An evolutionist, TE, OEC and YEC all walk up to a bar...

[Calminian]

take a few moments and read a little on the history of hermeneutics:

the 'preference for the literal' began with Luther,

Really? There were no six day creationists until Luther? Do these not count?:
Theolophilus
Methodius
Lactantius
Victorinus
Ephrem
Epiphanius
Basil
Cyril
Ambrose
??
And besides Philo, Clement, Origen and Augustine I don’t know of any others that believed Gen. 1 was figurative. And of those, Clement, Origen and Augustine were all YECs.

Clement believed creation was 5,592 BC
Origen believed creation was approximately 10,000 BC
and Augustine believed creation was 5,600 BC

So, as you can see, the hermeneutic used today by OECs was no where to be found in the early church.

mostly as a reaction to the extreme allegorical interpretation results of the high middle ages. Until then the 4 fold interpretation prevailed:
see: http://shakinandshinin.org/TheBible.html

Yes extreme is right, but even the extremists were YECs.

As far as Origen, I don’t want to take anything away from him, but you and I know his methods got him into all kinds of doctrinal trouble. Ultimately it led him to universalism. Do you really think he’s a good model to lift up?

besides, why shouldn't our understanding of Scripture be enriched as by God's good favor we understand more about His second book, that of Creation, via science?

Looking at creation is different from blindly accepting naturalistic explanations for the universe. The interpreting authors of this ostensible second book are naturalists, and naturalism is a belief system that both you and I reject (at least I hope). They approach the creation much like the Jesus Seminar approach the scriptures.

 

[Calminian]

Scientists in general understand from long experience that only a fool declares that it will always be impossible to explain an ongoing phenominom (sp?).

In the meantime 1/3rd of scientists believe in an afterlife and in a personal God who answers prayers.

You can beleive what you wish.

Nice back-peddle. Could have been a little more humble but hey, I'll take it!

 

[Calminian]

Interview witnesses just like the police do, so that the forensic pathologists have a framework to do their work in.

I see. So which of the eye witnesses of creation would you start with?

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Scientists in general understand from long experience that only a fool declares that it will always be impossible to explain an ongoing phenominom (sp?).

In the meantime 1/3rd of scientists believe in an afterlife and in a personal God who answers prayers.

You can beleive what you wish.

Nice back-peddle. Could have been a little more humble but hey, I'll take it!

The fact that you see that as a backpeddle is probably indicative of something, but I'm not sure what.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

I see. So which of the eye witnesses of creation would you start with?

The Earth and the moon and the stars are all witnesses to their immediate creation and history.
The fact that they are not human, or that the witnesses at Cana were, matters not. It is called evidence.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Clement believed creation was 5,592 BC
Origen believed creation was approximately 10,000 BC
and Augustine believed creation was 5,600 BC

So, as you can see, the hermeneutic used today by OECs was no where to be found in the early church.

Yes, and they also all believed the Sun goes around the Earth based on good scriptural reasons. For that matter so do a number of people today.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

The mistake you're making is, you're assuming God didn't intervene in creation (at least the theories you're esteeming did so).

I don't know about Seebs but the only thing I'm assuming is that God made my perceptions have a high correlation to physical reality.

This leads me to the conclusion that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are not to be read as most Fundamentalists read them.

God may very well have intervened in creation, the Big Bang looks to be one place that he may have done so, some of the physical constants set at that time have very interesting values. But I'm not planning to lay bets just yet.

He may have intervened elsewhere but all the evidence seems to indicate that if he did so it was very carefully so as not to leave any obvious signs.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Where then is the line between "We don't know" and "it's a miracle?"

Well now TLK, I would think you’d be more qualified to answer that than I. After all, you are picking and choosing which miracles to believe. []Personally I believe all the biblical miracles. [] You seem to have a system for deciding which ones are valid and which ones are not. Please share.

I'll share mine:
I very strongly doubt miracles that should leave behind massive amounts of evidence which is nowhere to be found.

I provisionally accept everything else as factual. Which is about how I treat most of the Bible. It is not always obvious what is a story and what is history, what has been embellished and what has been recorded with painstaking accuracy.
E.g. the story of Lazarus and the rich man, was that literally true, or was it a story that precisely, accurately and comprehensively defined the situation of heaven and hell, or a loose description?

What do I strongly believe and why?
Well, I'm here so I am a Nicean Christian, getting specific would take longer than I have, the why is based on a mix of faith, physical evidence, personal experience, socialization and the witness of other Christians.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Really? There were no six day creationists until Luther? Do these not count?:
Theolophilus
Methodius
Lactantius
...

<cough>
Are you sure you want to quote Lactantius?
Well, maybe you do, you seem to follow his model. When he converted to Christianity he tossed aside all pagen ideas, including the quaint idea that
the Earth was a sphere...

Fortunately not too many folks took him seriously on that issue.
http://nabataea.net/flatearth.html

 

[Calminian]

The fact that you see that as a backpeddle is probably indicative of something, but I'm not sure what.

All you have to do is look at the prior posts. You just destroyed your prior argument. Don't worry I won't hold it over your head.

 

[Calminian]

The Earth and the moon and the stars are all witnesses to their immediate creation and history.
The fact that they are not human, or that the witnesses at Cana were, matters not. It is called evidence.

The fact that they are human matters not?? I have a feeling you're going to regret this argument as well, but let's play with it a little.

So in your view the wine itself is as effective and valuable a witness as the human eye witnesses?? Honestly RTP, do you want to be taken seriously?

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

All you have to do is look at the prior posts. You just destroyed your prior argument. Don't worry I won't hold it over your head.

My prior post was:

If a sect of healers start getting 70% spontaneous remission of confirmed cancers within a week of laying on of hands you would have a pile of scientists with every concievable sensor gathered around them. and if they found nothing except the faith of the healers and the patients, then, in view of the lack of any prior evidence that the placebo effect or good mental outlook is effective once cancer has taken hold, you would have evidence of a supernatural intervention.

Many scientists would deny this, all would leave open the posibility that a natural explanation would be found, but a fairly large number would acknowledge that the best explanation is that a miracle is occuring.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but such evidence is possible to come up with, and God could,if he choose to, provide it. Similarily if he chooses not to be detected by science we won't find him.

how is

Scientists in general understand from long experience that only a fool declares that it will always be impossible to explain an ongoing phenominom (sp?).

In the meantime 1/3rd of scientists believe in an afterlife and in a personal God who answers prayers.

You can beleive what you wish.

a backpeddle?
Do you think acknowledging that an alternate explanation might be found is a backpeddle? Hardly since I stated that in my first post. In science there is always the possibility of an alternative explanation, but the best available one for the scenario I outlined above is a supernatural one.

 

[Calminian]

Yes, and they also all believed the Sun goes around the Earth based on good scriptural reasons. For that matter so do a number of people today.

I was wondering when this objection was going to come up. Please share with us what scriptural reasons they used. Do you have any quotes?

Are you stupid, ignorant or just trying be an *ss?
Look at the top of the stupid page, read carefully:
For Christians Only
Look at the top of Lady Kate's posts, see that little cross, that indicates she considers herself a Christian.

Now either you are blind or stupid or you are calling her faith and/or honesty into question, or quite possibly all of the above.

I’m new to this message board but have contributed to many christian only forums where atheists crash in. There are also many who consider themselves christians but deny essential doctrines like the resurrection. This is what her cryptic posts seemed to indicate. So I asked the question.

I don't know about Seebs but the only thing I'm assuming is that God made my perceptions have a high correlation to physical reality.

This leads me to the conclusion that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are not to be read as most Fundamentalists read them.

God may very well have intervened in creation, the Big Bang looks to be one place that he may have done so, some of the physical constants set at that time have very interesting values. But I'm not planning to lay bets just yet.

He may have intervened elsewhere but all the evidence seems to indicate that if he did so it was very carefully so as not to leave any obvious signs.

The bad logic knows no bounds. You’re just like the OEC in my illustration. He said the wine was 5 years old but that perhaps Jesus created it 5 years ago. You can’t see that the Big Bang is a natural solution to our universe? Why would you then want to place God somewhere in front of it? If this universe needs a miracle, why is an older one better than a younger one?

I'll share mine:
the why is based on a mix of faith, physical evidence, personal experience, socialization and the witness of other Christians.

Don't forget bad logic and blind faith in naturalism.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

The fact that they are human matters not?? I have a feeling you're going to regret this argument as well, but let's play with it a little.

So in your view the wine itself is as effective and valuable a witness as the human eye witnesses?? Honestly RTP, do you want to be taken seriously?

By you?
For your sake, and for the sake of those you might influence, I hope so.
By most people, I already am.

This isn't AIM so maybe you could take the trouble to spell out the names but if you insist on using initials for names use lower case for words like 'the' when they appear in the middle.

The wine would have been a useful witness, so would the people, and the containers, so are the Lake Suigetsu varves, so are the observations of the supernova remnants sn1987a.

The usefulness of the human witnesses would depend on alot of variables but assuming it wasn't an obvious scam, given the evidence provided in the Biblical story I think an interview with some of the servants, guests and the host would suffice to indicate a genuine miracle.

As I earlier noted it would be best if you could get some idea of the age of the containers, whether they had ever held water, how long they had held the wine.

If there had been a crack in any of them one might expect water to have seeped in deeper than the subsequent wine depending on how long the water had been in there.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

I was wondering when this objection was going to come up. Please share with us what scriptural reasons they used. Do you have any quotes?

I would hope you know the verses, Joshua 10:12-13, simple declaration in a historical passage, among a number of other passages.

I’m new to this message board but have contributed to many christian only forums where atheists crash in. There are also many who consider themselves christians but deny essential doctrines like the resurrection. This is what her cryptic posts seemed to indicate. So I asked the question.

So you were both questioning her honesty and her faith.

I don't know about Seebs but the only thing I'm assuming is that God made my perceptions have a high correlation to physical reality.

This leads me to the conclusion that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are not to be read as most Fundamentalists read them.

God may very well have intervened in creation, the Big Bang looks to be one place that he may have done so, some of the physical constants set at that time have very interesting values. But I'm not planning to lay bets just yet.

He may have intervened elsewhere but all the evidence seems to indicate that if he did so it was very carefully so as not to leave any obvious signs.

Just to clarify to anybody else reading this, until such time as evidence points to the universe having existed before the Big Bang I am assuming that God was directly responsible for it. I also believe that God did something that made us Human. What, when and how are not terribly important to me.

The bad logic knows no bounds. You’re just like the OEC in my illustration. He said the wine was 5 years old but that perhaps Jesus created it 5 years ago. You can’t see that the Big Bang is a natural solution to our universe? Why would you then want to place God somewhere in front of it? If this universe needs a miracle, why is an older one better than a younger one?

The OECs typically take a day-age approach to creation, they would come to much the same conclusion as myself, assuming it isn't a scam and lacking some other evidence, such as a receipt for the wine dated from 5 years earlier , the evidence of the witnesses indicates that a miracle occured.

The answer to the last question is that because that is what fits the physical evidence.

I don't understand the rest of your questions.

 

[Calminian]

The fact that you see that as a backpeddle is probably indicative of something, but I'm not sure what.

Read the prior posts. You’ll see it...if you want to that is.

Yes, and they also all believed the Sun goes around the Earth based on good scriptural reasons. For that matter so do a number of people today.

Bluff called. Please share those good scriptural reasons they used.

The Earth and the moon and the stars are all witnesses to their immediate creation and history.
The fact that they are not human, or that the witnesses at Cana were, matters not. It is called evidence.

I can only assume you’re typing these answers so fast you’re not thinking. But lets dig into this. You’re saying the wine was as good a witness as the human eye witnesses at that time the next day? I have a feeling you’re already regretting this argument. Time to backpeddle.

Are you stupid, ignorant or just trying be an *ss?
Look at the top of the stupid page, read carefully:
For Christians Only
Look at the top of Lady Kate's posts, see that little cross, that indicates she considers herself a Christian.

Now either you are blind or stupid or you are calling her faith and/or honesty into question, or quite possibly all of the above.

I’m new to this forum but have contributed to many christian only forums that are crashed by atheists and skeptics. There are also many that claim to be christians, but deny essentials of the christian faith like the resurrection. TLK claimed that it was reasonable for scientists to reject the Resurrection of Christ. From this I inferred she felt it was reasonable for everyone. So I asked the question.

So I guess I will plead ignorance. Whether I'm being an ss or not I can't say. I'm ignorant of those initials as well.

God may very well have intervened in creation, the Big Bang looks to be one place that he may have done so, some of the physical constants set at that time have very interesting values.

You can’t see that the Big Bang is a naturalistic model that assumes there has not been a supernatural intervention? If the Big Bang needs a miracle, then what’s the point? That would indicate it's not supported by science. Why is an old miracle be more acceptable to you than a young one?

You're are exactly like the OEC in my illustration who claimed he believed Christ created the wine, but it must have been 5 years ago.

...the why is based on a mix of faith, physical evidence, personal experience, socialization and the witness of other Christians.

Don’t forget bad logic and blind faith in naturalism.

<cough>
Are you sure you want to quote Lactantius?
Well, maybe you do, you seem to follow his model. When he converted to Christianity he tossed aside all pagan ideas, including the quaint idea that
the Earth was a sphere...

Fortunately not too many folks took him seriously on that issue.
http://nabataea.net/flatearth.html

Yes I would still included him. It was the intuitive belief at the time, by everyone, especially pagans and even "scientists." The belief had nothing to do with scripture, though as it was silent on the issue. I'm certain both you and I would have been geocentrists as well (both before and after we converted to christianity). The belief was not based on exegesis. If you disagree, please cite the verses you feel they would have used.

Galileo was not tormented by the theologians of that era, he was tormented by the “scientists” who wanted to pressure him into accept the current thinking (kind of like what modern scientists do today). The theologians of the era were split on the issue. It wasn’t a biblical issue.

 

[The Lady Kate]

Nobody questioned your faith. There were merely inquiries.

Which, as I understand, violate rule #1 of these boards.

I didn't know you made a profession of faith to question. I asked if you were atheist. If someone asked me the same thing I would just answer them. I don't question the faith of OECs (if that's indeed what you are). They may well be better christians than I am. I'm questing their approach to Genesis. I'm questioning their logic not their faith.

Did you forget that this is a Christians-Only section?
And I'm TE, not OEC.

I think scientists, as all, should believe these things, yes, but of course not for scientific reasons. This does not mean blind faith is necessary either. The YEC in my illustration realized how limited science was in investigating a miracle and therefore looked to other means to learn the truth. To many scientists have limited themselves to only finding naturalistic truths. Thus they will never discover the great truth of the Resurrection, nor the Creation.

Except that what we consider "miracles" can be perfectly natural. We can all agree that life is pretty miraculous, but scientists do a pretty fair job explaining the natural processes involved in it.
Similarly, childbirth is a miracle, but any Health textbook and take through the step-by-step from conception to birth.
A warm spring day is a miracle...even if we understand the mechanisms of the sunshine and weather.

Some miracles don't stop becoming miracles even if we know how they work...as paradoxical as it sounds, sometimes God can work "miracles" through perfectly natural means. Who's to say Creation itself is not one such miracle?

Well now TLK, I would think you’d be more qualified to answer that than I. After all, you are picking and choosing which miracles to believe. Why do you believe the miracle of the virgin birth, but not the miracle of creation?

Who said I don't believe in Creation? I'm standing on it, aren't I?
I just disagree as to how God performed that one...that God didn't have to suspend the natural laws quite as severely as YECs would have us believe...

Personally I believe all the biblical miracles. Atheists believe non of them. Only we are consistent. You seem to have a system for deciding which ones are valid and which ones are not. Please share.

It's not a question of believing in miracles....of course I do. It's a question of believing in which ones actually happened.

The Gospel accounts of the virgin birth, the healings, the resurrection.... these were eyewitness accounts of the miracles of Jesus.
Genesis...different book, different author, different purpose....as I had to clarify.
Genesis is not a science textbook, and we lose nothing of our faith by not treating it as such...indeed...God's own creation seems to support the idea that it is not.

What's to gain by turning part of God's word into something it was never meant to be?

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Galileo was not tormented by the theologians of that era, he was tormented by the “scientists” who wanted to pressure him into accept the current thinking (kind of like what modern scientists do today). The theologians of the era were split on the issue. It wasn’t a biblical issue.

This is the second time I've heard this claim (though it was politicians the other time), where did you hear this idea?
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06342b.htm

they were firmly convinced, with Bacon and others, that the new teaching was radically false and unscientific,
But what, more than all, raised alarm was anxiety for the credit of Holy Scripture, the letter of which was then universally believed to be the supreme authority in matters of science, as in all others. When therefore it spoke of the sun staying his course at the prayer of Joshua, or the earth as being ever immovable, it was assumed that the doctrine of Copernicus and Galileo was anti-Scriptural; and therefore heretical.

 

[Calminian]

The answer to the last question is that because that is what fits the physical evidence.

No, it fits the assumption of naturalism. It's a model that ostensibly works if the universe was not caused supernaturally. Not sure how often I'll have to drive this point home.

 

[The Lady Kate]

No, it fits the assumption of naturalism. It's a model that ostensibly works if the universe was not caused supernaturally. Not sure how often I'll have to drive this point home.

Fine. How then can we tell if the universe was created supernaturally?