Critias said:I didn't get that from her response. Either she wasn't intending that or I missed it.
My contentions are that God also speaks to us in prayer, prophets, and of course the Holy Spirit.
night2day said:gluadys said:Who decreed that the scriptures are God's only communication to us?
God did -- as un-PC as that is for today's world.
post 347
Of course an ubeliever can speak truth. Augustine was talking about the natural world and not the spiritual world in his commentary on Genesis. He wasn't advocating that we should accept an unbelievers 'truth' when it contradicts the Holy Scriptures.
When we are talking about scientific discoveries we are always speaking of knowledge of the natural world. That is why questions about the relation of science to questions of salvation and other spiritual matters are irrelevant. Science has no answers to spiritual questions.
If he was, then he wouldn't have gone against the unbelievers of the day when he stated the earth was less than 6000 years old. Especially when many believed it was older.
But being the respecter of natural philosophy that he was, today he would probably support a very old earth.
The Greek thought on the age of the world was still circulating, as well as spontaneous generation. Both, Augustine disagreed with.
The Greeks thought the world was eternal and generally denied there was any history. Many believed in eternal recurrence of events.
As far as our intellectual capacity is concerned, many will view that scientists are absolutely correct on many matters. But that is within the scope of our intelligence and doesn't concern One who is vastly more intelligent than us.
If scientists are absolutely correct on a matter, it does concern the One, since absolute intelligence would have to agree with what is absolutely correct. Note, however, that science does not pretend to absolute correctness, but correctness given the evidence. Of course, the evidence in nature comes from the creator of nature.
I am not stating they are wrong, but stating that our knowledge is limited and it doesn't account for One who is vastly more knowledgable then us.
The One is not nature, so why should a study of nature account for it? Science does not study God directly, but the work of God.
The fact that knowledge is limited does not make it false. If we know only a fraction of what there is to be known, but that fraction is true, then the knowledge is identical with God's knowledge, for He is its source.
I don't agree here either with your statement that the important thing about science is that it is often right. I believe the important thing of science is that it is always trying to understand our surroundings.
And it often understands them correctly.
What you may not see that you have done here is assert that what scientists tell us is truth. Truth that is equal to God's truth.
Dont twist my words. I did not say that what scientists tell us is the truth. I said when scientists tell us the truth, it must be accepted as truth. All truth is equal to God's truth, since God is the source of all truth.
I think this is where we make a mistake. God's truth is different than man's truth.
No, its not. When human "truth" differs from God's truth, it is not truth at all.
We can know God's truth, but that means it was never our truth, in the sense of us coming up with it.
Exactly. That is why science is about discovering truth. Truths of nature are not invented, they are learned through the study of nature.
I personally see something wrong with a statement that says, 'when we refuse to accept what scientists say as truth then we refuse to surrender to God in faith.'
But that is not what was said. See correction above. It is not a matter of accepting something because scientists say it, but because it is true.
I also am repulsed by your statement that I think hints to the fact if I don't accept evolution (common descent) then I am not surrendering to God.
If evolution is true, as it appears to be, then to reject it is to reject God's truth. The only important question is whether or not it is true. If it is not true, it would be equally wrong to embrace it.
Since the Bible deals with surrendering to God, show me where I must believe in evolution or what scientist tell me even when it contradicts the Bible, in order to surrender to God.
Truth never contradicts truth. If evolution is true, it does not contradict scripture. It may contradict your fallible understanding of scripture, however.
Again, you equate creation with interpretation of evidence.
No, I don't. You are projecting your own failings onto me, for you continually equate your interpretation of scripture with God's intended meaning of scripture, so you think I am doing the same with creation. But as i once explained --several times--to Vossler, we have to deal with four realities:
1. scripture
2. created nature
3. human interpretations of scripture
4. human interpretations of created nature
Creationists are always assuming that we only have two of these realities (1 and 4). They forget that the two realities we actually have are 3 and 4. If your interpretation of scripture (3) coincides with the actual meaning of scripture (1), why do you consider it impossible for a scientific interpretation of nature (4) to coincide with creation (2)? If interpretations of nature are never valid descriptions of actual created nature, why does it not follow that intepretations of scripture are never valid representations of the actual meaning of scripture?
You simply cannot reduce these four realities to 2 and claim that we have God's knowledge of scripture but only human knowledge of nature.
Just because we don't accept common descent doesn't mean we believe God didn't make a real and knowable world. Neither is it a denial of the doctrine of creation. It is actually a defense for it.
Oh, read some of the threads in this forum. To defend this doctrine as you understand it, you and many other creationists consistently deny the integrity of creation and turn it into an illusion.
You may think you believe in a real world, but when you consistently deny the consequences of the reality of the world, your words tell us a different story.
Evolution, by common descent is the denial of the doctrine of creation.
"I believe in one God, the father almighty, who made heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible."
Evolution does not contradict that doctrine. By the way, evolution is not by common descent. It is by mutations, natural selection and other selective mechanisms, and speciation. Speciation logically implies common descent. Common descent, then, is a conclusion and a prediction of the theory. And it is borne out by many lines of evidence.
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