self-conflicted T.E. does not survive attention to details

[BobRyan]

Christians have known for a long time that T.E. survives only by ignoring the details in the serious questions that expose it's flaws.

Here is a case in point. The author of this post is asking a serious question as a "believer" in T.E.

For those of you who hold to theistic evolution, what do you believe about Adam and Eve?

If you believe they are only mythological to explain human tendency to sin, then how do you reconcile verses such as Romans 5:12?

"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—"

If there was no literal fall of humanity, then there would be no need for Christ to have come, no?

If you believe they are literal humans, do you believe that they were the first of the homo-sapiens or only the first two with a soul? I still can't reconcile the Fall of humanity if they were not the first two human beings...


DISCLAIMER: I believe in evolution, just can't find a suitable way to reconcile these.

The question is raised because in fact - there is no bridge between the religion of blind faith evolutionism and the religion of the Bible. Marrying these two religions results in myriad of Bible denying conflicts.

Here is another serious T.E. effort to address that question - that exposes a key flaw in the T.E. paradigm.

OK - what if, hypothetically, I called that first creature to conceive of deities, "Adam"? I don't have to put a finger on exactly when - I can say that whenever it happened, I'll call that person "Adam".

IF God punished all mankind - and Christ had to be tortured on the cross - because "some hominid bashing in his daily ration of monkey brains - happened upon a bad thought one day" - then the atheist's mocking of the gospel is amplified 1000 fold and it is all nonsense.

The idea that all mankind must burn in hell because of some dunderhead barely-able-to-imagine-deity-exists "Adam" ate an apple or "had a bad thought" or "Bashed in the monkey's head the wrong way" -- is the most cruel and unjust unGod-like action thinkable for dooming the entire planet. Which fits the TE paradigm perfectly!

TE makes a mockery of the Bible, of God, of the Gospel - and logic.

This is irrefutable.

And what does TE gain by such a horrific sacrifice? They claim they are gaining friendship with the atheist's "religion" of blind faith evolutionism.

James 4 says "friendship with the world is hostility toward God".

I believe the Bible.

I don't think science can say just how gradual the transition was from prehumans to humans. Perhaps a couple hundred thousand years ago God rearranged the DNA in a prehuman womb so that Adam (Eve likewise) was born with fully human intelligence while his parents had no real language and intelligence as close to that of chimps as to humans. I think what you believe about that has more to do with your view of miracles than of science. All humans descended from them, though at times some people interbred with pre-humans

Saltations where brute hominid morphs into Einstein or Moses or Solomon in a single generation are not "likely". More like "Big whopping miracle goes here". And if science were all about "big whopping miracles" - then the 7 day creation account of the Bible - would not be the problem for atheists that it is today.

Do you "believe in" the unscientific facts of the literal virgin birth, incarnation of Christ, literal bodily resurrection of Christ, literal bodily ascension of Christ, the 2nd coming, the miracles of the NT... the prophetic statements in the NT where NT authors claim God speaks to people and they write what God said... and the literal 7 day creation week... and the literal world wide flood?

Pretty hard to do that and still claim that all your beliefs are reproducible in the lab or agreeable to atheist scientists or that they do not contradict what science clearly shows to be the case in the lab.

 

[BobRyan]

Here is another exchange with a T.E. believer who does take the subject seriously and is seriously coming to grips with the logical downward path of the T.E. position. Though I am sure he views all this as "very positive" and favorable to T.E.

Bob, again much of your material on TE is way, way off base. For example, I hold that God was incarnate in Christ. Christ is a revelation of God's general MO with the world and that means God is incarnate throughout creation.

That's pantheism. Try again.

The Virgin Birth has always been a problem for theologians, TE or otherwise. Does it literally mean, no sex. Not all biblical scholars would agree with that. They would take the term "virgin" to mean that Mary had no sex prior to being married. After that, no, it is not claiming Christ was somehow sexlessly produced in Mary. Also, the Virgin Birth is not in Mark, which suggests that it is a later addition to Christian thinking. .

That is outright denial of the Christian doctrine on the virgin birth - T.E.'s would be wise to sit up and "take notice" of where that downward path has led you.

BobRyan, I don't think you at all understand TE. First, the notion of original sin is well entrenched in Christian orthodoxy, which is where it originated. Secondly, all this reference to "monkey brains" is way, way off. It is common for people to say that evolution claims we arose from monkeys. But that is not at all the case.

I don't think you were "paying attention to detail" -- perhaps this was necessary to preserve the T.E. thought at the time. But consider looking "at the details" -- in my description I did not say "Adam came from monkey-brains". Rather I took the well known fact that primitives do dine on monkey brains and inserted that into the "first T.E. man's" daily experience. I point out that having this "barely human" so called T.E.-Adam whose only claim to fame is that he was the first to have the capacity to even imagine the abstract concept of "god" -- be the being on whom the entire destiny of the world would rest, the being that would condemn all mankind to the lake of fire, the being that would call for the torture of God the Son on the cross to rescue him from such a horrible result... not only makes a mockery of the Bible AND the Gospel, it makes a mockery of logic and of God. A result no doubt pleasing to many atheists who would love to malign Christianity.


I do not deny that your position is consistent with T.E. that is after all "Theistic" evolutionism and not "Christian evolution" in that it is ready made for anyone who believes in some sort of deity no matter what religion and it does not demand orthodox Christian views.

 

[BobRyan]

So those are good examples of the T.E. posts paying attention to at least some of the details and trying to seriously come to a logical conclusion.

Which may explain further how it is that T.E. itself only survives by using that model - of ignoring the points raised in the OP and the details we see in the discussion posts - that are not simple snipe-and-snark.

So then the details ---
Today at 3:39 PM #71
Today at 12:03 PM #67
Today at 10:52 AM #64
Today at 10:36 AM #62

 

[BobRyan]

. My point is that I do not believe at all in original sin. I do not consider it a biblical concept at all. I do not assume the Bible is an accurate geophysical witness or that it was ever intended to be.

And then the denial of the fall of man - ! (Is T.E. a disguise for atheism as some have suggested or is it just a very confused kind of Christianity that just-so-happens to deny all the key bible doctrines??)

You're attempt to have it both ways noted. That self-conflicted logic claims the Bible is not trustworthy AND that the Bible does not say anything that opposes T.E. no matter what it says !!

 

[Papias]

IF God punished all mankind - and Christ had to be tortured on the cross - because "some hominid bashing in his daily ration of monkey brains - happened upon a bad thought one day" - then the atheist's mocking of the gospel is amplified 1000 fold and it is all nonsense.

How is that any less sensible than "God punished all mankind - and Christ had to be tortured on the cross - because "some person - happened upon a bad thought one day"?

In both cases, we have original sin starting when the first human rebels against God. You are attacking basic Christian doctrine.

The idea that all mankind must burn in hell because of some dunderhead barely-able-to-imagine-deity-exists "Adam" ate an apple or "had a bad thought" ... -- is the most cruel and unjust unGod-like action thinkable for dooming the entire planet. Which fits the TE paradigm perfectly!

So if you don't think Adam's sin was rebelling against God (what you mocked as "having a bad thought"), then what are you saying original sin was?

....makes a mockery of the Bible, of God, of the Gospel - and logic.

Again, I see a lot of mocking in your post, not mine.

In Christ-

Papias

 

[BobRyan]

The question is raised because in fact - there is no bridge between the religion of blind faith evolutionism and the religion of the Bible. Marrying these two religions results in myriad of Bible denying conflicts.

Here is another serious T.E. effort to address that question - that exposes a key flaw in the T.E. paradigm.

OK - what if, hypothetically, I called that first creature to conceive of deities, "Adam"? I don't have to put a finger on exactly when - I can say that whenever it happened, I'll call that person "Adam".

IF God punished all mankind - and Christ had to be tortured on the cross - because "some hominid bashing in his daily ration of monkey brains - happened upon a bad thought one day" - then the atheist's mocking of the gospel is amplified 1000 fold and it is all nonsense.

The idea that all mankind must burn in hell because of some dunderhead barely-able-to-imagine-deity-exists "Adam" ate an apple or "had a bad thought" or "Bashed in the monkey's head the wrong way" -- is the most cruel and unjust unGod-like action thinkable for dooming the entire planet. Which fits the TE paradigm perfectly!

TE makes a mockery of the Bible, of God, of the Gospel - and logic.

So if you don't think Adam's sin was rebelling against God (what you mocked as "having a bad thought"), then what are you saying original sin was?

The Bible says Adam was made directly by God - and is called the "son of God" in the gospels. He is made in the image of God - upright, intelligent, perfect, sinless. He is vastly superior to our own age in that even after being banned from Eden he lives over 900 years. Made "A little lower than the angels" according to the Bible.

His IQ would dwarf Einstein's. So also Eve. Perfect, sinless, very intelligent. The students of God himself as God walks in the Garden in the cool of the day as their Father - as their Creator - as their instructor.

After some period of time (perhaps years) they sin - by transgressing the one prohibition - a "tiny test". They were told not to eat of one tree -- just one. Nothing difficult about that at all. EXCEPT the the serpent (who turns out to be Satan according to Revelation 12) tempted Eve to believe that she could EVOLVE to a higher state of being - a superior life form - if she ate from the tree... just as the serpent claimed to have gained the power of speech merely by eating from the tree.

In other words - the world was in a fort-Knox-like setup when it came to the risk that would send all mankind to the lake of fire. The odds were stacked against Satan and in favor of mankind. Only by the most egregious of acts of rebellion would the world have been placed in such jeopardy.

That is the Bible model.

But the T.E. model is that the fate of the entire world is in the hands of "mr dunderhead" -- hominid boy whose parents are "animals" and who is at the bottom edge of the bottom ledge --- the first animal that evolves to even "qualify" as "early human" - early "cave dweller" - and to have even the glimmering concept of a 'god'.

 

[BobRyan]

The reason the reference to days is in Genesis is that God realized we can think only in terms of time and therefore God accommodated himself to our level of understanding. Calvin took a similar stance. God has to talk "baby talk" to us because of the inferior nature of our minds. Calvin stressed that God did not intend Scripture to be a lesson in astronomy. The flat earth, etc., were simply ways God had of accommodating himself to our feeble intellects, talking 'baby talk" to us. Hence, my claim that Scripture was not intended to be an accurate geophysical witness is very much part and parcel of historical Christianity. .

your argument now takes the form "Yes the author intended 7 literal days because humans are too stupid to understand time that is longer than 7 days".

That same author said Adam lived 900 years. Is that because humans that could not understand time longer than a 7 week suddenly turned into humans that could not understand human life span for one individual to ever be less than 900 years???

I never gave any argument here. What are you talking about? At least, wait to her what I might say, before jumping the gun and putting words into my mouth.

Those words in your first quote above give the meaning as stated -- more transparently obvious than you may have at first supposed as it turns out.

in Christ,
Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Christians have known for a long time that T.E. survives only by ignoring the details in the serious questions that expose it's flaws.

Here is a case in point. The author of this post is asking a serious question as a "believer" in T.E.

For those of you who hold to theistic evolution, what do you believe about Adam and Eve?

If you believe they are only mythological to explain human tendency to sin, then how do you reconcile verses such as Romans 5:12?

"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—"

If there was no literal fall of humanity, then there would be no need for Christ to have come, no?

If you believe they are literal humans, do you believe that they were the first of the homo-sapiens or only the first two with a soul? I still can't reconcile the Fall of humanity if they were not the first two human beings...


DISCLAIMER: I believe in evolution, just can't find a suitable way to reconcile these.

The question is raised because in fact - there is no bridge between the religion of blind faith evolutionism and the religion of the Bible. Marrying these two religions results in myriad of Bible denying conflicts.

Here is another serious T.E. effort to address that question - that exposes a key flaw in the T.E. paradigm.

OK - what if, hypothetically, I called that first creature to conceive of deities, "Adam"? I don't have to put a finger on exactly when - I can say that whenever it happened, I'll call that person "Adam".

IF God punished all mankind - and Christ had to be tortured on the cross - because "some hominid bashing in his daily ration of monkey brains - happened upon a bad thought one day" - then the atheist's mocking of the gospel is amplified 1000 fold and it is all nonsense.

The idea that all mankind must burn in hell because of some dunderhead barely-able-to-imagine-deity-exists "Adam" ate an apple or "had a bad thought" or "Bashed in the monkey's head the wrong way" -- is the most cruel and unjust unGod-like action thinkable for dooming the entire planet. Which fits the TE paradigm perfectly!

TE makes a mockery of the Bible, of God, of the Gospel - and logic.

This is irrefutable.

And what does TE gain by such a horrific sacrifice? They claim they are gaining friendship with the atheist's "religion" of blind faith evolutionism.

James 4 says "friendship with the world is hostility toward God".

I believe the Bible.

I don't think science can say just how gradual the transition was from prehumans to humans. Perhaps a couple hundred thousand years ago God rearranged the DNA in a prehuman womb so that Adam (Eve likewise) was born with fully human intelligence while his parents had no real language and intelligence as close to that of chimps as to humans. I think what you believe about that has more to do with your view of miracles than of science. All humans descended from them, though at times some people interbred with pre-humans

Saltations where brute hominid morphs into Einstein or Moses or Solomon in a single generation are not "likely". More like "Big whopping miracle goes here". And if science were all about "big whopping miracles" - then the 7 day creation account of the Bible - would not be the problem for atheists that it is today.

Do you "believe in" the unscientific facts of the literal virgin birth, incarnation of Christ, literal bodily resurrection of Christ, literal bodily ascension of Christ, the 2nd coming, the miracles of the NT... the prophetic statements in the NT where NT authors claim God speaks to people and they write what God said... and the literal 7 day creation week... and the literal world wide flood?

Pretty hard to do that and still claim that all your beliefs are reproducible in the lab or agreeable to atheist scientists or that they do not contradict what science clearly shows to be the case in the lab.

How is that any less sensible than "God punished all mankind - and Christ had to be tortured on the cross - because "some person - happened upon a bad thought one day"?

Is is the difference between the "person is a dunderhead not even possessing language - while eating his ration of monkey brains" as the great being to decide the fate of all mankind. Vs the highly intelligent fully capable sinless, learns in the visible presence of God - "Adam" being the one upon whom the entire fate of mankind will rest.

In the first case it is "a setup" it is "guaranteed failure and doom of the planet" -- in the second case mankind is given every benefit to succeed and God is not so foolish as to risk himself being tortured on the cross and all mankind doomed to hell - by placing all that weight on the "animal as family dunderhead - hominid in a cave".

The suggestion that the rational objective unbiased thinking student "cannot notice the vast cavern of difference between those two scenarios" -- is inexplicable.

In both cases, we have original sin starting when the first human rebels against God.

you have washed out every detail in the two compared scenarios. Might as well have said "in both cases life forms are involved" as if that is all 'the detail' that T.E. can "survive" when doing the comparison.

That too is "instructive" for the unbiased objective readers.

So if you don't think Adam's sin was rebelling against God (what you mocked as "having a bad thought"), then what are you saying original sin was?

Not sure where your narrative is coming from -

My explanation was as follows

The Bible says Adam was made directly by God - and is called the "son of God" in the gospels. He is made in the image of God - upright, intelligent, perfect, sinless. He is vastly superior to our own age in that even after being banned from Eden he lives over 900 years. Made "A little lower than the angels" according to the Bible.

His IQ would dwarf Einstein's. So also Eve. Perfect, sinless, very intelligent. The students of God himself as God walks in the Garden in the cool of the day as their Father - as their Creator - as their instructor.

After some period of time (perhaps years) they sin - by transgressing the one prohibition - a "tiny test". They were told not to eat of one tree -- just one. Nothing difficult about that at all. EXCEPT the the serpent (who turns out to be Satan according to Revelation 12) tempted Eve to believe that she could EVOLVE to a higher state of being - a superior life form - if she ate from the tree... just as the serpent claimed to have gained the power of speech merely by eating from the tree.

In other words - the world was in a fort-Knox-like setup when it came to the risk that would send all mankind to the lake of fire. The odds were stacked against Satan and in favor of mankind. Only by the most egregious of acts of rebellion would the world have been placed in such jeopardy.

That is the Bible model.

 

[BobRyan]

@OP

I do not have a particular opinion on the matter. Evolution and my faith have never felt at odds to me. Maybe Adam and Eve are metaphorical, maybe the two people actually existed, I do not know. And I'm rather fine with not knowing that detail. It does not detract from anything.

Then I suggest -- "more attention to detail" as in the OP of this thread.

 

[Haasrecht]

Then I suggest -- "more attention to detail" as in the OP of this thread.

Did you just quote me across threads to try to get me to read something? Why not just link it in your other post where you quote me?

 

[BobRyan]

Did you just quote me across threads to try to get me to read something? Why not just link it in your other post where you quote me?

This thread shortens all of that much longer thread down to a single page or two - so much easier to follow the point.

Your post goes to the details listed in the OP of this thread. I assumed your alert window would let you know that your post was being added to this conversation as the point you were making is that there is nothing to see in those details being highlighted in the OP.

Might as well see the details being dismissed.

 

[Haasrecht]

Your post goes to the details listed in the OP of this thread. I assumed your alert window would let you know that your post was being added to this conversation as the point you were making is that there is nothing to see in those details being highlighted in the OP.

Might as well see the details being dismissed.

Ah. To clarify: I was not saying there is nothing to see. I was saying I am not concerned with what there is to see. I was merely pointing out that there are folks that are simply not concerned with the issue as a whole. We merely go about our merry lives with no cognitive dissonance about evolution and our faith.

 

[BobRyan]

Ah. To clarify: I was not saying there is nothing to see. I was saying I am not concerned with what there is to see.

thanks again -- I find that very useful for this thread.

 

[Haasrecht]

I thanks -- I find that very useful for this thread.

I never had any intention of being in this thread. If you want people involved, don't ping others from elsewhere.

 

[BobRyan]

Christians have known for a long time that T.E. survives only by ignoring the details in the serious questions that expose it's flaws.
.

Apparently that point can be demonstrated in almost every T.E. post.

 

[BobRyan]

The Virgin Birth has always been a problem for theologians, TE or otherwise. Does it literally mean, no sex. Not all biblical scholars would agree with that. They would take the term "virgin" to mean that Mary had no sex prior to being married. After that, no, it is not claiming Christ was somehow sexlessly produced in Mary. Also, the Virgin Birth is not in Mark, which suggests that it is a later addition to Christian thinking. .

That is outright denial of the Christian doctrine on the virgin birth - T.E.'s would be wise to sit up and "take notice" of where that downward path has led you.

I do not deny that your position is consistent with T.E. that is after all "Theistic" evolutionism and not "Christian evolution" in that it is ready made for anyone who believes in some sort of deity no matter what religion and it does not demand orthodox Christian views.

The fact of the matter is that there was and is considerable debate over what exactly the Virgin Birth means. This is not a matter specific to TE people.
.

Can you name any large T.E. - sized segment of Christianity that repudiates the virgin birth in that same way - but also does not accept T.E.??? (so then not 4-guys-in-a-dorm-room)

 

[BobRyan]

As it turns out -

there are Bible details so glaringly obvious that even our atheist friends notice them --

for example - the "kind of literature" that it is - in Genesis 1:2-2:3

==================================

Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:

‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’

=======================

That is the opinion of professors not at all inclined to accept the 7 day creation week that we find in Gen 1:2-2:3 yet they can still 'read' and point to the author's intent - whether they agree with the author or not.

 

[BobRyan]

Here's my problem, I believe in evolution, and it brings up doubts especially in the OT... were the OT writers simply writing what they "thought" and the way they "felt" about God, and not in an actual words God actually said..

Well, my problem is I believe the scientific evidence which casts doubt on some of the Bible writers, BUT, I have too much personal experiencial evidence of a God and other spirits existing on another side beside this one...

http://www.christianforums.com/thre...periencing-part-of-a-pm-conversation.7843548/

My personal experiencial evidence stands on it's very own as enough proof for me, but have I encountered the same God (YHWH) spoke about in the OT, some OT acts and verses by God cast a shadow of a doubt on him being a or the God of Love...

Anyone help?

God Bless!

Darwin claimed that is faith in blind faith evolutionism eventually drove out every last vestige of his acceptance of the Word of God. Dawkins, Provine, P.Z. Meyers all claimed the same thing.

One thing is for certain - blind faith evolutionism is totally at odds with faith in the Bible as the Word of God.

There can be no logical and truthful marriage between the two religions regarding the doctrine on origins - as Darwin himself observed.

Christianity is NOT opposed to evolution;

Until you read the actual Bible.

Evolutionists cannot respect hermeneutics, the science of understanding how the original audience would have read this passage.

for example - the "kind of literature" that it is - in Genesis 1:2-2:3

==================================

Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:
Tuesday at 5:12 PM #17

 

[-57]

In both cases, we have original sin starting when the first human rebels against God. You are attacking basic Christian doctrine.


In Christ-

Papias

Did you mean human or humans?

 

[BobRyan]

Did you mean human or humans?

Good question. Does he think one human condemned all of his ancestors and contemporaries?

OR does he think God actually made one couple - man and woman - - and that they alone doomed all of their future children.

And does the text of God's Word change as soon as someone else comes along to 'make stuff up' ??