I'm not "going beyond what His Word says about Him". He created the universe and everything in it. The Bible is silent on HOW He did it aside from speaking it all into existence.

If "Let there be light!" is described by science as the Big Bang, who am I to argue with God over it?

If "Let the Earth bring forth life" (edited for brevity) is described by science as Evolution, who am I to argue with God over it?

I'm not being pious, nor am I humanizing God. I'm simply not one of those who runs around saying, "See! This is what the Book says, so THAT'S THE WAY IT IS!" when a mountain of evidence contradicts the literal interpretation of the Book.

As Galileo said, "I refuse to believe that God gave me an intellect but expects me not to use it."

Reality is: If I shake the toaster components forever I'll end up with a box of plastic and metal dust.  Therfor the toaster parts will asymtotically approach assembly probablity of 0. (Yes, I know I'm confusing the theoretical with the practical but it's my nature )

Now on to evolution... I will certianly not claim to have studied it in depth but I have not found a good explanation put forth in a fashion understandable to a minimally interested layman (this is the root of my "problem") of how we went from simple organisms to complex organisms in the Cambrian.  How did an organism survive through many generations or attempts until one that had a circulatory system, excreatory system, endocrinsystem, nerveous system, etc. was created.  And yes, again I will admit it is theoretically possible but I have issues with the practical application of the theory.  I'm not good at the religion of evolution.

Perhaps we should talk about some less controvestial theories such as Global Warming.

+1

This is a good point, and I'm frankly glad that you made it - it gives me a chance to clarify something about Christianity.

Let me break this down slowly:

You are correct in that we are starting from different logical premises.

You start with the idea ("I demand proof") that man is the measure of all things. I'm thankful that you made that point, as it is highly relevant to this discussion.


In contrast, I start elsewhere.


I start as a person who has recognized his own shortcomings, recognized the shortcomings of the human race, and has rested in the supremacy of God in all things. As such, my presuppositions when approaching this subject look something like this:




I must start any endeavour - including one that is scientific in nature - with a 'fear of the Lord' (a reverence and awe, if you will) if I am to achieve any sort of knowledge. Where God has given us wise advice and instruction in His Word, I am a fool to reject these things. By extension, when I examine your starting point, I see that you are, according to the Word I defer to in all things, a fool. I try not to follow fools.

'Fool' doesn't mean, as has been pointed out before, that you act like one of the Three Stooges, Sideshow Bob, or a court jester. It means that you have a humanistic, delusional understanding of the world you live in. You forget that it's God's world, not yours. My only appropriate response is to bring to your attention that, whether you like it or not, this is God's world that you live in, and if you want me to take you seriously, you MUST recognize this.

Further, I must, if I'm biblically consistent, scoff at your demand for proof. God has given us much - more than we need, really - to demonstrate Himself. Most pointedly, He invaded human history in the person of His Son, bore the wrath of the Father against His people, died, and was supernaturally resurrected from the dead. He ascended back into Heaven. That is more 'proof' than any of us deserved. God has never 'set out' to prove Himself. God, in His dealings with man, presupposes His own existence. He condescended to dwell among us but did not and does not have to condescend to prove Himself to us. To demand He do so is, again, humanistic.

I'm not saying any of the above to belittle you, question your character as a citizen, or anything else against you personally. What I AM trying to do is show you the root issue here - I come from a Biblical worldview where God is set above man. You come from a humanistic worldview where man sets himself up above God.

The two will always clash, and don't mix.


Many have tried to mix them. The results are various - churches that set themselves up over Scripture, whether in demanding an interpretation that fits with what men have discovered through their own (fallen) endeavours, or, at the other end, a modern movement amongst otherwise good evangelicals where we insist that Scripture be interpreted using a 21st-century understanding of a 17th-century translation of a 2000-year old Greek document.

In the middle, you have people who see God's Word as their sole authority in all matters of life, and submit themselves to it - colelctively, in churches. Do these men sometimes disagree on finer points of theology? Yes, we do. Do we struggle to understand why God's Word says one thing while man's highest and best efforts say another? yes, we do - but at the end of the day, we take Scripture as our authority, understand it by submitting to what it says about itself (the protestant belief that Scripture interprets Scripture, i.e the anaology of faith) and go from there, leaving all our questions in the hands of a God who we trust will reveal to us what we need when we need it, just as He has always done.

That is, in effect, the root philosophical difference here, and until we wrestle with that, arguing over the age of the earth is premature.

One thing's for sure - you're right about not being pious.


I sure wish you'd drop the humanism (evident in both of your posts), but first you'll have to SEE it for what it is, and that hasn't happened yet.

Of course, others here will insist that Ham is just out to bilk evangelicals out of their money.


<––-holds Ham in high regard.

Creation Videos

video on Creation Science explained by a literal Bible text believer stand! 6k year old earth

God knows I am a rebellious SOB. He made me that way.



What Humanism? I refuse to tell God what to do, or to question His motives as to why He does things. That's called "humility" where I come from.

No, He didn't make you that way. You were born that way as a result of Adam's fall.

You remember Adam? he's that guy you take 'figuratively - then turn around and, without understanding of the Fall, accuse GOD of making you rebellious. That's 'sin' where I come from.

As for 'humanism', You may not 'tell God what to do' but you refse to recognize His Word as an authority, and you make God be whatever you want Him to be. That's not humility - that's first-order arrogance. Arrogance towards God is the HIGHEST order of arrogance.


YOu try to hols science and God in equally hgh regard, but that position will always fail. You end up letting Science dictate to you how to understand what God has said, instead of the other way around (which is the inevitable result of getting your theology from your particular religious group - but then, that's another discussion for another day).

You are still using your interpretation of one part of the Bible to support your interpretation of the rest.  You only believe God has said what you believe He has said.

This is thus irreconcilable theological grounds - no different than getting Mormons and Catholics to accept each other's interpretation of Apostolic succession.

For what it's worth, I do indeed let the natural world (Creation) shape my understanding of what God has done / said.  I don't have that much faith in the people that put the Bible together.  I don't even have that much faith in the capacity of Human language.

Even the Answers in Genesis guys admit he is full of baloney.

His arguments are only convincing to someone with no background in the natural sciences, who are willing to accept every strawman he presents.

I appreciate where you're coming from here - really, I do - but I don't think it's accurate to say I 'use MY interpretation'. Scripture is full of clues as to how we're to interpret it - there's a (largely protestant) principle that we let the passages that use clearer language set boundaries for how we understand passages that use less clear language - and interestingly enough, it's this principle that drives me to an understanding of the prophetic passages that is very, very similar to the interpretation you hold to on those areas (one area where I am forced to tip my hat to the RCC is in eschatology........yeah, that's tough for a baptist to admit...). Point is, it's not 'my' interpretation - it's one that is rigorously constrained to Scriptural principles that have been tested for thousands of years.



Point taken - but the fact that we don't agree on that subject (as a Protestant, I largely reject the notion altogether) doesn't mean that there's not one 'best' understanding of the subject.



Again, I appreciate where you're coming from. There's a school of thought that says God gave us 'two' books about Himself - Scripture being one, and nature the other. Obviously I don't buy that wholeheartedly, but I don't entirely dismiss it, either. God has revealed himself through His creation. There's no doubt of that - and, further, Scripture affirms this. I suppose that the main point of departre for us is that I insist that Scripture gets to define my interpretation of nature, where you would (it seems) let both of them interact with each other. Honestly, though, I have to say that at the end of the day, this approach ALWAYS leads, eventually, to setting nature (or, more specifically, man's understanding of it) against (or over) Scripture. And one of the principles I'ce chosen to stake my life on is that I set nothing - not sceince, not a church, nothing - over Scripture. Nature, and man's experiences in it, and interactions with it, and study thereof, cannot be safely 'exegeted' without an outside control. When we set science equal to Scripture, we eventually will come to the point that man is set up as a judge of Scripture, instead of a 'subject' of it. I believe that's dangerous.

God has revealed much in nature, but if we set off to 'exegete' this without control, we'll end up displaying our 'fallen-ness'. God has spoken clearly, and in understandable language, through Scripture. If we apply the principle that the clear guides our interpretation of the unclear (the same principle that uts you and I on the same page eschatalogically) we have to let the clear teaching of Scripture dictate our understanding of the unclear workings of nature (and by extension, science).

Moving on, I agree about not having faith in men - but while experience has shown me not to trust men, it's not that experience alone - it's first and foremost Scripture that has shown me this. My experiences aren't worht much,except to give me a bit of carnal assurance that God's Word is trustworthy.

Protestants don't believe that God created a man with enough autonomy (libertarian free willl) to pervert what God wanted to speak to us - so while the men who wrote Scripture were indeed fallible, and the men who have helped preserve it were fallible, and all have been in sin and have held God's Word with impure motives (self included) at times, Protestants believe that God is Sovereign enough (!) to ensure that His Word was presevred (for the good of His people) in spite of man's fallibility. So while I don't trust man any more than you do (and think both of us have good warrant for that) I do trust that God preserved His Word, for my benefit, and further, I believe that a rigorous examination of the history of Scripture will affirm this.  

Further, I think we have a divide between us on epistemology (and our base for knowing things). I believe, as a Protestant, that God sent His Word (through men...) as a supernatural revelation of Himself. I don't think any amount of study of nature could ever reveal God to us in the way He reveales Hismelf through His Word - I beleive that God is supernatural, transcendant, and His Word reflects that - the upshot being that when I speak of 'God', I'm not referring to a god that has been proven by nature (and its observation, or even a god that *could be* proven to exist through a study of nature. I believe that the God presented in Scripture transcends any of man's attempts - not only because man is fallen, but, further, because the very creation we would study is fallen.

The upshot of that is that I see God's Word as what old theologians would call a 'pou sto' - a 'place to stand' from which this world can gain no leverage. God's Word, being supernatural, and supernaturally given, gives us a foundation for knowledge that rests outside the natural world. This can be thought of as something of a fulcrum point from which we can (and must) leverage our understanding of the world around us.

Man, in science, even on our best day, has a 'fulcrum point' anchored right in his world, from which he can (philosophically speaking) gain no leverage from whcch to shape a true, proper understanding of the world around him.

The upshot of all this: When man's best efforts (and in light of how evolutionary theory and estimates of the earth's age often change, I don't think man has truly made his 'best effort' yet) conflict with Scripture, I'll go with great trust to what Scripture says.

YMMV, of course.

You don't understand how evolution works.  It isn't random chance.
It is a process guided by natural selection.

How does a flatworm live without a circulatory system?

Don't have to. Many denominations actually accept evolution as a tool God used to further his creation

And yet there you stand doing the same thing.



QED. Unless you are in YOUR religious group, you're wrong. Just because my "particular religious group" is one you despise (real Christian of you, BTW), then obviously it cannot POSSIBLY be right about Scripture. Oh, no! Only those who belong to particular religious groups where any asshat can open a "church" and profess to have all the answers is to be believed.

Sorry, brother, but when I have in one hand a mile-high mountain of evidence that X is true, and on the other hand a book that tries to explain essence of that mountain of evidence to people who didn't even know the Earth was round yet so it takes a few liberties, I'm going to defer to the mountain of evidence and realize that the Author of the book was actually trying to teach us something far different than the specific mechanics of creation.

And yes, I am well aware that my sinfulness is in my nature, but God chose to create me anyway. I think He knows full well (better than you ever will) that my questions and challenges are sincere and a desperate desire to know the TRUTH.

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear."  - Thomas Jefferson

I question. I seek. I challenge. And in the end, despite a lot of doubts, I continue to BELIEVE, knowing that one day I will be given all the answers and rewarded for continuing to seek despite the doubts. I will also not be condemned for questioning the religious faith of another since I avoid doing so for the sole reason that I am humble enough to realize that my own is weak.

But hey, if you have all the answers already, have at it.

You don't even really have to study it in depth, I think an 8th grade or high school text biology text book would probably be a good start.  And I don't mean that as an offense but we really aren't talking about graduate level material here.  Evolution is quite the opposite of random.

To use your box of toaster parts analogy, its more liike you sat there assembling it every way possible until you found the assembly that not only made toast but also made really good toast.

DING DING DING, what did johnny WIN!?

Let us agree that at some point in the past, you were born and brought into this world.

At that point in time, when you took your first breath, you did not have a religious belief or faith in God, Scripture, or Jesus.  You were ignorant of religion, language, speech, humanity, society, or anything else.

Some time between then, and now, you gained a belief in God.  This can be logically shown, as at point A you did not, and at point B (Now), you do possess such a belief.

Logically, then, there was a reason why you chose to believe, whether it was a conscious decision predicated entirely on logic, or an unconscious subtle decision reached through emotional influences.  One way or another, there was a discrete point in time when you lacked faith, followed concurrently by a point in time in which you gained faith.

The difference between us, if I might be so bold as to wager a guess as to your past, is that you were given faith at a young age by the actions, influences, words, and beliefs of others around you.  Once you had that faith in God, the rest becomes irrelevant-on that, I think you would agree.  On the other hand, I never had such an indoctrination (to call it what it is).  At the point when I become aware of the question "Should I believe in God?", I already had a sufficient grounding in logic and reason to wield Occam's razor and ask the cutting questions of the religions I became exposed to, and therefore find the flaws and lies hidden within them.  When someone effectively starts out with the base condition "Premise Y is true", and proceeds to build the entirety of their worldview around it, after a time it becomes essentially impossible for them to step back and analyze the reason why Premise Y was incorporated into their person in the first place.



Were there such a thing as an omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving God and Creator, and such an entity created humans, with all of our powers of reason and capability to think and learn, would it follow that He would want his creations to deny and reject His own gift to them, the power of thought, in favor of blind devotion and unquestioning faith?  What sort of perverse deity would create a universe intended to appear billions of years old, and then tell its inhabitants that they must deny their own senses in favor of unwavering faith in something they'd never experienced in the first place?  I tell you, I insist, that the belief in such a God is itself an atrocity, and it would render an abomination of God in the eyes of any fair and just arbiter of the truth.



I come from a worldview where belief without reason is indicative of intellectual insanity.  Were God to exist, and be omnipotent, it would be well within His grasp to create a universe where belief is rational and follows from the evidence, rather than the other way around.  You come from a worldview where faith comes first, foremost, and above all else...but you've never glanced into the core of your own faith to ask the terrible question why you have that faith in the first place, and where it ultimately comes from.  For you to understand and admit the answer would mean the destruction of your entire weltanschauung, and evolution makes us beings such that we attempt to protect ourselves from such demolishing awarenesses.

Something is holding my ass to the earth right now.  That is a fact.

We do not know enough about evolutionary forces to say we know with a good probability how they work.  Give the geneticists 50 years or so on that one.  The theory of evolution is comprehensive enough to be very useful to us, though, so that indicates that we are on the right track with it.  Of course, Newtonian mechanics was and is still very useful, but physics has been modified a great deal in some areas.

When you have kids, the concentrations of individual human genes on Earth will change.  That is a fact.

Darwin didn't say species changed for the better.

Those that are hidebound to a text written and corrupted by man, so much that they deny the Glory of God, and his Work that is Creation, are doing themselves  a disservice.

Look harder.



Seriously.



 

I love Dr. Dino.



When's he due for parole again?



 

He knows how to build a theme park though.



I might take the tour one day, it's about ten minutes away.



 

Holy freaking cow...



...I just watched that first video. I'm at a loss for words. This guy is either flat out lying through his teeth, or has never even attempted to pick up a science textbook. I'm speechless.





 

Yep guideded by natural selection...  I have a hard time BELIEVING the correct combination could be found / survive the process of natural selection.  I have a hard time making the jump from a relatively simple organism such as a flatworm or sponge to a reptile, mammal, fish or bird.

He is a compulsive liar and convicted fraudster.

He's even better in person.  Seriously.

In front of an seated audience at school I had a "debate" with him, which ended by him comparing me to Hitler.

Wow - you don't get to see Godwin's law applied in public forums that often.

Yes, I get the theory at the 8th grade level.  I'm still having issues making the jump from simple organisms to complex organisms using natural selection.

So you are suggesting God assembled the pieces to make complex organisms?

He's very good at what he does.



Ice, eskimos, etc....



 

truth



I'm an atheist but I'll be the first to admit that if God exists, then evolution is his handwork.



I see a lot of posts by people who believe the author of the Bible is God and he cannot lie.  



God would also be the "author" of the universe.   Its his creation as much, if not moreso, than the Bible and it should be true as well.



The problem is our interpretation of the Bible and our discoveries of the natural world are in conflict.  That leaves a few possibilities



1) science is in error

2) the Bible is in error

3) we are misinterpreting the Bible



#1 is possible, but science is self correcting and the huge mounds of evidence for things like evolution and the age of the earth are extremely powerful evidence

#2 is also possible, but the dogma associated with the Bible makes this unpalatable for many

#3 seems easy enough to go with.
 

chicken or egg.

I will say that the more I learn about life and religion, the more I see humans make shit up to explain other shit.

I totally believe that there is one God, and that one God made everything, and Jesus was a very enlightened prophet. but so was Ghandi and Buddah.

humans NEED to make sense of life, even when there is no sense to be made.

sorry, I don't get my science information from a tax-evading scumbag with academic credentials from a degree mill.    I'll check back in 2015 when he gets out of prison.



If you want more info on Kent Hovind, you can go to http://www.kent-hovind.com/  they have the complete story up until his incarceration when updates stopped.
 

Exactly!

why are there still monkeys?

*Facepalm*

Those "other" skulls are plants by Satan in order to decieve Mankind. We came from the Earth and we shall return to the Earth, not monkeys, lol.

I'm hoping for "not serious"

Just pointing out that the egg came long before the chicken.

The Bible is more proven that evolution

Source?

So...where did the egg come from?

They say intelligent design...it is just like evolution but God is the one making the changes to better help lifeforms adapt.

But that's not a viable scientific theory.

no..it isn't...but they get to say "yes...we agree with your ideas that these creatures adapted...but is is not natural selection, darwinism or evolution...it is all part of God's Plan that they adapted"

who is "they"

While this is how the movement marketed themselves to the non-Creationist world, the continued attacks on established timelines, fossil records, and established phylogenetic relationships has revealed their true nature.

So far, every ID proponent on arfcom has turned out to be a creationist.  I have my doubt about how many are truly simply theistic supporters of the current fossil record and natural history of the Earth.  CDesign Proponentsists are weird like that.