I was being a bit sarcastic in order to enunciate the irrationality of God creating via evolution from common decent where the human organism was subject to pre final form conditions that would have made it not capable of living.
What in the world is so difficult for Christian folks to just come to a unified position upon the simple idea that God created kinds of plants and animals as irreducibly complex organisms with a genetic ability to adapt and placed them into an environment that was additionally irreducibly complex? It may not make many folks a lot of cash but sure would bring the church in a much more unified place in this area.
Instead the church has still some divide over creation via various types of evolution which don’t carry much good science and don’t carry very much good rationale. This divide does make people some cash don’t you know because new ideas equate to a book opportunity…ugh…We are placing more blind faith on what I perceive as the absurd when we could be placing true faith upon the precepts of God’s Word that says that God created the heavens and earth and He created the kinds of plants and animals and placed them on earth to adapt and survive…Then upon this basis, look for folks with the gift of giving for helping to develop the best science departments in Christian Colleges taught by a unified WELL PAID group of Christian Scientists who stand tall upon the basic premise of the plain reading of early Genesis and from this find our zeal and energy focused towards developing the best hospitals backed by the best laboratories etc to the glory of God, Creator of the heavens and earth and Creator of fully functioning irreducibly complex kinds! What a testimony it would be to the world…And while we are healing bodies and performing good science, we are proclaiming the ultimate healer of our souls in the gospel of sweet Jesus our Lord!
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You did not address my point or respond to my question. It isn’t much of a conversation if one side does not listen to the other. So let me give you another opportunity:
You previously stated that evolution was statistically impossible. When I challenged you to formulate your assertion in terms of Bayesian analysis, you were unable to respond. Until you can do so, you have no ability to understand whether the theory of evolution is good science or not.
I know this will require a good bit of work on your part. Based on your participation on this forum, though, I’d say you have a lot of spare time. Studying some good courses in calculus, probability/statistics, and Bayesian statistics could get you to the point where you’re ready to assess the empirical data.
Whoa! Larry, I’m assuming this is the same Pete Enns that wrote Sacred Word Broken Word? Please read my 2 star review of that book on Amazon. His handling of the Bible in that book gives me no confidence in his recommendations on how to teach the Bible to anyone. You might want to look elsewhere.
Let me ask a question that may save a lot of time here… @grog, do you believe it is possible for someone to be a true follower of Christ and yet have beliefs regarding evolution that differ from yours?
I’ve used Enns’/Stone’s Telling God’s Story curriculum for three years with my kids, and I’m looking forward to the latest installment due out in September. It is well done, focuses on the New Testament and who Jesus is. It is published by a well-respected classical homeschooling publisher. The tone is very different from Enn’s blog. It is not edgy or controversial.
Christy. I’m pretty sure you would appreciate the podcast 45 min long
Lots of good info re how parents can help their children. He spends a lot of time talking about what parts of the Bible are appropriate for the age of the child. How to handle questions
On Sparks … it is a good and, I think, necessary book.
I read your review of Sparks’ book and gave it a positive vote.
Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation has the strengths of Sparks’ book that you identified, without straying over into Sparks’ “brokenness” hypothesis. I invite you (and others) to read my review.
Again, what you just said above does not make any sense if you are trying to talk about evolution. That is not how it works and when you keep repeating your mistaken ideas about what evolution means. Do a litle reading on evolution that is not on a YEC web site.
The idea of irreducible complexity has pretty much been shown not to exist.
“A genetic ability to adapt” pretty much describes evolution.
The environment cannot be “irreducibly complex” so maybe you are misunderstanding the concept.
So the arthors of all those ID books, dvds, and seminars are doing it totally for free? By your standard you should also throw out ID.
Again you just described evolution.
You make the mistake of thinking that your human interpretation of Genesis is the only correct one and everyone else should just fall into line behind you. However, human interpretations are not inspired and can be wrong. I for one do not agree that this is the best way to read Genesis.
Greg, you need to realise that disagreement does not imply division or disunity. Disagreement can be healthy, since you can learn from each other, you shake out misconceptions, and you mature in your faith and understanding that way.
The other thing you need to realise is that many of the attempts to debunk evolution involve making claims that are demonstrably incorrect and that cite serious misunderstandings of how the scientific method actually works. They are often made by well-meaning but badly informed Christians who have no scientific training. They have never worked in a lab, gone out on fieldwork, collected their own samples, or conducted their own analyses. They have no training or hands-on experience of keeping lab notes, calculating error bars, writing scientific reports, or interacting with peer reviewers. In many cases, they don’t even understand the maths, and in some cases they don’t even seem to appreciate that there’s maths involved at all. The result is that they end up spouting descriptions of how science works, how the evidence is analysed, and how conclusions are drawn, that bear no resemblance whatsoever to what real scientists actually do.
Or put it this way, how would you feel if you heard your pastor spouting a completely cockamamie description of how you do your own job that paints it in a bad light, then when you told him that his facts weren’t straight and it doesn’t work like that at all, he responded by telling you that you were being divisive?
Enns’ work Evolution of Adam provided a good discussion of the Documentary Hypothesis, which I think is a 19th Century attempt to find a purely human approach to how the Bible came together. But that pretty much lets the interpreter do whatever they want with the text. If we’re going to hold to some minimal level of “inspiration”, that doesn’t seem to me an adequate foundation, though the idea can inform our perspective.
While I have not yet visited Enns’ writings beyond that one book, I do not find that “promising.” Sorry I got my authors crossed up.
Pretty much any exegetical approach can coerce a collection of sacred books into making it say what you want it to say. You just ignore certain texts, or you justify some exceptions, etc.
I hate to sound a post-modern note, but the proliferation of denominations and movements that claim the same methodology but end up in scattered destinations is undeniable. If reading the Scripture is all about the exegetical methods, then we’ll never encounter what God wants to reveal to us through the pages, which is Himself.*
My $.02,
Chris Falter
*I am not claiming that God has a gender; I simply find myself constrained by the English language.
The only difficulty for me is that I think your unified position is simple, straightforward, and wrong. What exactly is it you want me to do? Pretend to believe something I’m convinced is false? I lack whatever mental ability is required to believe something to be true just because somebody on the internet told me to.
A lot has been said about this quote already, but it inspired me to ask the question:
What is so different about making man from dirt, and making man from dirt through evolution, other than the time required? Since we probably agree that God stands outside of time, and thus it is no real consequence to God, are we not just debating the process?
While I do not agree with the notion that any scientific theory is difficult for Christians in general, I find the notion that evolution is somehow uniquely revealing “how God goes about doing” is incoherent and lacks theological understanding. In particular, the creation of man (Adam) is revealed via Biblical authority, as a unique act by God, and thus falls outside the purview of the Sciences. It is the incoherence of EC that insists evolutionary processes are sufficient for this area.