the evolution of YECism

Critias · Sep 20, 2005

Karl - Liberal Backslider said:
Very good article. I note this:

To a certain extent, this has already happened, when you consider that some 50% of the US population does not accept that humans evolved from a non-human ancestor, despite the fact that amongst the scientific community there is no controversy. None at all. There are out of Africa theorists, and there are multiregionalists. But no "Didn't Evolve At All"ists. They exist purely in religious, rather than scientific, institutions.

Over this side of the pond, of course, most people look at YEC and say "Only in America!" whilst mentally classifying YECs alongside flat earthers, Raelians, Area 51 nuts and Scientologists. Amazingly, there are some UK YECs around now, but they're very much in the minority even amongst Christians. It's all in the "new churches", which are often sceptical of Biblical scholarship and tend to prefer every man his own Magisterium approaches to Biblical interpretation. Draw your own conclusions.

Do you think it is healthy for Christians to take the Bible how they want to?

vossler · Sep 20, 2005

Also the NYT is about as left leaning a "journalistic" institution there is. If they don't have a bias against anything of a Christian origin then nothing does.

rmwilliamsll · Sep 20, 2005

vossler said:
Also the NYT is about as left leaning a "journalistic" institution there is. If they don't have a bias against anything of a Christian origin then nothing does.

Left-right is a political spectrum.

you so naturally align right with Christianity and left with anti-Christian that you disclose more information about yourself then you do about this imaginary political-religious axis.
at the bottom,even with this not-surprising admission of yours, you are attacking the messenger, not discussing the message.

besides, NYT is not really political left, even looking at center of mass(just in the US) rather than the whole political axis available. The ideas supported at the NYT are to the right of most European social democratic parties.

fyi, there exist, even in the US, left wing Christians who would see the NYT as extremely right wing....it is a matter of perspective.

....

vossler · Sep 20, 2005

rmwilliamsll said:
Left-right is a political spectrum.

you so naturally align right with Christianity and left with anti-Christian that you disclose more information about yourself then you do about this imaginary political-religious axis.
at the bottom,even with this not-surprising admission of yours, you are attacking the messenger, not discussing the message.

besides, NYT is not really political left, even looking at center of mass(just in the US) rather than the whole political axis available. The ideas supported at the NYT are to the right of most European social democratic parties.

fyi, there exist, even in the US, left wing Christians who would see the NYT as extremely right wing....it is a matter of perspective.

....

You don't believe a hard left leaning political view is anti-Christian? Well, I've got some land...

Just so you don't think it's all about left/right, hard right leaning politics is also anti-Christian, maybe even worse because most purport to be Christians.

Just to show you how hard left the NYT is, they're against the John Roberts nomination while the Washington Post (also a left leaning publication) is for him. You've got to be on the fringe left if you're going to slam Roberts.

BTW, I wouldn't use any European political parties as a barometer of our own parties.

Karl - Liberal Backslider · Sep 20, 2005

Critias said:
Do you think it is healthy for Christians to take the Bible how they want to?

Nope. Not if it means effectively ignoring the collective wisdom of 2000 years of church history.

I suppose it's now time to wait for the implication that that's what TEs do, no?

rmwilliamsll · Sep 20, 2005

You don't believe a hard left leaning political view is anti-Christian? Well, I've got some land...

there has been since before Marx an anti-authoritarian Christian left, represented in the 20thC ably by J.Ellul. to dismiss such a complex phenomena as the political left as being consistently anti-Christian is to ignore much important Christian thought.
but that is well off topic.

....

Critias · Sep 20, 2005

Karl - Liberal Backslider said:
Nope. Not if it means effectively ignoring the collective wisdom of 2000 years of church history.

I suppose it's now time to wait for the implication that that's what TEs do, no?

Can ask what was the collective Church Fathers position on the flood: global or local?

What was the position of the Church Fathers on the age of the earth: very old or young?

What was the collective position of the Church Fathers on the creation of man: evolved or special creation?

rmwilliamsll · Sep 20, 2005

Critias said:
Can ask what was the collective Church Fathers position on the flood: global or local?

What was the position of the Church Fathers on the age of the earth: very old or young?

What was the collective position of the Church Fathers on the creation of man: evolved or special creation?

What was the collective Church Fathers position on the relationship of demon possession and mental illness? did any of them propose that schizophrenia was a chemical imbalance or did all of them believe that the voices heard were demonic? and justified their position with reference to the Scriptures where Jesus cures demonics?

What was the position of the Church Fathers on the issue of if the Sun revolved around the earth or if the earth revolved around the sun? and justified their position with reference to Joshua telling the sun to halt it's path across the sky?

What was the collective position of the Church Fathers on public health and sanitation, did they believe that malaria was mal aria or miasma fumes or did they know about falciprium as the causative agent, did they know any germ theory at all? and justified their position with the well known fact that Jesus taught that demons cause illness and the Church has the power to cast them out?

how many of the early Church fathers justified slavery with reference to the Scriptures? and quoted Moses and Paul to prove their point?

..................

Karl - Liberal Backslider · Sep 21, 2005

Of course, there's no middle ground between ignoring 2000 years of collective wisdom, (and sometimes collective tosh) and accepting it all completely and without question.

Still, at least my prediction of the coming implication was correct. It's getting predictable.

shernren · Sep 21, 2005

Over this side of the pond, of course, most people look at YEC and say "Only in America!" whilst mentally classifying YECs alongside flat earthers, Raelians, Area 51 nuts and Scientologists. Amazingly, there are some UK YECs around now, but they're very much in the minority even amongst Christians. It's all in the "new churches", which are often sceptical of Biblical scholarship and tend to prefer every man his own Magisterium approaches to Biblical interpretation. Draw your own conclusions.

Mmhmm. As a Malaysian I couldn't agree more. 'Cept somehow the church over here is starting to come under pressure and influence from all the American books that come over to adopt YECism as a dominant position. Right now we're rather quiet about it, but probably not any more in a little while ...

artybloke · Sep 22, 2005

Do you think it is healthy for Christians to take the Bible how they want to?

So how should they take the Bible then? How you want them to? How the Pope wants them to? How Jerry Fallwell wants them to? It is possible to read the Bible a number of different ways. Not all of them are right, not all of them make sense, but why should I take it the way you take it?

Critias · Sep 22, 2005

artybloke said:
So how should they take the Bible then? How you want them to?

It has nothing to do with me.

I believe many Christians today are Bible illiterate. They don't spend time throughly studying it, including the original languages and Jewish/Hebrew culture.

artybloke said:
How the Pope wants them to? How Jerry Fallwell wants them to?

Don't assume that because I am a creationist that I follow people like Jerry Fallwell or Jim Baker.

artybloke said:
It is possible to read the Bible a number of different ways. Not all of them are right, not all of them make sense, but why should I take it the way you take it?

I never asked you to take it how I said. I don't concern myself with trying to make you believe anything I say. I am just expressing the truth as I have been taught by God. I believe in being consistent with interpreting the Bible and express my beliefs of doing so.

What you do with it, is your business. I don't seek to do what I cannot do - change your mind.

artybloke · Sep 22, 2005

I am just expressing the truth as I have been taught by God.

So am I. Except God appears to have made me an evolutionist.

Critias · Sep 22, 2005

artybloke said:
So am I. Except God appears to have made me an evolutionist.

I would have to disagree that God "made" you be an evolutionist. It has been your choice. Just as it has been mine to be a creationist.

artybloke · Sep 23, 2005

Critias said:
I would have to disagree that God "made" you be an evolutionist. It has been your choice. Just as it has been mine to be a creationist.

Nope. I had it straight from the mouth of God.

Now prove me wrong.

Critias · Sep 23, 2005

1 John 4:5-6 said:
They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever listens to God listens to us [Apostles]; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

Acts 17:26 said:
From one man He made every nation of men, that they whould inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.

2 Peter 2:2 said:
Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.

2 Peter 2:5 said:
if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and severn others;

2 Peter 3:6 said:
By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.

2 Peter 1:21 said:
For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Exodus 20:11 said:
For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Job 38:4 said:
Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand.....Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this.... Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!

Job 42:3 said:
You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know....Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.

Choose for yourself what you will believe. Claim that God Himself came to you and spoke against His written word.

I am persuaded by God's word, not yours, not mans.

rmwilliamsll · Sep 23, 2005

Critias said:
Choose for yourself what you will believe. Claim that God Himself came to you and spoke against His written word.

I am persuaded by God's word, not yours, not mans.

i spent a year reading sermons from the antebellum American South supporting slavery. In those i saw the same certainty that God was on their side, that He would bring a Confederate victory because the North was heathen, unrighteous and UnChristian and that they were righteous and just for building such a godly society as their slave based one.

After Calvin my highest respect for a theologian is for R.Dabney who wrote a defense of slavery after the end of the unCivil War, where he argues strongly and Biblically that equalitarianism will be the end of Biblical society. That slavery is required of God's people and that the judgement of God will rise on the unrighteous Northerners for their destruction of God's own in the South.

perhaps that experience, of learning how my theological forefathers argued, will forever make such confidence and certainty in my theological beliefs from matching yours expressed here.

certainly God is truth, but we are full of sin and this darkens our understanding and keeps us from seeing clearly those things of God. but perhaps your private revelation from God is far more certain than is mine, it certainly appears so. But then again so was Dabney's and the South and they were wrong. God does not wish us to enslave, certainly not other Christians and their children because they are from a different ethnos.

as for me, i need to allow God to be the truth, my apprehension of it to be held a little bit lighter so that i can see how to revise it as i learn from both Scripture and Creation.
.....

Critias · Sep 23, 2005

Let me ask you this. When Jesus walked the earth, there were slaves in the cities He was in. He did not teach that they were to be set free, nor did He go and set them free from their masters.

I am not condoning slavery, but tell me, why did Jesus not do something about it if you feel that we as Christians must do something about it? I suppose you won't answer this, but just throw either a joke to poke fun at me or another question to avoid it. Hopefully not.

rmwilliamsll · Sep 23, 2005

Critias said:
Let me ask you this. When Jesus walked the earth, there were slaves in the cities He was in. He did not teach that they were to be set free, nor did He go and set them free from their masters.

I am not condoning slavery, but tell me, why did Jesus not do something about it if you feel that we as Christians must do something about it? I suppose you won't answer this, but just throw either a joke to poke fun at me or another question to avoid it. Hopefully not.

then by His silence He condoned it.
then Biblical people ought to support slavery as a general conception and only argue about it's form, not whether it is sinful in itself.
this leads directly to a hierarchical notion of society, something rejected strongly in the unCivil War for a equalitarian one.

one of the few obvious things in the discussion, is that this is, like creationism and evolutionism, a battle of worldviews, not simply a low level question about whether people ought to own one another or not.

slavery is a very good study, it parallels the CED debate on many levels.

...

Critias · Sep 23, 2005

rmwilliamsll said:
then by His silence He condoned it.
then Biblical people ought to support slavery as a general conception and only argue about it's form, not whether it is sinful in itself.
this leads directly to a hierarchical notion of society, something rejected strongly in the unCivil War for a equalitarian one.

one of the few obvious things in the discussion, is that this is, like creationism and evolutionism, a battle of worldviews, not simply a low level question about whether people ought to own one another or not.

slavery is a very good study, it parallels the CED debate on many levels.

...

Silence in the Gospels doesn't mean He condoned it.

Do you know that many slaves shared the Gospel with their masters and their masters became believers?

Maybe, just maybe God has a plan and He executes it accordingly to His Divine Will. Maybe, just maybe, TEs don't have the right world view, but are allowed to hold it to reach atheists who are scientifically minded.

You know Paul preached that there were people preaching Jesus Christ with the wrong motives, but he didn't mind. Jesus Christ was being preached.

We can sit here for the rest of our lives, never agreeing, or we can accept each other and preach Jesus Christ. We can stop with the insults, the deragatory jokes and sarcastic statements given by both sides and follow what Jesus Christ said.

I don't know what you think you can prove or show by your consistent opening of new threads to show us YECs how much in error we are. Fine. Accept that we are in error. I don't mind if you want to believe that about me. You aren't going to change my mind on the subject, unless you actually have Biblical support. Until then, your threads are useless. There only means is to exalt yourself and make yourself feel superior to YECs. Fine. You are superior to all of us YECs. I can live with that.

I just don't see the point to your constant opening of new threads, posted jokes for insult, sarcasm, etc. I don't see how the follows Christ's commandments.

We are all at fault here. Maybe we can accept this and try to fix what we have created. Or...we can keep doing what keeps us divided.

What is it going to be Richard?

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