Epistemology and Theistic Evolution

Faith & Science Conversation
22

Well - it might be more than just Christy that needs a translator here then - as I’m not sure I follow everything you post - not that I’ve read everything you’ve written.

But I will say this, to the extent that Adam or anybody else here wants to start piling on Catholics (whether they are present or not - and I wouldn’t be so sure there aren’t, especially among many lurkers none of us know about) that will all be a no-go here. We aren’t about trash-talking various denominations here, and won’t let others platform such stuff here either.

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23

Is it simply that all creationists believe in lying for “Jesus” (the name they use for the power and wealth of their organization).

Since what you said is not true… his purposes are many but they probably include…

  1. Provide a way for God to communicate the truth to human beings without the religious exploiting it for their own wealth and power.
  2. Jesus his son died on the cross according to the demands of the religious in order to get past their lies to the real God whom the religious do not speak for as they claim.
  3. Unknown. …just as the day and hour is also unknown except by false prophets seeking to use God as a tool of power and manipulation of other people.
  4. Since the only thing wrong with heaven and earth are the sins of the inhabitants who make any place they are into hell, both heaven and earth will be transformed when sin is eradicated .

Nope. With Mormonism is where you align yourself with this belief in a war in heaven before the creation of mankind. Mormonism is what pops up on a google search of that topic. The question was, why do you sound more like a Mormon or Gnostic than a Christian?

24

So those physical laws couldn’t happen naturally?

25

It wasn’t intended as a personal rebuke, more I was using your post to give context to why I was asking everyone in future posts not to consider themselves invited to be jerks to Catholics. I can see why that looked like it was directed only at you, but it wasn’t. I just “correcting” the part about “I’d be surprised if there are any Catholics here.” There are.

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26

I am unworthy of that much attention, be it from the forum in general, or from you specifically. Besides, too much attention from the forum or any one person could move me to paranoia.

  • The portion of the response that I posted which evoked a negative response focused on a portion Adam’s post to me, to wit: Adam wrote: “Surely those here on this forum recognise the futility of the Catholic habit”.
  • That portion of his post hardly constitutes a “piling on” anybody by anyone. However, I said to Adam: "Personally, I suspect they would … (an elipsis, not a period); to which I added: "if any of them (i.e. folks on this forum) were to arm-wrestle a Catholic here. (end of sentece, period).
    • Paraphrased, I meant that if a non-Catholic and a Catholic were to engage in debate over whether the Catholic was anything more than a “Nominal Christian”, an astute non-Catholic genuine Christian should be able to recognize what Adam refers to as “the futility of the Catholic habit”.
    • It’s important to me to note here that in my brief time here in biologos, I have yet to actually see a debate between a non-Catholic and a Catholic in Biologos. There either never has been one, or I have just never seen one, or it’s been undertaken privately.
    • Moreover, I said to Adam that I would be surprised if there are any Catholics here, but I welcomed correction if I was incorrect and there are Catholics in this forum. As you noted, “Lurkers” faith-allegiances aren’t known and, IMO, don’t get counted.

Would that include trash-talking Seventh Day Adventists for their young-earth beliefs which they are moved to express in this forum? Or does calling young-earthers “a cult” succeed where calling Seventh Day Adventists a “cult” wouldn’t?

27

Feel free to flag anything you believe is trash-talking SDA. It is not allowed. But saying “these are historical facts about SDA writers” or “SDA teaching is wrong about XYZ” isn’t trash-talking. Any posts that claim SDAs are not Christians is a violation of our guidelines and should be removed. We don’t make judgments here about who is in and out or whose faith is real and best. If people self-identify as Christians, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, LDS, SDA, or whatever, we take them at their word.

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28

The designation “cult” has to do with the behavior of a community, not the beliefs. I think some Christian homeschool groups are cults, but it’s not that they are teaching a false religion (though they do have some messed up ideas, in my opinion), it’s that they have a controlling, isolating effect on members of their community that make it very difficult for them to disassociate without stigmatizing and painful social repercussions.

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29

The designation is on shaky ground – to be fair. In general, it simply means a religious group which main stream society thinks is harmful in some way. That included Christianity at one point in history, which they called the cult of the Nazarene. I am not shooting down the designation completely, since I think there is a lot of religion which is harmful. And one of the more common things which I think does this is a teaching that the salvation of the world depends on members doing their duty in the activities of the organization. Putting such a burden on human beings is wrong, dangerous, and harmful, even objectively speaking. But in general, what people think is harmful, especially in religion, is rather varied and contradictory. So unless there is some objective evidence of harm, then perhaps the term should be avoided.

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That is indeed one usage. The usage here in the context of “YEC is a cult” was about the way the group policed boundaries and controlled information and squashed dissent. Agree that it is probably best to avoid the term if you are trying to have a civil conversation.

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31

The abundant lies and irrationality of denying the demonstrable findings of science is rather clearly in the category of objective evidence of harm. That is not a case where I would object to the use of this term at all. I am not entirely sure a civil conversation is always possible and accordingly I try to avoid getting involved in threads where this becomes too difficult for me.

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32

I now stand corrected. One biologos member has now publicly identified himself as a Catholic. I do not dispute self-identifications. Period. Now to find someone who has engaged the person in debate and found the Catholic’s faith futile.

33

ah see that is an answer that i was wondering if it might pop up.

so then let me ask this…

You as a TE would therefore maintain the belief that the Son of God…whom Trinitarians believe is God, came to this earth as a man and died for our sins.

Now the mere fact that God himself comes to this earth and mixes with his creation, then dies at the hands of his own creation would support the claim that God is intimately interested and intimately interacts with his creation!

Do you not agree therefore with that statement? Obviously from your last post yes.

This means that you also must automatically agree that the reason for the second coming of the messiah is to redeem us sinners to Himself and to restore the fallen creation back to its former glory as it was prior to sin and the fall of man.

Now here is the problem, how then can you possibly claim that Genesis chapters 1-3 are not literal? To make such a claim is to destroy the very foundation of your own claims of belief in the Messiah dying for sin and the restoration of life back to what it was before sin ruined this world.

Take the following verses…

Revelation 21.4 There will be no more death or mourning … crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed … ." He will wipe every tear from their eyes

Are TE’s really going to say that death is only spiritual given that Jesus died a physical death to save us from our sins, and the second coming is clearly a physical event in that the “dead in Christ shall rise first”. If its spiritual, why do the dead need to rise from their earthly graves?

I do not see how it’s possible that TE’s (which has the theist first), can possibly avoid the questions I have asked about sin and salvation in the context of the above points I have made.

Here is another question…
for a TE, what is the purpose of prayer?

34

Thank you @pevaquark. I dislike giving AIG any unnecessary hits to their website, but Dr Faulkner was pretty excited about this in 2016… “I ask those who may be quick to criticize the proposal presented here carefully to consider the consequences to astronomy. An exciting possibility is that this proposal may provide a potential explanation for the CMB.”

You’ve got to hand it to AIG. All it would take is just a bit more research and a testable hypothesis, and there’s a Nobel prize with Faulkner’s name on it. But no, they’re so modest… that plus the research might show that the age of the universe is older than 6,000 years. Sometimes it’s better “not to know”.

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35

Interesting statement. Is that an evidence-based conclusion or just your personal opinion?

36

These two posts, @Christy’s and @adamjedgar’s, epitomize the now eternal false dichotomy on the epistemological spectrum of Biblical literalism. Hard vs. soft.

On the Why must genesis be literal topic, my answer there encapsulates @adamjedgar’s above;

If you won’t believe that Genesis is the literal truth then you won’t believe in penal substitutionary atonement.

I deliberately used the word won’t, as in the hard literalist mind, that is what soft literalism must lead to. As @adamjedgar demonstrates.

Rightly.

If one takes the soteriology of the NT literally, why not take the Fall literally as that gives a rationale for penal substitutionary atonement, i.e. the defeat of sin? In a completely literal circular argument.

Now I suspect that not all here actually take the soteriology of the NT, i.e. the meaning of Jesus’ accurately reported death, literally. Which is the only possible way out of the false dichotomy.

37

In answer to this I ask some questions…

  1. If God simply created the science and then left us largely to our own devices, why do YOU read the bible…what do you gain from it?
  2. In your theology, what is the purpose of prayer?
  3. How would you describe salvation and what evidence do you provide in support of your theology on salvation? (for example, is it necessary…do we need salvation?)

My answers as a YEC would be fairly obvious i think. As YEC’s take a relatively straightforward reading of the text and we use it prinicipally as our source of authority, the answers to the above questions are very self evidence when reading the text logically and consistently according to its themes.

What i do not understand is how anyone who ignores the Biblical themes can also make the claim they are in support of its writings…that isnt possible when any of those writings, that are outside of the evolutionary model, are presented to them. Immediately these are claimed as “fables” (for want of a better way of describing it)

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38

Of course, if you have been around awhile, you would know Klax is agnostic, as least as I understand him (right,Klax?) so your questions are not really applicable to him. That being the case, I will try to answer from my perspective as a self-proclaimed EC, and ask you a few questionsin return.

That is a misrepresentation of EC, as it describes deism, as others have explained to you before. But, as a Christian who hold to EC, I read the Bible because “ 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”. At least that is it in a capsule. Of course, you might read some of the posts on inspiration and what it means to be God breathed to round that out. Another capsule summary of why to read the Bible is to gain wisdom.
Question for you: Why do you insist on saying EC folk (or TE in your words) are deists in so many words?

I

Answer: probably the same as yours. Praise, thankfulness, petition, comfort, repentance, wisdom, direction, and sometimes things that words cannot express. Obviously, the list is incomplete.
Question: Does that differ with you?

You could literally write books about about, but to summarize, you could refer to points 3-5 on the BioLogos “What we Believe section” which says: 3. We believe that all people have sinned against God and are in need of salvation.
4. We believe in the historical incarnation of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man. We believe in the historical death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, by which we are saved and reconciled to God.
5. We believe that God is directly involved in the lives of people today through acts of redemption, personal transformation, and answers to prayer.

And it looks like point 5 addresses your question on prayer as well.
I might add that we also need salvation to free us from our bondage to sin.

Questions: What is it from which you need to be saved?
Do you need salvation from Adam’s sin or from your personal sin? Or is there a difference (i.e. Is Adam’s sin another way of saying the sin of all mankind, manifested in your personal sin)?
What do you hold is necessary for salvation? What keeps you from being saved?

39

You, Sir, are engaging with me man to man. Addressing the substance. I like that. We couldn’t possibly be further apart in our epistemologies (I suspect that is why we’re able to do this), but here we are, actually engaging as gentlemen should. I’m sure it will all end in tears, but this is good while it lasts :slight_smile:

(1) For me God instantiates nature, He has no choice as to what the laws of physics are; creation, grounding being, automatically invokes them, whether He is the ground or no.

What I get from the Bible is Jesus, God incarnate. Jesus is the only warrant for God. The question then is what is the warrant for Jesus; the warrant for Jesus is the warrant for transcendence. the warrant that all will be well as it always has been. There is space for the Incarnation.

(2) My purpose of prayer is for me to be grateful and honest, it is the poor man’s therapy, whether God is real or not. It is also to comfort those who would benefit from my praying for them. [My wife is as deist at most as I, more so, but every time we go on a long car journey or she does alone, I must pray for her. When together we both pray about everything.]

(3) Salvation for me is taking another breath, is life and anything I can do to enhance others’, is starting again from failure to do so, is finding headspace around pathological shame, failure, loss. Beyond this life it is full equality of outcome for all. It is easy for me to find that in the New Testament and even further back, but I cannot possibly transfer that to you. Nature is eternal and infinite and, if in immanent and transcendent God, that means He is unimaginably complex, powerful, knowing and completely competent, capable Love. If He can do nature He can do supernature. He can fix everyone. If He is, He does.

40

First, please don’t tell me what I must automatically agree to. You don’t have access to my mind or heart and the only way you can know what I think and believe is if I tell you.

Second, I do not see the logic of “God became incarnate to redeem humanity, therefore the reason for the second coming is to redeem sinners and restore creation back to its former glory as it was prior to sin and the fall of man.” That is just a bare assertion, not a conclusion drawn from valid premises.

It is also not historical Christian teaching that the second coming of Christ is to redeem humanity. The incarnation, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Jesus was to redeem humanity. That work has been accomplished. Sin and death have been defeated and Jesus reigns exalted at the right hand of God. The Kingdom of God has been inaugurated but has not yet been consummated.

Also, there is nothing in the Bible that implies the New Creation will “restore creation” back to Eden. On the contrary instead of a couple in a garden taking walks in the cool of the evening with God, we are given the picture of a city where God lives with his people as Lord and King over a vast multitude of representatives from every people group and ethnicity. The tree of life is in the center of the city, not in the center of a garden. The picture is not a return to some pre-fall Edenic state of innocence, but it is a picture of a culmination and fulfillment of human culture and achievement in a city where God’s justice, righteousness, and peace is no longer thwarted by human sinfulness or creation’s brokenness. All things are made new, to fulfil the ultimate telos of their Creator.

This is not a problem. The world does not need to have been created in six 24 hour days 6,000 years ago, and sin does not need to have been brought into the world by a man and his wife eating forbidden fruit in order for it to be true that:

  1. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
  2. Humans have been redeemed from the empty way of life handed down from their ancestors by the precious blood of Christ
  3. The last enemy to be destroyed is death and we have the hope of the Resurrection because Jesus is the “firstfruit” of the Resurrection to come.

No, we are going to say that the Christian hope preached in the New Testament is that we will be resurrected to bodies that cannot die and we will live forever with God in his New Creation as it says in 1 Corinthians 15.

Just because we think that when the Bible says “death came to all people because all have sinned” it is talking about spiritual death not physical death and that physical death has been part of the natural order since life began doesn’t mean we have the idea that the eternal life Christ made possible is just spiritual and not embodied in some way, as Christ himself was embodied when he rose from the grave.

I believe God is a person who loves me and wants to relate to me. Prayer is relating spiritually to God in order to experience his presence and be transformed and benefited by the relationship with him that he offers his children.

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41

interesting, so what then do you theorise is the reason for Jesus incarnation and crucifixion? I would also like to see your biblical references for your view too please.

Also, lets not forget Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23 “his name shall be called Immanuel, God with us”. Clearly, that means that God is very definitely intimately interested and interacts intimately with his creation.

I have already answered the TE error about spiritual death…Jesus died physically and that is clearly because the wages of sin is a physical death (otherwise Jesus did not need to physically die it could have just been a spiritual death, but it clearly wasnt?)