There is no such thing as secular science. All of the reality of God’s creation is there for anyone and everyone to study and find the physical truths about. When Christians lose sight of the fact that the Bible is about spiritual truths and not science is when the false dichotomy takes over.
Whether or not there are miracles is not the issue. Many miracles in the Bible do not even violate natural ‘scientific’ laws – many are about the timing and placing and the extremity of natural events in God’s providence. But we don’t get to make up fantasy miracles to force physical reality into our misinterpretations of the Bible.
I may be misunderstanding; are you equating “science” with “creation”? They’re not the same kind of thing. One is a concept, a body of knowledge, and a method for acquiring knowledge. The other is a world full of created items where evidence may be drawn from by using methods such as observational science. (I’m sure you know that and we’re just having a confusion of understanding here, clarification would be excellent!)
I never said there was such a thing as “secular science”. We all have the same evidence available, the only differences are the assumptions we start with and the conclusions we come to. There are secular assumptions aplenty, and there are conclusions formed by secular bias, but there is no secular science since the world is available for people of all beliefs, biases, and worldviews to look at.
Now, science as a term could be redefined yet again to mean anything people want it to, and then my points would, of course, become irrelevant or absurd.
Of course not. Making up fantasy miracles implies adding things to the Bible that were never written about… which would make them false.
I actually agreed with @rsewell 's discussion of the hydroplate theory at the bottom of post 40.
So, if someone assumed God didn’t exist, must the assumption be Christian? So then, must Christians assume that God does not exist because “mainstream scientists” make that assumption?
Please learn the distinction between methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism. You are conflating them. Good scientists – including Christians and whatever their beliefs about the metaphysical, do the former.
You shouldn’t, but you are attempting to engage in argumentation. That’s the whole point of “defining one’s terms.” If you say, words can mean what I say they mean, sure. But people still have to agree your definitions lead to true assertions when you use your terms (like you did) as part of your premises.
This analogy between God and natural selection is a false equivalence because God and Christ are not technical terms like natural selection. God doesn’t have a definition in the same sense, God has a description, and people can disagree on what that description is because God isn’t something we can analyze and study scientifically. Our description of God is an abstract construct. But if you are going to define natural selection, you are describing an observable process about which we can say scientifically supportable or falsifiable things. So, no, you can’t just use the word “natural selection” to mean anything you like and have people understand you because you “defined your terms.” That’s not how language works.
If you are trying to convince people you are right with logic, then you have to use givens people accept as true for your conclusions to follow. This is just how logic works. People convince people their premises are true, and then they have to accept the conclusions that follow. If you can’t convince people your premises are true, then you lose the debate. If you just want to tell people what you believe just to inform us of your thinking, go nuts. But that would just be sharing, not debate. If that’s what you are here for, fine, but it sounds like you think you are debating.
In most debates, the argument is over the premises or whether conclusions acutally follow from the premises people agree on. People don’t expect you to only use premises people already accept, but they do expect you to defend your premises when they are challenged. That’s what a debate is, defending your premises. Demonstrating that you don’t understand the meaning of concepts that are part of your premises is something people are going to immediately challenge.
In general, sure, but the point of debate is to present your conclusions in a way that people have to concede they are true. Conclusions can be true or false based on rules of logic, but you can’t get a true conclusion without true premises. That is how logic works.
Yes, God reveals himself to people. They can’t see God in nature unless God reveals himself. This is a basic tenet of natural theology. The text is not saying that people with no revelation from God and no concept of God and no experience with God can look at nature and deduce who God is. If that’s what you think it says, that’s an interpretation that is not in line with historic Christian teaching on general revelation.
You are wrong. And no, I’m not going to teach you Hebrew or reproduce a commentary for Genesis 1-11 on this forum. But the scholarship is out there and I’m familiar with it and you aren’t. And yes, education doesn’t make you right, but it does help you recognize people who are wrong.
Jesus wasn’t using Adam and Eve to back up a moral truth. He was using it to access a concept upon which he wanted to build. That’s how good teachers teach.
I agree. But accounts of past events can be figurative and follow the conventions of literary genres we are not familar with.
Says you. You can’t do science by starting with a conclusion and fitting the fossil record to it. And it’s possible to approach Bible interpretation with the idea that good interpretations fit with what is true about the world. If it’s true about the world that death and disease have existed for millions of years before humans even existed, then a good Bible interpretation isn’t going to insist reality is different because the Bible says so. I don’t believe all physical death is the result of sin. I don’t think the Bible ever claims this. Spiritual death and eternal separation from God is the result of sin. I don’t beleive or think the Bible teaches that creation was fundamentally altered by human sin. Creation is affected by humanity’s sinfulness in certain ways, but I don’t think predation or tectonic plates or genetic mutations exist because humans disobeyed God. I think they are part of the natural order and a world with these things is the best possible world.
They are all part of God’s good world. Creation did not become not “very good” because humans sinned. Creation is still very good. Do you think God recreated the world to have evil in it as punishment for sin? Thorns and cancer and earthquakes don’t just “happen,” they have to be a product of how God made the world. How does it solve the problem of evil that God intentionally added them to creation as punishment instead of building in their possibility in his original good design? If nature didn’t have to have death and disease and natural diasters as a by-product of how it is, (how it is being the best possible very good world), but God intentionally put those things there to punish people, God is mean and vindictive and you haven’t addressed the “God is love” part of the problem of evil paradox.
I don’t understand why you are insisting that God could not look at creation and think “this is very good” unless every single individual aspect of creation also fits that description. It was the total picture that got the designation very good, not death, not disease, not natural disasters. I can look at my marriage and say “this is very good” and it would be dumb for someone to say, “oh, well your husband has to travel for work and leave you and the kids at home, so you’re saying that’s very good? You like it when your husband is gone? How could liking it when your husband is gone be part of a good marriage? If you are going to call your marriage very good, every single individual aspect that could possibly fall under the umbrella “your marriage” has to fit the description very good.”
Christ is the first fruit of the New Creation, and the seal on the hope that we will all be raised to new life. His resurrection is part of the Eschaton breaking into our world. It’s also the ultimate dignification of humanity as God’s image becaue Christ’s human body is what is recreated imperishable (see 1 Cor 15) and raised to eternal life. The hope of the resurrection is not that our current phyical bodies won’t experience biological death. They definitely will. They are perishable. The hope is we will get new physical bodies of a different order intended for a different creation.
Your then doesn’t follow from your if at all. Physical death is a natural process. Animals and plants don’t experience a spiritual reality, as far as we know, so their deaths are natural and not bad. What distinguishes us from plants and animals is our ability to spiritually relate to God, not physical immortality.
In the world we actually live in, death is needed to sustain new life. I’m not really interested in a hypothetical world you can make up in your imagination to fit your Bible interpretation, because it doesn’t follow any of the natural laws and natural processes God has made us able to understand.
Among philosophers of religion, “methodological naturalism” is sometimes understood differently, as a thesis about natural scientific method itself, not about philosophical method. In this sense, “methodological naturalism” is the view that religious commitments have no relevance within science: natural science itself requires no specific attitude to religion, and can be practised just as well by adherents of religious faiths as by atheists or agnostics (Draper 2005).
I found this quote from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is this accurate to your beliefs? If so, I’ve discussed this before. Methodological naturalism assumes that God’s work in creating everything has no bearing upon the creation itself in any way shape or form. Therefore, it assumes that a God who is infinite in wisdom and power exhibited no design in the creation of the universe. This is self-refuting from a Christian view. Creation clearly exhibits not only design, but the invisible attributes of God, and has done so from the beginning of creation, as Romans 1:20 says (Romans 1). There are also numerous verses stating that God continues to do work in creation, upholding its existence.
So, if God’s work is visible through creation, for the express purpose of removing the ability to be excused by ignorance, and God continues to work “behind the scenes” of creation, then how can we assume that religious commitments have no relevance within science?
Therefore, methodological naturalism is by definition a secular (false) assumption, because it assumes the nonexistence and irrelevance of God.
Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
It may have been some nontheists that agreed on that definition, just maybe, and not theologians? No, your interpretation of it is not accurate. Maybe you could glance at what is after my user name and get a clue.
Methodological naturalism looks at what can be demonstrated from nature. It doesn’t willy-nilly invoke ridiculous miracles to make nature correspond to bad exegesis.
(In my younger years I was a YEC and then I was an OEC for over three decades. Actually kidney cancer was a factor in my acceptance of the legitimacy of biological evolution, that God is sovereign in his providence, even, duh, over the mutations in DNA.)
If Satan is not very good, why is he present in God’s good creation? According to a literal interpretation of Ezekiel 28, God cast Lucifer down to earth, so God put Satan in creation on purpose.
It’s the one-liners we don’t appreciate, Dale. Leo can invest all the time he wants into thoughtful 4.7k word replies that make appropriate use of the quote feature to engage multiple people. I give him an A for forum use.
I take them as historical events as well. Taking it all as some vague metaphor looks like a complete dismissal to me. But the Bible doesn’t treat the things in the story literally and so I see no need to either. The question for me is whether this is just a fantasy to be put on the shelf with Harry Potter and Tolkein, like Walt Disney’s “Robin Hood”, or is it about real life in the here and now. So do I believe this story in Genesis is about magical fruit, golems of dust and bone, and talking animals? No I do not. The story is about real things. The tree of life, for example, is a relationship with God, for He is the source of life. And no the Bible is not about rising from the graves to live forever like vampires or zombies. It about living together with a God who is spirit – and so the spiritual MUST be the greater reality for God is not less real but more so.
… so you alter the text from “serpent” to “possessed serpent.” …ok… then we agree that this was not a talking snake but the angel who became our adversary and was called the devil. But… in no way does this look like a literal reading of the text to me.
This is complete nonsense. The word in Genesis 2:17 is תָּמֽוּת (tamut) and everywhere it is used (whether singly or as part of the same phrase מ֥וֹת תָּמֽוּת “shall surely die”) in the Bible it is for an immediate death as punishment and never an eventual death by old age.
That would be nice if it were true, but I don’t really believe that… I have heard the impugning of honest scientists all too many times with endless lies piled upon lies. And we see it in what you wrote…
According to you, we are scoffers following evil desires, not because we oppose Christianity but because we believe what God tells us over and over again in both the earth and the sky. And THAT is what I think you are refusing to see, hear, or understand – misusing an interpretation of the Bible to ignore the living God.
Because they are good. The good God saw was the clear demonstration in evolution that cooperation was the greatest survival strategy. What He saw was indeed good. The lack of suffering (i.e. pain) is a disease called leprosy. And the lack of death is a disease called cancer. Pain and death is how the body works. What you have done is replace reality with a comic book version filled with extreme superficiality.
Is he man, God, or both?
Why did he come to this earth? For what purpose? (you will obviously need to find biblical references for this…i suggest you quote them)
I believe that God did cast Satan to this earth yes, and the why is actually rather simple…we were created with free will.
God did not create robots!
Satan’s charge against God in heaven demanded testing, a trial or sorts. God was on trial (at least up until the cross)
All creatures in the universe have been given a choice to follow Satan or follow God. This planet happens to be the one we know for sure has fallen into sin.
the rest is irrelevant to be honest…it makes no difference whether one is YEC or TE, the wages of sin is death and atonement must be made for it in order for us to receive any kind of salvation from the eternal damnation that the bible tells us awaits those who disobey Gods commandments. The only way that we can receive the gift of grace is by faith in the sufficiency of Christ’s atoning sacrifice (faith that “He will save His people from their sins”)
another magnificent example of biblically supported statements with consistency in referencing. Well done…scholars everywhere must be lining up for your services.
Most often, intellectuals in the academic world teach us that when developing bible theology it is usefull to at least reference from the source. Now we all know that the source for God is the bible, so its only normal that one should reference his word.
If you think that is being used to somehow hide from the absurdly deficient arguments you put forward, you are overestimating your position. If you truly want to sound even remotely intelligent, i would suggest that appropriate biblical referencing in support of your position is mandatory.
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