Richard, I sense also a bit of an emotional reaction to some of these discussions. Maybe like, "do we really have to get all so wrung out about this debate?" I sense you want peace (which is a good thing) and not strife. You want people's faith to hold together, and not be sidetracked by empirical arguments. You also want a focus on spirit, as opposed to "facts", a spiritual/emotional connection with a good God, instead of a concentration and focus on cold facts and truths.
I understand all of this, and I empathize with it. But I also believe that we are to worship God in Spirit, and in Truth. If we neglect truth under the guise of spirit, we will eventually discover that we have lost the spirit, and gained a false spirit. I know this from discussions with buddhists and with bahai and with moslems. It is the spirit of truth that is given to us, not the spirit of falsehood. Annanias and Sapphira died for no other reason than that they followed the spirit of falsehood; they lied about the empirical facts.
It is absolutely important and essential to know and believe and sense/feel that God is good, and God is love. This should become part of the blood flowing in our veins. It should be the essence of every word coming from our mouths. But it is the truth of this statement as found in scripture, that helps us to understand that God is good even when we do not feel that God is good in our personal lives, or in the lives of our friends or in the lives of strangers.
It is falsehood and evil that wants us to put truth on the back shelf compared to the goodness of God. But it is a false dichotomy (I am speaking more broadly than just Genesis 1, but the principle applies).
If God is good, how can he allow evil? If God is good, how can he allow the flood? If God is good, how can He allow eternal punishment?
But God must be true to Himself. If we understand that, then we can understand God's goodness.
Rinse and hang dry - is that really your name? My previous post is out of sequence because you added three other posts. In response to your accusation of me not reading the entire article, you are mistaken, I had already read it and I referred to it too. You should read this statement matson made, "Some of the geologic periods may be missing, either because they were never laid down at that location or because they have since eroded away. "
Norman, this particular youtube is also very relevant to this discussion, as it shows how some "proof" for evolution is simply false, as well as relates to the reaction of christian students to the teachings of evolution.
It seems to me that education is a greater gift than teashirts. An education that is self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. And of course, faith. What a gift that is. Of course, God has to give it. But he can use us to deliver it.
Sorry to put in three posts here in a row.... but I came across an excellent expose of evolutionary paleotology, put together by Street Church Adelaide. Youtube - "Evolution - A Crumbling Theory ( StreetChurch Adelaide )
Facts are not always facts, even when it comes to empirical science. Evil and falsehood not only wants to pervert scriptural truths, but it perverts scientific and "natural" evidence as well, if the motivation is there.
In regards to radio-active dating methods you should check out these two sites, highlighting that sometimes methods have an error range of millions and hundreds of millions of years. " youtube.com/watch?v=3wMV8Hw99yg&feature=relm fu" on C14
or: youtube.com/watch?v=bGB-PfFSV2w&feature=relm fu on other rock dating methods. (you have to get past a bit of humour first).
Another youtube which demonstrates in support of Helder's statement that evolution does not explain everything. In this youtube it actually shows how evolutionary theory has hindered scientific pursuit by making the wrong assumptions.
I thought I would check your link on a critique of Humphreys (who I don't know, but have watched one video from him on starlight, expansion of the universe and found it lacking in detail, but interesting...). Your link author, DE Thoomas, discredited himself in my eyes very rapidly by using a very poor inappropriate example: "It's like looking at three estimates of the "maximum" distance from Albuquerque to Los Angeles: a thousand miles, 100 miles, and 10 feet. By Humphreys' logic, the smallest "maximum" distance (10 feet) is the best, most accurate value, because it "fits comfortably within the maximum possible" values! " This example reveals a very poor understanding of the process of measuring age, and it reveals a poor understanding of what Humphreys and others are trying to do. A much better example would be using travel time vs eyesight vs a measuring tape vs anecdotes to measure distance. So for example if you said it took ten hours to travel from one city to another, you would need to know the method of travel. If it was by air, you would need to know the speed and direction of the wind, the speed of travel, whether it was a straight route or circuitous. If you merely estimated distance from the air or from a mountain top by eyesight, or if you based distance on stories of settlers who travelled by covered wagon, you might get different distances. Humphreys is merely making arguments about what type of measurements are the most verifiable and the most accurate. And measuring time backwards is not nearly as simple or conclusive as measuring distance. Using one radioactive decay rate to verify another, would seem to open to the possibility of initial conditions being inaccurately assumed for all methods, or that all decay rates were more or less similarly affected by some external conditions. It would seem to be better to verify these methods by other unrelated non-radioactive decay methods which involved different mechanisms entirely. I think that is what Humphreys is trying to do.
Thomas mentions that C14 cannot be used to measure ages more than 50,000 years. Yet they can measure a 16 fold increase in atmospheric carbon that supposedly existed 440 million years ago. But they have no idea whether C14 ratios were similar or not at that time? They seem to miss the whole point of Humphreys argument that when ratios change, this affects the assumed or apparent age. We already know that nuclear explosions in the 1940s and 1950s have required adjustments in the way C14 is used to determine age. But we know about those effects. How do we eliminate the possibility of similar or larger events which may have happened in the past , which we do not have a record of?
Your DE Thomas also makes claims that Humphreys example of salt accumulation in the ocean as a way of measuring earth age is faulty, but uses an inappropriate example again. He gives no indication of how the ocean could lose salt on a regular basis, other than a mere presumption, so his comparison to snow fall is invalid.
In any case, I have no doubt that Humphreys has made and will make hpothesis that will fall short, and that will need to be changed. But I find that he has an open mind to possibilities that evolutionists are inherently reluctant to consider. So I wish him well.
In any case, no matter how you look at this whole debate, from a scientific point of view it certainly stimulates questions, opens possibilities, and forces a concentration questioning assumptions. From a faith perspective, it forces us to consider how God created things, and reveals the possibility that even materialistic science can be used as a tool to divert us from God. I appreciate your challenges of the YEC; they need to maintain integrity as much as they challenge the evolutionists to defend theirs.
Norman, now you are at least addressing some discussable points, rather than vague generalities and ad hominems. Thankyou for that. When Jesus said, in the beginning (of time) it was not so, for God created them male and female, and the two shall become one, he was refering to the Genesis event, right? In the beginning. Yes, the entire week of creation was part of that beginning, the beginning of how the earth operates and is maintained. You could argue that the beginning was before the week of creation, but then you are misappropriating the meaning of the word in order to argue with Jesus, right? And you would seem to be using the word very specifically not to refer to the creation week at all, which does not make much sense in the context. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Then we get a description of how that happened. We get the beginning of everything, of separation of earth and water, of light, of stars, plants, animals, fish, and humans. All of that week was a beginning, according to scripture.
The other point was made in Rom 5:12, "as by one man sin came into the world, and death by sin ..." You must admit it is difficult to reconcile this with a whole bunch of animal or human death before the fall of man.
Your other example about what Paul said about marriage... yes, Paul did intend, by the Spirit of God, a mutual submission of all of us to each other under the grace of God. But he also intended to recognize a difference between men and women, which was explicitly explained in the difference between the instructions to respect vs love, and also in the example he used of Eve falling into disobedience first, and in men loving wives as Christ loved the church, and wives respecting their husband as the church submits to Christ. Mutual love does not rule out specific roles, but puts those roles into perspective, as Paul pointed out.
You say that Jesus knowledge was limited, including about the process of creation. But this contradicts what John 1 says about Jesus being there in the beginning, with God. That Jesus himself was the Word by which the creation happened. Now yes, Jesus did indicate sometimes that somethings related to judgement and his own return were known to the Father only. But this doesn't mean that therefore He had to forget what He was involved in before.
You can speculate on things, but the weight of the evidence seems to lean in a different direction. I would say that Ian Juby is entitled to disagree with Pat Robertson, and he raises many valid points about fossils, rock layers, and rock dating, that Pat Robertson might be interested in thinking about.
Jeremy, strip mining does seem a bit drastic, but it will be reclaimed... and still be more productive than some natural canadian shield rock scapes. I was even wondering whether we could grow crops on some of the reclaimed areas... just wondering. yes, the north american fleet is relatively inefficient, but that's probably because we like bigger cars to carry stuff, and we have sleepers on most long haul trucks, and we don't use buses like they do in Europe cities. Double deckers everywhere in Dublin and London, for example. More buses than cars almost, it seems. But most homes are brick row housing there also, packed like sardines into streets, without yards, or with postage sized front yards, mostly. Some larger homes, with tall stone fences around them... and garages large enough to accomodate two bicycles, side by side...
Most of the open pit oilsands is already in operation now. From now on it will be insitu bitument, with still a large footprint because of all the injection wells and extraction wells, but without surface mining, and so a much smaller footprint. New technology being discovered all the time, including alternatives to steam injection. Yes, it will be nice to have more alternatives to fossil fuels, but it will still take fossil fuels to create many of those alternatives. In the meantime, we ought to make the transport of these fuels as energy efficient as possible, thus reducing ghg.
They are obviously not the same. Unless you think only one denomination, or one local church is 'the church". The church is the people of God, the body of Christ. The institutional is a particular manifestation of that in a particular time and place. I think the principles should be the same, but sometimes there is more discipline for example between church groups than within church groups. Sometimes the confessions are professed more by one church, but practiced more by another church that does not have them down on paper. Sometimes the best corporate worship is biblically practiced in a non-building setting, where people(two or three prophets) take turns in speaking, where each one shares a word, or a hymn or spiritual song, or a prayer.
A certificate of incorporation is not a bad thing, but if we think the certificate is the most important part of authenticity or legitimacy, then we certainly have it wrong.
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
Richard, I sense also a bit of an emotional reaction to some of these discussions. Maybe like, "do we really have to get all so wrung out about this debate?" I sense you want peace (which is a good thing) and not strife. You want people's faith to hold together, and not be sidetracked by empirical arguments. You also want a focus on spirit, as opposed to "facts", a spiritual/emotional connection with a good God, instead of a concentration and focus on cold facts and truths.
I understand all of this, and I empathize with it. But I also believe that we are to worship God in Spirit, and in Truth. If we neglect truth under the guise of spirit, we will eventually discover that we have lost the spirit, and gained a false spirit. I know this from discussions with buddhists and with bahai and with moslems. It is the spirit of truth that is given to us, not the spirit of falsehood. Annanias and Sapphira died for no other reason than that they followed the spirit of falsehood; they lied about the empirical facts.
It is absolutely important and essential to know and believe and sense/feel that God is good, and God is love. This should become part of the blood flowing in our veins. It should be the essence of every word coming from our mouths. But it is the truth of this statement as found in scripture, that helps us to understand that God is good even when we do not feel that God is good in our personal lives, or in the lives of our friends or in the lives of strangers.
It is falsehood and evil that wants us to put truth on the back shelf compared to the goodness of God. But it is a false dichotomy (I am speaking more broadly than just Genesis 1, but the principle applies).
If God is good, how can he allow evil? If God is good, how can he allow the flood? If God is good, how can He allow eternal punishment?
But God must be true to Himself. If we understand that, then we can understand God's goodness.
And we must be true to God.
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
Rinse and hang dry - is that really your name? My previous post is out of sequence because you added three other posts. In response to your accusation of me not reading the entire article, you are mistaken, I had already read it and I referred to it too. You should read this statement matson made, "Some of the geologic periods may be missing, either because they were never laid down at that location or because they have since eroded away. "
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
Norman, this particular youtube is also very relevant to this discussion, as it shows how some "proof" for evolution is simply false, as well as relates to the reaction of christian students to the teachings of evolution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4wJsD6ETks
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
I appreciate your comments, Norman.
Posted in: Great Article: Is Foreign Aid Bad for Africa?
It seems to me that education is a greater gift than teashirts. An education that is self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. And of course, faith. What a gift that is. Of course, God has to give it. But he can use us to deliver it.
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
Sorry to put in three posts here in a row.... but I came across an excellent expose of evolutionary paleotology, put together by Street Church Adelaide. Youtube - "Evolution - A Crumbling Theory ( StreetChurch Adelaide )
Facts are not always facts, even when it comes to empirical science. Evil and falsehood not only wants to pervert scriptural truths, but it perverts scientific and "natural" evidence as well, if the motivation is there.
" ""
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
In regards to radio-active dating methods you should check out these two sites, highlighting that sometimes methods have an error range of millions and hundreds of millions of years. " youtube.com/watch?v=3wMV8Hw99yg&feature=relm fu" on C14
or: youtube.com/watch?v=bGB-PfFSV2w&feature=relm fu on other rock dating methods. (you have to get past a bit of humour first).
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
Another youtube which demonstrates in support of Helder's statement that evolution does not explain everything. In this youtube it actually shows how evolutionary theory has hindered scientific pursuit by making the wrong assumptions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUlLp0xmsZ0&feature=relmfu
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
I thought I would check your link on a critique of Humphreys (who I don't know, but have watched one video from him on starlight, expansion of the universe and found it lacking in detail, but interesting...). Your link author, DE Thoomas, discredited himself in my eyes very rapidly by using a very poor inappropriate example: "It's like looking at three estimates of the "maximum" distance from Albuquerque to Los Angeles: a thousand miles, 100 miles, and 10 feet. By Humphreys' logic, the smallest "maximum" distance (10 feet) is the best, most accurate value, because it "fits comfortably within the maximum possible" values! " This example reveals a very poor understanding of the process of measuring age, and it reveals a poor understanding of what Humphreys and others are trying to do. A much better example would be using travel time vs eyesight vs a measuring tape vs anecdotes to measure distance. So for example if you said it took ten hours to travel from one city to another, you would need to know the method of travel. If it was by air, you would need to know the speed and direction of the wind, the speed of travel, whether it was a straight route or circuitous. If you merely estimated distance from the air or from a mountain top by eyesight, or if you based distance on stories of settlers who travelled by covered wagon, you might get different distances. Humphreys is merely making arguments about what type of measurements are the most verifiable and the most accurate. And measuring time backwards is not nearly as simple or conclusive as measuring distance. Using one radioactive decay rate to verify another, would seem to open to the possibility of initial conditions being inaccurately assumed for all methods, or that all decay rates were more or less similarly affected by some external conditions. It would seem to be better to verify these methods by other unrelated non-radioactive decay methods which involved different mechanisms entirely. I think that is what Humphreys is trying to do.
Thomas mentions that C14 cannot be used to measure ages more than 50,000 years. Yet they can measure a 16 fold increase in atmospheric carbon that supposedly existed 440 million years ago. But they have no idea whether C14 ratios were similar or not at that time? They seem to miss the whole point of Humphreys argument that when ratios change, this affects the assumed or apparent age. We already know that nuclear explosions in the 1940s and 1950s have required adjustments in the way C14 is used to determine age. But we know about those effects. How do we eliminate the possibility of similar or larger events which may have happened in the past , which we do not have a record of?
Your DE Thomas also makes claims that Humphreys example of salt accumulation in the ocean as a way of measuring earth age is faulty, but uses an inappropriate example again. He gives no indication of how the ocean could lose salt on a regular basis, other than a mere presumption, so his comparison to snow fall is invalid.
In any case, I have no doubt that Humphreys has made and will make hpothesis that will fall short, and that will need to be changed. But I find that he has an open mind to possibilities that evolutionists are inherently reluctant to consider. So I wish him well.
In any case, no matter how you look at this whole debate, from a scientific point of view it certainly stimulates questions, opens possibilities, and forces a concentration questioning assumptions. From a faith perspective, it forces us to consider how God created things, and reveals the possibility that even materialistic science can be used as a tool to divert us from God. I appreciate your challenges of the YEC; they need to maintain integrity as much as they challenge the evolutionists to defend theirs.
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
Norman, now you are at least addressing some discussable points, rather than vague generalities and ad hominems. Thankyou for that. When Jesus said, in the beginning (of time) it was not so, for God created them male and female, and the two shall become one, he was refering to the Genesis event, right? In the beginning. Yes, the entire week of creation was part of that beginning, the beginning of how the earth operates and is maintained. You could argue that the beginning was before the week of creation, but then you are misappropriating the meaning of the word in order to argue with Jesus, right? And you would seem to be using the word very specifically not to refer to the creation week at all, which does not make much sense in the context. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Then we get a description of how that happened. We get the beginning of everything, of separation of earth and water, of light, of stars, plants, animals, fish, and humans. All of that week was a beginning, according to scripture.
The other point was made in Rom 5:12, "as by one man sin came into the world, and death by sin ..." You must admit it is difficult to reconcile this with a whole bunch of animal or human death before the fall of man.
Your other example about what Paul said about marriage... yes, Paul did intend, by the Spirit of God, a mutual submission of all of us to each other under the grace of God. But he also intended to recognize a difference between men and women, which was explicitly explained in the difference between the instructions to respect vs love, and also in the example he used of Eve falling into disobedience first, and in men loving wives as Christ loved the church, and wives respecting their husband as the church submits to Christ. Mutual love does not rule out specific roles, but puts those roles into perspective, as Paul pointed out.
You say that Jesus knowledge was limited, including about the process of creation. But this contradicts what John 1 says about Jesus being there in the beginning, with God. That Jesus himself was the Word by which the creation happened. Now yes, Jesus did indicate sometimes that somethings related to judgement and his own return were known to the Father only. But this doesn't mean that therefore He had to forget what He was involved in before.
You can speculate on things, but the weight of the evidence seems to lean in a different direction. I would say that Ian Juby is entitled to disagree with Pat Robertson, and he raises many valid points about fossils, rock layers, and rock dating, that Pat Robertson might be interested in thinking about.
Posted in: Climate Change - Wither Now?
Jeremy, strip mining does seem a bit drastic, but it will be reclaimed... and still be more productive than some natural canadian shield rock scapes. I was even wondering whether we could grow crops on some of the reclaimed areas... just wondering. yes, the north american fleet is relatively inefficient, but that's probably because we like bigger cars to carry stuff, and we have sleepers on most long haul trucks, and we don't use buses like they do in Europe cities. Double deckers everywhere in Dublin and London, for example. More buses than cars almost, it seems. But most homes are brick row housing there also, packed like sardines into streets, without yards, or with postage sized front yards, mostly. Some larger homes, with tall stone fences around them... and garages large enough to accomodate two bicycles, side by side...
Most of the open pit oilsands is already in operation now. From now on it will be insitu bitument, with still a large footprint because of all the injection wells and extraction wells, but without surface mining, and so a much smaller footprint. New technology being discovered all the time, including alternatives to steam injection. Yes, it will be nice to have more alternatives to fossil fuels, but it will still take fossil fuels to create many of those alternatives. In the meantime, we ought to make the transport of these fuels as energy efficient as possible, thus reducing ghg.
Posted in: Of Elephants and Rabbits: Church Multiplication
They are obviously not the same. Unless you think only one denomination, or one local church is 'the church". The church is the people of God, the body of Christ. The institutional is a particular manifestation of that in a particular time and place. I think the principles should be the same, but sometimes there is more discipline for example between church groups than within church groups. Sometimes the confessions are professed more by one church, but practiced more by another church that does not have them down on paper. Sometimes the best corporate worship is biblically practiced in a non-building setting, where people(two or three prophets) take turns in speaking, where each one shares a word, or a hymn or spiritual song, or a prayer.
A certificate of incorporation is not a bad thing, but if we think the certificate is the most important part of authenticity or legitimacy, then we certainly have it wrong.