Wheaton scholars pen textbook bridging the Bible to ‘mainline science’

Der Alte · Jun 18, 2019

Brightmoon said:
I took a college class on Islamic history because I was kinda tired of American history back in the 70s . That class has been a godsend as I didn’t fall for the 9/11 islamophobia hype and i lived in NYC when it happened. I also learned something I didn’t know . FYI they worship the same God as Christians and Jews

You are very badly misinformed. Muslims will claim they do, but they absolutely do not worship the same God as Jews and Christians.
The name of the god of Islam is Allah. More than 1500 years before Mohammad was born, God spoke to Moses.

Exodus 3:15
(15) God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, [יהוה/YHWH] the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.' "This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.

God said His name was YHWH and that was His name forever and His name was a memorial to all generations.After saying this did God forget and tell Mohammad a completely different name?
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia יהוה/YHWH, pronounced Yahweh is the third person singular of אהיה/ehyeh, "I am." YHWH means "He is."
Arabic for "I am" is "Ana." Arabic for "He is" is "hu." Allah is not even close/.

hedrick · Jun 18, 2019

This is a stupid argument. There's only one God. Christians and Muslims have significantly different ideas about him.

Brightmoon · Jun 18, 2019

Der Alter said:
You are very badly misinformed. Muslims will claim they do, but they absolutely do not worship the same God as Jews and Christians.
The name of the god of Islam is Allah. More than 1500 years before Mohammad was born, God spoke to Moses.

Exodus 3:15
(15) God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, [יהוה/YHWH] the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.' "This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.
God said His name was YHWH and that was His name forever and His name was a memorial to all generations.After saying this did God forget and tell Mohammad a completely different name?
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia יהוה/YHWH, pronounced Yahweh is the third person singular of אהיה/ehyeh, "I am." YHWH means "He is."
Arabic for "I am" is "Ana." Arabic for "He is" is "hu." Allah is not even close/.

there’s that sentence in the first paragraph “Muslims will claim they do [...]“ nuff said. They also rever Jesus Moses and Abraham. Jesus is called Isa in the Quran

Tone · Jun 18, 2019

Brightmoon said:
unless they’re accurate descriptions of nature , religious beliefs are opinions

Your idea of nature is an opinion.

Brightmoon said:
The Bible has been edited a lot, it’s not pristine. Corrupted is a decent description of what was done to the Bible. Nature is nature and humans are damaging it and natural phenomena is responding to that damage. Nature is not corrupt that’s just what it does and how it’s supposed to act.

So,humans aren't nature...I thought they were according to your evolutionary belief...you have nothing to protest...it is your belief of survival of the fittest at its finest. Are humans "natural phenomena"?

Romans 8
"19The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God. 20For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

You contradict Scripture...and what it (nature) does now,is not what was meant for it from the beginning, so how do you believe that subjective observations of fallen men can get a clean reading from such corruption?

Brightmoon · Jun 18, 2019

Tone said:
Your idea of nature is an opinion.

So,humans aren't nature...I thought they were according to your evolutionary belief...you have nothing to protest...it is your belief of survival of the fittest at its finest. Are humans "natural phenomena"?

Romans 8
"19The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God. 20For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

You contradict Scripture...and what it (nature) does now,is not what was meant for it from the beginning, so how do you believe that subjective observations of fallen men can get a clean reading from such corruption?

humans are apes that what my tag line means . Of course we’re part of nature . It’s just that some things we do can affect natural phenomena badly. We aren’t the only organisms that can affect their environment like that . Elephants can deforest an area fairly easily

Tone · Jun 18, 2019

Brightmoon said:
humans are apes that what my tag line means . Of course we’re part of nature . It’s just that some things we do can affect natural phenomena badly. We aren’t the only organisms that can affect their environment like that . Elephants can deforest an area fairly easily

Do you believe that this world is in the state it was when first created?

Brightmoon · Jun 18, 2019

Tone said:
Do you believe that this world is in the state it was when first created?

. I hope not as the planet had a molten lava surface then and was being bombarded by meteors

Tone · Jun 18, 2019

Brightmoon said:
. I hope not as the planet had a molten lava surface then

What about the flora and the fauna...is it proliferating now as originally created to?

Brightmoon · Jun 18, 2019

Tone said:
What about the flora and the fauna...is it proliferating now as originally created to?

animals and plants can’t live in lava . The entire surface was molten and the moon was a ring of debris around the planet

RDKirk · Jun 18, 2019

Brightmoon said:
Science really doesn’t have anything to do with religion. So this is pointless and a rather silly thing to do. The fact that science debunks some beliefs is not done out of spite. The beliefs are just inaccurate descriptions of nature

But were they ever intended to be descriptions of nature?

RDKirk · Jun 18, 2019

Brightmoon said:
when scientists debunk pseudoscience that’s in the Bible it’s really the believers problem that they believed something nonsensical in the first place. I really don’t have much sympathy for the believer because pseudoscience can be dangerous. Sometimes it’s just silly but sometimes,like with evolution deniers, it can be dangerous because that particular erroneous belief interferes with medical research. these erroneous or pseudoscience beliefs can also target minorities of all types or women for abuse

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness

Scripture does not claim to be a science textbook, but rather the curriculum of a specific philosophy. There are people who claim for it other purposes, but scripture claims only one for itself.

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.

According to scripture, creation speaks for itself, and what it says about itself is true.

RDKirk · Jun 18, 2019

PloverWing said:
It's hard for me to evaluate the book well, because I haven't read it, but it looks like it's intended to guide young Evangelical students into ways of thinking about theology and Scripture that will allow them to accept mainstream science while still holding an inerrantist view of Scripture, and while still holding a belief in the Christian faith more generally. Apparently, Wheaton teaches a course on exactly this topic. (The course is new since my years as a Wheaton student.)

Many students who enter Wheaton were raised to be young earth creationists. I was. Further, they may have been taught that if the earth is old (and/or if evolution is true), then the Bible is not inerrant, and if the Bible is not inerrant, then the Christian faith is false. I was taught that too, growing up. It's important for Wheaton professors, then, to guide students -- especially students in the sciences -- into ways of thinking about their faith that will allow them to remain Christians even as they study biology, geology, astronomy, and so forth. To address one of Brightmoon's concerns, I don't think the authors are going for intelligent design, in a god-of-the-gaps sense; I think the authors practice genuine, mainstream science, and that they're addressing ways that Christian theology can be compatible with mainstream science.

Again, I'll be able to evaluate the book better after I've read it. But I'm encouraged by the efforts of Wheaton's science professors to help their students come to a more mature and robust faith.

Heck, I did that myself back in 1964.

Tone · Jun 18, 2019

Brightmoon said:
animals and plants can’t live in lava . The entire surface was molten and the moon was a ring of debris around the planet

So, you believe that death and decay are natural?

RDKirk · Jun 18, 2019

hedrick said:
That's why I said that there are theological implications. Please remember that I don't think Paul was inerrant. He probably believed that there was an actual pair of humans. But his argument still works if there aren't. I use fictional characters as examples all the time when I'm teaching Sunday School. They give us a set of shared stories we can use to help talk about and understand things.

In Rom 5, he says Adam was a type of Christ. In 1 Cor 15, as all die in Adam, all will live in Christ. In both cases he's speaking of Adam as as an example to illuminate Christ. He does not say that we inherit Adam's sin. It's hard to see how we could inherit sin from a non-existent person, although we could regard Adam as symbolic even then. But he doesn't say that. He says that sin spread to all because all sinned.

And even if it did cause problem with Paul, given a choice between biologists and Paul on human origins, I'm going to take biologists. We'll accommodate our understanding of theology to what we know.

I noted above that accepting mainstream science, and particularly mainstream science, archaeology and history, really is only consistent with a model where the Bible is a human witness to God's work, but is not God's actual words.

The question is only--for me--is the Bible reliable for the purpose the Bible claims for itself?

If someone tells me that a screwdriver makes a lousy chisel, that does not cause me to doubt the value of a screwdriver--I'll only doubt the wisdom of the person who tried to use it for a purpose it was never designed to serve.

If someone shows me a chewed-up screw he has driven in with a chisel, that does not cause me to value a chisel as a screwdriver--but I'll doubt the wisdom of the person who tried to use it for a purpose it was never designed to serve.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness

Tone · Jun 18, 2019

RDKirk said:
instruction in righteousness

Do you believe that this has nothing to do with what people call "nature"?

hedrick · Jun 18, 2019

RDKirk said:
But were they ever intended to be descriptions of nature?

Probably not. There are similarities between the creation story and other Near Eastern accounts. However there are also great contrasts. The other accounts involved battles between gods, and various non-godly acts on the part of their gods. Many scholars think Gen 1 and 2 were actually polemics: attacks on the polytheistic versions of creation. See Genesis 1-2 as Polemic - Dr. Michael Heiser, and its reference http://www.kevinstilley.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Creation-Myths.pdf. This is only a sampling of the literature.

If the authors were actually rewriting existing accounts to make a theological point, might they have still thought they were literally accurate? I'm not convinced we know ancient culture well enough to be certain, but I'd guess not.

On the other hand, later writers, including NT writers, might have taken them to be historical. Again, it's really hard to judge. As I've noted before, people often refer to commonly known stories such as Harry Potter in illustrations. I don't think it's crystal clear that Paul, for example, intended the reference to Adam to indicate that the creation account was historical. But it's possible.

Der Alte · Jun 18, 2019

Brightmoon said:
there’s that sentence in the first paragraph “Muslims will claim they do [...]“ nuff said. They also rever Jesus Moses and Abraham. Jesus is called Isa in the Quran

I don't know if you are agreeing or disagreeing with me.
In the mid 90s I was working in So. Cal I was listening to a Christian radio station. The speaker quoted this Sura from the Quran. I did not believe him so I immediately obtained a copy of the Quran.

Qur’an 18:83-86
—And they ask you about Dhul-Qarnain. [two horned one] Say: “I shall recite to you something of his story.” Verily, We established him in the earth, and We gave him the means of everything. So he followed a way. Until, when he reached the setting place of the sun, he found it setting in a spring of black muddy (or hot) water. And he found near it a people.

While Muslims do believe in Isa to them he is not savior, not the son of God, only the human son of Miriam. He was not crucified but taken up to heaven by Allah.
According to the Quran Isa did perform miracles, he even made a bird out of clay and brought it to life. Mohammad did not perform miracles, was buried not taken up to heaven by Allah but Muslims consider him superior to Isa.

GOD Shines Forth! · Jun 18, 2019

Brightmoon said:
. You know I was about 11 when I read Jonathan Swift’s gullivers travels for the first time. On one of his voyages he bumped into a society who fought horrible and destructive wars over which end of a boiled egg to open first. The big end or the little end . Religious people who quibble over beliefs remind me of that book every time and I find it difficult to take them seriously as thinkers

Yet here you are!

Also, I wasn’t "quibbling", merely stating my opinion on a matter. They call this a "forum" for a reason.

RDKirk · Jun 18, 2019

Tone said:
Do you believe that this has nothing to do with what people call "nature"?

Scripture says that nature speaks for itself, and that what nature says is true.

Tone · Jun 18, 2019

RDKirk said:
Scripture says that nature speaks for itself, and that what nature says is true.

Romans 8
"21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until the present time. 23Not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."

True.

*And this is the message that scientists should be getting...

**Whatever they believe they are seeing, it is not true unless they are seeing a "nature" that is suffering in an unnatural state.

Wheaton scholars pen textbook bridging the Bible to ‘mainline science’

This is me about 1 yr. old.

Senior Veteran

Apes and humans are all in family Hominidae.

"Whenever Thou humblest me, Thou makest me great."

Apes and humans are all in family Hominidae.

"Whenever Thou humblest me, Thou makest me great."

Apes and humans are all in family Hominidae.

"Whenever Thou humblest me, Thou makest me great."

Apes and humans are all in family Hominidae.

Alien, Pilgrim, and Sojourner

Alien, Pilgrim, and Sojourner

Alien, Pilgrim, and Sojourner

"Whenever Thou humblest me, Thou makest me great."

Alien, Pilgrim, and Sojourner

"Whenever Thou humblest me, Thou makest me great."

Senior Veteran

This is me about 1 yr. old.

Well-Known Member

Alien, Pilgrim, and Sojourner

"Whenever Thou humblest me, Thou makest me great."

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