Thanks, I’m really glad that was of interest.
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Yes. And it doesn’t matter how many other people were doing the same, it still makes Calvin a murderer. In terms of fairly basic Sunday School level Bible knowledge, “Don’t kill people” is approximately lesson 1. Maybe lesson 2 if you were sick your first day. It’s the sort of thing a high level theologian should be expected to know.
Yeah, and there’s lots of dodgy stuff in those creeds, not to mention in the early fathers. Bit of a worry there. The Apostles’ Creed is good, the Didache is good, and it’s all downhill after that (no I am not arguing as a Catholic, I don’t affirm any creed after the Didache). It would have been better if Calvin had been more into his Bible and less into creeds. Maybe he wouldn’t have ended up a murderer. And let’s not forget the whole Calvinism thing which was named after his theological inventions. And let’s not forget his anti-Semitism; sure, you could argue he wasn’t as bad as Mad Martin, but he wasn’t that much better.
In your opinion. I note the complete lack of engagement with my article.
Great, I’d love to read your work. Please list your peer reviewed publications, especially in the historiography of the Western scientific continuum.
Ah, so the basis of your objection is fear of Deism. Not a good basis for objection. Since when did “autonomously” have a Deist feel to it? Do you feel the same way about “automobile”?
Yeah… no. One Western concept of nature comes to us from the Greeks.
An elaboration, no. The notion, yes. That’s where Second Temple Period exegetes found it; Sirach, Jubilees, Enoch, and others.
Vague handwaving while dropping names, typically indicates bluffing. If you think Hans Jonas is relevant, quote him directly. If you think Jacob Klien is relevant, quote him directly.
For good reason. I don’t have a need for nineteenth century theologians when studying this field, except for historical value.
People who believe the universe is upheld and acts on a moment by moment basis because of God’s personal volition. People who believe it’s wrong to say that it rains because God set up an autonomous condensation/evaporation cycle.
People who believe electricity is the Holy Spirit.
Indeed. They’re happy for God to have arranged everything else so that it runs by itself, but they want to sequester this part of the universe away and say “No, this bit is special, He couldn’t have done that with this bit”.
I don’t have one. Behold! A better question is why all those Christians who are happy with the idea of God acting through nature everywhere else, suddenly run scared when the idea is proposed that He also did this in creation.
In the creation of the universe and its laws, and in the special creation of Adam and Eve.
Oh look, I just found this entire conversation is being held elsewhere. So I’ll leave you to that discussion. If you want to comment specifically on anything I wrote in my article, let me know.
Hello Eddie,
I’m sorry, but that makes no sense at all. If there’s actual evidence, present the evidence, particularly in conjunction with advancing an actual hypothesis that makes actual empirical predictions.
Keep in mind that Behe’s big “evidence” regarding malaria is derived from misinterpreting a few words from the secondary literature, not the evidence from the primary literature.
And his evidence for HIV was false, and he has yet to correct his book and deleted his Amazon blog in which he admitted that his claim was false.
Exactly, even more so in science than in the humanities.
That is not what we are talking about and the moths were the example used in your article.
To cut the discussion off on this point is a cop out. A miserable, pathetic ruse to avoid real discussion of the issues.
No. If I one day find evidence in Scripture which convinces me Adam and Eve weren’t specially created, I’ll follow that evidence. Bu I don’t see it.
Yes I am very well aware of their position.
No I’m not. I’m fully prepared to accept that God could have created Adam and Eve via evolution, or could have selected them from an existing population. I just haven’t seen a convincing argument for this, and all the evidence I’ve seen points in a different direction.
Indeed.
No, I was commenting directly and specifically on Calvin. I didn’t mention any other forms of Christianity. You did.
[quote=“Eddie, post:166, topic:4380”]
…but if one is going to choose one’s theologian on the basis of that theologian’s failings in practical life…[/quote]
I have no idea what “choose one’s theologian” is supposed to mean, or why anyone would do this. Nor is it relevant what anyone else was doing in Europe at the time. What’s relevant is that Calvin simply didn’t follow Christ, like plenty of other murderers in his era who were at the same time extremely religious. End of story. Telling me all about how much he read and studied the Bible (as if I didn’t know), doesn’t change that. It’s patently obvious that the spirit of Christ was not at the core of how he lived his life.
[quote=“Eddie, post:166, topic:4380”]
The fact that Calvin was anti-Semitic, even if verified, would have absolutely no relevance to ascertaining the correctness of his Biblical exegesis or systematic theology regarding issues such as omnipotence, predestination, creation, fall, redemption, the sacraments, etc. That argument is strictly ad hominem and doesn’t warrant a theological reply.[/quote]
Firstly I didn’t say it had any relevance to ascertaining the correctness of his Biblical exegesis, etc, etc, etc. Though when someone is as anti-Semitic as he was, it’s clear they’re doing something wrong. Secondly you don’t seem to understand what an ad hominem argument is. An ad hominem argument takes the form “Person A has moral failing B, so his argument C is false”. I didn’t do that.
More handwaving. Yet again I see no specifics here.
In your opinion. I note once again the complete lack of quotations.
No. Wow, every single exchange with you involves dismissing a handful of subject changes, straw men, and distractions.
And I responded to that, and you haven’t replied to my points.
I don’t need to while you’re not even addressing my basic arguments.
I actually quoted a couple of examples of historical Christian thinkers saying that natural causes should be first sought for every phenomemon.
Maybe you mean “The Greeks had a different concept of nature to the Hebrews”.
More unsubstantiated statements.
More handwaving, and name dropping. Just quote them, if you’ve read them.
Which idea of phusis? Plato’s? Aristotle’s? Archimedes’? The Epicurean concept of phusis? The Stoic concept of phusis? Do you know the difference?
Don’t worry, this does not surprise me.
Because it isn’t relevant. Last time I looked, Aquinas wasn’t a Second Temple Period Jew. He was a medieval Catholic theologian attempting to marry Catholic theology with Aristotle. He was also a great big blunderer, and a very naughty man. Who cares what he thought about this?
Of course it’s what you were talking about. You said specifically “Sounds like: If an organism survives and thrives, it is fit. If it doesn’t, it isn’t fit”.
Oh I’m not cutting it off by any means. I’m simply telling you it’s not going to proceed until you understand the topic and you’ve read what you’re shown.
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That’s all well and good … but it sounds like you would complain to Isaac Newton that all his research on mass and gravity is “… just circular numbers” … “you say something is heavy, Isaac, but all you do is give me its weight in pounds and grams … around and around … but what IS IT REALLY?”
We quantity “fitness” by a quantitative analysis of survival, longevity and offspring.
THAT’s what FITNESS IS!
And these raw numbers gain their meaning by COMPARING how one sub-genotype of a gene pool compares to OTHER subtypes.
I think you have come to the end of your road, Roger.
Um, no. They tell us it is no longer possible for a scientifically educated person to believe the first human couple was created only around six thousand years ago, or that the entire human species descended from a single human couple six thousand years ago, or that Adam and Eve (if they existed six thousand years ago as a special creation), were the first humans. And I agree with all that. I believe humans already existed at the time of Adam and Eve, and had existed for a long time. I do not believe all humans are descended directly from Adam and Eve.
It’s not a bogus defense. I showed that the view I was documenting had roots in Second Temple Period Judaism, and extended right through medieval Christianity to the modern era. So citing Aquinas is totally irrelevant. Quoting Aquinas doesn’t address the Second Temple Period evidence I presented, or the medieval evidence.
Of course. I was providing evidence for my argument. When providing evidence for an argument, you need to quote sources which support your argument. Your statement here doesn’t make any sense at all. I can’t quote Aquinas as evidence for my argument, because he isn’t evidence for my argument.
And the straw men are still coming thick and fast. I didn’t blame Aristotle for Aquinas’s defense of supernatural acts of God in creation. I can see why people just don’t bother engaging with you anymore.
[quote=“Eddie, post:170, topic:4380”]
You did imply that an older theological work would likely be of less value…[/quote]
No, I said specifically that I didn’t need nineteenth century theologians. I did not say anything like “works several decades old are automatically inferior to more recent works”. Remember, that was your original statement.
Remember that university thing?
Great, then I’m sure you can answer my question. But wait, you didn’t. Oh well.
They didn’t conceptualize any of that under a conception of nature precisely as we think of it in Western modern categories. The word isn’t loaded unless you load it with exclusively Western categories, which is what you’re doing.
But they did have a concept of nature, and phusis. They differentiated between magical and non-magical, between divine and non-divine, between mortal and immortal, between eternal and non-eternal, between miraculous and non-miraculous. They had a concept of nature which is relevant to the article I wrote.
I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to provide quotations from them in sufficient context to support what you’re saying. You know, like we learned at university.
[quote=“Jonathan_Burke, post:171, topic:4380”]
Um, no. They tell us it is no longer possible for a scientifically educated person to believe the first human couple was created only around six thousand years ago, or that the entire human species descended from a single human couple six thousand years ago, or that Adam and Eve (if they existed six thousand years ago as a special creation), were the first humans. And I agree with all that. I believe humans already existed at the time of Adam and Eve, and had existed for a long time. I do not believe all humans are descended directly from Adam and Eve.
I agree completely with your comment on Adam and Eve, and I am one of the biologists Eddie is talking about (I think). Special creation of Adam is not addressed by science, as is the case for the resurrection, the creation of the universe etc. The biology simply tells us (not inconsistently with Genesis by some interpretation) all things, you mention in the quote.
I have agreed with this.
I didn’t say that. I pointed out they are also concerned with the concept of universal ancestry from an original couple, which they rightly say is not possible.
This is virtually identical to what I have said.
Perhaps this will help.
Eddie
I disagree. You forgot to quote the last two sentences of Jon’s comment, namely
So although he did mention 6000 years three times, its clear from the end that meant what I said he meant (and what he says he meant) namely the exact same position as Biologos, myself, Dick Fisher, and many others who have written on this issue.
What we need to do is disentangle the special creation of Adam and Eve from the wrong idea that they were the first Homo Sapiens on the planet and that all humans are biologically descended from one couple. That is simply impossible if molecular genetics is real. And it isnt necessary in order to believe that God either chose or even created two people with whom to have a relationship, and breathed souls into them.
How did this spread, you ask? Biologically and/or culturally, depending on one’s theological point of view. As to who bears the image of God, again that is for the theologians to answer, but they should not have a problem with the idea of Adam and Eve not being the first and only human couple.
Sy has helpfully answered this for me, even while I was writing the same thing.
You need to explain why Sy has contradicted this.
Yes.
There’s some very good evidence in the Bible itself that image-likeness is a matter of appointment, not simply shape (yes the words for “image” and “likeness” by themselves have a different sense, but together they form the image-likeness which is greater than the sum of its parts). Otherwise there would be no point in Seth being identified as in the image-likeness of Adam, if that’s just how everyone naturally turned out.
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And so you had. And I pointed it out, and so did Sy.
Galileo posed the same problem. Christianity got over it. We’ve been here before. People used to think heliocentrism was really scary and would be the end of Christianity. It wasn’t. And frankly, the view of the fall and original sin which fits with the scientific facts, is not a novelty; you can find it in Second Temple Period Judaism and early Christian commentary.
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I will admit that that sentence does indeed come across as science centric, which is not how I feel. I have read your comments, and Jon Garvey’s comments on this issue for many years, and I have become convinced that we scientists could use a bit more humility in this regard (Coincidentally, I am speaking on this very issue at my Church tomorrow).
BUT… (I know you heard that coming), I am not sure that mainstream theology is all that united on Paul’s meaning. I have heard theologian Roy Clouser (dont have reference handy, sorry) say that Romans could have a very different interpretation.
But the real issue you raise, which I agree is an absolutely critical one for the Science and Faith discussion that is the heart of everything we do here, is what should be the relationship between science and faith when they appear to be at odds. It remains my (and I would speak for all CEs here) that God has spoken one truth to us with many voices, or in the more common usage, many books. The Book of Works (the name of my blog, not coincidentally) or what we learn from the scientific study of nature cannot contradict God’s revealed truth through Scripture and theological scholarship. That’s why I say “when they appear to be at odds”. When this happens, as it does frequently, either we got the science wrong, (as in the origin of the universe) or the theology has made a mistake.
Should we work at fitting the theology into the science?. To some extent yes, we should, but always with caution, because science changes, as we are seeing with evolutionary theory. I have seen some liberal theologians even jump the gun and quote very controversial “science” (like the nonsense from Sam Harris) as if its “gospel truth”, That is a mistake. Whenever I hear the awful phase “Science says” I shudder.
It is much harder to fit science into theology, since that is simply not acceptable to scientists. The most that we scientists can do is pursue the truth without prejudice, and report it. I am not worried that this truth will destroy Faith or undermine Christianity, because I believe in God and Jesus Christ, and I do not believe they can be undermined. All the scientific advances I have seen have gone in the opposite direction, to strengthen the cause of faith. In the end (whenever that will be) I believe that science and theology will be in agreement on all parts of the truth of nature. That convergence has been happening for centuries, and is accelerating now.
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