If an honourable addition to Mendel's work is all Evolution tried to be, we would not have a problem.
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How does science prove that we don't know?
Science merely presumes the nonexistence of special acts of God (miracles), a priori in any given area of investigation. If that presumption is true, it is a very valuable method. If that presumption is false, it's usefulness diminishes.
God is inherently super-natural. He made nature and is above it. He is like a carpenter who makes a box and fills it with ants. The ants inside the box could not tell you what is outside the box based upon what they observe going on in the box.
It's like we are fighting just to believe there is such a thing as faith, when in fact, that is the first most obvious fact about anything in life. For some reason, Evolutionists think this "blindness" to life is a good thing, like its sunglasses or something, only not the kind you can see through.
Any other topic and there is a divine way of interpreting it. Farming, is like sowing seeds in Heaven. Cooking bread, is like waiting for the reward of Heaven to mature. Building a house, is like establishing your house on the Word. But what is Evolution? How do you have a spiritual dialogue with someone who voids their own mind before the conversation even starts. It's just so frustrating. And yet we have lives that need meaning, that crave meaning and Evolution refuses to let anyone answer it.
I think I agree insofar as we need to separate evolution (and science generally) from atheism. In my opinion atheists have blended the two to strengthen their arguments against God. Christians contributed to this mess by persecuting science. . . . By the very act of opposing its natural partner in knowledge (science), the Christian church provides atheists with the opportunity to say that Christian theism opposes knowledge.
I've reached an impasse with Evolution, but I am not sure what it means. [snip] The thing is, I still can't get them to cave on morality or a moral standard and they do not reason well. Meaning I can't get them to see the whole in the theory for the gaping hole in their morality, they don't infer a connection between the two, at all.
...It is not a priori, it is methodological. IOW, when exploring any phenomenon, science doesn't rule out miracles, but it asks the question: "Assuming no miracle, what would produce this phenomenon naturally?" Can you think of a better way to discover natural causes of phenomena in nature?
Yes, but even you would have to admit, that's a big if.
Not only that, even if a viable natural explanation is found, that could never disprove the supernatural explanation.
No one is addressing your question: where is Christ in evolution?Hi there!
Just a thought. Darwin was a considerably theologically minded person, when writing about his motivation to research Evolution he said (paraphrase) "I cannot imagine that God would allow His creatures to suffer [what therefore is the mechanism by which they can survive]" (exact reference unknown). In what way does this reflect the God of Evolution? Does God not manifest Himself to Evolutionists even as they seek Him through Evolution?
The thing that comes to mind is that certain rules apply no matter how God manifests Himself. For example, His Word says He will not always strive with man, so too we must imagine God will not always strive with Evolutionists. But what else? Certainly the Law does not change. I have witnessed to Evolutionists on this site simply by pointing to the golden rule from the perspective of Evolution (would you let someone evolve before you?). Other laws apply.
But there is a big leap from this to witnessing about Jesus and at the moment, I just can't see how to do it. For example, does the God of Evolution ask Jesus to work more or work less, or does he simply ask Jesus to discern? As you can see, I am confused. It is no good talking about the God of Evolution if you can't mention Jesus, Jesus as the example of something. At the moment Evolution has nothing, not even a general recognition of the possibility of a god of Evolution.
Thoughts?
....Science can never show that "no miracle happened here". What it can show is "no miracle is necessary here"....
Indeed.
Problem 1 is, God told us a a series of miracles a relatively short time ago. They were described in detail, and given an explicit timeframe.
Problem 2 is, the scientific version of origins posits a universe that leapt into existence for no reason uncaused.
My view is, if a miracle is necessary 14 billion years ago anyway, not just just accept the one God described in Genesis?
That's a misinterpretation. It should be "for no reason known to science". To state that because science cannot pinpoint a cause, therefore there was no cause, is not itself a scientific statement, but a theological statement.
But notice your focus on miracles. In another thread, I said this was characteristic of creationism. As if evolution had anything to do with denying miracles. (It doesn't). You accused me of making this up, but here you are illustrating the very attitude I was naming.
OTOH, I don't know that Genesis is referring to a miracle either. ...
No, the BB is even more problematic that that. You have a singularity turning into a universe for no reason.
Certainly you can speculate about a natural mechanism,
No, you were claiming that creationists deny that God upholds the natural laws of the universe. You got called out on that one, as you completely made it up.
Speculating about miracles is really the achilles heel for theistic naturalists. None of you seem to be able to come to grips with the concept.
Yes you do. Your views are not based on hermeneutics. They are based on naturalistic theories.
Why do you say it is for no reason? If God decided to make a universe, is that not a reason?
What we don't know, scientifically, is why this mechanism got kick-started in the first place.
Well, as I explained in my other post, it is not that creationists don't know what they are supposed to say when asked directly.....
IOW's the only way you can make it work is to put a miracle of God in front of it.
Which is a watered down way of saying, the BB is a naturalistic dead end. "So what do we do? Hey, let's add God?"
Typical God of the gaps reasoning.
Epic fail. Why not just admit, you have no evidence to back up your explanation?
He is running from his own shadow, because deep down inside he does not really believe that God exists and is afraid of anything that contradicts his limited and myopic system of thought, for fear that it would shatter his shallow faith.You don't have a real theology of God and nature. All your god does is miracles. And where you can't see miracles, you can't see God.
....Did you even read the other post? I gave you an extended example.
But now I don't even need it, as you are providing the example yourself.
Glu, you completely made up the charge. There are no creationists that deny God as the upholder of natural law. It's just a myth you put forth in desperation.
Miracles are special acts of God, natural laws are the normal way God upholds things. Every creationists believes this. Every creationists knows and affirms the difference.
Excellent analogy - for what occurred when the Lord by His hand made the rainbow in Genesis 9 does not lose its significance when seeing how it occurs naturally after rainfall - for it has its source in the Lord and that will always make it glorious to behold, just as with all processes the Lord sustains/allows to develop.How does learning that what we once thought of as a miracle (due to our ignorance) is actually an intelligible natural phenomenon deprive us of God if, as you claim, God is the one who created and upholds natural laws? Is a rainbow deprived of God when we know how light is refracted to make it?
Gxg (G²);56218603 said:Perhaps this is different for me when having a background that does involve an American Indian/"First Nations" perspective. I appreciate Native Spirituality in Christ......as I do love the views of other Indigineous peoples/those in them following the Lord (such as Richard Twiss of the Siox Lakota). They always had high respect for creation..and and with that, I've noticed that for them, whenever the issue is brought up, their focus is very simple on how all creation is connected with the Lord.....and nothing escapes Him.
He is intimately involved in it---and feels it as well. I've often pondered this whenever it comes to opportunities I have to go out into nature.....with hiking, walking, and admiring Gods Creation....and seeing how much design is involved in all aspects of it. Be it the Eco-System design where survival of the fittest occurs...or in the symbotic relationships many creatures have with each other...or in certain plants/trees developed to fight against certain predators and yet being so fragile all at once....none of it is by chance. And when questions of Evolution being right or wrong come up, it seems to be inconsequential.
All of that is in line with the concept known as Panentheism ...the concept of God being outside of the world and yet connected deeply to it/all within it.
Many North American Native Peoples (such as the Cree, Iroquois, Huron, Navajo, and others) were and still are largely panentheistic, conceiving of God as both immanent in Creation and transcendent from it. North American Native writers have also translated the word for God as the Great Mystery or as the Sacred Other. This concept is referred to by many as the Great Spirit.
For more info, one can go online/consider researching the Following UNDER their respective titles:
For scholars that you can consider, one person that may bless you is by the name of Arthur Peacocke----as he's one of the main theologians/philosophers and scholars who has advocated the concept of Biblical Panentheism.
.........One can also go online/investigate a book he helped make on the issue...alongside many other scholars, as seen in the work entitled In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God's Presence in a Scientific World :
Panentheism, as I'm discussing, deals with how all there is not only emanates from God..but is experienced by Him as well. Its the idea that one's not to worship an animal or a tree since it's not the creator--but on the same token, as Chasidism ascribes to, the animal being abused is felt deeply by the Lord...and on the same token, an animal being killed naturally in the wild is something that's seen as beautiful rather than abhorent since nature was designed that way with all things aiding one another in a grand circle of life where all things are connected.
Again, panentheism is the idea that the entire universe is part of God, But God is greater that the universe. God is omnipresent and transcendent - that is, God contains the entire cosmos but the entire cosmos does not and cannot contain God. He is omnipresent because his uncreated energies permeate all Creation, generating and sustaining it. And He is transcendent because his uncreated essence is inaccessible to us - it is wholly beyond Creation. Much of it is very much seen best in the concept of the INCARNATION--where the Lord stepped into HISTORY itself even though He was outside of TIME.....and experienced life as all of us do, grieving and growing ( Luke 2:39-40, Luke 2:51-52, Hebrews 2:17, Hebrews 4:14-16, Hebrews 5:7-10, etc ).
Too often it does seem that people have this view of God that He's off somewhere in the great beyond, disconnected with what occurs here on the planet. It seems to be due to what has often been promoted with Classical Theism and how others seem to think that it makes God seem more glorious if He is not connected with His creation. But I think it diminishes it....
Gxg (G²);56218605 said:I do think it is possible and Panentheism is the skeleton within which science and religion are complimentary rather than in opposition. As it stands, its odd to see it claimed that one claiming God cannot truly do science, as many great scientists of the past were believers clearly in the Lord....
As mentioned in the earlier post, one to consider looking up is Arthur Peacock. For he contributes to this cause by inviting us to think out of the box in relation to evolution both in respect to the origin of life, the infinitely small, and with Man's conscious potential beyond our conception.
One of the best places to research is an article made by Arthur Peacoke entitled "Many Worlds: Evolution to Theology" http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/2659/Default.aspx
The advance of science and its discoveries relating to evolution have made the source of creation by a personal controlling God difficult to defend. But if supposing that Creation is to God as our bodies are to us, we can see how evolution is similar to the process of our bodies coming into existence.
...............
It is claer that we already know the physical man both as ourselves and in others. Moreover, we have ideas on how it evolved this far from being "born of woman" . However suppose man's evolution continues from being born from above...with us growing in the Lord
Another quote from the article by Peacock:
lllIt was not long after Darwin published the Origin that some theologians began to discern the significance of the central distinctive Christian affirmation of the Incarnation of God in the human person of Jesus the Christ as especially congruent with an evolutionary perspective. Thus, again in Lux Mundi in 1891, we find J.R. Illingworth boldly affirming: ". . . n scientific language, the Incarnation may be said to have introduced a new species into the world-the Divine man transcending past humanity, as humanity transcended the rest of the animal creation, and communicating His vital energy by a spiritual process to subsequent generations. . . ."(36) Jesus' resurrection convinced the disciples, including Paul, that it is the union with God of his kind of life that is not broken by death and capable of being taken into God. For Jesus manifested the kind of human life which, it was believed, can become fully life with God, not only here and now, but eternally beyond the threshold of death. Hence his imperative "Follow me" constitutes a call for the transformation of humanity into a new kind of human being and becoming. What happened to Jesus, it was thought, could happen to all......In this perspective, Jesus the Christ (the whole Christ event) has, I would suggest, shown us what is possible for humanity. The actualization of this potentiality can properly be regarded as the consummation of the purposes of God already manifested incompletely in evolving humanity. In Jesus there was a divine act of new creation because Christians may now say the initiative was from God, within human history, within the responsive human will of Jesus inspired by that outreach of God into humanity designated as God the Holy Spirit. Jesus the Christ is thereby seen, in the context of the whole complex of events in which he participated as the paradigm of what God intends for all human beings, now revealed as having the potentiality of responding to, of being open to, of becoming united with God. In this perspective, he represents the consummation of the evolutionary creative process that God has been effecting in and through the world.
Others may disagree, but I think it's more than worth considering....
Gxg (G²);63741881 said:Excellent analogy - for what occurred when the Lord by His hand made the rainbow in Genesis 9 does not lose its significance when seeing how it occurs naturally after rainfall - for it has its source in the Lord and that will always make it glorious to behold, just as with all processes the Lord sustains/allows to develop.
So you and all of them claim.
But if that is really the case, why do you object to "naturalistic" explanations of natural phenomena. ....
Just scratching my head as to where you got this notion.