Can you be an Adventist and an Evolutionist?

In the end it comes down to whether you are going to let "science" interpret scripture, or whether you are going to let scripture interpret scripture.... It really is that simple. There would be no discussion if our so called scientist determined that the world was billions of years old. IMO, when you use this method of interpreting God's word you are using man's puny wisdom to determine who God is... Not a smart way to go.

Loveaboveall said:

In the end it comes down to whether you are going to let "science" interpret scripture, or whether you are going to let scripture interpret scripture.... It really is that simple. There would be no discussion if our so called scientist determined that the world was billions of years old. IMO, when you use this method of interpreting God's word you are using man's puny wisdom to determine who God is... Not a smart way to go.

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Why are you trying to have scripture intrepret science?

JM

JonMiller said:

Why are you trying to have scripture intrepret science?

JM

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I said let scripture interpret scripture, not scripture interpret science On the converse science should never interpret scripture, IMO. If your science does not harmonize with what scripture says what do you do? Believe science because it is scientific? Or believe God because He is God?

Why does the scripture being true to itself imply that science must be wrong?

Why do you say that from your reading of the Bible that the theory of evolution must be wrong?

JM

RC_NewProtestants said:

No, how can that be...faith on both sides, you have simply told those who believe in theistic evolution that they can't because it does not fit with your fundamentalist interpretations.

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I don't care who you are or what you say it takes faith to accept some of the theories of evolution to be a fact because they are definetely not supported by any evidence at all. It also takes faith to believe in some of the things we are told about in the Bible for the same reason. Fundamentalism has nothing to do with those truths.

Whereas we have no problem when Jesus says he will be in the earth for 3 days as Jonah was in the belly of the fish that does not make the story of Jonah literal. Of course to the fundamentalist the idea that Biblical scholars are split 50/50 whether the story is a parable versus literal is not even acknowledged. Rather it is assumed that anyone who does not see it as literal is apostate. Yet they will acknowledge that even though Jesus said the seed dies He did not literally mean the seed died, because the science tells us that a dead seed with not grow a plant to be able to increase 10 or 100 fold.

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There's so called Biblical scholars who don't even acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ or the existence of God for that matter. If you take a poll of what all of the Biblical scholars say about anything in the Bible each time you seek the truth you loose your way to it and you will have your focus on the wrong place,,,,,that being on man instead of God. The fact that Jesus mentioned that Jonah was in the belly of a whale for 3 days tells me it's a literal thing that happened. He never started His statement in a fashion that would make one think He was speaking in a parable as He did when He gave us all of the other parables.

BTW, the seed goes thru a change afer germination that indeed mimicks death when it looses it's shape and morphology . Then it mimicks resurrection in that it is no longer a seed but immerges as a plant. Seeds are miracles of God.

I have no problem with using our ability to think and analyze things in a critical way with scripture and it's truths. What I have a problem with is concluding some parts of the Bible that can't be explained using an emperical method are myth or legend and other parts that can are ok and literal.

The fact is you have to interpret the Bible with an eye to reality and not everything that is said is meant to be literal. In fact even if someone who wrote it thought it was literal that may not be the case.

It matters little what you choose to believe until you attempt to dictate to others what they must believe and there we get into the serious problems. And what you know of as a fact about evolution is based solely upon your believe that God could not be involved in the evolution. So as is the case in most of Jim's material he is arguing against theistic evolution with the atheistic evolutionary hypothesis.

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I am not saying you have to believe anything RC. What I do is present the truth as I see it. From where I stand it appears to me that the truth is you have dismissed a lot of the Bible so you can reconcile what you have already accepted in science. I choose not to do that. There may be some things I can't understand right now but from what I have studied in the Bible I accept it's story of creation as literal. I also accept it's story of the global flood as literal as well. The latter I have concluded based on my study of geology and the crust of the earth.

God bless
Jim Larmore

Jimlarmore said:

I am not saying you have to believe anything RC. What I do is present the truth as I see it. From where I stand it appears to me that the truth is you have dismissed a lot of the Bible so you can reconcile what you have already accepted in science. I choose not to do that. There may be some things I can't understand right now but from what I have studied in the Bible I accept it's story of creation as literal. I also accept it's story of the global flood as literal as well. The latter I have concluded based on my study of geology and the crust of the earth.

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"What I do is present the truth as I see it", That is called opinion not truth.

It is not what I have already accepted as I was raised a SDA with my beliefs based upon the idea of creation and flood as being literal events. Then I learned about Science, Biology, Astronomy and Geology. The flood is a concept which is not seen in the geology. Yes there were oceans covering much of the earth at different times, some areas multiple times. I live in the Northwest which has some amazing geological features and I still see people pointing to things and saying they were features created by the flood. They were not by the flood of the Bible but by the floods caused by the melting of the last ice age. And it is really not debatable except by those who know so little of geology that it is almost sad to think they pretend they have some knowledge.

Also I learned about the literature of the Bible and the literature of other ancient religions. The story of Adam and Eve is clearly not meant to be literal

"[SIZE=-0][SIZE=-0]Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made." [/SIZE][/SIZE]

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[SIZE=-0][SIZE=-0]Pretty obvious when you think about it but wait what about this "[/SIZE][/SIZE]

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him." 19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

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God creates man and then creates the animals and brings them to the man to name and see if they would be a good partner. Then of course the order is different from the Gen. chapter one version in which animals were created then man. There is nothing subtle about the story to even try to make one think it was meant to be literal, at least not to a modern mind. So this does all come down to fundamentalism because it is they who declare the inerrancy and literalism quite apart from what the Bible says.

JonMiller said:

Why does the scripture being true to itself imply that science must be wrong?

Why do you say that from your reading of the Bible that the theory of evolution must be wrong?

JM

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Ex 20:11 For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Days = Yowm day (24 hour period)
1) as defined by evening and morning in Genesis 1

Not much wiggle room there to interpret this straight forward scripture any other way ..... Unless of course it does not harmonize with your science than you must find some way to "allegorize" it so that you do not have to change what you believe about science.

Loveaboveall said:

Ex 20:11 For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Days = Yowm day (24 hour period)
1) as defined by evening and morning in Genesis 1

Not much wiggle room there to interpret this straight forward scripture any other way ..... Unless of course it does not harmonize with your science than you must find some way to "allegorize" it so that you do not have to change what you believe about science.

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So you Believe that the universe was created in those 6 days. That Heaven itself was made in those six days. That all those stars and galaxies we see through are telescopes well over 10,000 light years away from us were made in the six days less then 10,000 years ago.

Well I guess you could allegorize that heavens there means earth's atmosphere but that would not be very literal would it. And after all that is how you prevent wiggle room. Why insist on getting rid of wiggle room when dealing with language given to people who were in the area of knowledge really primitive does not make a lot of sense to me. The Biblical statement certainly worked for the recommendation of taking a day off, whether used as an example of rest from the creation process or whether as in the Deut. version rest because God took them out of slavery. The concept was clearly presented. It is those who assume inerrancy that want to resist wiggle room though it is perfectly normal in most all human language.

Loveaboveall said:

Ex 20:11 For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Days = Yowm day (24 hour period)
1) as defined by evening and morning in Genesis 1

Not much wiggle room there to interpret this straight forward scripture any other way ..... Unless of course it does not harmonize with your science than you must find some way to "allegorize" it so that you do not have to change what you believe about science.

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Where does that say or imply that evolution isn't correct?

JM

RC, what's your take on this part of Ervin Taylor's statements?I was just wondering because, if I recall correctly, you were talking to Eila about the concept of "spiritual death" recently.

My argument with "spiritual death" is with the deconstruction of traditional assumed theological terms. In other words it is often used though it has no clear or logical definition. You usually have to decipher what the person means by the context of how they are using the term.

Even when using the term spiritual death he is pretty vague, but people often think they know what the term means even though they fail to be able to define it. Paul is talking about death as in the cease existence. People especially SDA's forget that death is final. Through a couple of verses in the Bible we see a resurrection by the power of God for even the wicked. But their existence would end were it not for a supernatural act of God, done for God's purposes.

In practical matters however death is death if there is no hope for resurrection to life eternal by the hand of God then the results of death will be eternal. And that is what Paul is talking about, that kind of death that is the result of sin caused by the separation from God, the source of life. So as the separation has come because of the act of a man so the reconciliation comes by a man, Jesus Christ.

Death just as in the expression spiritual death is only found when there is and cannot be any connection with God.

RC_NewProtestants said:

So you Believe that the universe was created in those 6 days. That Heaven itself was made in those six days. That all those stars and galaxies we see through are telescopes well over 10,000 light years away from us were made in the six days less then 10,000 years ago.

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I see this as a problem as well. The evidence for God creating things for an eternity of time is there when we look at the universe. If our calculations are right some of the more distant galaxies are highly red shifted i.e. accelerating away from us. They are many billions of light years away as well. So when the Bible says that the sun, moon and stars were made during the creation week we have a physics problem to deal with. How can the entire universe be just six thousand years old when the speed of light alone means it has taken several billions of years for the light from some of the more distant galaxies to reach us? Some folks like to say that when the Bible says the stars were created that it means our solar system. I'm not sure I am comforable with that rendition or idea. The Bible says "stars" which to me means a sky full of stars. With only 8 planets orbiting our star that would not be a sky full of stars.

I think we may accept He made our galaxie in that creation week and that would account for the sky full of stars. The distant galaxies, which number in the billions , I think have been here from the eternal past. This universe we live in is bigger than most anyone on earth has any idea of. The background radiation source we have may be from galaxies that are no longer even visible to us from the furthest distance out. All of this galactic calculation stands or falls on the constant speed of light or "C". So what about the speed of light?

We have some evidence that it has not always been as constant as some think.

Check this out:

http://www.ldolphin.org/constc.shtml

If the speed of light has changed over time and was at some point in the past a lot faster that would change a lot of the things we measure today not the least of which is the decay of radioactive material that dates minerals in the crust of the earth. It may also mean that some of the distant galaxies are not as far away as we think they are presently.

Some other things to think about is this. If God created the stars in our galaxy during the six days of creation and this planet is only six thousand years old then that means we should see new stars appear occasionally as the light they emit would start to reach us from six thousand years ago. To my knowledge that is not happening on a regular basis at all. The present star sytems have been studied for a long time now and they are even mapped out so what is currently visible has been there for the past 250-300 years. This galaxy is over 100,000 light years in diameter based on the current speed of light. Is this accurate? It's all based on the speed of light and it's change over time. If the change has been exponential then we may not be looking so far back in time as we think when we look up into the heavens.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

I'm almost speechless. I'm guessing JM won't be.

It isn't really worth a response, but since you asked for one Avonia:

First, lets be clear, what Jim posted isn't science at all, just speculation.

And do you know that the speed of light is related to how materials behave in electric and magnetic fields? You can't just change that and not change the rest of physics. Including how friction works and how materials bond together (chemical bonds are based on electromagnetism!). This is really a crazy idea, at the same level of craziness as saying that the world is flat.

JM

JonMiller said:

It isn't really worth a response, but since you asked for one Avonia:

First, lets be clear, what Jim posted isn't science at all, just speculation.

And do you know that the speed of light is related to how materials behave in electric and magnetic fields? You can't just change that and not change the rest of physics. Including how friction works and how materials bond together (chemical bonds are based on electromagnetism!). This is really a crazy idea, at the same level of craziness as saying that the world is flat.

JM

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If you take a good look at the web-site I provided you will see that what they are saying is not based on speculation but good science. Speculation to a degree is part and parcel of all good science. However, when you start pointing a finger at an idea like this and call it crazy you are stepping out on a fragile limb philosophically. After all the big bang is pretty crazy if you really think about what they are saying about it.

The laws of physics are not necessarily everywhere constant either. In sub-atomic particles we see some divergence and also within the theorectical confines of a black hole the laws of physics breaks down. So to say this is crazy is not taking a serious look at the things we can observe in science and also what the implications may be. BTW, if you look at the first few theorectical nano seconds of the big bang you will find what they are saying happened is well outside the laws of physcis as well. BTW, how is friction effected by the speed of light?

God Bless
Jim Larmore

I looked at the link Jim gave and though I don't have the physics needed to deal with it I do like the fact that people are challenging scientific accepted theories. That is the way science should be. If they can put forth a good enough argument they will sway scientific understanding. However that takes a good deal of time and just running forward and accepting a new theory is probably not a good idea.

In this case whether light once traveled 2x or 100x times faster would not solve the 6 days of creation problem. Which is why Jim has gone past the literal story and accepted the idea that those other galaxies exist far before earth. Which I have no problem with but it is not taking the story literally and that has always been Jim's complaint against my views. It simply reinforces my view that people have for so long added material to these stories that they then claim them to be literal because they have filled in the gaps to make the claim that they are literal. Then when someone does not accept their filled gaps they accuse that someone of not taking things literally.

Not a pretty picture.

RC_NewProtestants said:

In this case whether light once traveled 2x or 100x times faster would not solve the 6 days of creation problem. Which is why Jim has gone past the literal story and accepted the idea that those other galaxies exist far before earth. Which I have no problem with but it is not taking the story literally and that has always been Jim's complaint against my views. It simply reinforces my view that people have for so long added material to these stories that they then claim them to be literal because they have filled in the gaps to make the claim that they are literal. Then when someone does not accept their filled gaps they accuse that someone of not taking things literally.

Not a pretty picture.

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At least I have not called the creation or flood event a myth or allegory or something. There seems always to be certain aspects of nearly everything that we can sit back and see flaws in it. You have found one in my account of the creation story and the visible universe. However, I really don't see the way I see this as "going past the literal account" of the creation event. My allowing the existence of galaxies to exist before this one was made fits well within God creating the sun , moon and stars. Especially if take unto account the author of the book of Genesis ( Moses ) was Egyptian and was most likely well studied in the stars/constellations etc. He was familiar with the visible stars we see now without the aide of a telescope which if you think about it over 99% would have been the stars in this galaxy only.

I think the bottom line to all of this falls within what we call faith. For God to create something from nothing goes way beyond the laws of physics and nature. The Bible tells us that God spoke the animals into existence. He also spoke and the sun, moon and stars were formed. God stands outside of the known laws we observe just as He stands outside of time. We can either accept that or reject it. I choose to accept it.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

Another way to say this is that one is inclusive of the other—God as the one inclusive of physics as the other. That way we don't kludge physics, and we recognize that there are many things outside of our current understanding that when understood from a large-enough frame of reference, make sense.

Jim, I'm with you on the something from nothing—amazing no matter what perspective you are coming from!

Jimlarmore said:

If you take a good look at the web-site I provided you will see that what they are saying is not based on speculation but good science. Speculation to a degree is part and parcel of all good science. However, when you start pointing a finger at an idea like this and call it crazy you are stepping out on a fragile limb philosophically. After all the big bang is pretty crazy if you really think about what they are saying about it.

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You were talking about the speed of light changing so much so that the stars wouldn't have to be billions of years old. This is craziness, unless you made up a theory that was so different from our current theories but still had as much evidence in favor. I don't think you will do this.

Speculation has little point to good science, which you have evidence in favor of other theories. If you are lacking evidence, then speculation allows you to create theories, which then need to be testable. Speculation doesn't enable you to ignore data though.

We have crazies come and talk at our physics conferences all the time. The fact that very occasionally one isn't crazy, doesn't change the fact that most of them are and that we are right in calling them crazies.

Cosmology and string theory are at the edge (I feel string theory is beyond) science. They aren't good examples of what physics is. There is a lot more speculation in these fields then most of the rest of the fields in physics.

The laws of physics are not necessarily everywhere constant either.

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That is actually one of the current key assumptions of physics. It was the key to relativitiy, and a lot of other physics. While some still want to let go of this assumption, the broad majority of the community hasn't yet seen to do so.

Yes, as far as most physicists are concerned, the laws of physics are the same everywhere.

In sub-atomic particles we see some divergence and also within the theorectical confines of a black hole the laws of physics breaks down.

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Not among sub-atomic particles, I don't know what you are refering to here (I think you might be refering to quantum mechanics, but you would be wrong).

It is true that in a blackhole (a theoretical object, which we have seen observational evidence for, but for which we have none to do experiments on), our current theories of physics break down. This doesn't mean that physcis breaks down, rather that our current theories are incomplete. (for the longest time there was a bet about whether blackholes exist at all, now most agree that they do exist, but the distant nature of them makes experimentation with them impossible)

So to say this is crazy is not taking a serious look at the things we can observe in science and also what the implications may be. BTW, if you look at the first few theorectical nano seconds of the big bang you will find what they are saying happened is well outside the laws of physcis as well.

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Yeah, cosmology and string theory go way outside of the range of physics that we can do experimentation on. Therefore, there is a lot more speculation in those fields, and I expect that it is much more likely that the physics is different then what is in their theories.

BTW, how is friction effected by the speed of light?

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Friction depends on the electromagnetic interaction between material. The permitivity of free space is a constant of this interaction, and is inversely proportional to the square of the speed of light. If the speed of light wasn't constant, it wouldn't be constant, and if there was any great change, most everything would be screwy. Including friction.

JM
*I would like to note that I still haven't looked at that site.

I Also don't think you know what they mean by physics breaking down in a blackhole (or anywhere else). They don't mean that physics changes, that instead of the speed of light being c, it is 4, or anything similar. Rather, they are saying that physics gives 'nonsensical' results, like infinite. The point about blackholes is that it isn't as if there is some 'new physics' there, but rather that it is actually infinite there.

By the way, the universe would be a massively different place if any of the phsyical constants were anything else, really. If there was much change, the universe would be an entirely different place. Many people (myself included) takes this as evidence of the Creator, as the universe seems 'tuned' for our existence here.

JM
*note that I don't really know GR, but that is what my understanding is.