Pick a parable
Yeah, sorry i will not go further into the YECvsEC debate in this post.
There have been many more posts about this and they are not in favour of what you are saying right here.
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The parable of the pearl.
I am sure they are not. That is because they use their evolution worldview to interpret scripture. I use “solas scriptura” scripture alone interprets scripture. God bless 
Well.
My point was i do not believe in things proven false.
So if your interpretation would be the only one that is in tune with Christianity like you are saying.
Then i would not be be a christian. Luckily however, this is not the case.
God bless.
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No they aren’t. They are about the nature of the Kingdom of God. The converted and the unconverted weren’t even conceptual categories. There were God’s people and then everyone else.
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Ah! “The Parables of the HIDDEN Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price?”
Hidden from who?
Pretty much every parable is talking about those who are true believers and those who think they are i.e. vine and the branch
What does the text actually say those two parables are about? Before “scripture interprets scripture,” let’s see what it actually says…because it’s pretty explicit.
I think what you’re doing, though, is not even interpreting scripture through scripture, but interpreting through systematic theology…
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DING! DING! That is solas scriptura or that it is a part of solas scriptura
So…you’re willing to ignore what scripture says in its immediate context for the sake of your systematic theology?
“Systematic thinkers tend not to question their primary assumptions, since these assumptions are the foundation on which their entire system rests; once these are questioned, the system collapses.” Victor Shepherd, The Committed Self, p. 160
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Evolution is full of blood, disease, death animals ripping each other apart?
I think you mean the Old Testament is full of God… well this is just a fraction of things:
- God sending disease/plague: Num 11:4-35, 14:36-38, Num 25:9
- Straight up smiting (death): Ex 12:29, Num 16:27-32, Num 16:49, 2 Kings 19:35
- burnt to death by fire from God: Lev 10:1-3, Num 11:1-3, Num 16:35, 2 Kings 1:9-12
- God commanding/sending animals ripping someone apart: 1 Kings 13:1-24, 1 Kings 20:35-36, 2 Kings 2:23-24, 2 Kings 17:25-26
But back to interpreting parables as we were of course!
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I think you miss the point @Wookin_Panub is making. According to evolution, “disease, death, animals ripping each other apart, etc.” is occurring during a time that God says is “very good” and sin has not yet appeared. The acts of God you are referring to are judgements on sinful people in a time where sin has already taken hold. Respectively, you are comparing apples and oranges.
That’s not according to evolution. Evolutionary theory includes nothing about the Fall. Yes, there is an obvious problem superimposing evolution onto a literal interpretation of Genesis. But not many evolutionary creationists are trying to work evolution into a literal six day young earth world. We understand evolution and an ancient earth don’t work with a literalistic Genesis interpretation. That’s not the issue. The issue is finding a Genesis interpretation it does work with. I guess what I’m saying is you can never come up with anything logical if you say, “Given a literal interpretation of Genesis” and “Given evolution as scientists describe it.” Those are mutually exclusive premises.
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I get that he believes the fall did all kinds of magical things, i.e.
I suppose I was writing in the sense that I don’t see why it’s such a strange thing for such acts to occur naturally in the wild vs. God doing them to people or using animals to maul youth, etc. I see your perspective though in regards to “it’s okay to have such barbaric acts since God is judging sin.”
There are some odd things like Numbers 31:17-18 where the Israelites get to keep the virgin women after slaughtering their families or other times kill everything even nursing infants like in 1 Samuel 15:3. Compared to being upset at animals being animals, this seems like a bigger deal.
Are you seriously using rational wiki as a credible source? There is nothing “magical” about God. Supernatural, yes. Magical? absolutely not.
You’re right Christy, I should have said “evolutionary creationism,” not evolution. However, even if one takes a less than literalistic interpretation (as you put it), you are still left with a God who used death and disease to build a “very good” world.
It’s definitely a topic people have thought about a lot. But it’s not some kind of deal breaker and it’s not like YEC solves theodicy issues. In the YEC interpretation not only do you have Satan running around tempting people and thwarting God’s perfect creation, you have a world that would have been completely unsustainable. The nitrogen cycle requires death. Certain organisms would have quickly overpopulated the world in the absence of death and predation, it would have been a nightmare. So you have to basically posit a second creation event that isn’t recorded in Scripture at the Fall, where God dramatically recreates the world and changes his creation fundamentally; institutes new natural cycles, alters the biology of all the herbivores to make them carnivores, proactively creates a host of diseases, pests, and other “not very good” stuff, all to punish the humans for sin. Theologically this sounds more problematic to me than the idea that God declared good a world that included death and disease. I find it easier to believe that a rose has thorns because it provides an evolutionary advantage and protects the plant (and God probably enjoys roses and wants them to stay pretty) than that God was so mad at Adam and Eve, he invented thorns to poke them and make them bleed.
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I never said it did. I’ve seen reasonable answers from both sides. However, placing death, disease, and suffering before mankind even existed (and thus before sin) seems to only put fuel on the fire.
The nitrogen cycle has to do with the decomposition of plants, right? Plant “death” is different from human and animal death, since they are not nepesh chayyah. YECs believe that there still was entropy before the Fall, since entropy is not always bad (ie. digestion). As for overpopulation, the purpose of reproduction was to “be fruitful and multiple and fill the earth.” Once there was enough of one kind of animal, they likely would have stoped reproducing since reproduction had fulfilled its purpose (see my posts on the “where did sin come from?” page for more details).
I wouldn’t call it a second creation event, but Genesis 3 makes it clear that some things did change. The Serpent lost its legs, Eve had increased pain in childbearing, Adam had to work harder to grow food, death entered the world, etc, etc.
Rational Wiki is not a source in the same sense that Wikipedia is not a source but a collection of ideas and sources. The sources listed can provide further research and investigation into the ideas presented which is always helpful. I grabbed this particular part of their wiki because it summaries generally what some Christians claim ‘supernaturally’ happened the second that the molecules of fruit entered into Adam and Eve’s mouth. But thanks for teaching me and dismissing the particular section of their website that I put a link to which was just a summary of the ‘supernatural’ things we pretend happened a few thousand years ago.
the nitrogen cycle works with organic matter, it doesn’t discriminate between plant and animal death. But I take your point that if there was no animal death, the nitrogen cycle could still exist using only plant matter. My point is that death on some level is foundational to the biological laws that allow for life, but maybe you don’t disagree.
The anatomy of an organism does not spontaneously and instantaneously change from being suited to eat plants to being suited to eat meat. Carnivores have different teeth, jaws, and digestive systems than herbivores. Tigers are “designed” to eat meat. So when creationists insist that when Adam and Eve ate fruit there was this “change” that radically impacted the structure and function of all creation, either they are saying sin has “magical” powers (picture the Disney movies where the princess pricks her finger on the spindle of the spinning wheel and everything goes dark) or God purposely changed and redesigned his creation. I affirm that God is the creator of all that is. I don’t know how anyone ascribes creative power to “sin.” Sin is a state of rebellion, not a personal entity. Sin affects how created things interact, it doesn’t create new things. Thorns, malaria carrying mosquitos, Ebola, poisonous snakes, these are all part of God’s creation. Sin did not design them or bring them into existence.
So that leaves us with God re-doing creation to make it cursed. This brings in problems with the character of God. If natural evil is something God allows to exist in his creation, that is one thing. It has its theological and philosophical problems. But if natural evil is something God did not intend for creation, but puts there on purpose, because he is forced to or because he wants to, all based on a human choice, that means either God’s hand is forced by humans or God created bad things as a punishment. That is more problematic theologically and philosophically. That’s saying God imagined and purposely created Ebola, because …sin.
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