Evolution is based on a process called Natural Selection-in other words, Nature chooses. Creation is based on the idea that God chooses. Which seems more foolish, believing that God, and entity that could possibly exist, designed the universe or believing that Nature, a concept that we know doesn't exist as an intelligent entity, designed the universe? For me, I am going with the one that is at least possible. So you may call me a fool but I will find solace in the fact that I am at least a step above you.
Advertisment
9 comments:
Nyk,
Your foolishness is not because you put your faith in God as our Creator, because he is. Your foolishness is because you are turning a term used as a scientific observation into a theological philosophical one. When a scientist uses the term “natural selection” he or she is NOT saying that God is not involved or behind it. The scientist can not make that observation either way because we can not put God under the necessary controls for scientific experiments. When you observe nature through a strict scientific method, when something occurs for immeasurable reasons scientist call it “random”. This term is used in a scientific context and does not translate into a philosophical one.
Yes Nyk, there have been atheists who double their foolishness by not only saying that there is no God, but they also misuse scientific terms thinking they can prove their philosophical point. So you have indeed one up’d them. But I would rather you did not look like a fool at all, and would be able to speak intelligently to those who understand science and that terms like “natural selection” and “random” are limited by their scientific context when they comment on truth found in philosophical and theological perspectives.
Statements like your last post perpetuate the idea that Christians are foolish individuals who actually don’t care about what is true as long as they can convince themselves they are right with uninformed arguments. Your argument makes no sense because it does not take the time to discover what the scientific terms you argue against actually mean in a scientific context. When scientist say that “nature chooses” it is only because science is limited by the fact it is a discipline that observes NATURE. Nature is the extent of what we can see with the scientific method.
Peace,
James
James,
I grow weary of your 'science can't speak to God' responses. It is amazing to me that emergents want to eliminate the chasm between "sacred" and "secular" (most of this elimination I would agree with you on) until they hit a virtual wall of Education, Politics, and Science.
I will simply leave you with with a couple passages of Scripture;
Romans 1:20
"For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse."
Mark 10:6-8
"But from the beginning of creation he made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh."
You need to get new material.
Nyk
Nyk, it isn’t that science can’t inform us on things of God, just that it has limitations as a particular discipline. My comments were meant to educate you on the language of that discipline so that you can dialogue with it effectively. You seem not to want to do that but instead you would rather talk about what you pretend science is. You do this because the way you imagine science to be is a much easier opponent to defeat. Which makes sense because you are not really interested in what is true, you just want to win an argument.
I love the verse in Romans 1:20 because I do think that all of creation is evidence of “his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature.” I can not look at creation without being amazed of how awesome our God is and as I study science and become more informed on how amazing the world is, I continually see these things as growing evidence of God. But we have to understand that when it comes to God that science can only give us answers that we can use as philosophical evidence. In other words science can do two things; it can answer specific questions about nature according to the scientific method and then these results can inform other disciplines such as the meta sciences like philosophy, social science, and metaphysics. Conclusions made through the soft sciences are based on hard science data but has to depend on logic and philosophy to weave the parts together.
Hard science can only give us specific answers about the observable (visible) world, it takes philosophy to take these answers and tie them together in a way to show how they are an evidence of the “invisible attributes” of God. Just because science can not give us hard evidence of God, doesn’t mean that we can’t be informed by science on a philosophical level and embrace these findings as real evidence of a Creator God. I think the philosophical evidence, which isn’t hard science but very much informed by it, is overwhelming that there can be no other answer than God was our creator.
My comments had nothing to do with trying to “eliminate the chasm between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ and I think it would be irresponsible to keep my faith from effecting how I interact with issues such as Education, Politics, and Science. But at the same time I have to understand the roll of things like Politics, and Science in order to effectively interact with them. If you think that I need to “get new material” I can only suggest that you haven’t paid close enough attention to my old material. I am not going to tickle your ears with the things that you want to hear, and you should not want that either if you are really after what is true.
James
I think you should then define what you think Natural Selection and Random mean in a "Scientific Context", because I certainly know what they mean and how they are used and how they are misused. I also think that we may be discussing something beyond our underlying problem which is certainly a waste of time. You see, I based what I believe and every part of my life upon the fact of the Bible being truth. Therefore, I judge everything else by the truth of the Bible. So when Scientists tell me something that doesn't jive with the Bible, I don't doubt the Bible, I doubt the scientist. You, on the other hand base your beliefs on...well, I am not sure what exactly but you have demonstrated through several "conversations" that it isn't the Bible. So we are at an empass when discussing things like evolution because you are going to believe what ever the "scientists" say despite their changing of their conclusions almost daily, their lying, their supression of facts and discoveries, their outright frauds and the fact that the vast majority of them are athiests who are by no means objective. I have no confidence in what "scientists" say.
Until you get to a point in your life where you hold fast to the truth of Scripture above all, there is really no point in keeping on with this conversation.
Nyk, I did define what "natural selection" and "random" mean in a scientific context. But your objections are not about science; they are about protecting an inappropriately literal view of our creation story and drawing poor conclusions from it that carefully crafts as tidy little world view that is stacked fragilely on top of one another like a house of cards. Your only futile hope then is to try and ward off the wind that is threatening to blow your house of cards over.
When something doesn't jive with how YOU read the bible through a fundamentalist lens you villainize the source of the information because you think that the devil, liberals and scientist are all out to get you. You think they can't be trusted because "they all conspire together with their common agenda of to get people to walk away from God." It is really kinda of paranoid. I find it ironic that you accuse scientists of not being objective when your perspective isn’t objective at all.
You hold to your view of the Bible above all, you even hold it above God himself. Idolatry is taking any image or picture of God, even a really accurate and good picture, and treating that image like God. Even good pictures of God are limited in describing all that God is. The Bible isn't capital "T" truth, but scripture does point us to perfect Truth; which is the person of Jesus Christ. All truth is God's truth, and as a follower of Jesus I am always trying to walk as close to what is as actually true as I can. You seem more interested in sticking your head in the sand of the idolatry of your own point of view.
I think you should reflect on a bit of sad Christian history that may help you in this regard. Galileo was persecuted by the church as a heretic for saying that the sun was the center of the solar system and the earth revolved around it. The church of the 1600’s did this because their literal interpretation of scripture. Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30 state that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved." Psalm 104:5 says, "the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that "the sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises." Joshua 10: 12-13 talks of how God made the “sun stand still” and “delayed going down for a day”. The church took all these scriptures to mean that the earth stood absolutely still and the sun is the object moving around the earth; not the other way around. That is what the Bible says and everything else is heresy. If a scientist came along like Galileo and said something different then he had to be wrong because they knew their Bible was right.
Of course it is widely accepted now that Galileo was right and the arguments made by the church of the time were absurd; and also a poor way of reading scripture. I think your arguments based on what you claim is “not jiving with Bible” is just as absurd today as the church’s arguments against Galileo was in the 1600’s. Nyk, you have to ask yourself what you care more about; finding out what may actually be true or fighting to protect your own paradigm of truth? Please do not deceive yourself into thinking that you are taking the high road by simply “believing the Bible at all cost” when what you are really doing is reading the Bible from your own selective perspective at all costs. Again, be careful that you don’t confuse your paradigm about God with God himself.
Maybe we have indeed reached impasse of being able to continue this conversation, if it is true it’s a shame. I wish you well Nyk.
Peace,
James
Well, I am glad you are finally out of the closet...the Bible is not truth, eh? Say no more.
I said the Bible isn’t truth with a capital “T”, but it is truth that that points us to Jesus as that kind of Truth. In the context of my statement my point was the Bible is not God. Nyk, again you would rather try to find a way to disqualify the truth of my statements than look at them head on because you are more interested in protecting your perception about what is true than discovering what actually is true.
How can you know Jesus outside of Scripture? Everything you know about Him, who He is and what He taught and how He lived is through Scripture and in Scripture He said that the word of God is truth. And He wasn't talking about Himself. If you want to look to His life and example you will see that He lived His life (though He was God) with a foundation of Scripture. And this was the Old Testament which you so readily dismiss. He doesn't agree with you. If you are basing your life and beleifs on anything other than Scripture then you are basing them on nothing but yourself. You keep saying that this is my interpretation of Scripture as if I am the first and only one who has read the Word this way. Though the things I beleive about Scripture are the same things that the vast majority of Theologians all the way back to the Apostles taught. And it is interesting that you decry me for supposedly living my life on "my interpretation" when that is exactly what you are advocating and doing yourself. And of course, the Holy Spirit is left out of the equation as well. I am not confusing Scripture with God, as you say, I am simply accepting the fact that God has chosen to reveal Himself to us through Scripture and I am living my life the very same way Jesus lived His, that is through the power of the Holy Spirit with a basis of Scripture. Go argue with the Jesus you claim to follow, because I tire of it.
Nyk,
Scripture is a testimony of Christ, I have acknowledged that and I live by it; and I mean all scripture; I am not “dismissing” the OT. As you mention the Spirit also testifies of Christ which whom I have committed my life to and who’s Spirit I walk by daily. The church is also a testimony of Christ, the whole church, not just one small western fundamentalist strand that you think somehow speaks for all the church and goes back to the apostles. Even creation and nature itself testifies about Christ who is God. All of these things testify to the truth of who God is.
I have not denied the fact that my own interpretation plays apart in how I reason through and make sense of all these testimonies of God. I have just called you out on the fact you act as if your beliefs are not interpretations but the way you read the scripture reflects absolute true understand. You sound exactly like those in the 1600’s that unjustly persecuted those that believed the earth revolved around the sun because they thought the way they read the Bible was the right way regardless of any other reliable testimony of truth that conflicted with their view.
Your initial post was about having one ups-manship over those who “foolishly” believe in “natural selection” based on an argument where you also misuse the terminology. The point of your post was to say to those that believe in evolution- “I am smarter than you” and “know better than you”. Of course it is true that everyone believes their opinions are right or they would get new ones; so I do not fault you for believing you are right, for I also believe I am right.
But believing you are right is a different thing from saying that anyone who disagrees with you is a fool. How is saying in your original post that you are “at least a step above” someone like me, who believes in evolution, compatible with following Jesus? Is that the Jesus you follow, the one that makes you a step above the rest? Is that the way the Jesus you follow lived his life?
I am sorry that you “tier” of the conversation that is generated when you call those that believe in the validity of natural selection as legitimate scientific observation a fool. I am sorry you “tier” of having listen to arguments generated from your initial accusation that somehow believing in natural selection as a scientific concept is opposed to believing in God as the Creator of all. I guess defending your cardboard and uniformed accusation can really wear you out.
Nyk, I’ll leave you alone for a while and give you a break. I am not trying to wear you out but instead help you understand that the way you think about these things in regards to what it means to follow Jesus does not represent what all followers of Jesus think.
Peace,
James
Post a Comment