Fundamentalist Christianity, environmental responsibility, and concerns the move to clean energy

Faith & Science Conversation
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Sigh.

Yeah. I think I said the Bible tells us about the one who saves, that is, Jesus. That one comes to know about Jesus through reading and the right preaching of the Word of God is the “normal” process. But the Lord works as he wills, and reveals as he wills, even when it’s exceptional. I fully admit that it’s not the normal way. But neither of us is qualified to say this can’t happen.

Conversely, exposure to the Bible, biblical knowledge, or the word rightly preached is no guarantee of faith of any kind. Not without the work of the Holy Spirit.

So, to say that “salvation comes from one source…the Bible” is inaccurate.

Even “rightly preached” is challenging in this conversation between you and me. If the two of us met someplace neutral – religion and philosophy section of John K. King Used Books in Detroit maybe – outside of a discussion of how one understands measurable reality in relationship to biblical faith, I suspect you would condemn me, solely based on my views on the OT Law and its relation to Christians. You regularly do indirectly by your posts. I could be YEC all the way, solid dome firmament, pillars, flood all of it, and I’d still be off the ark. Because, it seems, Jesus doesn’t really save. Or sanctify. Or keep. That’s my job it seems.

Good grief, man! No one I have read here is saying that salvation is to be had or found in science! Provide quotes with links to the posts!

Regarding the variety of views that Christians who recognize evolution as the currently best explanation of how life develops and changes, well Adam, I don’t think you can see the trees for the forest. This is not a monolithic group or some cult. You are absolutely free not to see evolution as explanatory. You are absolutely free to disagree with the various ways that Christians are working out their faith in light of facts they can’t ignore. I don’t think you see, or are willing to acknowledge, that there are a lot of different views regarding the relationship between science and faith here – among people who love Jesus and depend on him for salvation, or who love Jesus and see their relationship with him in ways I don’t really understand.

But, please, if there is someone claiming that salvation comes through science, quote them.

As far as I’m concerned, see these:
Ephesians 2:8-10
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

And

James 2:14–26
14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good1 is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! 20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

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This is a fair point, however, its also making excuses for poor theology. To be honest, its almost as if you are saying…its ok ill just plod along with my evolution even though its obviously not fitting well with self evident scriptural theology…heck it doesnt even fit in with the theme of the Bible (ie Creation, The Fall, The Cross, and The Second Coming), but no worries…Im sure God will excuse that if i just do good works…i can get saved if i live the good life.

King Saul thought that doing good works by saving the best of the sheep and cattle for sacrifice to the Lord was ok…and he was rejected for that belief.

What did the prophet Samuel say…“to obey is better than to sacrifice”???

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That is not a truthful view. For example, my approach starts from the Creator, God. I believe that He left to us two ‘books’. The first one, the library of biblical scriptures, reveals God and His will to humans - not everything, not with much details, but reveals how we can find peace with God, salvation through Christ.
The other ‘book’ is the ‘book’ of God’s acts. If we believe that there is a Creator, then the creation tells about the creative work of God.
If both ‘books’ are from God, then they should tell similar stories. If there seems to be conflicts, then our interpretation of one or both ‘books’ is wrong.

When I became a believer, I read books telling the YEC interpretation of the past. The books seemed to tell a coherent story and were written by believers, so I believed the claims. When I started to learn more about matters like biology, geology, how the scriptures should and should not be inspected (exegesis vs. eisegesis), etc., I started to note weaknesses in the seemingly coherent stories told in the YEC-spirited books. The more I learned, the more obvious it became that the claims in the books were poorly justified or simply misunderstandings. The facts did not fit to the YEC stories. To be honest to myself, I had to re-evaluate my beliefs about the creation and start to reconstruct my theological view about creation and Genesis. Truth means much to me, both The Truth (Jesus) and truth as an explanation of the reality that accords with facts.

There is a conflict between the facts revealed by science and the beliefs of YEC ideology. This does not mean that we set science above biblical scriptures, it only means a realization that either the YEC interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis, or the scientific understanding based on scientic facts, is wrong. Although I would be glad to find that the scientific understanding of the reality is totally wrong, in the name of honesty I have to conclude that the YEC interpretation of scriptures is not true.

After abandoning the YEC interpretation of the creation story, I have spent almost 40 years trying to understand how the scriptures should be interpreted in a credible and truthful way. Despite all the reading, studying and all effort, there is still very much to learn. After all these years, I am quite confident that what we know about the universe, Earth, life and exegesis of biblical scriptures, all point to the direction that YEC interpretation simply cannot be true.

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But not.

There certainly is no way to draw your conclusion from the verses I included from Ephensians and James,

I think you have made up your mind on the matter. You will not listen to Christians who are scientists, or Christian theologians who recognize the best understanding of the operation of the physical world comes through science. There is no reason you would listen to me.

But you – you Adam — are still faced with the challenge that the understanding of the physical world that is demostrated in the Bible is entirely different from what is demonstrable and testable now.

You are welcome to deny reality and make up a fictitious explanation that feels adequate, but is demonstrably false. And you can argue it until the cows come home.

But you still haven’t really dealt with the problem.

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  • Who claims that science can “save” anyone, assuming of course that “saved by science” refers to ‘eternal salvation’ not 'temporal salvation? I certainly don’t. I do, however, believe that human beings, medical knowledge, and technology have cured and alleviated physical health. I myself benefit from a pig’s valve and a stent put into my heart and an endovascular stent graft put into my aorta. Several of my brothers have had hip, knee, shoulder joints and corneas replaced.
  • What a very Jewish notion, … you do know that, don’t you? Islam has it’s own version: "The Qur’an saves.’
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See the issue here is that i do not accept the steady state theory or theology. The bible clearly doesnt support any doctrine of that kind. Such a belief can only come from one place…humanism and the secular belief there is no God…no miracle that could have caused these things.

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i was meaning that salvation is a philosophically driven doctrine and that no amount of scientific knowledge will save anyone because you will not find the key to salvation by studying science…its not in science text books!

Whilst those who have received learning from the bible are expected to follow its guidance in order to receive salvation, even those who do not know God may still be saved…we know that they are saved not through righteousness by faith (for they do not have faith in God), but by the grace of Christ. They are saved because God wrote his laws in our minds and on our hearts and those who live according to the statement Christ made “in as much as you do it to the least of these my brethren you do it to Me” , may be saved.

The irony of the salvation of those who do not know God is that it appears that they are saved by their works…however, this is a bit misleading…they are saved by their fruits…these are the characteristics illustrated by Christ in the gospel and I believe that they are different from the works are nothing but filthy rags which the apostle James talks about!

Is that clear enough now?

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  • Once more, who cares? Who do you know that thinks science holds the key to salvation?
  • On the other hand, the Talmud says:
    • Shabbat 145b-146a:
      • Rabbi Yoḥanan then explained to them: Why are gentiles ethically contaminated? It is because they did not stand on Mount Sinai. As when the snake came upon Eve, i.e., when it seduced her to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, it infected her with moral contamination, and this contamination remained in all human beings. When the Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai, their contamination ceased, whereas gentiles did not stand at Mount Sinai, and their contamination never ceased. Rav Aḥa, the son of Rava, said to Rav Ashi: What about converts? How do you explain the cessation of their moral contamination? Rav Ashi said to him: Even though they themselves were not at Mount Sinai, their guardian angels were present, as it is written: “It is not with you alone that I make this covenant and this oath, but with he that stands here with us today before the Lord our God, and with he that is not here with us today” (Deuteronomy 29:13–14), and this includes converts.
    • Yevamot 103b:
      • When the Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai their contamination ceased, whereas with regard to gentiles, who did not stand at Mount Sinai, their contamination never ceased…
    • Avodah Zarah 22b:
      • The Gemara answers: With regard to the Jewish people, who stood at Mount Sinai and received the Torah, their contamination ended, whereas in the case of gentiles, who did not stand at Mount Sinai and receive the Torah, their contamination has not ended.

In other words, the Jews believed that “standing at Sinai”, a metaphor for receiving the Torah from God, saved the Jews and left Gentiles unclean.

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Deleted.
Nah. Not worth my energy.

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I hear that!

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Why are you quoting traditional Jews in a Christian forum. JEWS ARE NOT CHRISTIAN. THEY DONT BELIEVE IN CHRIST AS A MESSIAH!

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Or perhaps you simply dont have the biblical support in order to reference what you are thinking. If you think im wrong and want to get into a theological discussion about faith and grace…lets go ill discuss the book of Romans any time any place!

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  • Or perhaps she sees the futility of discussing anything with a Sabbath-worshiper who believes that all Sunday-worshipers are going to be annihilated.
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Sorry, Adam. I have better uses for my limited time and energy. Theology is not a Blood Sport or MMA ring event. And neither is the living out faith in Jesus.

I’m sure you’ll find more willing or energetic people to oppose.

This seems apropos:

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Aka an idolator.

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Too bad they didn’t replace the coal plant with a nuclear one and keep using those towers.

Or summers that are cooler but drier than before. We’ve had three summers in a row that haven’t quite met the requirements to be called drought, but they may as well be drought since the resulting drop in the survival rate of native trees and shrubs in my conservation work has been devastating.

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That’s false, which you should know by now since it has been explained to you repeatedly.

He never responds – or, as far as is evidenced, even pays attention – when he is corrected, for example with the matter of Acts 15 where the Holy Spirit manifestly did NOT include the Sabbath as something to be observed.

That wasn’t new, it’s from Deuteronomy.

Nor is that new, it’s from Leviticus.

Jesus gave only one new commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you”.

Incorrect: salvation comes from the Cross, from Christ, via the Gospel.

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I rejected (and still do) the YEC version because it does not fit the text of the scriptures. When I looked into where its dogmas came from, I found that historically YEC arose after scientific materialism had infected the church. It isn’t from the scriptures that the idea that something has to be 100% scientifically and historically correct in order to be true, it’s from scientific materialism – and thus YEC actually rests on a foundation of an inherently atheistic philosophy.

More importantly to me, the YEC interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis does not hold up when those chapters are understood according to the worldview of the original writer (or even of the later editor) plus in accordance with the types of literature they are.

For my part, the more I read those chapters in the Hebrew the more certain I am that the YEC interpretation simply cannot be true – and indeed that it is insulting to the original writer, the original audience, and to the Holy Spirit who inspired the text.

Or to Christians theologians who don’t care about science but care deeply about the actual text of Genesis rather than modern translations seen through a lens of human philosophy.

Indeed.
Jesus told the Pharisees that He was “greater than the Sabbath”.
Jesus was raised on the first day of the week, and thus gave us rest.
We thus ought to worship on the first day of the week, since it is the “Lord’s Day” as the early church named it, the day of true rest.

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