Thank you for your factless opinion. I must say when you actually put a paragraph together you are eloquent. But just know, God loves you Martin even if you don’t think so. God gave me my Turkish translator experience because he knew I would need it during my doubtful years. I am sure he has tried something with you to, even if you can’t now think of what it was.
The Mediterranean flood happened. Everyone knows it. The geologic data does put the rivers mentioned in Genesis as pouring into the eastern Mediterranean. And it is a fact that the Bible said that Eden was in the East–it didn’t say East of what. That is scientific fact. So how did Genesis get that info into it? blind chance?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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You’re welcome gbob. Facts are useless once and only viewed through a flawed, distorting prism. God’s love is in Christ and all the love I receive and am barely able and allowed to give: my wife lets me love her. Not in any ‘God-incidence ([coincidence/]incidents)’.
I have one gob smacking coincidence and the kindness of strangers but none of that is Him interfering in reality. I rely on Him not. His faith must be sufficient for me.
I know the Med flood happened. I’ve known it as long as you. Your use of data and your fact are utterly underwhelming. Genesis has no info except a surprising summary of human social evolution from gatherer-hunter to city slicker via pastoralist thru farmer with metallurgist and musician on the way.
You know, Freedom is a wonderful thing. God’s gift to us. And it means we can all have differing opinions. I won’t bother to try to disabuse you of yours. I am glad your system works for you. This one works for me. We should rejoice in that, brother. But somehow you seem less than pleased that I have found my way. Some how it is important for you to get me to give this up. What is the big deal if I delude myself or you delude yourself? We at least have the freedom to do it. In Christ’s love.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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Jesus’ racism (looking back down the wrong end of the telescope in modern hindsight - not the article, which is excellent, but the charge).
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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gbob. Thank you. Brother. I once bought the complete works of Francis Schaeffer, going cheap. No wonder. I read the first page and no more. He attacked the culture that birthed him. Apologetics are best done from a position of… apology, of humility. As rhetorical devices. You don’t have to mean it : ) Telling people with the vinegar that they are insane cowards will not catch flies. And it’s extremely suggestive of fear and its projection. I made a friend of a brilliant atheist by being agreeable. Being aggressive or even defensive would have ruined everybody’s day. I don’t want you to give up your religion, just change how you sell it. Which I see you have. You are appealing to something other in me. The big deal, as you are instinctively feeling toward, isn’t delusion. It’s honey. Christian love. I.e. transcendent in fully human ignorance. That’s how you catch flies. As your change of tack has caught me.
You are correct of course, salesmanship is important. I know I have not been good at that. I also know I never would have arrived at a place where I have an entire historical scenario for the early scripture had I not been absolutely attached to fact vs nonfact, and having honored the words of Scripture.
Over the 50 years I have worked this problem I lost geologic friends for my merely being a YEC, got fired from a job for merely being a YEC(but my performance review was top). When I left yec, I was called lots of names, and lost most of my YEC friends. Old earth Christians didn’t really like what I had to say about the need for historicity and so for a while, atheists were the only people who paid any attention to me, but it was because they were using me to advance their agenda. When I took my anti-yec web pages down, the atheists called me all sorts of bad names for saying I no longer wanted to be used to destroy people’s faith. I left this area from 2004 to late last year with occasional looks at the literature to see if my views had been disproven. I have been scared, and desensitized by my years of struggle to come to this point. We humans are social animals and we want to be in a crowd, but I have lived outside of, and rejected, all the various popular view for most of my life. Those views are YEC, OEC/accommodation, and atheism. As Marshall Janzen said of me when I first came here, “You are one of a kind”. And I am. Sadly, that tends to make a wounded animal response and you are correct to point it out. Thank you.
Martin, you and I share something else in common. We both sound atheistic at times. We both have been influenced strongly by the atheistic criticisms of the scripture. We just took different solutions to the problem.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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gbob. I’m moved mate. Very moved. The sub-cultures, ‘ethnes’ you have experienced are almost totally alien to me, despite being a cult member for 20 years. You have suffered all round, far more than I. And I have added to that for which I’m sorry [I had got quite flinty eyed I admit], but it’s led to this meeting of minds, hearts. Dang! Moved again! How unmanly. It is an honour to further your acquaintance Glen. Thank you my friend.
2 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
54
Indeed Glen. One has to do what one has to do. I feel we have a common overarching metanarrative. Looking for love.
When I wrote the last note, I thought, someone was going to tell us to get a room, but thought it might not be appreciated here on this forum. lol
We all have soft spots in our hearts. If we didn’t, we would not have responded to Jesus’ call. Yes, we both are hard nosed guys, able to defend our positions. While I was living in the UK, we got a new country manager, Chuck, with whom I had worked in the US. We had had a somewhat rocky relationship. But to ease our dealings in the UK, I took him to a Schlumberger picnic his first weekend in the UK. One of the salesmen I worked with cornered Chuck and told him that I was a real hard-nose negotiator. Chuck replied, “I can assure you Ian that the hard goes much deeper than the nose!” lol
Einstein in spacetime, said reality is a cube, but he could not convince any one, of the idea.
Take the three dimensions, length being the first. Depth, being the second a flat plain. Height giving 4 sides, but nothing to bind the physical aspects of the space. Time, or the breadth of God’s love is the 4th dimension holding space in the form of a cube together. If one could measure from a spot in Antarctica up through South America through the north pole, and then back down to Antarctica, it would give a good indication of the length. Some have tried to see how far into Antartica one could go.
Being a square, all sides being equal, a total volumetric space measurement. I mean we could, if we had exact measurement of one end of Antarctica in a straight line through the north pole to an end again on the opposite side, figure how much area above us that heaven consists of. Of course earth may not be in the exact middle, and there may not be an equal amount of area below the earth as above. Unless the north pole is the exact center of the cube?
The motion of the earth turning would be like a washing machine. The “earth” would be spinning in the center with an ocean of water between the central continents and Antarctica. There is still centrifugal rotational gravity force for those obects launched by humans in the last 70 years. Revelation says there are four angels at the four corners blowing with four winds causing all to turn as in a rotation effect. Revelation 7:1
One cannot measure from east to west on a current map. It just keeps going in an infinite circle. But if you take a map and put 3 equal dots (Einstein’s 3 dimensional spacetime) at the north pole, it would cause the map to form a cube placing Antarctica as a land border around all 4 sides of the map. East and west would follow the land in the center still as a never-ending circle, but you could then measure all the sides with the north pole in the center.
My question is, would time calculation change based on the shape of space itself as a cube, and not some virtual math reality, that by math, we think does exist? Also how would that effect quantum physics?
Einstein said reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
And this certainly wasn’t Einstein’s view of space-time. That was more the previous Euclidean view which he proved was incorrect. According to Einstein, space-time is a 2-sided cone-like structure.
P.S. Any picture which sticks a plain inbetween and calls that the present is wrong and displays a serious lack of understanding of relativity (which includes the relativity of simultaneity).
I didn’t follow very much of your post above, but much of it did sound suspiciously like a wordy cloak around what will end up being a variation of a flat-earth theory of some sort.
What is “centrifugal rotational gravity force”?
So are you positing, then, on the strength of this Revelation passage that these winds are causing planetary (or apparent celestial) rotation?
I have made it a policy to ignore things like that. He clearly is talking about the block universe and calling it a cube. That alone says he doesn’t know much about what he speaks of.
I always felt like it was some sort of “ism” with a negative connotation with the gentiles are dogs metaphor and then further accented by how it was first for the jew and then for the gentile and so on.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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