My older brother used to entertain people at family reunions by playing chess, carrying on a conversation with two or three people, and listening to the radio all at once and following each one of those as well as a typical person would by concentrating on the one thing. At one gathering he carried on two separate conversations at once while working on computer code, and later switching from code to watching a movie – and again tracking as well on each as someone concentrating on just the one thing.
By the time cancer took him down he was only dual-tracking – which he explained by saying that his third track was focused on the cancer (he was given six months to live when the cancer was first detected; he lived eleven years more than that).
Or the signal strength? I barely survived the portion of physics dealing with electricity and radio, so I didn’t follow the article very well.
I would still maintain that it is not really as much multitasking as it is multiplexing. It can sure look like multitasking since it’s coming down the same wire, so to speak.
If we are to avoid indoctrination, are we not SUPPOSED to present BOTH sides of a debate and.let the crowd make up their own minds?
If you.refuse the literal bible readers, then accoding to education standards, you are at high risk of indoctrinating (at least thats what i was taught in studying my Bachelor Degree in Education).
For me, the debate is not about whether science is right as such…its about which is more authoritative…mans interpretation under the realm of naturalism or via the philosophical principles found in the Bible. The bible tells us IT is the primary source of authority…not the words and reasoning of men.
I recognise the claim may be made science explains one thing and the binle another, however, the trouble is, thats clearly not true because they are in open conflict on the creation account…which is further excaserbated by the fourth commandment in Exodus and that is just the beinning of the problem.
How do we explain the risen Christ who in bodily form almost certainly exceeded the speed of light to ascend to heaven and retun again after seeing Mary outside the tomb on sunday morning but before seeing doubting Thomas 8 days later?
Remember on the sunday morning He He said to Mary, “do not touch me for i have not yet ascended to the Father”, and yet 8 days later asks Thomas to put his hand in His side and touch the scars? Clearly the risen Christ bodily went to heaven and back during those 8 days. Also, when the saved enter heaven after the second coming, we have physical attributes and yet we will be able to travel faster than the speed of light and this is ecause the millenium lasts only 1,000 years before we return from Gods current home in heaven to the new earth as stated by John in Revelation 21. Given we cant see Gods current heaven through our telescopes, Hubble can see 10-15 billion light years i believe)…heaven is a long distance away and 1,000 years at less than the speed of light is not enough time for the trip for Christ in 8 days or us in not more than 1,000 years…
Another problem…the naturalistic moral reasoning of men:
1 Samuel 15:22
But Samuel replied: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
The lesson in the rejection of King Saul was that He thought his own intellect and moral reasoning was superior to Gods and he consistently refused to be obedient. Samuel tried to make it simple to understand by saying…
“Saul, your own reasoning is that of men…its a sinful path. God is not seeking mens moral reasoning, he is seeking obedience to his laws and that is because God knows better. His eyes are not blinded by desire and corruption” … now for me that means i have no alternative but to read the Bible as its written.
If God wanted modern intepretations, the bible cannon would not be closed…it would still be ongoing. If one is to believe the bible cannon is complete, then one has no alternative but to accept what is found in its pages now are the complete revelation and nothing more may be added.
Do you know where the idea of “presenting both side of a debate” came from? It was a liberal ploy some years ago to try to get equal time on TV and radio during political campaigns. It’s bizarrely amusing that so-called conservatives now use it.
But that’s exactly what YEC is – the concept that a writing has to be totally scientifically and historically correct comes from the naturalist philosophy of scientific materialism. People back then didn’t think that way; they considered stories to carry truth because they came from God.
So have you taken advanced courses in ancient near eastern culture, ancient Hebrew, and the rest of what it takes to read it as written?
It’s not my desire to convince everyone to share my beliefs. That ship has sailed long ago in life. There is no debate or two sides. Young earth creationism is akin to belief in a flat earth. But if you or anyone is deconstructing and have questions about how to still live as a biblically based a Christian I’ll try to help and share my perspective.
Everyone refuses a literal Bible, some just pretend not to. At least some of the time, anyways, since there are mutually exclusive items and many passages and commands no one follows. You might think you take the Bible literally but you will follow a translation of Genesis 2 that is very bad just to specifically avoid discrepancies in the order of creation compared to Genesis 1. That is not taking the Bible literally or seriously. That is making the Bible say what you need it to. Some also like to pretend whatever they have been led to believe is exactly what God/the Bible teaches. Case in point:
And this is where you 100% go wrong. It’s not man’s interpretation of reality via naturalism vs the Bible. It is a fallible human interpretation of nature via the Bible versus a fallible human interpretation of nature via science. At the end of the day, science is falsifiable, repeatable, testable, makes predictions and speaks about scientific issues. As I type this on an IPHONE (a super-powerful, mini, mobile computer) and it’s immediately available to people all over the earth, tens of thousands of miles apart, science’s fruit is practically self-attesting at this point.
It seems there is an intellectual sleight of hand in here somewhere. You seem to forget that all you are doing is offering a fallible, human interpretation of what you think the Bible is and means. You seem to like to skip that step and just go straight from what you believe to exactly what God believes and teaches. My Bible comes from a human publisher, not heaven. Before that a translation committee arguing over how to best interpret and translate the text. Before that textual scholars trying to reconstruct an early version of the text.humans sitting through thousands of manuscripts, tens if not hundreds of thousands of variants and ancient citations. Before that a human church arguing over which Christian writings were authoritative and which were not. A lot of books were excluded and many Christians were not happy and used works not found in the Bible. Before that it was a human author writing and composing that individual work to meet a specific goal. At every link in this chain there are fallible human judgments. Yet somehow you seem to think your Bible and views fell right from heaven. It did not. Your Bible has a human publisher just like mine.
For most of us it’s extremely obvious that if God speaks through the Bible His message has been accommodated. Each work is in a specific language at a specific time to a specific culture with its own worldview and local problems. A cursory look at the Bible shows God did not override the ancient cosmology of the Biblical authors. Unless you think the earth immutable and does not orbit the sun.
I can’t find solid figures online, but IIRC the latest Novum Testamentum Graece has on the order of 15,000 variants given in the critical apparatus, trimmed down from something like 40,000 that were considered, and that 40,000 come from a total somewhere around 300,000 (some say 400,000 but that’s an outlier estimate) – but the difference of 260,000 between the total and the ones considered for inclusion are nothing but spelling differences including the occasional transposition of letters. That’s actually rather astounding since the total number of Greek New Testament manuscripts is a bit under 6,000 (or was last time I checked) and the typical manuscript isn’t even a full page.
As one of my professors put it, the Bible is more than human literature, but it is never less than that. It cannot be interpreted apart from its linguistic, literary, cultural, or worldview context because those are the things that were available for God to speak to people on their own terms. How people cannot grasp this baffles me – it’s the same sort of thinking exhibited by American tourists when they expect everyone in Europe to talk to them in English, a view that in both cases is insulting to the audience.
I am an evangelical and a total protestant, BUT I prefer some of the theological positions of the Eastern Orthodox and have a soft spot for the RC church since it gave me my first introduction to religion in 6th grade (one year at a Catholic school). The largest Christian denomination with a long history should not be ignored and I keep a Catholic catechism on hand to read up on their position on issues.
Its idea of being a universal church for all is interesting. And it does act a lot like an umbrella church embracing a huge diversity of thought and ways of life. But being such a large group has its downside as well. It means you can find all kinds of people in it. Those who insist they are the one true church and only real Christians are not so appreciated, for example.
I was not raised in any religion but by a couple of hippie psychology majors one of whom was a Maoist communist. So I pretty much started with the scientific worldview and read the Bible with science as my filter asking whether any of this could be meaningful in the context of the scientific reality. Frankly, I honestly think I can only believe in Christianity BECAUSE of evolution. I think it fits the God of the Bible far better than this childish fantasy of an existence without suffering and death which is contradicted by everything we know in the science of biology including how our bodies work.
Yeah, like requiring new converts to sign a pledge of obedience to the pope! My mom used to get gobs of email from a Roman Catholic YECist who kept insisting that all Christians were supposed to obey the pope; I guess some of her extended family had been converts and had to sign that pledge.
We try not to lump entire denominations or faith traditions into groups we mock. That would be part of following our gracious dialogue guidelines, so please refrain from this type of comment in the future. And yes, they still exist. I believe Amy Barrett on the Supreme Court was a member of a Catholic Charismatic group. Nobody is calling her stupid.
I think that is more of an effect of its changeability due to its changes of pope, since I think the pledge you are talking about came from pope Benedict XVI (at least that is the best my investigation could discover, if you have more information I welcome it). There are plus and minus effects from this feature of the RC church. It is why I definitely think the Eastern Orthodox are more conservative, unchanging, and most like the churches of the first centuries. But don’t think that unchanging conservatism is necessarily the best thing. After all I am an evangelical which is the most dynamic of all sectors of Christianity, where new churches keep popping up and passing away quite often. …keeping it alive …keeping it real.
Obviously I did not appreciate the comment from Buzzard either (despite having no tendencies to charismatic Christianity myself). It might inspire retaliation with contempt for some more conservative sectors of Protestant Christianity. Talk about endless perpetuation of error and repression… But conservatism has its place and value also in the Christian spectrum.
It was in effect under John Paul II for certain, and given the ages of people I talked to who mentioned this probably goes back to Paul VI.
I’ve drifted towards Orthodoxy, but I’m realizing lately just how much influence Greek thought had over the theology and how much tradition has actually overruled theology (e.g. giving the Eucharist with a spoon containing a bit of bread and a dribble of wine, when at least two councils stated that the bread should be placed in the hands of the recipient and the chalice should be shared directly).
Oh I quite agree. The veneration of early church fathers seems excessive to me also. But I think that influence from Greek thought goes back to the first two centuries and Gnosticism is simply where that influence was greatest. That influence was practically unavoidable when Christianity was carried over to the Gentiles. I don’t even think the Jews of Jesus’ time were entirely free of it either.
The vast majority of Catholics don’t want anything to do with the Catholic Charismatic movement. They don’t consider it to be authentic Catholicism, but rather, Catholics imitating Protestant evangelicals.
Another reason the Catholic Charismatic movement is generally disliked is Charismatic’s unfortunate habit of referring to themselves as “spirit-filled” - the implication (unintentional or not) is that Catholics who don’t carry on like they do are not “spirit-filled”.
The Catholic Church tolerates the Charismatic movement because they don’t want its adherents leaving to join a Protestant church.
But that’s a two-edged sword - some Catholic Charismatics buy into Protestant evangelical theology and leave Catholicism altogether.
I don’t recall referring to Catholic Charismatics as “stupid”. One Charismatic I knew was a senior lecturer in electrical engineering at a Australian university.
Really? Personally, I’m not afraid to explore the issue, and am ready and willing to discuss it publicly, here in this thread, or in a private thread where “we” can be more frank.
One definite advantage of a Private conversation, IMO, would be a freedom to talk about politics, because–one thing seems clear to me, is that here in the U.S., Americans have a really difficult time separating religion and politics and, in Biologos, politics–like a number of other 'hot topics"–is a forbidden topic.
What d’ya say? How about a round of bumper-cars … on a Private bumper-car court?
You can express that opinon, like you just did without mocking an entire group of people, some of whom might read this conversation, that’s all I’m saying.
Fine. You implied they should not be taken seriously and should have been laughed out of the church by now. It wasn’t in line with our gracious dialogue ideals, that’s all.
I think it is a wonderful example of how the Catholic church can accept diversity within its vast organization and be the umbrella church for all people as it sometimes claims.
I thought I found it for a second, but that was a part of a vow made by the Jesuits, not all of Catholicism. I also found something similar in an oath taken by priests and bishops.
I cannot help but wonder if this is just another of those things passed around in certain Christian groups without an basic in actual fact. That is the problem. People mistakes like reading this vow of the Jesuits and mistaking it for something all Catholics must do, and then it gets repeated over and over again as if it were a fact. It reminds me of that saying by Goebbels, “repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it.”
Perhaps it is in the Code of Canon Law which was in effect from 1917 to 1983. I have looked at the newer one started in 1983, but the older one is harder to get a copy of. In that case, a mention of this Code of Canon Law in a pledge signed by members might be taken as an agreement to such obedience to the pope. But mostly I am only seeing an obedience to the pope only being required by priests, bishops, and the Jesuits.
The weird thing was that people who grew up Roman Catholic apparently didn’t have to sign anything like it.
I got this straight from Roman Catholic converts who were required to sign before they would be confirmed. The statements being signed were identical over several decades.
I don’t know if it was in canon law, I just know that every Roman Catholic convert I met for most of my life had to sign such a statement. It would be interesting if it does appear in older canon law, as that would say something about institutional inertia (or even resistance).