Featured Churches and Creation

Even your memory of this post.

 

When you are putting a puzzle together, the view changes, and a number of other things do as well. But it's all headed for a specific result.

 

As I said before,

There's nothing wrong with writing information down. I'm just agreeing with the above statements with respect to the limitations that are present with respect to written records. Alternatively, with a photograph or video footage, in the least, we have an additional means of observation that are beyond certain forms of biased interpretation, and the informations is beyond a form which can be misinterpretted in certain ways.

A photograph of a cake gives a more clear understanding of said cake, than a verbal description. A verbal description could be misunderstood or loosely described both upon the Initial conjuring and transcription, as well as misunderstood during the ultimate reception and interpretation.

Which goes back to the original purpose of police officers wearing body cameras. Because cameras allow us to examine events with a greater amount of accuracy in scenarios where written or verbal thoughts otherwise may fail.

And in regards to history books, thankfully they often contain photographs. Which is a form of evidence in which some might cite, which can grant more clarity to otherwise just written word.

With respect to laboratories, information is also contained in written books (again, there's nothing wrong with writing things down), but also, typically experiments are held within the laboratory to affirm written information. We might also have things like photographs to help us understand what is otherwise just written as well.

And I agree that it's a matter of what is being studied. And what I am saying is that things like photographs or video recordings, can enable us to view concepts in ways with more clarity and less opportunity for misunderstanding, than just written words, hence body cameras on police. A verbal description could be misunderstood or loosely described both upon the Initial conjuring and transcription, as well as misunderstood during the ultimate reception and interpretation. But a video recording of the same concept, removes a great deal of human error and it removes the flaws of our conjured recollection and interpretations. Again, hence body cameras on police.

 

Official doctrinal statement of the LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod):

"We teach that God has created heaven and earth, and that in the manner and in the space of time recorded in the Holy Scriptures, especially Gen. 1 and 2, namely, by His almighty creative word, and in six days. We reject every doctrine which denies or limits the work of creation as taught in Scripture. In our days it is denied or limited by those who assert, ostensibly in deference to science, that the world came into existence through a process of evolution; that is, that it has, in immense periods of time, developed more or less of itself. Since no man was present when it pleased God to create the world, we must look for a reliable account of creation to God's own record, found in God's own book, the Bible. We accept God's own record with full confidence and confess with Luther's Catechism: "I believe that God has made me and all creatures."

Brief Statement of LCMS Doctrinal Position - The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

 

See my above post with the official doctrinal statement of the LCMS.

I would presume that the other Lutheran denomination, WELS, would agree with that as well.

 

As do I. It's a carefully worded statement, and I'm familiar with the way people read into such things.

A large number of LCMS pastors are YEC, which definitely gives the LCMS a YEC flavor, but at the same time, the synod allows considerable latitude on the issue. A relative of mine is an LCMS pastor who has asked me for advice regarding how to handle origins issues in an age when the membership is drifting away from YEC ideas. Through those discussions I came to know, at least in part, how the synod handles the topic. They are not going to endorse a specific school of thought as many American evangelical churches do - you will note the statement never names one - and I would oppose them doing so.

 

Mine does, Church of Christ (this is Australian and not to be confused with any US COC) Each church is largely autonomous so I can't speak for other COC's here.
One of our members has been a personal friend of Ken Ham's for over 50 years, he always comes to visit and talk when he's over here.

 

That's like saying we can discount what Jesus has said "because it's only a parable."

 

It's not like that. I never said people who view the Bible as only an allegory discount it.

 

Barbarian observes:
That's like saying we can discount what Jesus has said "because it's only a parable."

See above. It's what you said.

Seems to me "only an allegory" discounts it.

 

Think whatever you like. I'm not implying anything about how seriously you take the Bible. We simply disagree.

 

It is interesting that Ken Ham says that the bulk of the persecution and opposition he gets when he conducts Creation Evangelism in schools and universities, comes from church ministers. Some actually stand up in front of the audience and argue with him. Not a good look for the church, is it!

 

That does not happen here, our COC holds to creation. I've never heard a murmur from anyone about evolution and we have been members for about 20 years now.

Kind of begs the question of why these churches invited him unless it was for the precise purpose of arguing.

 

I don't know. I have always been associated with churches that strongly hold to Creationism. But just recently I visited a church where they had a well-known RCC priest preaching (not an RCC church), where he said that there was no real Adam and Eve - that the beginning of Genesis was just a myth to explain how we as Christians can be better human beings and improve the world around us.

 

I would have stood up and walked out.

 

Most likely because they have learned from experience that YE creationism is a powerful atheist-maker. People who foolishly attempt to get science from the Bible do that. St. Augustine note this over a thousand years ago.

Often, a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, … and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant person is laughed at, but rather that people outside the faith believe that we hold such opinions, and thus our teachings are rejected as ignorant and unlearned. If they find a Christian mistaken in a subject that they know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions as based on our teachings, how are they going to believe these teachings in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think these teachings are filled with fallacies about facts which they have learnt from experience and reason.

Reckless and presumptuous expounders of Scripture bring about much harm when they are caught in their mischievous false opinions by those not bound by our sacred texts. And even more so when they then try to defend their rash and obviously untrue statements by quoting a shower of words from Scripture and even recite from memory passages which they think will support their case ‘without understanding either what they are saying or what they assert with such assurance.’ (1 Timothy 1:7)

St. Augustine of Hippo, De Genesi ad Litteram

 

More recently,

...But eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationISM. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology turned out to be true. I took a poll of my ICR graduate friends who have worked in the oil industry. I asked them one question.


"From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true? ,"


That is a very simple question. One man, Steve Robertson, who worked for Shell grew real silent on the phone, sighed and softly said 'No!' A very close friend that I had hired at Arco, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one!" But he could not name one. I can not name one. No one else could either. One man I could not reach, to ask that question, had a crisis of faith about two years after coming into the oil industry. I do not know what his spiritual state is now but he was in bad shape the last time I talked to him.

And being through with creationism, I very nearly became through with Christianity. I was on the very verge of becoming an atheist.
Old Earth Creation Science Testimony - Why I Left Young Earth Creationism, by Glenn Morton

 

If so, he was defying church doctrine, which teaches that Adam and Eve were real people. The Church does not take a doctrinal position as to whether or not Genesis 1-3 is allegorical or literal history. Most Catholics, like most other apostolic Christians, hold to the former understanding. But it's not church doctrine.