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Why I don't like naturalism...

Oct 25, 2010
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...We are to believe that God was muddled and confused with His intentions, claiming that all He made was good and perfect yet concurrently requiring millions of years of death and decay in order to select and produce biological life. We are to believe God intended death and decay to be a constant in His plans for creation. We are to believe God made us in His image by first entering us in the image of lesser primate beings devoid of intellect and spiritual awareness. We are to scrap the entire genesis narrative and rewrite it according to the enlightenment of "evolutionary theory". We are to believe universal common descent is factual when if we are to assume it to be reality, it would imply over 99% of the fossil record is missing. Also given how such processes cannot be verified due to the amount of time required, and also in light of how gradualism is falsified given the fossil evidence, we are to believe it happened anyways. We are to believe what scientists tell us is truth and reality, even if such evolutionary events cannot be defined and proven empirically. We are to believe, in contradiction to scripture, that Noah’s flood was either local or metaphorical. We are to believe God is not allowed to be God; that He is not allowed to act outside the bounds of naturalism. That unless they are processes that can be understood and dictated by science, they are not real and God didn’t ''really'' do it that way.

Is it really that hard to understand the inherent dangers of Biblical dispositions that must dictate how you read and interpret scripture?
 

CryptoLutheran

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I don't like God being accused of deception and lying, which He is if the universe is only 6,000 years old, because all of the available tools for us demonstrate a much older a universe. If the universe looks 14 billion years old but is only 6,000 years old then God is lying to us.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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solarwave

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...We are to believe that God was muddled and confused with His intentions, claiming that all He made was good and perfect yet concurrently requiring millions of years of death and decay in order to select and produce biological life.

I'm going to try to reply to you though biology isn't my best area currently, so I'll leave the details of the evidence for evolution to someone else.

Recently it was pointed out to me that in Genesis God said the world was good and then very good, but not says it is perfect. This is a greek idea added afterwards to Christian thought. The fact that the creation was good and then very good shows that there is a scale of goodness (or from totally evil going up to perfection) and that creation wasn't on the absolute pinnacle of perfection.

It could be said that a universe which can make itself requires a more creative, beautiful and intelligent mind. Its great if you can make a robot, but even better if the robot can make itself.

We are to believe God made us in His image by first entering us in the image of lesser primate beings devoid of intellect and spiritual awareness.

We evolved from apes if that is what you mean. Why is this a problem?

We are to scrap the entire genesis narrative and rewrite it according to the enlightenment of "evolutionary theory".

You don't scrap the narrative, you understand it in a metaphorical way. This isn't a new idea thrust upon us by atheistic science, even Augustine considered that this could be the case just based on the writing style of the Creation story.

Is it really that hard to understand the inherent dangers of Biblical dispositions that must dictate how you read and interpret scripture?

What does this mean? :)
 
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shernren

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Is it really that hard to understand the inherent dangers of Biblical dispositions that must dictate how you read and interpret scripture?

Yeah, I mean, right on this forum I've seen creationists affirm

  • geocentrism
  • an eternal universe (steady state cosmology)
  • open theism
  • Jesus isn't God
  • black supremacism
  • white supremacism
... oh, you mean this is a thread about the doctrinal dangers of theistic evolution? Sorry, can't really think of any off the top of my head right now.
 
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Mallon

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Yeah, I mean, right on this forum I've seen creationists affirm

  • geocentrism
  • an eternal universe (steady state cosmology)
  • open theism
  • Jesus isn't God
  • black supremacism
  • white supremacism
... oh, you mean this is a thread about the doctrinal dangers of theistic evolution? Sorry, can't really think of any off the top of my head right now.
One YEC also recently claimed that there are no metaphors or allegories in the Scriptures, too. It's all literal.
 
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Mallon

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One YEC also recently claimed that there are no metaphors or allegories in the Scriptures, too. It's all literal.
Just to correct, I think I read that elsewhere on a YEC blog recently (not that it makes a big difference where I read it).

I have heard some YECs here insist that the contents of Jesus' parables were historical, though, on several occasions (because they are apparently meaningless otherwise).
 
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Papias

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Mallon wrote:

One YEC also recently claimed that there are no metaphors or allegories in the Scriptures, too. It's all literal.


One YEC? I think I've seen at least several YECs assert that here - though I can only think of one name off the top of my head......

But yeah, I've seen those all claimed here, and defended. We might add the denial of gravity (that the Moon is "held in the firmament" by some other means) in my .sig file. Incredible........

Papias
 
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juvenissun

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I don't like God being accused of deception and lying, which He is if the universe is only 6,000 years old, because all of the available tools for us demonstrate a much older a universe. If the universe looks 14 billion years old but is only 6,000 years old then God is lying to us.

-CryptoLutheran

Are you (or are we) sure that we have seen ALL the tools? That is the major problem. Personally, I don't think so. As advanced as we are, we might have not seen anything yet.
 
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juvenissun

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One YEC also recently claimed that there are no metaphors or allegories in the Scriptures, too. It's all literal.

It is simply a way to take the least damage.

I would rather to treat the Scripture as literal, "but allows interpretations", then to use metaphor or allegory as scapegoats.

For example, somewhere in the Psalms (?), God says: my feather ... (sort of like that). How would one understand this "metaphor" without literally relate it to bird?

The literal/allegorical argument is not really related to the Scripture, but is related to one's attitude toward God.
 
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Mallon

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It is simply a way to take the least damage.

I would rather to treat the Scripture as literal, "but allows interpretations", then to use metaphor or allegory as scapegoats.

For example, somewhere in the Psalms (?), God says: my feather ... (sort of like that). How would one understand this "metaphor" without literally relate it to bird?

The literal/allegorical argument is not really related to the Scripture, but is related to one's attitude toward God.
Is it not a two-way street, though? You seem to think that God will be offended if we read a literal passage too metaphorically, but do you not think He would be upset if we read a metaphorical passage too literally, thereby missing the intended message?
 
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CryptoLutheran

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Are you (or are we) sure that we have seen ALL the tools? That is the major problem. Personally, I don't think so. As advanced as we are, we might have not seen anything yet.

The key word is "available". As new tools and information becomes available to us no doubt many of the ideas we have right now will be changed simply because we don't have everything right now. But all of the available tools at our disposal all seem to point toward a very common direction and it would require extremely radical new data to simply overturn everything over night.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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Oct 25, 2010
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I don't like it when Christians assume that just because something is natural, God isn't somehow involved; that God is only being God when He's spinning miracles.

Do not misunderstand me, God is involved on both natural and super natural levels, I agree. The naturalist mindset is what I address, and I notice how quickly it is taken to extremes. Whether anyone would care to agree is not the issue, the human body itself is a testament to super natural creation, as the likelihood of it arising strictly via naturalistic processes is practically nil. You just have to look at a single human enzyme. There is always a balance.
 
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Oct 25, 2010
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I don't like God being accused of deception and lying, which He is if the universe is only 6,000 years old, because all of the available tools for us demonstrate a much older a universe. If the universe looks 14 billion years old but is only 6,000 years old then God is lying to us.

-CryptoLutheran

I am not a YEC, and I am sure you can understand the falsehood in equating an argument for OEC with an argument for naturalism and the theories involved thereof.
 
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