The same reason Don Quixote attacked windmills?
If that is how a Christian argue, perhps I should change religions.
(or maybe it isn’t how a Christian should argue)
Richard
If we take Scripture seriously, as being authoritative, then our goal must be to understand what it means on its terms, not imposing our views on it. As C. S. Lewis (among others) has pointed out, one very helpful approach is to read what others have thought, especially from significantly different times and cultures. Not that they are more inerrant than we are, but they have different biases and so may help to expose our own. Fundamentalist approaches, whether the unthinkingly dogmatic imposition of a particular theological view such as creation science, source criticism, etc. or the unthinkingly dogmatic imposition of a particular atheological view like the pretensions of militant atheism, do not do justice to the complexity of the rext and the wide scope of God’s message to us.
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it would be very intelligent of you to read the references i have provided above…surely you are not so Darwinian evolutionary stubborn minded that you cannot bring yourself to actually read them? (because if you did, you wouldnt need to ask that question as its answered in the references)
Hi Richard,
im not understanding what you mean with the above? How is it related to the quoted part of my post you have referenced there?
Are you suggesting that you believe that God wont destroy the earth and kill all humanity that remains evil (unforgiven sinners) after the second coming?
I ask that, because if my above conclusion is what you are promoting, then id suggest that there are a couple of problems there:
1. Christ said “as in the days of Noah, people were eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage and a flood came and destroyed them all…so shall it be with the second coming of the son of man”
2. The prophecy in the book of Revelation (written 60 years after christs death on the cross) says "and i saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the former things have passed away. (this is all above the complete erradication of evil from the heaven and the earth…there is no doubt about that theology)
ah…gotcha…so please explain to me this…
prior to the invention (if you will) of Darwins theory of Evolution, what was the general theology on biblical interpretation regarding the age of the earth? Was it not as written? (rhetorical question as the answer was very definately yes).
There is no point trying to argue you way around that, i have already (and can do again) posted a reference from an Islamic scholar from the 1300s AD.
So given that prior to Darwin, the concensus was the earth was about 6000 years old (going by biblical genealogies), then how can you possibly support your above complain without also implicating yourself and all of TEism in that conundrum (ie that one must not input ones own views on it)?
You need to look in the mirror, with Darwins “on the origins of species” right next to your face and then tell yourself you are not inputing your own views on the bible genealogies and Genesis chapter 2 (second creation).
If you were truly honest with yourself, you simply cant ignore that lie there.
Roy, instead of timewasting with vacuous opinion, please provide references that support your claim there.
AS usual, not a single reference in support of your claim. Honestly St Roymond, i have serious doubts that you actually are a reader of the Bible at all…you rarely if ever quote any of it that supports your claims when disagreeing with me on anything. That is seriously questionable mate…you need to really think hard about that habit of yours there as there is no credibility unless you reference from the very book you claim provides you with your knowledge of Christ and Salvation…because as it is, i dont think you actually use it for any of that.
Now to correct you on that statement about Christs parables…we know for a fact that a parable is…well exactly that…a parable!!! A parable never claims times, dates, places, names…its clearly meant to illustrate a deep meaning using a simple memorable story. Please dont timewaste with nonsense…parables have nothing to do with the the historical biblical lineages!
You know what is really interesting in all of the responses to my post…not a single response has even tried to see if the references provided support or reject my conclusions!
You know what that means…you either cant be bothered studying outside of your own narrow minded world view or, you know full well your goose is cooked there The smart TEists here know full well that if we can prove the existence of Eber (Shems Great great grandson) beyond the balance of probabilities, then its absurd to try to continue to promote the belief that Noah didnt exist and that the flood never happened.
The fact remains, because of the Arminian tablets to Amenhotep, we are able to conclusively show that the Israelites were attacking the southern area of Canaan in the 1350-1400 BC period.
BTW if any of you had actually watched the James Cameron documentary, you would also note that they offer an interesting scientific view on the 10 plagues of Egypt…the eruption of a volcano in the Mediteranian around 1500 BC!
If you are looking for biblical references that describe the controversy over what constitutes the canon of scripture, I would challenge you to produce biblical references to the table of contents of the canon.
Instead, rather than insulting Roy, make sure you have the actual facts.
Various biblical canons have developed through debate and agreement on the part of the religious authorities of their respective faiths and denominations. Some books, such as the Jewish–Christian gospels, have been excluded from various canons altogether, but many disputed books are considered to be biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical by many, while some denominations may consider them fully canonical. Differences exist between the Hebrew Bible and Christian biblical canons, although the majority of manuscripts are shared in common.
Different religious groups include different books in their biblical canons, in varying orders, and sometimes divide or combine books. The Jewish Tanakh (sometimes called the Hebrew Bible) contains 24 books divided into three parts: the five books of the Torah (‘teaching’); the eight books of the Nevi’im (‘prophets’); and the eleven books of Ketuvim (‘writings’). It is composed mainly in Biblical Hebrew, with portions in Aramaic. The Septuagint (in Koine Greek), which closely resembles the Hebrew Bible but includes additional texts, is used as the Christian Greek Old Testament, at least in some liturgical contexts. The first part of Christian Bibles is the Old Testament, which contains, at minimum, the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible divided into 39 (Protestant) or 46 (Catholic [including deuterocanonical works]) books that are ordered differently. The second part is the New Testament, almost always containing 27 books: the four canonical gospels, Acts of the Apostles, 21 Epistlesor letters and the Book of Revelation. The Catholic Church and Eastern Christian churches hold that certain deuterocanonical booksand passages are part of the Old Testament canon. The Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian churches may have differences in their lists of accepted books.
Some Christian groups have other canonical books (open canon) which are considered holy scripture but not part of the Bible.[2]
The rest of the article is worth reading, as well.
Kendel
we can go into a large number of Museums across the globe and actually see these undisputed artefacts…in answer to that enormous problem with your entire world view there, you wish to lean on the notion that the Bible canon is disputed as your evdience in support of Old Earth theology?
The Christian biblical canon was ratified over a long period of time…its been debated at length by our forefathers many many centuries ago…given these individuals mostly lived at a time far closer to the original source, its pointless trying to say we in modern times have a better understanding of what the writers intended to include in their works. The reality is that the further we get away from the source, the less accurate the message becomes (that is proven fact in academia btw…not just biblical theology).
Anyway, for the sake of addressing timewasting grumbling with some common sense and actual facts here… the following are some of the key moments (if you will) in the compilation of the Bible canon:
Council of Rome 382 AD
Hebrew Bible 2nd Century AD
Council of Florence 1442
Councils of Hippo and Carthage 393-419 AD
Council of Trent 1546 AD
The Council of Trent is the most significant in terms of the final version, obviously.
We can’t simply rewrite the bible canon because the current one doesn’t align with our modern beliefs (and make no mistake, Darwinian Evolutionary influence on Biblical theology is modern…not ancient!)
im suspecting that part of the inferred issue in the above pertains to the apocrypha as part of the canon. For me, the answer is rather simple: I’m not Catholic. If you want to talk about the apocrypha as part of the Bible canon, we had better start another thread about that i think, suffice to say, that has absolutely no bearing on whether or not the genealogies in the Bible and its various historical timelines are authentic…im providing EXTERNAL EVIDENCE that supports the Biblical timeline here…so arguing about the canon is a side issue without any relevance…its rather ridiculous actually as it completely misses the point of the evidence its supposed to be addressing!
BTW Kendel, bringing up the Jewish Tanakh…that has nothing to do with the Christian bible canon…jews did not follow Christianity. You are playing games there with that kind of rubbish. The fact remains, either you are Christian and follow the bible (as decided in the Counil of Trent) or you are not Christian and dont follow the Christian Bible. So which are you there? (and please dont get angry at me for demanding you take a side there…this is your fault for aligning yourself with a ridiculously stupid argument …attempting to cry foul of the accepted Christian church bible canon…for me, that is throwing the writings of the God we supposedly believe in under the bus! )
For me the bible canon as we have is the inspired word of God. I know that what we have is authentic because i can check out modern bibles alongside some very significant manuscripts (Sinaticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus), the dead sea scrolls, and many many fragmented pieces of ancient bible writings…by far, and i mean by far, the vast majority of those ancient texts that we have align very closely with modern biblical translations in use today.
Any claim to the contrary is ignorant of the actual facts. If you dont wish to believe me, then id suggest that you start studying people who actually do know…scholars such as Dr Dan Wallace (he is the foremost expert on the topic)
i will bet that few here can bring themselves to read Dan Wallace…because his expertise totally trashes most of the stupid claims on these forums on the topics of textual criticism. i would challenge any of you, if you are truly honest with yourself and with your Christianity, to study Dr Wallace.
Now before any of you misinterpret something i said earlier about “the further we get away from the source the less accuracy we have”…that is not dissagreeing with the scholarly claim that its because of the massive number of different bible translations that we have that we can know we have the accurate source writing. This simply means that somewhere contained within those various writings we do have, is the “original”!