4 Things Americans Can Learn About Faith and Evolution From Great Britain and Canada

@Bill_Smith:

At this point in the discussion on Hittites, I’m not sure if either one of you would be willing to agree with the author’s very persuasive conclusion:

Hittites and Hethites: A Proposed Solution to an Etymological Conundrum
Nov 08, 2011 - by Bryant G. Wood, PhD

www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2011/11/08/Hittitesand-Hethites-A-Proposed-Solution-to-an-Etymological-Conundrum.aspx

"The problem is one of semantics and terminology. As the term Hittites for the Indo-
Europeans of Anatolia and north Syria is firmly embedded in the scholarly and popular
literature, that name cannot be changed.[56] Because the Bible writers
distinguished between the two groups, this should be reflected in our English
translations. I suggest an ecumenical solution to the problem. Since the
demonyms ~yTixi (ḥittîm) and tYOTixi (ḥittîyōt) refer to the Indo-Europeans
of Anatolia and northern Syria, I propose retaining the
Protestant term “Hittites” for those entities."

"For the ethnonyms yTixi (ḥittî) and tyTixi (ḥittît), on the other hand, the
Roman Catholic term Hethite(s) is the correct choice, since yTixi (ḥittî) is
synonymous with txe-ynEB. (be nê ḥēt) and tyTixih; (haḥittît) is synonymous
with txetAnB. (be nôt ḥēt). "

"If these changes were incorporated into future translations of our English
Bibles, it would clearly distinguish the indigenous descendants of txe (ḥēt)
from the people of Ḫatti and alleviate present misunderstandings."

Yes, I saw that when I read the article. I have also read others who say the same thing. I suppose that I could go back and dig up quotes by Graf and Wellhausen and others to prove my point but I didn’t think it was worth the time. The position given by Singer also bolsters my argument(Singer subscribes to ananachronistic explanation). It is well known, as evidenced by the quote I gave from Albright, that historians have said the Bible is wrong and then they were later proved wrong and the Bible right as more information came to light. I have also witnessed the ridicule of the Bible by those who do not believe it, including by scholars. As far as the different theories on the Hittites, the article may be correct which is why I repeated the link that someone, maybe you(I forget), had posted… As I mentioned in a previous post I had read or thought of some of the possibilities long ago when I was looking into the question. I actually found a short discussion by Yamauchi from 1972 in a book I bought back then that mentions the possibilities that are also discussed in the article by Bryant Wood. It is also discussed in some of my other books.

Bryant’s position may be right. It sounds reasonable to me. There could also be a relationship that traces the both the Hittites and Hethites back to Heth, one of Canaan’s descendants. It could be just a coincidIence that the names are similar, but maybe not. It can get a little tricky when delving into tracing the genealogies and following the historical record for the correlation. Some parts are obvious and others less certain. I would have to look into it again to see what I think.

As I just now posted, it may very well be right. It makes a lot of sense although there could be more to it also as I said in my previous post.

@Bill_Smith

Awwww… now you ruined it. You are going to try to make both types of Hittites tie ultimately to the same references in the Table of Nations?

The Table of Nations in Genesis 10 is hardly historical. It is based on geographical knowledge circa 600’s BCE. And I would hazard a guess that I don’t think there is anything in the Bible that is truly about the Anatolian Hittites … so really, the original critics of the term in the Bible were right for the wrong reasons - - the Hittites that Bible refers to are not the Anatolian type at all.

You assume too much.

You really believe that evolution has NO reasons behind it? None at all?

Do you believe it just emerged out of someone’s imagination? Or that it was conceived of by the Devil and planted in someone’s mind?

NO evidence whatsoever?

Ha, says the other Assumer (@Bill_Smith) that all his interpretations of the Bible must be right…

I notice you didn’t even attempt to defend your position with a single detail.

Hi G.
I asked a question. The respondents have made it clear that they are having a problem with the bible.
It’s always been my understanding that what makes a christian is not someone who was raised in a family which possessed a given ideology, but someone who actually believes God.
As creation is part of the biblical narrative, and clearly so, when someone tells me that I should be more like another group of people, and less like Jesus— I think that’s a credible reason to question their beliefs.

I think they are asking you to see that if your view of the Bible is correct, then you are describing a God that intentionally made thousands of life forms look like they were created through Evolution.

@Steve_Buckley,

Surely we are not so strange as you try to make it sound?

There have been generations of Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Episcopelians, Methodists and even some Baptists who have no problem seeing Evoluton fitting into God’s creation. They have thought about it, they think the Creationists are over-stating their position and they can’t take them seriously.

And they have lived god-filled lives, bringing other people to Jesus, and dying with the confidence that they will meet the creator of the Universe.

You deciding that you need to upset all that doesn’t really seem to fit the context…

The DNA that makes up my genome didn’t exist until I was conceived, and my genome is exclusive to me. Nowhere in time has there been another organism with the DNA sequence found in my genome, nor will there ever be another organism with my genome. I started out as a single cell, and from that single cell I developed through natural means into the person I am today.

I also sense that you reject common ancestry between species, yet it is this same process of mutations and mixing DNA that drives evolution. So why do you reject common ancestry when you accept all of the mechanisms that drive it?[quote=“Bill_Smith, post:241, topic:36748”]
The evidence is that we have never seen anything complex THAT WE KNOW HOW IT CAME TO BE formed without a designer.
[/quote]

Then if we don’t know how these complex things came together you can’t claim that it was created by a designer.[quote=“Bill_Smith, post:241, topic:36748”]
You can go against all of our experience(our science) and have blind faith that living things came about by a process that we have never seen operate, but I choose to believe that our uniform experience is correct and living things did not randomly assemble, there must have been a designer, just like everything else that is complex had to have.
[/quote]

Our experience says that organisms come from other organisms through natural processes.

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3 posts were split to a new topic: Fossils: Evidence of evolution or evidence of a global flood?

I didn’t think I needed to answer this because you probably know my position, but since someone objected later, my answer is that the table of nations is perfectly accurate. It was based on God’s knowledge which goes before 600BC, in fact his knowledge goes long before 1400BC when Moses wrote it, probably using records passed down from the time of Adam.

Your DNA did not exist, but your parents dna did exist and along with your mother’s womb, had everything already in existence to form your dna. Your dna did not come about by random chance, but by the complex machine executing its instructions to form you with the existing materials provided. The natural means of development were a finely tuned complex machine that already existed with all the capabilities to assemble you. They did not have the capability to form a jelly bean, just a human.

Many different species are all the same kind of the Bible. Chihauhuas and Great Danes are both the same kind, although they look a lot different. They both descended from the same dog kind on the ark, probably including wolfs and coyotes as well. Believing that mutations can create a new better kind, is like going into an auto factory that makes fords and blowing up a few machines and expecting the broken factory to start putting out chevys. Mutations just break the complex machine, they do not design a new one. Again, you can believe the nonsense that random chance will design something, like throwing a bomb into a ford factory will make it produce chevys, but that is not how the world works.

You are still missing the point. You can’t absolutely prove anything. Everything could have luckily put itself together, but we have never seen that happen. Everything complex THAT WE KNOW HOW IT CAME TO BE was formed by a designer. You have zero examples of complex things arising by random chance. You can choose to believe that the things that we are arguing about, living organisms(something complex), came about without a designer, but you have no examples of that ever happening. I choose to believe that living organisms came about just like everything else complex came about, by a designer.

Our experience says that organisms come from other organisms(which are complex machines with everything already built in to make a new one) through natural processes(processes executed by a complex machine that has already been built).

@Bill_Smith,

The Table of Nations is accurate for a specific time frame.

If you think it was written in the Bronze Age, it peculiarly predicts settlements that didn’t exist during the Bronze Age but would exist in the Iron Age. And it peculiarly misses settlements that did exist in the Bronze Age, but were gone by the time of the Iron Age.

@Bill_Smith,

How many times have you heard that false statement from the YECs?

You obviously don’t know enough about physics. If you take a cloud of Hydrogen that is large enough, it begins to organize itself purely by means of the gravity it has within its own mass.

At some point, this fuzzy blob of unorganized hydrogen bursts into a nuclear-powered star.

Do you think a fuzzy blob of hydrogen has a brain somewhere?

My genome did arise through random chance, in part. Everyone is born with 50-100 random mutations. Also, everyone agrees that new species evolve from pre-existing species so why do you reject the conclusion that life evolved from a universal common ancestor?[quote=“Bill_Smith, post:299, topic:36748”]
Many different species are all the same kind of the Bible. Chihauhuas and Great Danes are both the same kind, although they look a lot different. They both descended from the same dog kind on the ark, probably including wolfs and coyotes as well. Believing that mutations can create a new better kind, is like going into an auto factory that makes fords and blowing up a few machines and expecting the broken factory to start putting out chevys. Mutations just break the complex machine, they do not design a new one. Again, you can believe the nonsense that random chance will design something, like throwing a bomb into a ford factory will make it produce chevys, but that is not how the world works.
[/quote]

How do you determine if two species belong to the same kind? What criteria do you use?

Secondly, species are different from each other because of mutations. Humans and chimps are separated by 40 million mutations yet each of us is doing just fine. According to you, there should only be a single species with a single genome that doesn’t differ by a single base. Obviously, this isn’t true. We can also see that the differences between genomes matches the patterns that we would expect from random mutations, as shown here. The evidence points to random mutations.

When have we ever observed a supernatural deity creating species?[quote=“Bill_Smith, post:299, topic:36748”]
Our experience says that organisms come from other organisms(which are complex machines with everything already built in to make a new one) through natural processes(processes executed by a complex machine that has already been built).
[/quote]

My parents were built? Really? My grandparents would disagree.

You are mistaken. You can go read the conservative response elsewhere if you would like, but I will not take the time here to give one.

Gravity will definitely pull hydrogen atoms toward each other. I agree that that physical law that exists is not random chance. It is a part of how God created the universe, with the laws of physics operating in it. However, it is not enough to make a log cabin form from pickup sticks. Saying that the amount of organizing that gravity can do is enough to form a complex item is again nonsense. It is like saying that since you saw a cow jump in the field that that proves that cows can jump over the moon.

No one has ever seen anything complex put itself together.

Without going into it further, I believe you will also find that the gas pressure is too high for the gravitational attraction to overcome it to form a star.

Everyone agrees? I don’t and there are quite a few scientists who don’t.

You are arguing in a circle. Kinds are not the same as species and kinds produce more of the same kinds. There is variance allowed within the kind as you can see from the fact that Great Danes and Chihuahuas are the same kind. They do not produce new kinds by mutations. That is the point you are trying to prove, but there is no evidence of it.

We haven’t. I think that is obvious. We have however seen complex items assembled such as chairs and computers. Anytime we have seen a complex item assembled, there is a designer. You are believing complex things assembled by themselves and we have never seen that happen.

Your grandparents would be wrong. The complex machine(actually a pair of them) were created about 6000 years ago. One was named Adam and one was named Eve. God put everything in them - dna, womb, development functions in Eve’s body - to be able to make new people. They didn’t evolve new people but used the built in capability that God put in their bodies.

You said it yourself:
“Your dna did not come about by random chance, but by the complex machine executing its instructions to form you with the existing materials provided.”

That would be species evolving from pre-existing species.[quote=“Bill_Smith, post:304, topic:36748”]
There is variance allowed within the kind as you can see from the fact that Great Danes and Chihuahuas are the same kind. They do not produce new kinds by mutations. That is the point you are trying to prove, but there is no evidence of it.
[/quote]

You still haven’t defined what a kind is, nor how to determine which species belong to a kind, so that term is pretty meaningless. On top of that, how do you explain the physical differences between different kinds, as you see them? Isn’t it due to the differences between the DNA sequences found in their genomes? If genomes can’t be changed without killing the organism, then how do you explain all of those differences between the genomes of species in different kinds?[quote=“Bill_Smith, post:304, topic:36748”]
We have however seen complex items assembled such as chairs and computers. Anytime we have seen a complex item assembled, there is a designer. You are believing complex things assembled by themselves and we have never seen that happen.
[/quote]

We don’t see anyone assembling biological organisms, so your analogy doesn’t work.[quote=“Bill_Smith, post:304, topic:36748”]
The complex machine(actually a pair of them) were created about 6000 years ago. One was named Adam and one was named Eve.
[/quote]

Based on what evidence?

No, you are not a different kind than your parents, nor a new species if you want to use that flawed term.

There is variance allowed within the kind. You can get blonde hair or black hair if the right dna exists in your mother or father. However, if the information is not already there, if your parents have none of the dna for blonde hair, you can’t have it. It won’t just magically evolve by some lucky mutation.

We don’t see any biological organisms evolving either. Anything complex that we know how it came to be has a designer. You can blindly believe that biological organisms came about without a designer, but we have never seen that happen with anything that we know.

If you read my earlier posts you will see that I think that you can prove Christianity and the Bible to be true. The Bible tells you that Adam and Eve were created out of dust and a rib(or side, but probably rib) about 6000 years ago.