Creationism is NOT Biblical

[shernren]

It's poetic prose ...

I think that speaks for itself.

 

[Assyrian]

Certainly any number of modern sexual practices are mindboggling. It is mindboggling that of all the things tolerated by man, somehow God tolerating incest prior to the law is the least satisfactory exception to the many very clear rules.

How many wives to Soloman have? THAT is mindboggling.

Perhaps you mean curious, or "very odd," when you say "mindboggling."

Just sounds exhausting to me. Modern sexual practices, they can be pretty odd, but hardly that surprising in secular hedonistic society. No, what is mindboggling is Christians with deep moral values, who have supposedly a deep respect for the bible, are so eager and willing to accuse Adam and Eve's children of incest just to make the text fit their interpretation. And they don't even bat an eyelid at it.

Of course if anybody suggests David and Jonathan were more than friends, or Jesus and Mary Magdalaine got married, they are rightly horrified. But incest? No problem at all.

 

[Assyrian]

Adam could have started his begating as early as the first day he was created, remember that he knew Eve the same day she was created. To use a Maltus/Darwin expression populations typically grow geometrically. Two will get you four, four will get you eight and there could have been 4, 5, 6 generations before Cain slew Abel.

So all these children conceived before the fall, they wouldn't have inherited Original Sin would they?

 

[shernren]

So all these children conceived before the fall, they wouldn't have inherited Original Sin would they?

Not to mention this would have him afraid not of his brothers and sisters but of his nephews and nieces, great-nephews and great-nieces. How on earth did Cain win that tussle out in the field? Did Abel lie down and give it to him easy?

 

[busterdog]

Just sounds exhausting to me. Modern sexual practices, they can be pretty odd, but hardly that surprising in secular hedonistic society. No, what is mindboggling is Christians with deep moral values, who have supposedly a deep respect for the bible, are so eager and willing to accuse Adam and Eve's children of incest just to make the text fit their interpretation. And they don't even bat an eyelid at it.

Of course if anybody suggests David and Jonathan were more than friends, or Jesus and Mary Magdalaine got married, they are rightly horrified. But incest? No problem at all.

Let me go on the record as saying that yes, I do bat an eyelash at incest. It is not a simple concept to accept for the reasons that you say. But that is a far cry from seeing anything in the text compelling the liberal reading in that makes Adam and Eve not that parents of all people.

But, it is also extremely difficult to build doctrine on the basis of inference. You would require apparently the existence of parallel lines of human lineage. Now, I would think that it would not be to avoid incest that you would come to this conclusion, but rather a larger worldview.

As a creationist, I have to pick my poison on this one. I will prefer not to reject to surface text on the basis of inference. One thing clear to me is that God could have had made incest "tolerable" without issue of morality. Similarly, dietary laws seem to have changed post flood. Even Peter was apparently encouraged to eat Possum, ship rats, Frog legs and such in Acts. Yechhh.

One distinction for us is that in Adam's very large family it would be very simple to have brothers and sisters who hardly lived near or knew one another.

 

[marktheblake]

(regarding WAW consecutive) Usually it means the events happen one after the other, though it is also used to indicate things that follow as a logical consequence.

you base the crux of your argument that Waw consecutive can only mean, sequence of events, now you say 'usually'. Thats not so convincing. How can you be so sure that it cannot mean order of importance.

Good question. It is what the genealogy seems to indicate. Maybe the blessing was the birthright of the firstborn?

Who is Shems first son? Arphaxad or Elam? Elam is mentioned first in Gen 10.22

Of those in the Messianic line that we know about their story (beyond the simple lists of geneologies) are most if not all, second born. So there is no basis to suggest that the first born had the blessing of being in the messianic line (if thats what you inferred)

Creationists, you could have intelligently argued that since the Book of Jasher was referred to in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18, it is therefore a credible source of evidence.

Dont need to champ, the Genesis text stands well enough on its own. My apologies for not bringing it up earlier - my guess is you were hoping it would have been.

YEC and OEC may have a flawed understanding of Genesis, but they represent carefully considered views that fit reasonably well with the text.

YAHOO! finally a common sense answer from the 'other' view. Thanks.

 

[marktheblake]

Then there is the sheer mindboggling fact that what you are proposing is incest.

What is incest, please explain it to me so I can understand?

I live in a beautiful garden with My mother and father, and brother and two sisters. God made my mother and father, and he said there are no other people.

 

[Assyrian]

you base the crux of your argument that Waw consecutive can only mean, sequence of events, now you say 'usually'. Thats not so convincing. How can you be so sure that it cannot mean order of importance.

Why make up Hebrew grammar when the normal meaning works very well? Doesn't the fact that you have to make up new meanings of Hebrew grammar to make a passage fit your interpretation, suggest the problem lies with your interpretation? I have never come across the idea of waw consecutive indicating order of importance. It tells us events happen consecutively in time, or that follow as a logical consequence of the previous verb. Did light appear after God said 'let there be light'? That is probably the meaning the waw consecutive here. But it could also describe light appearing the instant God spoke, light coming into existence is the consequence of of God saying let there be light.

But I don't see how that helps your interpretation, the other children came after Seth.

Who is Shems first son? Arphaxad or Elam? Elam is mentioned first in Gen 10.22

Good question. It seems unlikely that Arphaxad was Shem's third child after Elam and Assur, we are told in Gen 11:10 Shem was 100 old when he became the father of Arphaxad, two years after the flood. I don't know whether that is conceived or born, but it seems a very tight schedule for Shem to have three children in two years.

While the waw consecutive isn't used for order of importance, the place in a list can indicate order of importance. That can simply be who is eldest, but Gen 10:22 does not say they were born in that order, while Gen 11:11 puts the other sons and daughters after Arphaxad. One reason to list Elam and Asshur first might simply be the the importance of those powerful nations. Personally I think Assyria should come first

Of those in the Messianic line that we know about their story (beyond the simple lists of geneologies) are most if not all, second born. So there is no basis to suggest that the first born had the blessing of being in the messianic line (if thats what you inferred)

It was just a suggestion. I would think fathers would generally want to hand the blessing down to their first born and needed convincing when God told them their second son was to receive the blessing instead. Abraham wanted Ishmael to have the blessing. Jacob bought his brother's birthright with a bowl of soup, and still had to con his dad to get the blessing. Reuben lost out on his birthright because he slept with Jacob's concubine Gen 49:4.

 

[Assyrian]

What is incest, please explain it to me so I can understand?

I live in a beautiful garden with My mother and father, and brother and two sisters. God made my mother and father, and he said there are no other people.

Haven't we heard that kind of argument before? Gen 19:30 Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he lived in a cave with his two daughters.
31 And the firstborn said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.
32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father."

I would think if anyone said God was telling them to have sex with their sister, then that is a piece of guidance they should really check out with their pastor.

 

[Van]

Genetically, the human race is the most incestuous race on the planet. Before the Law was given forbidding close relative marriage, close marriages occurred, even though they were no longer necessary. Quite recently and perhaps even today, in isolated tribes, close relative marriages occur.

Adam and Eve's offspring married close relatives, and the offspring of Noah's kids also married close relatives, or so I believe.

 

[Assyrian]

Let me go on the record as saying that yes, I do bat an eyelash at incest. It is not a simple concept to accept for the reasons that you say. But that is a far cry from seeing anything in the text compelling the liberal reading in that makes Adam and Eve not that parents of all people.

But, it is also extremely difficult to build doctrine on the basis of inference. You would require apparently the existence of parallel lines of human lineage. Now, I would think that it would not be to avoid incest that you would come to this conclusion, but rather a larger worldview.

There seems to be a lot of fear at work in your study of scripture bd. There are major inconsistencies in your interpretation of Genesis, plain meanings have to be changed to make them fit, and it even leads to bizarre conclusions like God planed Adam and Eves children to commit incest. But in spite of the contradictions, you cannot look to see if there are other ways to read the passage, because of fear. That is not right. I don't even see why having other humans around is a 'liberal' view when that is what Fundamentalists like R.A.Torrey believed a hundred years ago.

You say it is difficult building a doctrine on inference, well there isn't a lot to build the doctrine that Adam and Eve's family were the only humans, as you said yourself it is just the verse where she is given the name Eve, which as we have seen is pretty difficult to interpret. I don't see how reexamining this interpretation is any different from what Christian scholars did in the 16th century to reexamine the traditional interpretation of the geocentric passages. It is simply our responsibility a Christians who love God's word and love truth, faced with evidence from science that a traditional reading of scripture is wrong.

As a creationist, I have to pick my poison on this one. I will prefer not to reject to surface text on the basis of inference. One thing clear to me is that God could have had made incest "tolerable" without issue of morality. Similarly, dietary laws seem to have changed post flood. Even Peter was apparently encouraged to eat Possum, ship rats, Frog legs and such in Acts. Yechhh.

One distinction for us is that in Adam's very large family it would be very simple to have brothers and sisters who hardly lived near or knew one another.

In a single generation? Nah a family like that would stick together, for security. Even big strong Cain was terrified of going off on his own. But even if they hadn't seen brother Zac or sister Izzy for years, incest is incest. Unlike the Levitical laws about possums and crustacea, incest is a much more serious matter morally.

 

[mark kennedy]

There seems to be a lot of fear at work in your study of scripture bd. There are major inconsistencies in your interpretation of Genesis, plain meanings have to be changed to make them fit, and it even leads to bizarre conclusions like God planed Adam and Eves children to commit incest. But in spite of the contradictions, you cannot look to see if there are other ways to read the passage, because of fear. That is not right. I don't even see why having other humans around is a 'liberal' view when that is what Fundamentalists like R.A.Torrey believed a hundred years ago.

It's not fear to take the clear meaning of the texts in Genesis and Romans literally as the authers did. There is a contradiction here but it's between the secular philosophy you mockingly protect and the clear meaning of a book you claim to hold as sacred. The duplicity is stark and explicit but it's not allowed to say what that indicates so I will forbear.

You say it is difficult building a doctrine on inference, well there isn't a lot to build the doctrine that Adam and Eve's family were the only humans, as you said yourself it is just the verse where she is given the name Eve, which as we have seen is pretty difficult to interpret. I don't see how reexamining this interpretation is any different from what Christian scholars did in the 16th century to reexamine the traditional interpretation of the geocentric passages. It is simply our responsibility a Christians who love God's word and love truth, faced with evidence from science that a traditional reading of scripture is wrong.

Let's see, it couldn't have anything to do with the doctrine of original sin could it? I mean for a Christian justification by faith is pretty important and the reason for it's need is the sin of Adam, or at least Paul thought so if his opinion means anything to you. It makes no sense unless you want to embrace some kind of a heretical doctrine but that would require a doctrinal stand that is irrelevant in this forum. There is no such thing as geocentricism in the Bible and the modern equivilant would be Darwinism. Aristotlean philoosophy is to geocentricism what Darwinism has been to universal common descent. You can just simply assume universal descent in the affirmative and ignorance as an argument against descenting views without ever answering the doctrinal issues you slight.

In a single generation? Nah a family like that would stick together, for security. Even big strong Cain was terrified of going off on his own. But even if they hadn't seen brother Zac or sister Izzy for years, incest is incest. Unlike the Levitical laws about possums and crustacea, incest is a much more serious matter morally.

Inbreeding is not a problem until bottlenecks constrict the gene flow. It happens over generations and the deleterious effects are only multiplied as the mutations accumulate. Mocking the Scriptures does not make for good theology and that's all I see here.

 

[shernren]

It's not fear to take the clear meaning of the texts in Genesis and Romans literally as the authers did. There is a contradiction here but it's between the secular philosophy you mockingly protect and the clear meaning of a book you claim to hold as sacred. The duplicity is stark and explicit but it's not allowed to say what that indicates so I will forbear.

I was recently reading John Stott on Romans 5 and surprise, surprise, there was a section about harmonizing this passage with science. He spoke of being careful to interpret as literal history a passage like Genesis 1 which is so obviously written with literary and artistic intent. He then went on to describe in brief the archeological evidence for anatomically modern humans far before the arrival of Adam the Neolithic hunter (his personal identification). what then of pre-Adamic, or extra-Adamic hominids? He quotes Derek Kidner without disapproval: that God saw / demonstrated that natural means of evolution would not provide hominids with the ability to know him, and thus "uplifted" Adam's hominid society into equal relationship with God, making Adam the federal head of humanity not only vertically but horizontally as well.

John Stott and Derek Kidner, supporting the antiquity of the Earth and its archeological remains, the validity of human evolution, and the existence of pre-Adamic hominids! They must surely be brainwashed liberal scholars who think the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ are just first-century Jewish myths, that the Bible is full of contradiction and errors, that Christianity belongs in the trash-heap of history, and that mohawks are cool.

In other news, Richard Dawkins has been going to mass with Pope Benedict every Sunday before his weekly roadshow sessions around Britain where he proclaims the truth of six-day creationism and Noah's global flood with Alister McGrath and Elton John.

Inbreeding is not a problem until bottlenecks constrict the gene flow. It happens over generations and the deleterious effects are only multiplied as the mutations accumulate. Mocking the Scriptures does not make for good theology and that's all I see here.

As far as bottlenecks go I don't think they ever get much smaller than two. (Or eight.)

 

[Assyrian]

It's not fear to take the clear meaning of the texts in Genesis and Romans literally as the authers did.

Are you saying you know who the author, or authors, of Genesis are? And you know they took it literally? How?

If you believe the author or editor of Genesis was Moses, you should read Psalm 90 where he gives a highly allegorical study of Genesis 1-8 (just count the Genesis themes he brings up) and even tells us God's days are not the same as ours. As for Paul in Romans, he tells us his comparison of Adam and Christ is figurative. Rom 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come.

The bible does not tell us to take everything literally, so what is it that keeps creationists from looking for other ways to understand what it says, basically what busterdog showed us, fear.

There is a contradiction here but it's between the secular philosophy you mockingly protect and the clear meaning of a book you claim to hold as sacred. The duplicity is stark and explicit but it's not allowed to say what that indicates so I will forbear.

Mark, the bitterness and hatred you have towards your brothers and sisters in Christ is very clear from your posts.

Let's see, it couldn't have anything to do with the doctrine of original sin could it? I mean for a Christian justification by faith is pretty important and the reason for it's need is the sin of Adam, or at least Paul thought so if his opinion means anything to you.

How could it have anything to do with the doctrine of Original Sin when there are plenty of TEs who accept Original Sin and see no contradiction between it and TE. I dropped the doctrine of Original Sin long before I became a TE, when I left the Catholic Church, it was just one more tradition did not see it anywhere in scripture. And that is what Original Sin is, a old Catholic tradition dreamed up in the fifth century based on a bad translation of Romans 5:12 into Latin.

According to Paul the reason we need to be justified by faith is because of our own sin. Rom 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. You can blame Adam if you like, but the real reason we need Christ is because we are sinners.

It makes no sense unless you want to embrace some kind of a heretical doctrine but that would require a doctrinal stand that is irrelevant in this forum.

Hasn't stopped us having long discussions on Original Sin before

There is no such thing as geocentricism in the Bible and the modern equivilant would be Darwinism. Aristotlean philoosophy is to geocentricism what Darwinism has been to universal common descent. You can just simply assume universal descent in the affirmative and ignorance as an argument against descenting views without ever answering the doctrinal issues you slight.

Aristotle didn't come up with geocentrism. People thought the sun went round the earth long before Aristotle came along. Bible interpreters didn't need Aristotle to see geocentrism in a literal reading of the passages.

But that isn't the point here. The point is that the universal interpretation of these passages throughout the history of the church had been that they said the sun went round the earth. When science showed the traditional literal interpretation was wrong, Christians had to go back to the bible and re-examine how they interpreted those passages. That is what we need to do today, it is no different from what Evangelical scholars did in the seventeenth century, and the only thing stopping creationists from following their example is fear.

The only difference I can see for us today is that the scientific evidence we have for an ancient earth and evolution is much stronger than the evidence for heliocentrism was in the seventeenth century, and while scholars in seventeenth century faced a tradition of geocentric interpretation which was completely unchallenged, we have a rich heritage of different ways to interpret the Genesis days from church fathers and bible scholars throughout history.

Inbreeding is not a problem until bottlenecks constrict the gene flow. It happens over generations and the deleterious effects are only multiplied as the mutations accumulate.

Except the bible never tells us the reason incest is forbidden is inbreeding. If that is the only reason, and incest isn't wickedness as the bible says, then it should be all right for brother and sister to marry now, as long as they don't have any children. Would you be ok with that?

Mocking the Scriptures does not make for good theology and that's all I see here.

When you hate the people you disagree with, it is easy to see anything they say a mockery. But scripture never says Cain committed incest, or that it was morally acceptable before the flood.

 

[shernren]

Got back home so that I can quote John Stott verbatim at leisure.

We should certainly be open to the probability that there are symbolical elements in the Bible's first three chapters. The narrative itself warrants no dogmatism about the six days of creation, since its form and style suggest that it is meant as literary art, not scientific description. As for the identity of the snake and the trees in the garden, since "that old serpent" and "the tree of life" reappear in the book of Revelation, where they are evidently symbolic, it seems likely that they are meant to be understood symbolically in Genesis as well.
​

Oh dear, how liberal! But Stott redeems himself in the very next sentence:

But the case with Adam and Eve is different. Scripture clearly intends us to accept their historicity as the original human pair.
​

Stott continues on to cite the theory of monoregional human origin (remember, this is an evolutionary theory that relies on the evolutionary concepts of population genetics for validity) as evidence in favor of his statement. After some ruminations on how Adam was a Neolithic farmer, he asks us:

But surely the human fossil and skeleton record indicates that the genus homo existed hundreds of thousands of years before the New Stone Age? Yes. Homo sapiens (modern) is usually traced back to about 100,000 years ago, and homo sapiens (archaic) to about half a million years ago ... The likelihood is that they were all pre-Adamic hominids, still homo sapiens and not yet homo divinus, if we may so style Adam.

Adam, then, was a special creation of God, whether God formed him literally "from the dust of the ground" and then "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life", or whether this is the biblical way of saying that he was created out of an already existing hominid.
​

Pre-Adamic hominids and the possibility of biological evolution providing our human bodies! Oy ve! But it gets better:

What then about those pre-Adamic hominids which had survived natural calamity and disaster (as large numbers did not), had dispersed to other continents, and were now Adam's contemporaries? How did Adam's special creation and subsequent fall relate to them? Derek Kidner suggests that, once it became clear that there was "no natural bridge from animal to man, God may have now conferred his image on Adam's collaterals, to bring them into the same realm of being, Adam's "federal" headship of humanity extended, if that was the case, outwards to his contemporaries as well as onwards to his offspring, and his disobedience disinherited both alike."
​

My, my - humans who aren't descended from Adam? What a shame. How the conservative have fallen.

The point here is not to say that John Stott says these things and that therefore they must be right. The point is that one can hold to the antiquity of the earth and to the scientific correctness of hominid evolution without being a Bible-burning liberal.

 

[busterdog]

There seems to be a lot of fear at work in your study of scripture bd. There are major inconsistencies in your interpretation of Genesis, plain meanings have to be changed to make them fit, and it even leads to bizarre conclusions like God planed Adam and Eves children to commit incest. But in spite of the contradictions, you cannot look to see if there are other ways to read the passage, because of fear. That is not right. I don't even see why having other humans around is a 'liberal' view when that is what Fundamentalists like R.A.Torrey believed a hundred years ago.

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Its only bizarre if you demand that the Bible accommodate unbiblical beliefs. Obviously it doesnt bother me much.

You say it is difficult building a doctrine on inference, well there isn't a lot to build the doctrine that Adam and Eve's family were the only humans, as you said yourself it is just the verse where she is given the name Eve, which as we have seen is pretty difficult to interpret. I don't see how reexamining this interpretation is any different from what Christian scholars did in the 16th century to reexamine the traditional interpretation of the geocentric passages. It is simply our responsibility a Christians who love God's word and love truth, faced with evidence from science that a traditional reading of scripture is wrong.

Other independently created human beings just doesnt fit. There are inferences and then there are inferences. Much depends on what you are trying to prove.

You are also seriously overselling your point, since there isnt a real position that other humans were created in other places in TE. What the OP wants is to prove error. Now frankly, I am trying to think of a place which clearly says that all humans carry only the genes of the lines of Adam and Eve (or Nephilim ).

So, the OP does not prove evolution accounts for anything in Genesis, except by the most extreme and dubious extrapolation of we have been discussing. Is there error in either the Bible or creationism because of the possibility that other humans were created independently of Adam and Eve? I could simply say, I dont know, and the OP fails.

In fact, I think I will, with the notion that until I find direct scripture on the subject, I would not stake the YEC creed to this particular issue. But, also with the understanding that clearly, through one man's sin, death entered and that dominion over the earth was given to Adam. Scripture lines up pretty well to indicate that there were no other direct creations other than Adam, so despite feeling comfortable about it, I would decline to stake creationist belief to that periferal issue without something more direct (and I tend to believe it is there somewhere).

Certainly, you are not trying to prove that God created the first humans without evolution 6,000 years ago or so. So, the whole attack is not a very strong one.

In a single generation? Nah a family like that would stick together, for security. Even big strong Cain was terrified of going off on his own. But even if they hadn't seen brother Zac or sister Izzy for years, incest is incest. Unlike the Levitical laws about possums and crustacea, incest is a much more serious matter morally.

Why is it more serious? Who says? And in what context is it more serious? It is certainly more serious where there are genetic issues, of which there are examples in modern times. There is no need to require that the direct creations of God did not have a better genetic integrity such that genetics are not the issue. The other issue is simply the necessity of having a well ordered family. Theoretically one might meet a sister one had never known and then marry. The wierdness of growing up in a platonic relationship is not an issue there. Remember, Adam theoretically had hundreds of kids and grandkids within the first hundred years, many of whom might have not know one well at all.

Mar 2:26 How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
Now, God is no more telling me to enter the holy of holies to eat the bread in the Temple (once it is rebuilt) any more than he is telling me it is ok to marry my sister. It is a false assertion that one inference allows all inferences or that one exception such as David's allows all exceptions.

Admittedly, this is not an easy issue, but where is it leading? To the rejection of creationism? Again, the point is oversold.

 

[mark kennedy]

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Its only bizarre if you demand that the Bible accommodate unbiblical beliefs. Obviously it doesnt bother me much.

Busterdog, if Assyrian is making you fearful I can contact the moderators who will make him stop being so scary. Just keep telling yourself, it's only a discussion forum.

Are you saying you know who the author, or authors, of Genesis are? And you know they took it literally? How?

It's attributed to Moses by Christ himself, you can get someone else to chase that wild goose.

If you believe the author or editor of Genesis was Moses, you should read Psalm 90 where he gives a highly allegorical study of Genesis 1-8 (just count the Genesis themes he brings up) and even tells us God's days are not the same as ours. As for Paul in Romans, he tells us his comparison of Adam and Christ is figurative. Rom 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come.

Moses did not say that Adam was figurative, his said that Adam was a figure of Christ. I have told you this repeatedly and you still spew the same fallacious and clearly bogus statement. It is not so much that you are in error that bothers me but the condescending attitude that you pontificate it with.

The bible does not tell us to take everything literally, so what is it that keeps creationists from looking for other ways to understand what it says, basically what busterdog showed us, fear.

BD has nothing to fear from fallacious ad hominem rhetoric, that's just plain silly.

Mark, the bitterness and hatred you have towards your brothers and sisters in Christ is very clear from your posts.

It is you treatment of the Scriptures that puts you outside traditional Christian theism, not my personal opinion of you. I'm debating justification by faith alone with a Catholic scholar (I mean he studied theology in a Catholic college) and found that I have fewer differences with him then any TE I have encounted. What TEs actually believe about the Bible is a mystery to me since it is absent in their arguments. Primarily because all they focus on is what they don't believe. Your view of the Bible entered the Church at the advent of 19th century atheistic naturalism and bears more of a simularity to that philosophy then anything I can find of it in Scripture.

By the way, in preparing for the debate I found this canon from the Council of Trent and fifth session:

If any one does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema.​

Let's get something straight and I assure you this is nothing personal, when you directly contradict or twist the Scriputures I see you as being outside the faith:

And account [that] the longsuffering of our Lord [is] salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all [his] epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as [they do] also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (2 Pe 3:16)​

Peter discusses the creation of the world from the speaking of words, the global flood and Paul discusses Adams transgression and indicates in no uncertain terms that he was the first man as all New Testament writters do. When you catagorcially reject this based on secular science and worldly wisdom just stop and think, What do you expect my reaction to be.

BD is anything but a flame artist, his posts are mild and generally well thought out. You just spoke of him as a coward and this politically correct clutch phrase 'argument from incredulity' is nothing more then a way of calling someone a fool. Do you seriously expect me to extend the right hand of fellowship to someone who clearly twists the Scriptures and attacks evangelicals and fundamentalists with inflammatory and highly emotive satire?

You have expressed no interest in core Christian convictions and all TE does, as far as I can tell, is attack creationism. I see no difference between TE and the Liberal Theology of secular humanism or the atheistic philosophy of Tillich or Hegal.

How could it have anything to do with the doctrine of Original Sin when there are plenty of TEs who accept Original Sin and see no contradiction between it and TE. I dropped the doctrine of Original Sin long before I became a TE, when I left the Catholic Church, it was just one more tradition did not see it anywhere in scripture. And that is what Original Sin is, a old Catholic tradition dreamed up in the fifth century based on a bad translation of Romans 5:12 into Latin.

I read the New Testament in the original, not Latin and not just the English translation. This passage creates no exegetical challenges whatsoever and it's the most basic of Hermaneutics yeild a literal interprutation of Genesis in no uncertain terms. I don't know what you left Rome for but you left the essential reason for justification by faith when you did, it's because in Adam all sinned. That is of course if you take the Apostle Paul at his word and don't twist it around to fit into you philosophical Christian/secular matrix.

I left the Catholic church as well but not because I rejected the tradtional doctrine of the Church (not just Rome but Christianity at large). I left because I believe in Scripture alone as the canon of the Christian life and duty, Christ alone being the righteousness of God to us and grace alone, lest any man should base. I have never discarded the Scriptures and while many of my beliefs run contrary to Rome essential Christian doctrine remains consistant in their basic views.

According to Paul the reason we need to be justified by faith is because of our own sin. Rom 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. You can blame Adam if you like, but the real reason we need Christ is because we are sinners.

Paul clearly blamed Adam and the need for justification according the the Apostle to the Gentiles, was Adam. We should really talk theology sometime, I would have a blast with you in the formal debate forum.

Hasn't stopped us having long discussions on Original Sin before

You have talked about this before and you defend the same two errors zealously.

Aristotle didn't come up with geocentrism. People thought the sun went round the earth long before Aristotle came along. Bible interpreters didn't need Aristotle to see geocentrism in a literal reading of the passages.

The issue raised by Galileo was Aristotlean mechanics, there was a much larger process involved. Galileo wanted to toss Aristotle's physics out the window while Medieval scholars wanted to revise and expand it. When Galileo started winning the argument at Piza they went to theologians who painted him as a Protestant. We have discussed these things as well and you are still getting it twisted. The only used a couple of Scriptures and when they did Galileo said, 'the Bible tells us how we get to heaven, not how the heavens work'.

But that isn't the point here. The point is that the universal interpretation of these passages throughout the history of the church had been that they said the sun went round the earth. When science showed the traditional literal interpretation was wrong, Christians had to go back to the bible and re-examine how they interpreted those passages. That is what we need to do today, it is no different from what Evangelical scholars did in the seventeenth century, and the only thing stopping creationists from following their example is fear.

There is not now, nor has there ever been a Biblical doctrine regarding Astronomy and the suggestion that there was one is laughable.

The only difference I can see for us today is that the scientific evidence we have for an ancient earth and evolution is much stronger than the evidence for heliocentrism was in the seventeenth century, and while scholars in seventeenth century faced a tradition of geocentric interpretation which was completely unchallenged, we have a rich heritage of different ways to interpret the Genesis days from church fathers and bible scholars throughout history.

No there isn't, I'm just not going to chase this wild goose any further.

Except the bible never tells us the reason incest is forbidden is inbreeding. If that is the only reason, and incest isn't wickedness as the bible says, then it should be all right for brother and sister to marry now, as long as they don't have any children. Would you be ok with that?

Again, I'm not going to argue this in circles. Adam and Eve would have had pristine genomes. The reason that inbreeding is bad is because it causes bottlenecks and mutations accumulate.

When you hate the people you disagree with, it is easy to see anything they say a mockery. But scripture never says Cain committed incest, or that it was morally acceptable before the flood.

I don't hate Buddists, I think they are great. I don't hate Wiccans, the few I have know were friendly and fun to talk to about paganism. I don't hate Mormons, I have set down and talked to them for hours and enjoyed the discussion a lot. I just don't consider them Christians.

Now you are using this moralistic tone and not considering what I offered as a substantive response to the problem of who Cains wife was. That's what you guys do and while I find it interesting and fairly amusing I do not see anything remotely theistic or Biblical in it. There are answers to these questions but when the question just keeps getting asked no matter what the response, it's nothing but a rhetorical device.

That is most of the lines of argumentation imployed by TEs on here.

 

[shernren]

BD is anything but a flame artist, his posts are mild and generally well thought out.

Hmm.

Video is fun to watch. So is throwing a rock at a hornets nest.

Mallon says Jesus was an idiot.

That sounds mild and well-thought out to me!

 

[busterdog]

Hmm.


That sounds mild and well-thought out to me!

Put a date on those posts for the good people who are lurking, wont you?

They can draw whatever conclusions they wish.

Thanks.

And to Mallon, I am sorry if you took this cited broadside literally. I dont remember the exact context, but it was probably my inference drawn to push some assertion of yours to its extreme. Not exactly and improper technique for argument, but it was not intended to deny your relationship with your Lord, in case there is any question. Hope you forgot it like I did.

 

[busterdog]

Busterdog, if Assyrian is making you fearful I can contact the moderators who will make him stop being so scary. Just keep telling yourself, it's only a discussion forum.

Fear is a good thing, when it is fear of the one who dispenses grace freely and upbraideth not. The comment took me by surprise, but I will be sure to employ more fear in thinking about this matter further, not less.

I don't hate Buddists, I think they are great. I don't hate Wiccans, the few I have know were friendly and fun to talk to about paganism. I don't hate Mormons, I have set down and talked to them for hours and enjoyed the discussion a lot. I just don't consider them Christians.

Well said. And when they mangle scripture, I imagine you dont indulge a subjective standard on whether they are right or wrong.

A number of TEs have acknowledged that they dont hold a basic confession of Christian faith as measured by other TEs who do hold that confession. You said it before they did (the Christian TEs) and you were right. Now, you cant possibly be condemning every Christian practice, belief or confessoin of every TE. But, you noted that the faith was seriously lacking by anyone's measure.

Didn't you do your job, at least in part? Should you not point out error? Its not as if you took a swing at someone. This is board, for God's sake.

I would tone down some comments as counterprodutive. So what? Opinions are like you-know-whats and I have my own. Anyone who really wants Mark to change can tell Mark he is right, or at least grounded biblically, a few times and then see what happens.