God. Go read the Torah again (if you have read it before). Leviticus & Deuteronomy is like the handbook used by moder witch doctors.

In the NT there is nothing in the philosophy that had not been taught before except for turn the other cheek which christians don't follow anyway. Its a system that encourages Love Thy Brother as long as Thy Brother believes like you do. It accepts the violent fringe of their group with a casual "Well, he/she really isn't a christian".

In a nutshell, your belief system encourages the acceptance of ancient ignorance as truth and dismisses current truth as falsehood ONLY because it came to a conclusion different than a group of nomads unable, according to your scripture, to win a battle, with the help of their deity, because the opponents had iron chariots.

Biblical Christianity says nothing to suggest that it is a call to overpopulate the world, and you know it.

Chuck

Is it dogma of the largest christian church in the world that contraception is not to be used? I never said anything about Biblical Christianity. I said "christian dogma". My statement about christianity killing more people every year than Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc is much more defensible than your claim that somehow atheism, Karl Marx, or Charles Darwin led directly to the actions of Hitler, Pol Pot, or Stalin (or Mao).

2) Atheism at its best is stunningly Galilean: Where else, than to the biblical revolution, would you go (I'm thinking now of the North Atlantic civilization) for precursors to the ideals of the best of today's atheists?

You must be joking. How about starting with Domecritus, Solon, Plato, The Buddha, Confucius, Paine, Hume, Jefferson, Ingersoll, and Bertrand Russell.

>>> Is the way I think, part of what you see as the problem? Is there anything that you actually want me to do?

A very intelligent non-Christian friend one day gave me two reasons why he utterly rejected Christianity - (1) YEC, and (2) Homophobia. They both showed that the people who held these views simply don't understand the real world.

Do I care what you believe about YEC? No. Do I care when a head elder prays over the communion bread "Oh Lord, there are people here that don't believe in You and Your Word"? A little. Do I care when the money I give to the organization is used to pay people to make public statements that turn people off the God I believe in. Absolutely.

>>> I said that the creation story can not be disproven because it does indicate that there would be an appearance of age.

The appearance of age includes the appearance of death. You believe God created a world that looks like death has been going on for millions of years. This belief is logically incompatible with your belief that God is not a liar.

Lots of people hold contradictory beliefs about all kinds of things. However I find it very hard to accept blatant contradictions as the basis of my understanding of morals and the universe.

/Bevin

Adventism is built upon: "There is a man going round taking naames!"

The world is built upon: " He knows whose be naughty or nice, so be good for goodness sake!"

What is the difference? Tom

keafan,

I understand that you already do not accept the propositional truths that I professed faith in. We had already established that in previous conversations. But you still did not provide any alternative explanation for the questions that I rose for some of the reasons of my faith, for example about causality.

You did not really answer my main question, for example, you did not establish the reasons why believing that God created is necessarily a bad thing.

For your reassurance, I do not support the prevention of the teaching of evolution as a valid scientific theory. It seems valid within its own assumptions, I do not deny that.

You provided a more detailed definition of 1+1=2. You can restate the definition in as many ways as you want. Your answer seems to concede my point, that you do recognise how I can provide you with as many definitions of God as I can think of, but if you don't want to acknowledge them, then it will never happen.

You criticise me for providing God all sorts of attributes imaginable. To me though, it is just natural, as the natural numbers themselves. You have to be fair and deal with God as defined by your opponent, before you can claim to be atheist towards the God of your opponent.

You want me to redefine God to some finite sky being, one that you can reject? That kind of defeats the purpose of you calling yourself an atheist to the God that I believe in!

It appears that you think that sex can somehow explain that we were not created? As I stated, God provides causality, your refutation kind of forgot that?

I didn't expect to be very convincing to you keafan. But, I thought you might be able to explain better how my beliefs actually cause problems. Are you able to explain to me how they are bad? Disagreeing is one thing, but them causing problems is a genuine concern to me. The onus is on you to back that claim up, in a way that I can understand.

"In the NT there is nothing in the philosophy that had not been taught before except for turn the other cheek which christians don't follow anyway. Its a system that encourages Love Thy Brother as long as Thy Brother believes like you do. It accepts the violent fringe of their group with a casual "Well, he/she really isn't a christian"

Yes there are some fair points in that one. But notice that you are defining the belief as a good thing, but then explaining that we are not good at following the Christian belief. You are arguing for that Christian belief! I think you could make some wonderful sermons. There are plenty of example of Christian's turning the other cheek. You have not shown that the belief itself is a bad thing.

I understand that you already do not accept the propositional truths that I professed faith in.

If a statement is not agreed on by the parties to a dialog as being true or false then it is not a propositional statement. Writing it as "If God" this or that then we can talk. Your tendency to state things like "Causality is an attribute provided by God" is in the form of a proposition but is actually a type of conclusion that is missing any propositions and premises.

Then you have the nerve to say that I don't "accept propositional truths that I professed faith in". You can have faith that a premise is true but a proposition is passed the level of premise and is either true or false.

Not only is your "Causality is an attribute provided by God" not a propositional statement between you and I, but I don't necessarily think that causality is an attribute, that anything transcendent (by definition not knowable in space or time) has attributes, nor that there is any such thing as God as described in the Bible.

You are trying to jump past proving your conclusions straight to claiming that since I believe in some things that you attribute to your God-that-is-unknowable-in-space-or-time I somehow believe in your god.

For STARTERS, those are a few of the reasons I ignored some of your more incoherent passages.

But notice that you are defining the belief as a good thing

You most certainly misread what I wrote. Go back over it and post where you got that erroneous idea and I will explain it more clearly for you.

..."The natural number 2 is the successor number to the natural number 1, therefore, by definition, 1+1=2"....

and its all in the definition and the rules...

most readers here would not accept or understand that sometimes 1 + 1 = 10

actually, there are only 10 kinds of people in the world...
those who understand binary, and those who dont.

that may represent the crux of some of the many problems between believers and those who still have more questions than answers...

a lot of the differences can be explained in the daffynishions and level of education brought to the issue.

"inspiration" means??????
"40" means???
"sin" means?
"loving God" means?

so many questions, so little time...

I'm here late, having previously become disgusted at the dishonesty of some in control here, so rarely visiting, and even more rarely feeling any desire to respond. However, I have not seen Charles Scriven stooping to the tactics of some, and think that perhaps some claims that he has made could use some context and disagreement. So here goes:

At the farthest remove from young earth creationism is the ideology of evolution.

And what is this "ideology"? The usual practice of science demanding evidence for factual claims, and understanding such evidence to involve identifiable causes and effects?

Does any other science get lambasted for insisting upon the use of proper procedures? Well, it might, for religious concepts such as free will that are ostensibly being protected from evolution are even more likely to cause hostility to the practices of neuroscience. But more on that later.

Here I may be more precise, and say that I have in mind a two-fold dogma. One tenet is materialistic naturalism, to which all other ideas about life and culture, including all ideas about development in nature, must conform.

How so? And what is this "materialistic naturalism"? Some actually fault "naturalism" for having been set up precisely to allow for a "supernaturalism" that supposedly doesn't have to follow normal (classical, in the classical realm) cause and effect rules.

Does medicine have to conform to this "materialistic naturalism," or are homeopathy, chiropractic, and shamanistic ritual to supplant scientific medical training in SDA institutions? After all, the complaint is that other ideas about life must conform to this "ideology," so one has to wonder, if life appeared by magic, shouldn't it be repaired by magic? Why conform to materialism in treating cancer, if life didn't originate "materialistically" (whatever that means), and the mind escapes the bounds of causataion?

The other is the claim to superiority not only in knowledge of the world but also in knowledge of morality. This ideology leaps beyond science to say that with the advent of Darwinian investigation, no account of reality, beyond what science can provide, is either plausible or helpful.

Really? With Darwinian investigation we ended up with demands for science in the fields of medicine, sociology, and anthropology? I differ strongly with those who say that evolutionary theory isn't important to medicine, but I would hardly make the leap that I interpreted you as making. Of course I may have misinterpreted you, as you might only be complaining that science is required for origins, and not that it is required elsewhere, but I'm having a hard time finding a meaningful complaint against evolutionary science that isn't equally applicable to other sciences.

Some, of course, do incorrectly suppose that their own views of morality actually follow from evolutionary science, but I hardly see that across the boared. For example, I do not.

The world is matter, nothing more, and for all useful purposes, God is dead. Religion is at once irrelevant and pernicious.

Well, what is matter, and how does one arrive at "matter" as all from a principled philosophy? I saw that Nietzsche was evoked later on, largely as emblematic of the point of view being projected here, yet he hardly accepted concepts of "matter" in the sense you are portraying.

God dead? Sure, but that's hardly a way to get to any sort of claim that "matter is all," especially when energy seems to be more generic, and spacetime seems to be beyond a strict correspondence to matter/energy (and phenomenologically, matter/energy are constructs of perceptions).

Religion could not logically be both irrelevant and pernicious, and logical atheists would not claim that it was both at the same time.

Ideologues of this stripe—I am thinking, in particular, of the so-called “new atheists”—cannot, however, make an adequate response to the following objections:

Objection One: The ideology of evolution crowns and miters itself the final arbiter of truth, but fails to see that scientific methodology can neither verify materialism nor explain why anything at all actually exists. It puts forward as fact what is a metaphysical bias.

So why would it be tied to "materialism" if it cannot verify it, unless you suppose (sans evidence) that the people you are faulting are simply stupid and/or dishonest? What we have is epistemology, and a lot of people claiming without evidence or proper consideration of philosophical positions of non-theists that "materialism" is believed by them. Well, it's time that you support such a claim, not merely make it without regard for proper discussion and argumentation--let alone without addressing the actual philosophies behind science.

Do phenomenologists, for instance, claim that either evolution or "materialism" is the final arbiter of truth? Or are you just attacking a strawman instead of addressing the crucial issue of epistemology?

And what "ideology of evolution" claims to be the final arbiter of truth? This claim smacks of Expelled and Ben Stein's ridiculous complaints that "evolution can't explain gravity." You have a long way to go to show that there is an "ideology of evolution," and I have been given no reason to believe that such a thing is not only a way of avoiding the issue of epistemology, yet again. If it is not, well, come up with verifiable evidence for this "ideology of evolution," rather than merely repeating it.

And I'm afraid that you have no meaningful explanation for why anything exists, and it is your claims which require it, not ours. Honest philosophy takes the phenomena as they appear to our senses, and then works as far as it possibly can from that "evidence." What other honest way of understanding is there?

Objection Two: The ideology rests on the assumption that all natural development is a function of chance under the iron sway of physical law. This suggests that human freedom is, at best, a useful illusion. It thus makes little sense to say (and really mean) that wise choices matter, or that love and justice refer to anything remotely like what we take them to be in ordinary life.

The biggest issue I have with this is that what you're blaming on your unproven "ideology" is a "problem" for neuroscience and any other honest scientific endeavor relating to humanity. I can see why you're attacking your (or someone else's, perhaps) strawman of "evolutionary ideology," because evolution by itself doesn't relate very directly to the question of "free will," while sciences you aren't targeting by name directly oppose notions of "free will." How could you fault the science of evolution for this? But you can simply blame "evolutionary ideology" sans evidence, and suppose that you made a case, at least if those of us who have studied and thought about these (without religious strictures) have been driven off the board (not entirely as yet, but we'll see).

The question, then, is if you're actually willing to oppose neuroscience and the rest of the human sciences by fictionally folding them into the "evolutionary ideology" that has never been shown to exist as such.

Objection Three: The ideology assumes that nature can support a moral vision of human dignity and human rights. But as David Bentley Hart says, “nature admits of no moral principles at all, and so can provide none.” Certainly it cannot be the basis for the preciousness of every human life, or for deliverance from the tribalism that undergirds so much of human violence.

That whole paragraph hinges upon whatever "nature" is supposed to be. In the same sense that we have an understanding of phenomena without having to say how and why these exist in the first place (you cannot, and have no explanation that hasn't been conjured up in forms similar to but different in details and gods from your own mythology), we can point to "human nature" under various terms to say that we are "naturally" moral and value the lives of others.

However, like most of your other claims, the terms are ambiguous and used in an apparently biased manner, so it is not at all clear that what I called "nature" is what you would call "nature," or that you have a coherent meaning for it at all. I do not know of anyone who uses an actual "evolutionary ideology" to provide moral guidance, for whatever that's worth. Religious morality certainly is explainable to a degree by scientific means, to get to the frailty of opposing ideas, meaning that again one has to wonder what would make religious morality inherently superior to some other type.

Objection Four: The ideology demonizes the religion of the Bible when that religion (for all its hypocrisy and fraud) constitutes history’s single most effective revolution—against resignation, against oppressive power, against indifference to suffering and injustice.

Hm, how is that so, and why has so much revolution been against established religion? Why did American revolutionaries look primarily to classical sources, rather than to the Bible with its admonitions to obey authority? Indeed, why was it that Christianity was adopted by many European rulers in order to gain control over people?

Why is evolutionary theory demonized without support, using terms like "evolutionary ideology" without establishing that this has anything to do with evolutionary science as practiced, if somehow religion is superior to practices that you condemn? I should think that not falsely attacking opponents would mark the religious as superior to those who might falsely attack (some "new atheists" do, and I faulted some of that at http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/academic-theology-a-b... today), and yet I can see nothing but a strawman behind the term "evolutionary ideology" when it is evolutionary science that is being opposed by invoking that term (granted, there could be an "evolutionary ideology," but that would be a mistake by ideologues, not scientists while actually conducting scientific investigations).

But back to the earlier claim, I do not doubt that many people have claimed religion to be on their side as they fought oppression, which appears largely to be due to the fact that in many religion-permeated societies religion is held to be the ultimate authority. Of course they have to claim that god is on their side to get support, if any winning side is understood to have god behind them.

The ideology of evolution fails to comprehend what Nietzsche saw and (to his discredit) celebrated: when God is dead, mercy, sooner or later, must lose sway before the willfulness of power.

Oh please, Nietzsche said a lot of things, including in his story the eventuality that Zarathustra gives of his surplus, as the sun does its. The man whose last sane (?) act was to try to save a horse from being beaten was not as Scriven and Osborn misportray him. The man who eschewed constancy was not the constant that a few quotemines are able to falsely depict him to be. How about an honest portrayal of him for once? I warn you, though, that such would require a great deal of study, not a little bit of biased misuse.

And I return to asking why, if you're invoking Nietzsche, you don't recognize the fact that he was no materialist? I pointed that out to Osborn as supporting evidence that I am no materialist, which didn't prevent him from simply repeating his lie that I am. But of course I am not so ignorant of philosophy as Osborn's and this article are, hence I would not begin to understand myself in the simplistic way that these articles understand philosphy and science.

Above all, it won't do to pretend that scientific opposition to "free will" is based upon some "evolutionary ideology" that has been erected as a strawman to attack, rather it is more directly supported by the neurosciences, cognitive science, and disciplines like anthropology and sociology. You are either attacking these by proxy and misdirection, or you are simply ascribing all of the threats to religion from science as belonging to "evolutionary ideology" without in the least understanding their actual basis in science, mostly not evolutionary science (though the latter affects biology comprehensively, if not very strongly in many cases).

You cannot oppose evolution without implicitly or explicitly opposing other sciences under the incorrect label of "evolutionary ideology," or through some other misunderstanding and/or misportrayal of the scientific issues involved. There is nothing at all special about evolutionary science, which in fact merely brought biology under the same epistemological and cause-and-effect rules as the rest of classical science. Blame Newton if you wish for destroying "free will," but evolution is largely a classical application of physics to biology.

Evolution is demonized as "special" only because many religious folk want an exception made to the honest rules of inference utilized by science. Or, if this is not so, there are a huge number of presuppositions in your article that need to be supported rather than merely asserted. I have never seen a creationist who can actually support such claims, for it appears that these were in fact only invented to circumvent normal ways of establishing facts and theories by prejudging evolution to be false, so that its proper use of the scientific method can be ignored by those who are unwilling to utilize the appropriate standards for "free will" and other religion-based claims.

The whole "evolutionary ideology" assumption must be justified before any of the rest can even begin to be conjectured to follow from it. And as far as I can tell, that term only exists to cloak the fact that neuroscience and other sciences are tacitly under the gun from religion, while evolutionary theory is blamed for what cannot be entailed by it in absence of scientific data from other disciplines.

Glen Davidson

Oh yes, you'd need to read the blogpost and the discussions from #17 through the end of #18 to understand well my disagreement with the portrayal of the religious, if you follow the "whyevolutionistrue" link in my comment above.

Just saying...

Glen Davidson

John,

More questions than answers, me too. And I do agree that a lot of the differences are interpretation.

keafan,

Please, forgive me for not being able to articulate all my thoughts very well. Philosophy is certainly not my strength. You suggest that the onus was on me to explain what I believed in, and I gave it a shot. There are far more qualified people than I to explain these ideas to you.

You defined your understanding for me: "You can have faith that a premise is true but a proposition is passed the level of premise and is either true or false"

You are distinguishing between a propositional statement, and a premise. A distinction that I did not realise you took while I was making my statements.

From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition

A proposition is a sentence expressing something true or false. In philosophy, particularly in logic, a proposition is identified ontologically as an idea, concept, or abstraction whose token instances are patterns of symbols, marks, sounds, or strings of words.[1] Propositions are considered to be syntactic entities and also truthbearers.

The existence of propositions in the abstract sense, as well as the existence of "meanings", is disputed by some philosophers. Where the concept of a "meaning" is admitted, its nature is controversial.
...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premise

In logic, an argument is a set of one or more declarative sentences (or "propositions") known as the premises along with another declarative sentence (or "proposition") known as the conclusion. Premises are sometimes left unstated in which case they are called missing premises

I do not understand how you think I was using the terminology incorrectly, according to these understandings they seem to be almost interchangeable! But you have a different understanding to these? I don't see how that difference is applicable in this case.

I was providing definitional statements. Not that dissimilar to your natural numbers definition. Statements that do require faith. Statements that are useful to my understanding of reality. All I was trying to say, is that I know already that you disagree with many of these statements. That you don't have faith in them, even though I do.

Maybe, the problem is that to my understanding, having faith in some premise is actually equivalent to accepting that the proposition is true! To you, these might mean different things? If I didn't think a statement was true, then I wouldn't have faith in it. If I didn't have faith in it, then I wouldn't think it was true. I fail to see the difference really. Can you explain to me how these are different?

Do I have the nerve!? I over-reached with you, that is a flaw of mine, and I will continue to work on fixing that. I am really sorry about that. Perhaps a better way for me to have said that is that there is overlap with facets of reality that you believe in and I believe in. Some of those attributes I define as attributes of (provided by) God - those are part of my personal faith statements. I was trying to explore what your atheism means with respect to that overlap. I'm really sorry if that came across as disrespectful in any way.

You most certainly misread what I wrote. Go back over it and post where you got that erroneous idea and I will explain it more clearly for you.

This is what you wrote:

"In the NT there is nothing in the philosophy that had not been taught before except for turn the other cheek which christians don't follow anyway. Its a system that encourages Love Thy Brother as long as Thy Brother believes like you do. It accepts the violent fringe of their group with a casual "Well, he/she really isn't a christian"

Sorry, you are correct, I must have misread it. This is how I read the first sentence. I thought that you meant that "turn the other cheek" was a good Christian belief! In hindsight, that may have been because of my Christian bias. And then you connected that with "which christians don't follow anyway", which I thought was an indictment coming from you on Christians for not following that particular belief. That juxtaposition inferred in my mind, a further affirmation that turning the other cheek is a good thing, because it appears to me that you think it is something that we should do. It now occurs to me that might not be what you intended in that first sentence? If that understanding was correct then I thought that was actually affirming that particular Christian belief was good.

Honestly I didn't follow the connection to the second sentence, the way I now think that you intended. Where you went on to say, (I assume as negative towards Christians), "Its a system that encourages Love Thy Brother as long as Thy Brother believes like you do". I assumed that you were referring back to the Christian belief system in general, because I (mistakenly?) thought you had just affirmed the belief about the turning the other cheek.

I thought that I had the gist of your attacks, that you were saying that it is actually our Christian belief system, as a whole, that causes us to not follow our good beliefs. So, now I stand corrected, it appears that you intended the 'brother' thing differently than I understood.

To my mind, in that statement from Christ, my belief is that any human may be my brother. I never considered before that it mattered who it was that might be the one hitting me, the important thing was only to turn the other cheek when hit. Just as Christ suffered as a lamb to the slaughter by those that despised him. Essentially a statement about Pacifism. You have reinterpreted that in a way that I have not thought of. Thank you for the correction on what you intended.

Do I care when a head elder prays over the communion bread "Oh Lord, there are people here that don't believe in You and Your Word"? A little. Do I care when the money I give to the organization is used to pay people to make public statements that turn people off the God I believe in. Absolutely.

Me too Bevin, I stand up against the judgemental approach. I think we should not play God. It disgusts me too. It seems that keafan's turn the other cheek, if it's your brother, interpretation does raise it's ugly head amongst Christians.

Its not the judgement, it is the combined certainty and ignorance. It is this combination that cause non-Christians to form the opinion that many Christians are ignorant and dangerous.

For me to worship at an SDA church again, the denomination would have to official acknowledge that they accept into membership people who think that there has been life on Earth for more than 1M years.

David Read is a prime example of someone who is both ignorant and certain - a non-scientist lawyer Christian who doesn't even understand the evidence, yet has written a book showing that the vast majority of scientists are wrong.

Dwight Nelson is another - look what this person thought of it... http://www.amazon.com/Built-Last-Creation-Evolution-Thoughtful/dp/081631...

"I'm going to throw my copy away. I got it from the free bin of a yard sale and paid far too much."

People here may think of me as a paramedic. That is a part time job for me. My full time job is a sofware engineer at Intel Corp. What do you think many of the engineers think of Christianity when the nonsense that the YEC's promote is boiling over into their school district meetings?

/Bevin

Chuck,
I wasn't trying to channel the new atheists. I disagree with the premise that religion is unhelpful and should be abandoned.

I also disagree though, with your premise that atheism is more dangerous than Christianity.

Look at the way the majority of people practice Christianity and look at how they practice non-belief, and I would argue that a pretty fair argument could be made that there is little difference in moral behavior.

Using the standard of support for human rights and compassionate living, I would even wonder if Christianity is lagging behind. Consider this. If a strongly nationalistic, super-patriot, aggressively pro-war figure (early Hitler like) arose in our country (especially out of the Republican party) who do you think would be more likely to support him, atheists or Christians? When our country swerved into torture, what percentage of Christians supported it versus atheists? Do you think a higher percentage of Christians or non-believers are on the front lines of supporting human rights and liberty in our country? Who tends to be more in the forefront of destroying them? Look at the agendas at the recent Values Voters conference and appreciate the irony:

http://washingtonindependent.com/61121/fear-of-fascism-gay-agenda-domina...

If you did a factor analysis trying to find the factors that load into predicting compassionate living and support for human rights, I'm sure that belief in either atheism or Christianity would be extremely poor predictors. My point is that whether you are a Christian or an atheist has little to do with whether you live a moral life. In fact, when it comes to supporting human rights, I'm bending over backwards to give Christianity, as practiced now, the benefit of the doubt because it is likely you would see a negative correlation.

Singling atheism out as leading to a less moral life isn't supported by the evidence we see. Neither is holding Christianity up as a superior philosophy. I understand and support your vision Chuck for what Christianity could be. Problem is, it is simply not how Christianity generally is practiced. And atheists don't behave like one might think their philosophy leads to either. There are factors much greater than Christianity versus non-belief that decide compassionate behavior.

You suggest that the onus was on me to explain what I believed in, and I gave it a shot.

Chris

I didn't ask for anybody to "explain" their beliefs. I asked for proof that God exists: The burden of proof for the existence of God or Gods rests on the theists. ... theists should come up with some reason why they should continue to hold some privileged, reverential authority.

Now, in a logical argument it takes both the person making the argument, and the person you are trying to show the truthfulness of that argument, to agree (or assume for the sake of the argument) that a premise is a true conclusion to a prior argument. If that doesn't occur, then its pointless to make the argument because until the premises are agreed to be true, the conclusion will not be agreed or accepted.

Here is one argument, out of a long series of arguments, you made in a previous post.

An atheist who believes in the value of life, e.g. a Utilitarian Universalist, who believes in 'Goodness', they at least believe in a simple version of what is defined as God, i.e. a common faith in some of the significant attributes of God. So, we are squabbling about what is God, rather than His actual existence.

'Goodness' is an attribute of God.
Some atheists believe in 'Goodness'.
Therefore, some atheists believe in the actual existence of God (even though they do not admit it).

To make the conclusion follow from the premises there has to be an implied proposition along the lines of "Things that have attributes actually exist".

That implied, or assumed, proposition is not a proven conclusion and I don't accept it as being true. That's why I have stated that you can give your god every attribute known to man but it doesn't prove the God of the Bible (or your own version) actually exists. You now proceed to give your deity every attribute imaginable, then claim that we are only debating different attributes of your deity. You may as well claim that a special fish under the ice cap at the North Pole has all these attributes and your God is that fish. It might help to show how there actually is something that is not a natural event or "thing" and then we can discuss the attributes of that "thing".

Let's try your argument again:

'Goodness' is an attribute of Santa Claus.
Some christians believe in 'Goodness'.
Therefore, some christians believe in the actual existence of Santa Claus.

Conclusions to logical arguments will always be propositional statements (either true or false). Premises to the conclusion must be accepted as true in order for the conclusion to be logically true. If a premise is not accepted to be true, then in order to make the conclusion true the premise must be treated as a conclusion to another argument which the one making the argument must prove with another set of premises which are accepted as true.

I don't accept your implied premise, and have shown that implied premise to be false. I could use the same argument with every statement you have made about the attributes of your god: Saying that something has particular attributes does not lead to the conclusion that it actually exists.

Everybody accepts the conclusion that adding 1 object to 1 object results in 2 objects. In philosophical arguments, if somebody doesn't accept a claim, it falls onto the one making the claim to prove it to be true.

Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Posted by: keafan | 29 September 2009 at 2:03

Everybody accepts the conclusion that adding 1 object to 1 object results in 2 objects.

Well, some people, being non-dualists, believe that no perceived object has independent existence.

It seems to me that your implied premise in stating that "adding 1 object to 1 object results in 2 objects. " is the conclusion of another argument you assume to be true, namely, that objects have independent existence.

Indeed, in a quantum entangled universe, please show me an "object" that has independent existence.

Do you, yourself, have independent existence?

Does that tree outside the window have independent existence?

Does logic have independent existence?

Perhaps it is in committing to polarities that are impossible to reconcile logically that we fiddle while Rome burns?

Perhaps logic is not the tool for the job at hand.

No wait, what is the job at hand?

I'm confused....

The numeral 1 is an object. An abstract object, but an object. Non-dualists may not believe in anything greater than one but in reality (if you subscribe to the idea that there is 'reality') they are arguing that what, in math or physics or our field of vision as described by a rational person to be a singular "object", is just a fraction of 1. So then, maybe, I should have written that everybody that does math using whole numbers accepts the conclusion that adding 1 object to 1 object results in 2 objects?

I take it the rest just refuse to use any math except with fractions? Are they all locked up yet? Are we safe?

;-)

Are we safe?

If logic is what keeps you safe, lots-o-luck. :)

I wonder what danger the non-dualists pose. Hmmm....

Then there is marriage where two become one flesh. 'splain that one.

I would, but there may be children reading.

Please see:

"The Joy of Entanglement" by Popescu and Rohrlich in Lo, Popescu, and Spiller (1998), or Nielsen and Chuang (2000).

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/#2

In Venn Diagrams which hypothetically show all Mathematical possibilities one creates sets. They can be distinct (independent) or overlap ("somewhat interdependent").

Just because Santa and God can be "nice" in the "intersection" of the sets does not make Santa and God alike or interdependent.

Likewise where male and female sets "intersect" they become "one" while yet being separate in other attributes.
At the intersection is where both God given joy and lustful trouble can take place.

My "practical" finite math discourse for today. :~)

cheers,
pat

I don't remember your example when I was learning Venn diagrams in school Pat. Maybe I would have paid more attention :)

Pat

Love your venn diagram analogy. It would be an interesting exercise to see how the SDA Leadership would relate the SDA Church to the Christian Community. It sure caused a lot of heat several generations ago. Tom

Another review of Dwight Nelson's book:

"The book is basically seven chapters of recycled creationist arguments from Behe to let's assume the Bible is true because you assume Thomas Jefferson existed and the Bible says evolution is false. You can read a Jack Chick tract for the same "cogent" arguments.

"The final chapter where he "stops being Einstein's chauffeur" (an urban legend by the way) and makes his own argument. His argument is basically John Lennon was brutally murdered by a fundamentalist Christian therefore you should be a Christian. The only time he stops recycling ignorant creationist arguments and odd claims that we should just accept the Bible because mathematic systems can't prove themselves while being internally consistent, he does so to dance on John Lennon's corpse for the same reason John Lennon was shot.

I'm going to throw my copy away. I got it from the free bin of a yard sale and paid far too much."

The other review was from "Anne" a PT from Berrien Springs, MI.

keafan,

I am trying to establish at least a partial definition of God that we can then discuss any further.

I provided a defining attribute of God. My statement is that God is the source of goodness.

My statement is a definition. It is a tautology. You suggest that you have shown it to be false. But, tautologies are neither true nor false - they are simply useful for explaining things or they not - tautologies can not be proven as true or false.

All you did was substitute the word God for Santa. That does not falsify anything. If you define Santa with all the same attributes of God, then the only difference in your definitions between Santa and God is a name.

But, in real life, the defined relationship between God and goodness is not actually defined the same way as the relationship between Santa and goodness. Santa may have goodness, but God is the source of goodness. If you can demonstrate how Santa is actually good, then I would say that God was the source of that goodness!

So, for your first refutation, you accept attributes as real things. Otherwise the Santa thing makes even less sense coming from you.

Then, in order to refute my premise, you re-introduce your claim as an a-priori assumption. That God is not real. So you suggest then that God can not have any attributes, because God is not real. My rebuttal to that is simple, prove to me your premise that God is not real. You can not use a-priori assumptions, premises that we disagree on, to falsify the original premise that I was trying to make. To do so, you have to establish the truth of your claim.

You said to me: "I have stated that you can give your god every attribute known to man but it doesn't prove the God of the Bible (or your own version) actually exists."

Actually, because you allow me to give attributes then it follows that it must exist! Just as you argued, if it doesn't exist, then it has no attributes. Which is it?

Now, I defined God as the source of things such as goodness, causality, truth, etc. They are definitions of my perception of what God is, at least within my limited ability to perceive what God is.

If the attributes under discussion are agreed to exist, then we are indeed arguing only about tautologies. The attributes are sufficient to establish a reasonable and useful definition.

Bevin,

Thanks for your answer. It is a complex and controversial problem. Sometimes I wonder if it will tear the church apart. There are stress fractures already, as you personally testify to. And I think that is serious. I don't know the solution to this problem, but I agree it is a major concern.

I do have a spiritual belief in creation, and I understand why the Church has it's official position. But here is the thing. I am willing to worship with you despite a different understanding of origins. So, my problem is that the requirements of Church membership does not correlate with my willingness to worship with you. There is a disconnect there.

I keep mulling over this discrepancy in my mind. There should be nothing that hinders people from worshipping God with fellow believers, except their own volition. Why do we need to erect barriers?

For a long time, I have felt that the significance of church membership has been elevated too high, the problem is that it can lead to losing sight of things that are more important. As it prevents people from worshiping God with us, then it is a genuine issue.

I acknowledge what you say about the stand on creation providing enablement for people to erect higher barriers, to act 'holier than thou', and to inflict injury on fellow believers. God did not erect barriers for us to get to Him, he did the opposite, he came to us and died. These barriers seem in opposition to what Jesus did.

..."Everybody accepts the conclusion that adding 1 object to 1 object results in 2 objects.????"...

I often agree with the author of the above, but....

aaah..... can we say ..."sometimes yes, and sometimes no?"

adding metalic sodium to water might only result (violently) in steam

adding one galaxy to another, only results in a new, larger, probably strung out galaxy...but it would take far longer than Ussher could imagine

adding plutonium to plutonium could rapidly result in a loud, unsurviveable bang

adding one sperm to one egg could result in one life.

adding 1 in base 10 to another 1 in base 10 does = 2

but

adding 1 in binary to another 1 in binary, results in "10"

and as I despaired earlier...there are only 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary, and those who don't.

(for the uninitiated, the 1 in "10" holds the two's place, the zero holds the 1's place...so in binary, "10" means that there is one (2), and no (1's)....)

so, 1+1 can equal "10" !!!

thus, it can be said that there really are only "10" binary commandments: do good, don't do bad.

its all in the telling and the daffynishions.

maybe the same with religion(s).

and there are a lot of daffynishions in religious tales.

sometimes leading to misunderstandings, arguments, crusades, massacres, world wide floods, Egypts innocent firstborn being slaughtered, eventually culminating in God BBQ ing everybody who disagrees with our understanding.

So you suggest then that God can not have any attributes, because God is not real.

That is bunk. Your claim that an attribute of God is goodness, some atheists believe in goodness, therefore some atheists believe in God was the absurdity being rebutted. Your stating that a character has attributes in no way proves anything about the character actually existing.

My rebuttal to that is simple, prove to me your premise that God is not real.

Again, proving your claims about God is not my problem. Claims you make without evidence can be dismissed by me without evidence.

Actually, because you allow me to give attributes then it follows that it must exist!

You dropped a key, qualifying word from my statement: actually. As in reality. As in objective reality. ACTUALLY exists in objective reality.

Does Cinderella have attributes? Does she exist? Yes, as a fictional character in a book. Does Cinderella ACTUALLY exist? No. Does Santa have attributes? Yes, as a fictional character. Does Santa ACTUALLY exist? No. Does God have attributes? Yes, as a fictional character in a book. Does God ACTUALLY exist? No, unless you, the devotee claiming that the character does ACTUALLY exists shows some evidence.

Just as you argued, if it doesn't exist, then it has no attributes. Which is it?

Where did I argue that? As I have said, you can give God any attributes you want. However, as I also said, just the mere fact of your claiming some attributes for some character doesn't prove the ACTUAL existence of that character. I'm certain that lots of people in nuthouses claim all kinds of attributes and deeds of their invisible friends. What they say their friend has done and what their friend is like, add no credibility to their claims that the invisible friends ACTUALLY exist in objective reality.

> I keep mulling over this discrepancy in my mind. There should be nothing that hinders people from worshipping God with fellow believers, except their own volition. Why do we need to erect barriers?

This was the essential point Chuck makes at the beginning of this thread - this issue is not worth splitting the denomination over!

My family has a Protestant friend who likens Protestant denominations to clubs - shop around until you find one that fits, but from a salvation standpoint they (currently) make no difference.

They don't have to be like each other, they have to appeal to enough people to do some good.

The SDA denomination is at a cross-roads. It can either

1. be a denomination that caters for people who don't care about science, who care about feeling certainty more than they care about being reliable, who like the feeling of secret knowledge more than the care about the accuracy of the knowledge, OR
2. be a denomination that allows for a range of beliefs with an acknowledged uncertainty

It has a lot to offer, with its understanding of the Great Controversy, the importance of health, the state of the dead, salvation through faith, ADRA, etc. It is a shame to see it deliberately set out to repulse intelligent educated people.

/Bevin

Beth, I think what Charles was referring to when he said you were channeling the new atheists was your statment, "Pointing to Pol Pot or Stalin as examples of non-believers makes little sense because what made them so powerfully awful was not their atheism but their fervent ideology. Same with Hitler."

It won't do to slam religion for such medieval atrocities as the inquisition and the Albigensian crusade, but give atheism a free pass for the atrocities committed by the officially atheistic communist regimes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. That's just cheating. In a previous post directed at Charles, I had briefly adverted to the fact that Christipher Hitchens tries to do this by characterizing strong ideological belief, even in an atheistic ideology like communism, as akin to religious belief. Obviously, Charles can speak for himself, but I think he must been referring to your Hitchensian argument (quoted above) when he said you were channeling the new atheists.

Bevin,

Appreciate the post you've just shared.

I just spent the evening with some friends--we're un-cool enough to call ourselves "The Theological Club"--who read books together. Tonight we discussed Marilynne Robinson's GILEAD, the Pulitzer-prize winning novel. During one conversation in the book, the protagonist, an aging and insightful pastor, makes this remark to a friend who is puzzling over "predestination" but has found the pastor's comments too vague: "I'm just trying to find a slightly useful way of saying there are things I don't understand. I'm not going to force some theory on a mystery and make foolishness of it, just because that is what people who talk about it normally do."

I identify with this remark. It certainly has relevance with respect to the Christian belief in creation.

Anyone else like it? Anyone think it's too softheaded?

Chuck

keafan,

"Your claim that an attribute of God is goodness, some atheists believe in goodness, therefore some atheists believe in God was the absurdity being rebutted"

Yes, not far off, my argument goes something like the following:
Premise 1: God is the source of goodness
Premise 2: Some atheists believe in goodness
Conclusion: Atheists who believe in goodness, believe in something provided by God.

This is internally consistent.

Premise 1 is a tautology, it is part of what defines God.
Premise 2 is a fact.
Conclusion is rejected by you, I think because you reject premise 1.

In order to reject premise 1, you have to disagree with the tautology. Therefore you are redefining what God is, in order to make it absurd. So, we are not working with establishing the existence of the same concept.

If you agree with Premise 2, then we agree that the particular attribute in discussion is actually real. Goodness actually exist in more than a book! The defining attributes of the other characters you mentioned, do not have the same type of relationship between the attribute and the character. Snow white is not defined as the source of goodness. Your analogy does not hold, because the type of relationship is different.

"Your stating that a character has attributes in no way proves anything about the character actually existing." God is not simply a character that has attributes. God is the reason why those attributes exist. God is the source of those attributes. God's existence is seen by the existence of those attributes. See the difference in the definition?

When you understand some of the Christian resolutions to Plato's Euthyphro dilemma, then you will understand the relationship between the attribute and the concept in the definition of God being provided in this context. For example C. S. Lewis responses to it.

"David Read is a prime example of someone who is both ignorant and certain - a non-scientist lawyer Christian who doesn't even understand the evidence, yet has written a book showing that the vast majority of scientists are wrong."

Bevin, don't hold back out of politeness. Go ahead and tell me how you really feel.

As Will Rogers once said, we're all ignorant, just on different subjects. I did spend years writing a 600 page book on origins, however, so if I'm ignorant on that subject, it isn't from a lack of self-education. But I would submit that being unconvinced by Darwninist theory is not the same as being ignorant of it, however difficult that is for you to conceive of, Bevin.

Fortunately there are many people, far brighter and better educated than I, who remain unconvinced by Darwinian theory. Kurt Wise, a Harvard Ph.D who studied under Stephen Jay Gould, is one example. Marcus Ross, who about 3 years ago earned his Ph.D. from U. of Rhode Island, is another. According to this piece: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/weekendreview/story.html?id=45e0....

"Ross, a "young Earth" creationist who believes the Earth is no more than 10,000 years old, recently received his doctorate in geosciences at the University of Rhode Island after writing a dissertation on mosasaurs, marine reptiles that disappeared 65 million years ago. Ross's advisers described his work as "impeccable" and they therefore had no reason to deny him his doctorate."

Here's the New Yok Times' piece on Ross:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/science/12geologist.html?_r=3&pagewant....

There was another article on Ross after he started teaching at Liberty University (the link is broken). He obviously has a good sense of humor: "Today we're going to start a lecture on geological dating, or dating a geologist," he recently announced to students. "If you've ever seen my wife, you know I've had good results."

Marcus Ross well understands the biblical/theological stakes in the creation/evolution debate:

"If he is wrong, Ross said, there are staggering implications. "If Adam and Eve aren't real people and the fall isn't a real event in history, then there's not a good reason to believe that Christ rose from the dead and every thing else," he said."

I emphasize again that Marcus Ross understands science inside and out, but still rejects the long-ages view in favor of young earth creationism:

"Marcus understands evolution and I know because we tested the hell out of him," he [Fastovsky, his Ph.D advisor] said. "So I think it's very heartening that a person of his background is teaching at Liberty."

Here's a piece by another credentialed creationist:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2007/02/16/creationists-need-re....

"Evolution proponents often consider creationists to be ignorant. The assumption is that anyone who understood science or was properly educated would obviously accept molecules-to-man evolution as fact. In reality, this confuses science with a commitment to naturalistic philosophy. Scientists such as Dr. Ross and I fully understand the scientific method and use it appropriately. However, we also believe the Bible and the creation account in Genesis. I know and understand a lot about evolution, I just don’t believe that it explains the origin of man. It is my sincere hope that Christian young people will not shy away from careers in science. Examples such as Dr. Ross should encourage them that they can do good science and honor the Creator at the same time."

'Nuff said about ignorance. As to certainty, I do not profess certainty with regard to origins. I have faith in what the Bible says. I believe, but I am not certain. The certainty seems to be mostly on your side.

"I believe, but I am not certain"

I am still looking for any indication that there is any evidence (other than God Himself telling you after the Second Coming) that would persuade you that you are wrong.

If there isn't any, then you are (for all practical purposes) certain.

/Bevin

David, I can pour water for 6 years into a bucket with a hole in it, but at the end of the 6 years it is still ignorant. My comment on your ignorance was based on the inadequacy of your statements in the above discussion - ie: on the evidence.

David writes> "I emphasize again that Marcus Ross understands science inside and out, but still rejects the long-ages view in favor of young earth creationism"

Marcus Ross is an Intelligent Design advocate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_R._Ross

"He has also been interviewed by Christian radio stations, and was featured in DVD lectures arguing why intelligent design is a "better explanation" than evolution for the Cambrian explosion, a 70 million to 80 million year diversification of invertebrate animal life about 530 MYA"

As described here, this does NOT FORCE HIM to be a YEC

http://serc.carleton.edu/files/nagt/jge/abstracts/Ross_v53n3p319.pdf

In his publications, he clearly uses standard multi-million year ages for life on Earth

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=dow...

However, he is a YEC - he just can't do science with it. He is a perfect example of someone who is emotionally committed to YEC while intellectually understanding science. I can see why you like him.

But science is based on EVIDENCE, EXPERIMENTATION, not LIKING

/Bevin

Tom and Beth,

Yes,even Venn diagrams can be interesting and very useful to visualize distinctives and commonalities! :~)

Tom, I think Froom and QOD were rightly trying to make the "intersection" larger with the Christian community rather than focus only on the "distinctives" outside the "intersection" that the "ultracons" of SDA chose to. Des was likewise trying to break the wall of partition with the Christian community of 1844 and Jesus...only at that time going to the MHP.

Distinctives are ok BUT JESUS, Lord and Savior in both sets and the "intersection" is essential.

I think also the Venn is useful to point out/visualize issues of Christianity vs. other world religions. The "intersection" may include the desire to do many good deeds and seek love and "peace". The "distinctive" of non Christian religions however is large in the Venn diagram. There is NO JESUS AS LORD/GOD and SAVIOR there or in the intersection. That my friends should be problematic for a Christian seeking "commonality" or for those claiming we worship the same "God."

Anyway, if one is "bored" it is fun to demonstrate/visualize differences and likenesses with the diagrams.

Try a few on different areas of interest.

regards,
pat

bevin

Please cite an experment that proves life forms can be generated from organic soup.

Please cite evidence of progressive modifications. A spider has eight eyes, did it ever have just two?

So far you seem to carry the day, on the time issue, on a few poetic passages of Scripture, and extinct life forms.

If you win, what reward do you expect to receive? What science will have been advanced? If you lost what science will have been retarded?

Darwin proved that the churchmen of the Middle Ages were wrong. That was a blessed think. But they were well on their way to extinction long before Darwin. Tom

"Your claim that an attribute of God is goodness, some atheists believe in goodness, therefore some atheists believe in God was the absurdity being rebutted"

Yes, not far off, my argument goes something like the following:
Premise 1: God is the source of goodness
Premise 2: Some atheists believe in goodness
Conclusion: Atheists who believe in goodness, believe in something provided by God.

Chris

You are employing the typical religious tactic of changing the terms in an argument. Your original claim was that "we are squabbling about what is God, rather than His actual existence.

Also, you assertion that "God is the source of goodness" is a tautology is refuted by yourself in premise 2 because tautologies in logic are universally accepted unconditional truths. If premise 1 is a tautology, how can there even be such a thing as a person that does not believe in your God, let alone the fact that your God is held as a faith statement by only a minority of humans on this planet?

You seem to be using rhetorical tautology in a logic form. A rhetorical tautology is unfalsifiable and contains no useful information but instead "it masquerades as an explanation when the real reason for the phenomena cannot be independently derived" (wiki- tautology- rhetoric).

Here's a way to put it that I would accept as a logically true conclusion:

Premise 1: Chris believes his God is the source of goodness
Premise 2: Some atheists believe in goodness
Conclusion: Atheists who believe in goodness, believe in something that Chris believes is provided by his God.

As afar as your deity actually existing, if you could provide some evidence that it actually does beyond the old Argument from Ignorance (I can't understand how X happened, therefore my God exists) I would be interested in checking it out. You might wish to also notify the scientific community of your evidence.

Premise 1: Chris believes his God is the source of goodness
Premise 2: Some atheists believe in goodness
Conclusion: Atheists who believe in goodness, believe in something that Chris believes is provided by his God.

Thanks keafan, yes, exactly, now you seem to understand. I am happy with the way you wrote that. Do you have a problem with that argument any more?

There is plenty of the scientific community who believe in God. I have nothing to provide to the scientific community about that.

PS. I did not define God as something independent of goodness. So, not masquerading as an explanation for anything else. Simple goodness is our way of perceiving God.

I did spend years writing a 600 page book on origins, however, so if I'm ignorant on that subject, it isn't from a lack of self-education.

David

A few weeks ago I had a good laugh reading some of the chapters of that book posted on your website. You seemed to argue that the preliterate inhabitants of the British Isles were somehow vastly smarter than today because they figured out, as early as 3000 BCE, how to arrange rocks to align with celestial occurrences. How did the earliest-placed stones survive the Deluge of ~2350 BCE?

Anyway, I agree that christians who dismiss the recent creation event of Genesis cannot honestly claim that Jesus is still relevant without the literal Adam, Eve, Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, the introduction of sin by them, and our "fallen" state of that origins story. If they believe evolution over long periods of time what, EXACTLY, have we "fallen" from that would need a Savior?

Jesus compares the end of time as like the "days of Noah". John claims that Jesus IS the creator. Paul appeals to the actions of Adam to prove his Jesus. The whole Great Controversy theme Bevin seems to approve of is contingent on the Garden, Adam, and Eve actually existing as historical, literal things.

As Ross is quoted as saying: "If Adam and Eve aren't real people and the fall isn't a real event in history, then there's not a good reason to believe that Christ rose from the dead and every thing else."

Without the Fall the whole theory of salvation from the consequences of that Fall are ridiculous.

Do you have a problem with that argument any more?

Now that the argument doesn't resemble what you originally concluded? I have no problems with the new argument.

"how can there even be such a thing as a person that does not believe in your God"

There are books on this. Everyone does actually believe in God. Some just don't realise it.

keafan,

"Now that the argument doesn't resemble what you originally concluded? I have no problems with the new argument"

For my education, can you please state what the difference is with this and my original claim?

..."So far you seem to carry the day, on the time issue, on a few poetic passages of Scripture, and extinct life forms."...

so we might agree that sciences explanation about the Old Earth makes our past literal belief in a young earth.. aaah....wrong?

and you agree that the claim that Joshuas God helped Him massacre more of his neighbors by stopping the sun from revolving around the earth for a short while...that claim falsifies any literal belief in this Bible story as actual, true history that we should base our knowledge of God on?

and dinos? not the result of amalgamation of man and beast..just before the flood, when the hot women were fooling around with aliens? and Dinos didn't live at the same time as man? weren't taken abord the ark? and to get rid of them, God buried them under the iridium layer, about 65 myA? possibly by bowling an errant space boulder at the earth? or causing India to convulse with volcanoes?
Trying to kill everything again, like He had done 200mya in the "great dying" of the Permean? like He would later try to do with a flood? but with the flood, he would leave behind almost no verifiable evidence of its one-time existance?

lets forget worrying about the science involved....what do the Bibles "poetry" about God's alleged actions tell us about the loving nature of the deity we are supposed to honor and worship?

He tried to kill everybody in a world wide flood? and then left behind insufficient evidence to verify that it was one event, around the world, all at the same time?

And why Did He overcame the laws of the universe to help his fave band of nomads finish the massacre of their neighbors?
Doesn't God love everybody, equally? or does He prejudicially help His friends who claim "Gott mit Uns" to kill their enemies?

and why , if He believes in truth and fairness, did He help Jacob cheat his uncle in the goat breeding business? again, by overcoming His own laws...of genetics that time.

with these (morality) questions unanswered, how do we believe literally in the rest of the old stories?

should these questions carry over to the newer "poetry"? describing the magic of making wine from water, and even walking on water? and Lazarus being awakened after three days in the tomb despite the rational fear that "surely he stinkith"?

maybe David Read is right. the whole story may be so delicately balanced on simple belief and faith that once you start picking and prodding at any part...evolution for example...the age of the earth..whether or not talking snakes speak in Hebrew or Aramaic, whether or not there are tall, majestic people living without sin (or oxygen) presumably on Jupiter, ...

...ask the wrong question, and the whole ediface could come tumbling down.

better listen to David, and stop asking questions.

period

everybody in unison, lets start chanting "Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war"..in lockstep...and get the crusade going again.....

ha ha John, funny satire, thanks for the laughs, but I think you need some new jokes.

this Christian and atheist walk into a bar. the bar tender serves the Christian, but completely ignores the atheist. The atheist says hey you, aren't you going to serve me? but the bar tender continues on serving others, and doesn't even notice that the atheist is there. The Christian noticing the frustration says to the bartender, "Hey God, can you at least pretend this atheist exists for a minute!"

David,
You're probably right that this was what Chuck was referring to. And if so, you are both correct that I agree with Hitchens et. al. on that particular point. I disagree with him though that religion is at fault. I think religion is the excuse but I'm not sure that no religion means no excuse.

I don't think that the lack of belief in something has similar results to belief in something. The communist and fascist atrocities came about because of fervent belief in something. Atheism is defined as not believing in any gods. It is generally what one believes that causes action, not what one doesn't believe.

Now someone can argue that by not believing in gods, one would be more likely to commit atrocities. Perhaps. But it is a weak argument because not believing in gods would be an extremely poor predictor of whether one would commit atrocities. In other words, if you want to explain why people commit atrocities, belief or non-belief in god/s wouldn't tell you much, if anything, about why they are doing it.

Here's another example. In our country, atheists are under represented in the prison system given their population. Now we can argue that this shows that atheists are more moral but it would be a poor argument because there are many other factors that better explain why atheists are under represented (like they have a higher overall education rate which factors strongly in not ending up in prison.) Atrocities - or more generally, respecting human rights - is MUCH better explained by factors other than religious belief or lack thereof. Therefore I think it is beside the point to say that Christianity is somehow superior to atheism and point to atrocities for evidence.

It is believing that it is acceptable to kill other people to get what you want or to change society or to save people or because you are under attack or because your standard of living is threatened or for whatever reason, that leads to atrocities. I don't think that looking over history and/or looking at Christianity now, we can say that Christians are less prone to using those reasons for killing other people than non-believers.

If this all sounds cynical, I suppose it is. I haven't lived in a country that has suffered an atrocity since we did it to the Native Americans (done almost exclusively by Christians I would add, whose belief in Manifest Destiny overrode their belief in human rights). But looking at how our society reacted after 9-11, I can easily see how it happens and how Christianity, as practiced by the majority in our country, won't be any help.

While it would make theoretical sense to argue that belief in god/s would make people less likely to commit atrocities, I still maintain that the reality says otherwise. Saying the communist/fascists regimes killed a few million more than the millions killed by religious believers isn't much of an argument IMO. So I bristle when I hear people talk about how Christianity is superior to atheism because when it really matters - when lives are at stake - it isn't.

Sorry this is long. It's kind of a difficult argument that I'm probably not explaining well.

Chris

If you are unable to ascertain the difference between

we are squabbling about what is God, rather than His actual existence

and

"Atheists who believe in goodness, believe in something that Chris believes is provided by his God"

then I think its pointless for me to continue debating your false conclusions.

And, your comment that people have written books on the idea that everybody believes in your God? Any idiot can write a book. Repeating falsehoods many many times does not make them true. Putting them in book form does not make them true either or add any credibility to them.

Again, claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Show me the dome over the flat earth and we can have an evidence basis to discuss the God claimed in the Bible. Without the dome and an Adam & Eve your claims have no standing IMO. Well, about the same standing as Cinderella and Santa.

" Everyone does actually believe in God. Some just don't realise it."

An absolutely unprovable premise. Might as well say that "everyone belives in (miracles, Santa Claus, fairies, and angels)" but don't realize it.

How does one "believe" if he is not cognizant about something? It sounds like wishful thinking--the kind Christians often make: They simply MUST believe in God, because it is impossible not to.

Tom asks > Please cite an experiment that proves life forms can be generated from organic soup.

Tom, research abiogenesis for yourself. You might start here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis or here http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/

But the critical point is this. IT DOESN'T MATTER. For all I know God assembled the early cells.

What matters is this. The rocks, the fossils, and the genes all point to millions of years of life on Earth. Either life has been here that long, or God created a huge lie.

I don't believe God is a liar, so I believe life has been here that long. When spiritual human life started, I have no idea, but I do know the apes have been here for a long time.

/Bevin

"Please cite an experiment that proves life forms can be generated from organic soup."

It is about as easy as proving from experiment that fully-grown humans appeared on this earth 6,000 years ago, without human observation or videos to record.

It all depends on which is easier to believe.

Is it easier to demonstrate, especially with ultrasound and modern techniques, that embryos evolve from a sperm and egg, gradually splitting and begin to demonstrate a great deal of similarity at an early stage of most beginning forms of life. This is well known and demonstratable.

No experiment has ever been performed producing a fully-grown human, or dog, or tree, instantneously.

Some things are more difficult to replicate. However, the fossil records show repeatedly, that no single solitary fossil has ever been found BEFORE it could have evolved. A good theory is one that is vulnearable to disproof, yet is not disproved. That would be strong evidence against evolution if the discovery of even a single fossil were found in the wrong geological stratum. The very first time that the flatworm PLATYHELMINTHES was found is contemporary times. There are no fossil records whatsoever and are "already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history." But "the very first time they appear" is not the Cambrain but today.

Now we are down to brass tacks. Origins are beyond human understanding or ability to prove. It is all a matter of faith. I prefer the faith that Jeus came and demonstrated.

It is amazing that Abraham, Job, Moses, David, Isaish, and Daniel all had that faith before the fact. Imagine John the Baptist, and Paul with that faith on the way to the chopping block.

Imagine three score years and ten without faith and three score years and ten with faith. I have been blessed. Thank God from whom all blessings flow. Tom

Bevin, I see that reading comprehension is not your strong suit. What part of "Ross, a 'young Earth' creationist who believes the Earth is no more than 10,000 years old" do you not understand? Do you think he was misrepresented in several newspaper articles, including one in the New York Times, as well as in multiple blogs? Do you really think that there would be such controversy surrounding the awarding of his Ph.D. if he were an old earther?

The language of design is common to both ID and YEC, so you shouldn't take from that that he is not a creationist. The same goes for the Cambrian explosion; it is something that both creationists and ID people point to.

You can tell from his review of Davis Young's book that he is sympathetic to the young earth view, and not to old earth creationists:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/april/33.63.html

Beth, I don't think I would use the argument that atheists are underrepresented in the prison system. Although self-identified "atheists" are a very low percentage of inmates, much less than one percent, about 20 percent of inmates do not identify with any religion, suggesting that they are not religious, are functionally non-believers.

Some statistics are here: http://www.adherents.com/misc/adh_prison.html.

Isn't it great that the Christian tent is large enough to contain
good people with a variety of beliefs on positions that have little or nothing to do with the basic Christian message: God is love. When such disagreements as the age of the earth can never be settled or proved by any known method, it is one of the many things that have divided Christians far too long. Why can't Christians "live and let live"? What we are showing the world is that we either can appreciate others' differences, or that we have no room in our church for you who don't agree with us. Is your heart that small? Are the church's doors too small? Are there check lists for admittance?

We should be ashamed of denigrating anyone with different beliefs that have nothing to do with one's Christianity.l

Thanks David for the link on atheism and the prison population. I did some more digging on that too. I think it does still seem fair to say that self-described atheists are underrepresented while the more vague "non-identified" may very well be over represented (though this is more unclear). The data is not even very clearly sourced.

The article you linked to makes the point I was trying to make. That trying to use belief/atheism as a distinguishing category for moral behavior won't get you very far.

keafan,

You said:

If you are unable to ascertain the difference between

"Atheists who believe in goodness, believe in something that Chris believes is provided by his God"

Looks like I did not ask my question very well. I did not realise that you thought my "original claim" was "we are squabbling about what is God, rather than His actual existence". I thought you were referring to my original claim as the way I wrote my first conclusion, in the same argument that we are talking about. i.e. my first "formal" conclusion was:

"Conclusion 1: Atheists who believe in goodness, believe in something provided by God."

and the way you rewrote that was:

"Conclusion 2: Atheists who believe in goodness, believe in something that Chris believes is provided by his God"

You accepted that Conclusion 2 is consistent, but you say that Conclusion 1 is absurd. I have trouble realising the difference between conclusion 1 and conclusion 2. I think that some of my definitions are different to yours. But, I think that the only difference in the two conclusions is your insertion of "that Chris believes is" added to my first conclusion, and "his God" instead of just "God". These differences apparently made the 2nd conclusion acceptable to you. But it was My conclusion to start with, so I feel that the insertion of "that Chris believes is" and the change to "his God" instead of just "God", is kind of redundant. But this difference seems significant enough to you, that you disagree with the first one, but agree with the second one? But to me, it just proves that our concepts of God are different.

I was asking you to explain in your words, what the difference is between these two. I think that this might be significant, it might help me explain what I think the actual difference is where you and I disagree. So, please don't give up on me after we have gone this far. Why don't you want to enlighten me?

Of course, I realise that God's existence is part of what we are discussing overall. My point in that phrase about squabbling was that we have not agreed on a definition of the concept of God. I still maintain that we have different concepts of God!

You made a conclusion that if my definition was true, then there would be no atheists. I was agreeing with you, and saying that even books have been written with exactly that premise. Think about that. Perhaps you will see that this proves that our respective concepts of God are indeed different.

Hi Beth,

I agree with you about labels. "That trying to use belief/atheism as a distinguishing category for moral behavior won't get you very far."

That's why I can make a statement like: It is possible that those who call themselves atheist, are actually believers (and so are saved). Just as it is possible that one who identifies themselves as a Christian, may not actually believe (and so are not saved).

Actual belief in transcendental goodness results in morality. For example, take the statement that God is love. This goes to the actual specific belief, rather than the moniker of the individuals belief system.

David, I (Bevin) wrote > "However, he is a YEC - he just can't do science with it. He is a perfect example of someone who is emotionally committed to YEC while intellectually understanding science. I can see why you like him."

And you are accusing me of not being able to read?

/Bevin

""Ross, a "young Earth" creationist who believes the Earth is no more than 10,000 years old, recently received his doctorate in geosciences at the University of Rhode Island after writing a dissertation on mosasaurs, marine reptiles that disappeared 65 million years ago."

Maybe someone can explain how someone can believe that the earth is no more than 10,000 year old, yet writes his dissertaion on repitles that disappered 65 million years ago? If they dissappeared that long ago, how can that be consistent with an earth only 10k old?

Elaine, that's exactly what the controversy is about, that's why it is newsworthy. (Or did you think the New York Times runs an article about every freshly minted Ph.D?)

I'm of two minds about it. Obviously, he couldn't have gotten a Ph.D. degree from any large, state-supported University if he wrote his dissertation from a creationist perspective. But why should a Bible believer be denied a first class educational credential that he has worked for and is qualified for? So in way, I think he was very clever to go ahead and write the dissertation using conventional dates and long-ages assumptions.

It is very clear that Marcus Ross could not have received a Ph.D. for his dissertation on mosasaurs without doing that work within the long-ages paradigm. It is also clear that Ross cannot be faulted for dishonesty, because his advisors knew he was a young-earth creationist and did not subscribe to, for example, the 65 m.y.a. date for the extinction of the mosasaurs. Essentially, his advisors took the attitude, "we don't care what you believe privately as long as you do good science within the conventional paradigm."

But isn't this the same problem some Christians faced under the Roman persecution? The Roman magistrates often essentially told the Christians, "we don't care what you believe privately as long as you offer a nominal sacrifice--just burn some incense--at the cult of the emperor." Those Christians who refused to do so, often at the cost of their lives, were viewed then and today as the authentic Christians.

Does a Ph.D. from a major university make it excusable, even commendable, to genuflect to the conventional paradigm, even if you don't really mean it? Ross can now, if he chooses, use his credentials to further creation science. But his Ph.D. dissertation, with its long-ages dates, can always be quoted against him. And he can always explain it, saying, "but I was doing work within the other paradigm in order to get my Ph.D degree. I don't really believe that." Of course, the Roman Christians could have made the same defense, "but I had to acknowledge the cult of the emperor to save my life. I never believed in the divinity of the emperor; I always knew that there is only one God."

Ross can now, if he chooses, use his credentials to further creation science.

As far as I am aware, the term "creation science" is an oxymoron. They can't replicate or predict anything that I have ever seen.

PhD "scientists" tend to sit around and talk without ever doing any science that has to do with Biblical Creation. Ross just pulled the same dishonest tactic that Leonard Brand pulls- couch your research in long-age terms, get it published in a peer reviewed journal, then run around claiming they are YEC'ers that have been "published". Right. Dishonest from start to finish.