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Featured Evolutionary Creationism

Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by quantumfaith, Dec 26, 2014.

  1. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

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    Hardin says:
    Has macro evolution ever been experimentally demonstrated?
     
  2. Jordan Kurecki

    Jordan Kurecki Well-Known Member
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    You cannot believe the bible and believe in evolution.

    Sin and death entered the world through Adam.

    God looked at his world and called it very good.. Animals dying is not very good.
     
  3. Jordan Kurecki

    Jordan Kurecki Well-Known Member
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    BTW.. Plants are not alive in a scriptural sense by the way, they do not have a "living soul" or "Nephesh" in the Hebrew...

    So if you're gonna try to argue that the eating of plants by Adam and Eve constituted death...well you can't.
     
  4. Jordan Kurecki

    Jordan Kurecki Well-Known Member
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    Presenting Evolution as a way God created everything is wicked and ungodly and based on unbelief in the word of God.

    Apart from the scientific problems of evolution, it contradicts scripture.
     
  5. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    I disafree with you in the strongest possible terms while still attempting to mainta in some semblance of decorum.
     
  6. InTheLight

    InTheLight Well-Known Member
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    Fixed your post to reflect what the Bible actually says.

    If animal death is "not very good" why then does God repeatedly use the sacrifice of animals as sin coverings, passover, and the forgiveness of sins?
     
  7. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    I am not ARGUING anything. I am attempting to give YOU something to consider and contemplate. And YES I am fully convinced that death existed before the fall of mankind into sin and disobedience.

    My greatest concern is for young people who so often leave the church, and in many ways abandon their faith when they are confronted with science, evolution and the like. I want them to know that they can indeed maintain and grow in their faith without holding onto the YEC (Ken Ham) position regarding origins.

    I have spent my entire career and professional life working with such students and I have counseled many who had walked away from their faith and heritage because of such tensions. I want them to know that there are thinking, rational, educated people of faith who struggle and seek answer and ponder such questions.
     
  8. Deacon

    Deacon Well-Known Member
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    :thumbs::thumbs::thumbs:

    Youth today are often presented with an terrible decision: can they follow a religious teaching that says they can not believe what they are convinced is true.

    Rob
     
  9. matt wade

    matt wade Well-Known Member

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    I am not ARGUING anything. I am attempting to give YOU something to consider and contemplate.

    You've spent your entire career trying to create Christians who don't believe God's Word is true. Do you also counsel them that Jesus was not born of a virgin, because it is scientifically impossible? How about when Jesus rose from the grave? Do you explain that away as something that is not necessary for them to believe?
     
  10. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    Oh yes Matt why don't you just toss out hand grenades of invectives. Keep on making your childish claims. No one has addressed the virgin birth or resurrection.
     
  11. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    Sorry Deacon.....I do am not following your thought.
     
  12. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

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    Still curious quantum!

    Has macro evolution ever been experimentally demonstrated?
     
  13. matt wade

    matt wade Well-Known Member

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    The point is, when you start tossing out parts of the Bible because they aren't scientific or intellectual enough, where will you stop? Call me simple minded, or nonintellectual if you will, but I believe that the entire Bible is true. If God is powerful enough to accomplish some of the miracles, he is powerful enough to accomplish all of the miracles.

    It aggravates me immensely that you are proud of the fact that you teach the youth of today that they don't need to believe in the miracles of the Bible. I will not mince words about this. You are contributing the the decline of the church today.
     
  14. HankD

    HankD Well-Known Member
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    Personally, creative evolution is (IMO) an oxymoron and cannot be harmonized with scripture. However I don't question anyone's faith who holds to this theory because they do give God the glory for His creation.


    HankD
     
  15. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    I am going to be careful what I say here as part of me wishes to respond more viscerally. I am not calling you simple minded. I do not take away anything, power, authority, grandeur or sovereignty from God by taking and sharing a position of evolutionary creation. It aggravates ME immensely the expression of your pride. I have NEVER set aside the miracles of scripture. Unless you think it NOT a miracle that God has the ability to create from his word and watch it all unfold (anthropomorphism).

    My point....disagree....fine but refrain from referring to me as evil, wicked, godless etc in the "round about" way that you do.

    I am a "sinner saved by grace and faith" EXACTLY like YOU.
     
  16. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    Humility (by us) and Praise (for God)
    The Bible clearly states that God used miracles in creating the universe and in salvation history, but is less clear about miracles in formative history, so each view — proposing a formative history with or without miracles, with two modes of action or only one — seems compatible with what the Bible clearly teaches. Most of the arguments above (all except those based on atheistic theology) are rational, but none seems strong enough to negate what we learn by a scientific study of nature, in our efforts to determine if the universe actually IS capable of total self-assembly by natural process.
    By using the evidence and logic of science, we can try to determine whether everything could be produced by divinely designed natural process (as claimed in theistic evolution) or if (as claimed in old-earth creation) God also used occasional miraculous-appearing divine action. But with our current state of knowledge it seems impossible to know with certainty.
    Therefore, instead of criticizing either view as being "less worthy" it seems wise to adopt a humble attitude. Each of us should admit, like Job, that "surely I speak of things I do not understand, things too wonderful for me to know," and we should decide that God's plan for design-and-creation was wonderful and is worthy of our praise, whether he did it with two modes of action or one.
    When science helps us discover any aspect of God's clever design for self-assembly in nature — for example, how a balance of forces lets stars (like our sun) operate for billions of years, and how this operation eventually produced the atoms that form our bodies and our planet (yes, we and our home are made from stardust) — we should praise God. We should also praise God for miracles, in salvation history or formative history. Whether a feature of the universe (stars or stardust, first life or complex life) was created by natural process and/or by miracle, we can praise God for his intelligence, power, and wisdom, for what he created and how he created it.

    applications: A proponent of old-earth creation (or young-earth creation) should be willing to praise God for designing a universe that was totally self-assembling by natural process, with no formative miracles, in case this is how He did it. Similarly, a proponent of evolutionary creation should be willing to praise God for using both modes of creative action, for cleverly designing nature to produce most phenomena without miracles, and for powerfully doing miracles when natural process was not sufficient, since this might be the way He did it.

    Appropriate Humility
    In theology and science, our humility should be appropriate — not too little, and not too much. We can make some claims, but not others, with confidence.
    For the WHEN of creation, scientific confidence is justified, while theological humility (regarding our interpretations of what Genesis teaches about timing) is justified.
    For the HOW of creation, scientific humility and theological humility are both justifiable, so Christians should be humble about God's methods of creation. You and I should say in public — and believe in private, in our hearts and minds — that "IF God created using another method (differing from the way I think He created), then God is worthy of our praise."
    But this humility (if... then...) is compatible with also explaining why we think a particular view is most likely to be true. We can be humble while we explain — using arguments based on theology and science, based on our interpretations of scripture and nature — why we think one view is more plausible than other views.
    We should respect each other, but respect does not require agreement. We can respect someone and their views, while vigorously criticizing their views. If we are searching for truth, we should avoid the intellectual laziness of postmodern relativism, because for most questions about origins a skillful use of evidence and logic can be a valuable source of knowledge, leading to improved understanding.
    For dedicated Christians who care for both people and ideas, the goal is an appropriate humility that requires a balance between two desirable qualities — confidence (which if overdeveloped can become rude arrogance) and humility (which can become timid relativism or aggressive postmodernism) — that are in tension. But most of us tend to err in the direction of overconfidence in our own theories, so trying to develop the virtue of modest humility usually has a beneficial effect. {more about appropriate humility when interpreting the two books of God}

    Humility and Love
    When we ask "HOW did God create?" we cannot know for certain what the truth is, so humility is justified. But even when Christians disagree about the details of creation, we are brothers and sisters in Christ, and we can join together in our praise of the creator, joyously proclaiming that "you are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being. (Revelation 4:11)"
    How does God want us to treat each other? Jesus said, "As I have loved you, so you must love one another. If you have love for one another, then everyone will know that you are my disciples. (John 13:34-35)"


    http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/te-cr.htm
     
  17. Deacon

    Deacon Well-Known Member
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    Biblical faith and science do not have to be at odds with each other - in fact, they shouldn't be at odds with each other.

    God revealed himself in both scripture and in the world he created.

    We shouldn't present youth (or any other believers) with a dilemma suggesting that their biblical beliefs about the world are at odds with what they see in the world around them and they must make a choice between the two.

    John Walton gives a talk called Genesis Through Ancient Eyes [LINK] that presents his views on the perceived conflict and how he try's to solve the problem.

    Rob
     
  18. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    I guess, I have not been clear enough. I completely concur, as a matter of fact just began reading "Lost World of Genesis".

    I hope I have never communicated that the revelation of nature, under constant discovery of mankind, is opposition to the revelation of God and scripture. Teleology, I think is perhaps the crux of matter relative to tension between the naturalist and the theist.
     
  19. Van

    Van Well-Known Member
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    Questions for the scientific minds of men:
    1) If the earth (and our solar system) formed from a presolar nebula which contained ejecta from at least one prior supernova, how do we know our dates do not reflect the age of nebula debris formations?

    2) If all the species evolved from other species, from what did the first species evolve?
     
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