Christy, I think a lot of the articles on the AIG website at least encourage cult-like behavior, and I see that behavior played out in my church to some degree, with a coating of “midwestern nice”. But especially among the homeschool families (at least half our church) this is a huge deal. Our church (perhaps out of ignorance and a desire to be faithful to God’s word) bought and has used the AIG Sunday school curriculum quite a few years ago. Every lesson is tied one way or another to YEC a la AIG. It’s not taught overtly from the pulpit, but it’s in so many other places. While I don’t believe at all that our church is behaving like a cult, the philosophy of AIG has infultrated the congregation, and in a self-governed church, that means it’s everywhere, even if the pastors aren’t preaching it.
This is scary. But I think it also potentially comes with a silver lining. At least if it’s ‘easy-in’ then perhaps it can also in some ways be easy(-ier) out. At least there aren’t travel expenses or physical extraction involved. But the requisite mental extraction may be a bit harder since it is now the person’s own volition (or so they feel) that draws them to their tribal membership. At least the antidotes (reality and persistent curiosity) are also only just several clicks away. Hence the conditioning of the conditioners against heresy-tainted sources … ‘fake news’ … etc. And another difficulty to overcome is that falsehoods make a large enough splash everywhere around the internet that it is probably much easier to find your way into questionable content than to reputable content.
Sorry but I find this quite amusing. You have been told this falsehood and believe it to be true I am sure. Problem is it is false so you are doing what you claim people who accept evolution are doing.
My church uses the AIG curriculum too. One of the kid Sunday school classrooms has pictures of fossils on the wall, which now strikes me as a pretty weird thing to have in a Sunday school room, but I guess it’s all part of trying to make science “fit the Bible.”
BioLogos has no more surrendered to science than Heliocentrists have.
I would like to know of one. In my experience with someone who used to be a dear friend but is now distant both geographically and personally, she is so entrenched in her online echo chamber (or as I put it, her online echo chamber pot), she cannot will herself out of it, nor does she have any desire to, to abandon her ‘truth’ (frequently spelled with all caps) and perverse sense of enlightenment.
After reading @LM77 Liam’s wisdom last spring, I have asked myself if I do not love her enough to try. She has been kicked of Facebook at least twice for posting about ‘hoax crisis actors’ and suchlike trash about the real horror of mass shootings and other catastrophes, some of it anti-Semitic. When she was younger, such ideas would have been anathema to her loving personality.
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Thanks, Dale. I guess the rigidity permeates many, many aspects of the organization particularly the leader.
Nice strawman. Next will you tell me that evolution as a theory is real because gravity is both a law and a theory?
If man did not disobey God, bringing sin and corruption into being, then what do you need Jesus for? You aren’t a sinner, someone has lied to you. Why bother with the Sabbath after a few billion years where it didn’t exist?
Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
John 3:16 Etc…
When you make Genesis into a fable, you destroy the whole salvation story and turn God into a fable or a liar. Sand is at least something. Evolution removes the foundation of Christianity and Judaism entirely.
So you are saying Adam actually created sin? How did Adam who was sinless before he created sin manage to fall into sin which hadn’t been created yet? Adam had to have been created with the ability to sin.
I need Jesus because I, all by myself, have sinned. If I only sin because Adam created sin and it is irresistible then why should I be held responsible? It’s Adam’s fault.
The point of the story of Adam is we are all born with the ability to sin, we all will sin, and we all need a redeemer.
So, which parts of the bible do you downgrade from scripture to mythology or parables? As I said, if you remove Genesis, you have thrown out the foundation for all scripture for another religion; one without God. Be sure that naturalistic, or Darwinian evolution is a religion, because none of it can be proven.
Do you know John 1? Jesus is the foundation of our faith because he is the author of Genesis and all of the rest of scripture. He is the creator who either made a perfect universe as he outlines in Genesis, watched us fall and made a way for us to be brought back to him or he created sin and death and corruption and blamed man for it while spinning myths about it all. I don’t believe in an imperfect or evil creator, which would be required for evolution to be true.
I can understand the desire to wrap up creation in a nice package that can be explained by science, but naturalists aren’t looking for truth. They are looking for a way to replace God by any mechanism they can imagine. The problem is, none of it works and there is no reconciling God with materialism and naturalism. Note, that as this site is presented as Christian first, science second, that I haven’t made scientific arguments, only a few of the most basic biblical apologetics.
Man, alone of all creation, was capable of creation, because God made us in his image. Not even the angels could do it until man showed them how.
Adam was given free will. He and Eve had the ability to say “No, I won’t obey.” Simplest thing in the world today.
We have a different problem than Adam. We are fallen creatures with the knowledge of good and evil. We could choose to do good, but we don’t. We will die as the result of Adam’s sin, but our final judgment will be on our actions and thoughts alone.
The point is, that if Adam didn’t bring sin into creation, then God did, and no perfect God can create sin, suffering and death. They are all outside his nature as a perfect being. If God was responsible for death and sin, then what good is a redeemer? It’s like a traffic cop who gives you a ticket you didn’t deserve and then offers to pay your fine.
Hi Patrick. I appreciate your desire to uphold and defend the Bible, but I think we’re getting a bit off topic here. The thread is really about how we should approach science honestly and accurately, and how young-earth organisations are failing to do so. Perhaps this discussion should be spun off into a separate thread?
The fact of the matter is that regardless of how we approach the Bible, regardless of whether we view Genesis as history or myth or parable or a recipe for black forest gateau, and regardless of who or what we believe did or didn’t evolve from what, any evidence that we cite in support of our respective positions must consist of honest reporting and honest interpretation of accurate information. The Bible has far more to say about the need for honesty and integrity than about either the age of the earth or evolution, and we need to make sure we’re getting that right before we start trying to work out the theological and historical implications.
Very good. We share that in common.
I will never call a mode of teaching used by our Lord (parables) a downgrade! I will not join you or commend you in that.
That might be fair enough - though I think it would be more accurate to say that many here think truth should always come first in whatever form it is shown us. All truth is God’s Truth might be a more accurate characterization of this site’s guiding philosophy which is seen as a pursuit, then, of accurate understandings of both God’s works and His Word; and the conviction that both of these things, accurately understood will not contradict each other. We aren’t in the habit of pitting one against the other, or making some hierarchy out of it where one must be elevated as preeminent over the other. Say rather that we search both and engage with both in order to learn and grow in truth. We don’t try to put them into needless turf wars with each other any more than we would try to pit language arts against mathematics at school.
Then explain why Eve committed the first sin before Adam. It was Eve that brought sin into the word with no knowledge of good and evil.
God gave us all, Adam and Eve included, free will. What we do with that free will is our own responsibility. The sin is created by each of us.
Adam and Eve were one flesh, both literally and figuratively. Both sinned, but Adam, being the first created and the head of the body, was the one most at fault. By Eve’s words to the serpent, Adam didn’t tell her the exact words that God told him. He added to them.
I agree with your second point, as far as it goes. We are responsible for our sins, not Adam’s. But because of Adam, we get sick, we age and we die. We live in a fallen world which is also aging and dying. The world is not getting better as time goes by.
That reminds me of the title of the thread. Is ‘lies’ the best term here? Do you really think AIG is intentionally misrepresenting the truth, or are they saying it as they see it?
Peter, have you ever listened to Kent Hovind? He has a great catchphrase. “We believe the evolution theory is the dumbest and most dangerous religion in the history of the world!”
Before you go on how little I must know, I got interested in this subject years ago, and studied a lot of it even before the internet was available for such searches. Never assume that anything you know is new to me, unless it is something brand new.
Begin with the first fact. Evolution has never been proven and cannot be proven to have happened in the past.
Second fact. Science relies on facts and observations being used to create a hypothesis that can be falsified. Evolution (which bypassed hypothesis and shouldn’t even be a theory) has become so all-encompassing that it cannot be falsified, even if you find the proverbial Jurassic rabbit. They have been found, and every one was discarded or explained away.
Hi @Patrick_S, welcome to the forum! Maybe a good place to start is the claim that the theory of evolution is a religion. Have you found evolution to be a religion to anyone in particular, or have you seen it treated as a viable theory? A theory is something that is falsifiable and open for testing, and therefore doesn’t have to be definitively proven or disproven to be beneficial for research and application. At BioLogos, you’ll find discussion about how evolutionary science is in harmony with Scripture, and it’s the process that God chooses to shape His Creation.
Sorry Patrick, but I am sadly all too familiar with the work of Hovind et al.
Everything you have just said is straight out of the YEC / AiG echo chamber. As I said, there is no point in responding to you until you know something about the subject you are wishing to discuss, so please heed my advice and do the appropriate study of the science from outside of your echo chamber from people who actually know something about it.Thanks.