In regards to the lion thing, the world was not the same before the fall, man became mortal, child birth became painful, and man became sinful. Man was made steward of the world and since he fell so did the world he watched over. “Through one man death came into the WORLD” why would it say world if this is a spiritual death since animals don’t go to heaven, if it was a spiritual death it would only matter for man not the whole world.
Dr. Todd Woods blog also deals with some of the poor arguments promoted by Creation.com. He is a young earth creationist pleading with his colleagues to stop undermining their own efforts with pseudo-science and dishonest quote-mines. I’m guessing that you will trust his opinion more than mine so please do a Google search for his name. His blog is easy to find. (I don’t agree with all of his conclusions but I admire his honesty and his consistency in trying to be Christ-like.)
What he is saying is that in your view this is a problem, but in ours it is our fault due to the fall which caused this.(he’s my brother) This also applies to body odors and other disgusting things.
Excellent! Romans 5:12. Yes! Check out what word Paul uses for “world”. You are assuming “planet earth” (GE) but Paul chose to use the word KOSMOS, which means “the world of people”!
2Peter 3 makes the same important distinction between the Noahic flood of the KOSMOS (the world of people) and the future destruction of the GE (the world of continents and rocks, planet earth!)
Thank you for settling the matter! I wish I had at hand the classic article by Professor Tertius on this distinction. Yes, we know that HUMAN DEATH and not animal death was the topic because KOSMOS refers to the world of people. (In English we make similar distinctions between the COSMOLOGICAL WORLD and the GEOLOGICAL WORLD, based on those Greek words of KOSMOS and GE.)
John 3:16 says that God so loved the WORLD (KOSMOS). Yes, God loves people, not rocks! Christ died to save a sinful world (KOSMOS), not to save rocks and animals.
Equivocation fallacies so often explain hermeneutical problems. WORLD has multiple meanings in the Bible but when we look at the original language, the text is often much less ambiguous.
I must get back to my work. I’m so glad the discussion got down to the heart of the matter and an appropriate conclusion.
So do you mean it could go either way?
https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Lexicon.show/ID/G2889/kosmos.htm and I will be done with this for now as I believe we have all said all that we need to.
So what’s you’re position on this?
Sorry, I mean on the age of the earth as taught in the bible.
I don’t believe this story. But it does say that the lioness was fed milk and eggs, a far cry from “green herbs.”
The Bible verse mentioned says,
And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.’
Again, milk and eggs are not green herbs. Wild adult animals don’t drink milk, and eggs are available only after birds have mated, and would probably be obtained mostly from flightless birds. Besides, eating a fertilized egg involves the death of a bird embryo.
The owners of the lioness were so reassured by the aforementioned Bible verse that they feed more grains to the lioness!!! But cats don’t digest grains well. Lions have sharp teeth for tearing flesh and short guts (no need to break down meat very much in the gut), which would make them unable to eat very much “green herbs” even if they wanted to. The garden would be awash with stinky diarrhea. So much for paradise.
Have you ever seen the funny take-off of the famous “Peaceable Kingdom” painting? The lamb is missing and the lion is bloated!
Actually, cows have one stomach with 4 chambers: rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. The abomasum is the “true stomach.” Speaking of digestion, the rabbit’s digestive system is a showcase of intelligent design! Rabbits are hindgut fermenters. By the time their food is broken down in the gut, it’s too late to absorb the nutrients from it. So they have to expel and eat again the poop pellets!
Of course, as a linguist, I don’t put much time into the equivocation fallacies behind “one stomach” versus “four stomachs”----though it does serve as an excellent example how those factors complicate all Bible translation (and translation in general, obviously.)
Yes! Though not lately. But as was illustrated in the attempt to use that lion and the lamb imagery as a “proof” for something never intended reminds one of the Michelangelo discussion about the white bearded man in the sky view of God. Humans have an inevitable tendency to “literalize” to make more tangible—and then to defend it as if to deny the “most literal” interpretation is to deny the concept itself.
Yes, tradition is a powerful force. It has always plagued the Church and always will.
I think it is silly to make hay out of the word random. Scientists use the term to mean one thing, within the realm of science.
It is not INTENDED as a metaphysical statement of reality.
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And you are quite correct. But donors to evidence-denialism organizations love it.
So even though the “hay” is indeed silly, it can be very lucrative hay. There’s no denying that.
Even though I’ve been horrified at the statements of various politicians of late, I can at least give some of them credit for their honesty. One very outspoken politician known for outrageous comments was asked how he could possibly make such ridiculous statements. (For example, “I’m gonna build a wall and make Mexico pay for it!”) He didn’t try to dispute that it is absolutely inane and unrealistic. But he said that whenever he sees a crowd calming down and perhaps even losing their attention, all he has to do is replay such popular mantras, and the crowds go wild.
I started to notice this phenomenon within the “creation science” community when I was still a part of it. I was encouraged to play-into-it. (I generally resisted most of such advice but not as much as I might now wish.) There weren’t nearly as many well known anti-evolution and anti-old-earth mantras in the 1960’s and 1970’s as there are now. But they worked quite similarly: “There is absolutely zero evidence for evolution!” (Crowd applauds.) “It is called the THEORY of evolution for a reason! It is ONLY a theory!” (Crowd applauds.) “No cat ever gave birth to a dog.” (Ditto.) “Radiometric dating is worthless. Carbon dating of a live clam claimed that it had been dead for thousands of years!” (Rousing laughter. Heads nod. Elbows poke neighbors.) “Nobody ever saw one animal turn into another animal! Show me where that ever happened!” (Depending on how you build up to it, you may even get a standing ovation.)
One of the growing problems conference organizers back in those days was where to draw the line on the crazy-but-a-crowd-favorite spectrum. (Where does evidence-denialism stop?) I remember when we—or my elder colleagues who had more clout, actually; I mostly watched—started having problems with two potentially divisive issues:
(1) Controlling the “Creation Science Weekend” speaker list. Once you open the barn door to science-denialism, where do you draw the line? Some of the same crowd-favorites who claimed the earth is only 6,000 years old also were claiming that cancer had been cured years before, but they claimed that a conspiracy of the entire medical profession (yes, every doctor, even those who died of cancer!) and what nowadays people call “Big Pharma” was allegedly suppressing the “universal cancer cure.” [Yes, back in those days most audiences were willing to assume that “cancer” is one word for one disease, not the thousands of diseases which is the actual reality.] Unfortunately, on that particular weekend, an evolution-denying medical doctor was also scheduled to speak. So did that make him a compromising enemy or just a hypocrite? (Notice that Kent Hovind is replaying some of these same cancer claims generations later at his anti-evolution events.)
(2) Even if one manages to keep the speaker’s platform and various “workshops” in the Sunday School classrooms under control, there is still the lucrative “books & tapes tables” to worry about. And the guy who lets Dr. Gish use his favorite slides and sometimes loans his fossil collection specimens, also insists on in-kind payment by means of an 8’ table in the church foyer where he can sell his “Cryptozoology Handbook”, “Build Your Own Fallout Shelter” plans and kits, and the “miracle supplement pills” his wife and daughter make at their kitchen table which (reportedly) cured their cousin’s diabetes. Oops, and there’s another conflict of interest this weekend: the pastor of the host church has a son-in-law who is trying to get his own young earth creationist science ministry started. So he expects to be crammed somewhere into the already pre-printed conference schedule handouts. So if evolution is inconsistent with the Bible, how many other scientific, medical, and economic concepts should be denounced and considered inconsistent with the Bible? Is there an “official list” of ideas which the local church and all Christ-followers should oppose?
Indeed, exactly how much science-denial should be allowed before the popular science versus the Bible controversy morphs into “_______ is Inconsistent with the Bible” where cancer treatments, fluoridated water, and the socialism of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society Programs are vying for a place on the conference schedule? That was what we faced in 1965. Anybody who keeps up with ministry fund raising tactics today should notice that the familiar seeds were being planted a half century ago. Human nature changes little over time. Have we learned anything?
For me, those experiences of the 1960’s were a wake-up call for why the |Apostle Paul said “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” The Church has always faced tremendous dangers whenever its ambassadors have stepped outside of its Gospel-preaching mission. Are we doomed to repeating our history of tangents and conflicts? Should we be known for what we affirm and believe or for what we oppose?
Obviously, the Gospel includes opposing and denouncing sin. But how far should we go in telling people “X is inconsistent with the Bible” when those lists of X’s have tended to define church schisms and perpetual conflicts? Historically, the lists have gotten very long: circumcision, meats offered to idols, using chords/harmony in church music, using instruments in church music, using organs but not pianos in church music, using drums in church music, using acoustic but not electric guitars in church music, non-bearded men (because they were considered effeminate in the 1860’s), bearded men (because they were considered Commie-loving hippies in the 1960’s), etc. etc. etc. etc.
And when we add something to our “inconsistent with the Bible” list, do we encourage or even force our brethren to add our list to their banned list? Do we reinforce and multiply one another’s brand of legalism? Are we intolerant of our brethren’s tolerance?..and/or are we tolerant of our brethren’s intolerance? Are we our own worst enemies?
In other words, whenever we decide to draw lines in the sand, do we force others to react with lines of their own? Is this why the history of the church is one of division and more division? Are we ignoring the Bible’s admonitions for our unity? Is unity impossible because agreement will always be impossible?
Meanwhile, one tries to put one’s own position in the history of the Church into proper perspective. From the pulpit I’ve sometimes referred to it as the Universal “I’m sure thankful to have been born into the particular Christian sect that got everything right! Wow! What were the odds of that happening?! I am so blessed!” Syndrome.
Is this cartoon always where our “X is Inconsistent with the Bible” lists inevitably take us:
P.S. No. I don’t claim to have the answers. I just know that the status quo is not particularly successful. Meanwhile, I’m about to leave for a region where the Christ-followers there are more concerned about (1) having something to eat tomorrow, and (2) not being killed by Muslims making forays into their area. Not once have they asked me about the age of the earth or the Theory of Evolution. They have asked me if the Bible permits them to call God “Allah” when witnessing to Muslims.
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