So how does God, who is spirit and not physical, “surround” Himself?
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Hokey toot–the more I think, the more I come to the conclusion that God alone will care whether we come to Him–and as many don’t because of lack of experience, abuse, etc–God really knows our hearts, and the belief doesn’t matter so much. He’s got to be better than my own parents, and they were really good at looking at our hearts!
I’m sure that Ham means well. My own pride gets in the way of admitting my own uncertainties, too.
Thanks.
i don’t think Ken Hams schism with the AIG in Australia (now CMI) has any bearing on whether or not the AIG message is sound theology and doctrine. All that does is tell us that Christians, just like any other human being are sinners and treat others poorly with regularity. If we are going to use this BIologos line of criticism, then all Christianity is lost and that only fulfills the aim of Satan.
The AIG schism seemed to come to some here as a surprise…i don’t know why, churches have done this for millennia (take the early Christian church schism between the apostles Paul and Peter)…the church was founded on the idea.
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the bible tells us that God is the centre of all things…everything eminates from Him. If we take the big bang expansion, some state it started from a single point of origin…that would make the origin the centre from which everything came.
I don’t see why you should be concerned about God being the centre of all things. When we look at the book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem will be the centre hub of all life on the new earth and God will make earth His new home…it will become, the centre of the universe. Whether that is really the geometric middle or not i don’t think is relevant is it? Given the universe only exists because God…i would argue that the central power that “holds” the universe is God…so where He is becomes the origin of that eternal power. That is a pretty logical conclusion. I think this is also why some denominations have great difficulty with the death of Christ (as God) on the cross. If God dies, then the universe self destructs so there cannot be a trinitarian belief.
You’re right. I stink at dovetails, which is why I love my biscuit joiner.
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My projects are described as folk art at best. I am definitely not a furniture maker. Of course, my shop tools are pretty rudimentary. Here is a pic of a little rocking horse I just made for a new niece. Simple, but great for a little rug rat, and just took a 4 foot 2x6 and a 4 foot 1x4:
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You should make 3 more so you can have an Apocalypse.
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“AIG is to be forgiven for their manner of reading the bible. They are yet committed to a 19th century pre-scientific worldview. They believe they are true defenders of the Christian faith.”
While the intended point is valid, the worldview is a 17th to 18th century-originating pseudoscientific worldview, probably better labeled as post-scientific. It is the error of scientism, treating purportedly scientific personal reason as the ultimate authority. The success of Newton’s formulas at giving a relatively simple mathematical formula for complex phenomena led to the error of promoting simple formulas for things that don’t actually follow simple formulas, as science and reason were treated as the answers to all problems.
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You remind me here of something that my headmaster said when I was thirteen years old. He said that there are two kinds of subjects: exact subjects such as Maths and Physics, and those which he described as concerning “the vagaries of humans and other living beings.”
One particular error of young earthism is treating exact subjects such as maths and physics as if they were “vagaries” subjects, while at the same time treating “vagaries” subjects such as history, theology, philosophy and linguistics as if they were exact ones.
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Reminds me of convergent vs. divergent thinking. I have often thought that AIG (and some others who take a similar viewpoint on “inerrancy”) end up treating the Bible like it’s a math problem. When you view the Bible like that, it’s easier to view anyone who doesn’t “come up with the same answer” as a “compromiser” because there can only be one correct answer.
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How about a push for honesty when discussing the text?!
Heck, they won’t even agree to objectively look at the original-language text. They hypocritically claim to follow the historical-grammatical method yet determinedly ignore history and abuse grammar.
And in an amazingly large number of cases they can be verified by tree reactions to volcanic eruptions, droughts, and other natural events the dates of which are known from written records.
To get an extra ring requires that the tree would have to experience an interruption of the seasons sufficient to cause its mechanisms so that an extra two seasons (at a minimum) had passed; hurricanes and arctic storms can do it, but even where hurricanes are common an extra ring once every five years is the upper limit.
I seriously doubt that such a result could even be obtained in a laboratory; in the regular world it’s impossible.
In the case of extra tree rings it would require an arctic storm followed by a hurricane every single month!
“Making stuff up” is a required skill for any YECist.
Jesus disagrees; He never mentioned Genesis when He said, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy-burdened…” His invitation doesn’t need Genesis at all, it rests on the fact that ordinary life burdens people and wears them out.
Jesus gave one ^.
Well, that excludes Ken Ham as being mature.
That’s clearly what you want to believe, but it’s not true.
That’s not logical because the first Creation account wasn’t written as history.
Attributed by whom? The text doesn’t do so.
Only to those determined to deny that Moses wrote for his own people.
Not yet they haven’t.
There’s no such division, there’s only honest science and lying science.
That is so laughable it’s astounding that anyone who can read would claim it, for the simple reason that when the Big Bang was first proposed the primary accusation was that it was meant as a tactic to “smuggle God into science”.
You should read more medieval theology. While here and there a scholar or two might have been angling for power, theologians for the most part were just like today’s YECists: they were absolutely certain that they understood God better than anyone else and were determined to show they were correct.
According to a number of ancient scholars, the Hebrew text of Genesis 1 is such evidence.
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That’s actually a statement about this universe, not a universal law. This kind of got drilled into students by one physics professor who regularly used the phrase “Not in this universe, anyway” in response to questions about whether some things are possible or how certain things worked.
How many times do people have to remind you that evolutionary science is not a religion? Every biology professor I had, Christian or otherwise, if they heard you say this would either laugh out loud or shake their had in pity (or both).
You think “We don’t know yet” means science has no anchor? When I was in grad school we learned that there are Hebrew words for which the answer to “What does it mean?” was “We don’t know yet” – does that mean that ancient Hebrew lacks an anchor?
“We don’t know yet” is why we do science in the first place. Indeed it’s the driving force for any field where research is involved – including ancient Hebrew.
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And often, what we don’t know is tightly constrained (i.e. “we know a lot of things that it’s not”):
This is among the most bizarre shells that I have ever found in my research.
I can state with certainty that:
- It is from a gastropod.
- It is probably a juvenile.
- It is not a member of Neogastropoda, or any of the other groups that never look even remotely like it.
- Anders Warén and Phillipe Bouchet also think it looks weird and don’t know what it is, which really says that it’s strange and distinctive.
Beyond that, all I can do is list features.
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What about it? There’s no connection.
Mathematically that makes no sense – beside the fact that the statement “the universe has a point of origin” is inaccurate because it implies that the universe emerged into pre-existent space. To be accurate the statement should read “The universe began as a point” – which as I’ve pointed out is something that ancient Hebrews scholars concluded from Genesis 1.
There is no “point opposite that of origin” because every point in the universe is the “point of origin”.
False. The opening Creation story is the wrong kind of literature to be read that way. That is not opinion, it is fact: we know what literary genre(s) that story uses and there is no literal history there. Thinking that a literal interpretation is correct comes from imposing a flawed worldview onto the text, which in turn comes from arrogant thinking that what the text looks like to a modern reader is what it actually is. That’s an amazing error because even if the account were narrative, that doesn’t make it history, it just makes it narrative, and narrative can be fiction or fantasy or allegory – and it’s impossible to tell just by looking at it.
No it doesn’t, it hinges on the Incarnation.
Genesis 1:1 isn’t even a complete sentence, it’s an introductory clause.
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I went looking for something in response to Walton’s demonology and found this snappy little article on Walton and AiG going demon hunting
Mortenson says that the ANE Hermeneutic, on the other hand, makes the Old Testament assessable only to scholars. This argument is simply nonsensical, and I can prove it pretty easily by just handing Mortenson a copy of the Hebrew Bible and asking him to read and tell me what it says. He won’t be able to—Why? Because he can’t read Hebrew. The English Bible he reads has been translated from Hebrew into English by biblical scholars who have expertise in biblical languages—and part of what is required to translate ancient languages correctly is a knowledge of the ANE culture .
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Ahahaha love the sense of humour.
I trained as an industrial arts high school teacher…i have fond memories of my university lecturer being famous for his “no measure 5 minute dovetail”.
I was never that good but practise certainly helps.
The secret with woodworking is to pair up the mistakes…ie male and female is self correcting. (A lot of irony in that given us blokes i think tend to see our wives as our moral compass. God really does have a hell of a sense of humour i think)
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That would be true if AIG translated their own bible, however, given we use many different bible translations, i dissagree.
Your statement is falsified because any decent scholarly, recognised bible translation read in any language can be identically intepreted by any world view (noting a paraphrase is not a translation). It is not necessary to be christian to understand the bible and that is exactly Gods intention. God uses the bible to reveal Himself to ALL humanity…not just the Christians.
Having said the above, even bibles such as the NWT (an anonymous bible published by Jehovahs Witnesses) can bring people to Christ
Gods word is for all humanity and is timeless. This is one reason why i dissagree with St Roymond on biblical interpretation.
Funny, then, that not a single biology professor I had made that claim; in fact most of them denied it right up front. The word “evolution” embodies the idea that life comes from life.
If that is true, where are all the scientific papers arguing that case? If it was even remotely true the journals would be flooded with such papers! When information arises that negates any significant part of a theory, scientists in every related field would be looking at ways to get in on the new knowledge; for that matter, when something like that happens there will be PhD students who will drop the dissertation they’re working on and switch to something that relates to the new findings.
The answer is “yes” because we know what kinds of literature the opening chapters of Genesis are, and none of them provides any way to assign an age to the Earth.
It’s also “yes” because ancient scholars centuries before Copernicus, scholars proficient in Hebrew, concluded from the text of Genesis 1:
- that the universe is ancient beyond human comprehension and the Earth is old beyond counting
And others concluded from the Old Testament writings:
- that the universe is a trillion years old
- that the Earth is a billion years old
- that the Earth’s age can’t be discovered because up until the creation of humans the days were “divine days” of unfathomable duration
No, because you never showed in scripture where your definition of truth comes from, and because you didn’t bother to ask what kind of literature the Creation stories are and how those literature kinds define truth.
No, the lies com from those who try to impose a modern worldview onto the very ancient scriptures. They claim that truth can only be found where every detail is scientifically and historically accurate – yet cannot show where the scriptures assert that.
We point out quite often where YECists are lying and all they do is double down on their lies, even when it is shown that the YEC lies are the top cause of young people abandoning the faith.
LOL
AiG was founded on lies! Ken Ham took it and built it into what it is by libel, slander, deceit, deception, misrepresentation, and manipulation.
with ancient scholars whose study of the Hebrew text led to them giving a very good layman’s description of the Big Bang a millennium before anyone even knew that we live in a galaxy.
Everyone advocating for YEC needs to repent of the sin of being part of the biggest cause – for at least thirty years – of young people abandoning the faith and others rejecting it.
Absolutely.
I’ve yet to encounter a YECer who even addresses the data that tells us what kind of literature the first Creation story is. They’re thus dishonest (though most don’t understand that, they’ve been deceived) before they even get to the science!
This is a great point, one I can appreciate thanks to a university course in oceanography and another in coastal geology.
I’m not sure I see the connection here.
That said, I’m surprised I missed Sam’s assertion earlier. Given that a fair number of people in our informal “intelligent design” club at university ended up as Christians due to concluding there must be a Designer behind evolution, I got a chuckle from the idea of blaming God for it. These were students who arrived at the university as atheists or agnostics and saw in evolution the glory of God.
Especially since in a good number of those passages the Word is something that is visible and even (arguably) touched.
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A Lutheran priest/pastor I learned much from made the same observation once.