I realize lots of things are debatable.
Framing it as a matter of “mental health” as if they are sick or injured is part of the problem.
How can you help someone who you can’t (won’t) relate to because you believe them to be “mind sick”.
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Meh. Name one true thing about people that modern psychology has taught us that isn’t already in the Bible.
Renaming things like “evil” or “selfishness” to “personality disorder” doesn’t count.
Yes this is tangential but I think it’s important to understand this is a moral battle not a health battle.
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I don’t either and specifically said so. I am talking about posture. If leaders constantly model a posture of paranoia and conspiratorial thinking (watch out, the general public is being deceived, they are hiding the truth, only a few select, enlightened people can get you the real information you need to understand), that modeling will have an effect on the followers and they will be more open to responding to that same posture from others. On the other hand, if leaders model a posture of cooperation with science, the government, other Christians, and convey that truth and reliable information are not difficult to discover if you have proper tools available to everyone, then the followers learn how to vet sources and keep themselves well-informed.
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Health is a spectrum not a binary. There are plenty of people who are not sick or injured who could take better care of their health, mental and physical. And I have no idea why you assume that I don’t relate to people unless they are peak mental health. Most people, myself included, are struggling, in case you were not aware.
That’s a stupid exercise. But sure. Serotonin regulates mood.
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Thanks for explaining yourself, Christy. You are right, at least, in that people need to learn how to vet sources and keep informed. At some point, that will be as far as it goes. People just think differently…and don’t think they are being conspiratorial or paranoid (they think YOU and I are). And sometimes they just want it to be that way. I tried looking for more online about the particular Facebook posting of Ham’s. (I don’t do Facebook much.) But there were other articles on his beliefs that way. Anyway, thanks for the response.
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First response here - I see a parallel in the way the Religious Right seems to flock to conspiracy theories like this. Ham seems to propose that HE owns a conspiratorial corpus of “key information that is not generally known and is with held from the public.” - once people come to him in trust he will supply the missing parts.
But in that case (think of Martin Luther asking the Church why, if the power to release souls from Purgatory was actual, did they need to sell this great mercy) Why does Ken Ham need to guard (sell) this great information?
It will help for Mr. Ham to explain how the sun, moon, and stars cross the sky beneath the waters some of which caused the Flood, yet Creation includes Planet Earth orbiting the nearest star.
Since he rejects science altogether for the highly effective reason that it isn’t consistent with his reading of Genesis1, he will also scoff at The first and third verses of Genesis, which announce that, as of “Let there be light” some 13.78 billion years ago, God invented time, space, matter, and light. Picture the Spirit, leaning over Moses’ shoulder while whispering the opening verses of Genesis into his ear for Moses to write down, the only actual science to be found there, with a fatherly wink aimed at the age of science finally figuring out the Big Bang.
Verse Two on the other hand grandfathers in the then-dominant pagan view of the universe’s cosmology - a vast body of water, featureless and void, with [for pagans, what would become] earth sequestered deeply within.
Genesis is about the Creator - that idea should be universal.
But, Mr. Ham, Creation does not lie and cannot mislead. Do us all a favor and explain the solar system in light of Days Two and Four.
Not sure where to send this love letter to the esteemed gentleman, but if enlightened, I will be happy to do so. (Please do not hold your breath waiting for a resemblance of thought to come back.)
A few months ago a member of my home congregation managed to supply an hour-long infomercial of Mr. Ham’s regarding his current “life size replica” of the Ark. On the one hand nonsense lurked around every corner (dogs are degenerate wolves, since changes in DNA are always subtractive) while some 21st-Century engineering brilliance answers the mechanical problems of ventilation, refuse collection, food distribution, and oh so much more.
But he forgot to include the significant presence of steel reinforcement buried in the hull to keep he ship intact in the occasional strong winds that make life above ground so interesting.
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I do not believe this from my reading of the bible, show me where you get that from?
Did you mean terrane theory, a geological explanation?
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Please explain then how it is that Satan is the one who whips up a wind storm that kills Jobs children in Job ch 1?
18While he was still speaking, another messenger came and reported: “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, 19when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on the young people and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you!
I find it a really difficult theological position to claim that Satan, a creature who is (even by your own world views claims) more than 6,000 years old, unable to learn science both faster and more intelligently than any human?
Add to the above youre confusing divine authority and power with God allowing Satan to have control of things like the weather. Satan is only allowed to have power to control things like the weather if God allows it. Here in Job 1, we clearly find an example of God doing just that…allowing Satan to control lightning and the wind.
Another example is found the Gospels when Satan took upon himself the form of an angel tempting christ. They did not walk to those places in that narrative, Satan was given the power to physically take Christ there (the roof of the temple being one of the spots he took christ).
This is an example of a person who recognises huge theological conflicts with their world view and then simply twists biblical text to fit their error in order to ensure the sqfety of world view. Philosophically, this is foolish and the conflict here is a major probpem for me.
I do not agree with your world view Christy because of massive philosophical stuffups like this…it becomes untennable.
If you would fix these problems and present a consistent and sound philosophical position, and then align that with the science, you would win me over…but honestly, this is a mess…
Interesting to consider. I also ran this idea of Satan by a friend who also referenced Job. That argument falls a little flat to me as I consider the genre of Job to be that of a thought experiment or drama rather than a historical rendering, even if based on a historical figure. The playing of the conversation in heaven, the lack of concern at wiping out Job’s family (is that consistent with the God you worship?), the recording of Job’s, his friend’s, and God.s conversation, all point to a morality play of sorts, not a historical rendering. And as such, Satan here is a character, and his actions are created to move the story forward, not to express the nature of Satan. Of course, in that culture, everything- earthquakes, fires, storms and so forth were considered to be inseperatable from the actions of God or the gods.
The example of Satan and Jesus is a bit more problematic to explain away, but not that difficult. As it says in the first verse of the story: ‘4 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted[a] by the devil.”
This took place in the desert, and ended in the desert, and has all the hallmarks as being a vision, as people went to the desert and had visions. And, as the text says, he was taken to the wilderness to be temped, not that he was taken to the Temple or the mountaintop to be tempted, with the illusion of change of position coming within the temptation by the devil, not within the physical reality of Jesus’s trip to the desert. To say otherwise would give the devil physical control of Jesus’s physical condition and actions. Why would the devil not then just give Jesus a little shove off the roof of the temple and be done with it?
This type of imagery is often used in the Bible when describing dreams and visions, Again, perhaps it is a fundamental difference in how we read the Bible, and is not a gap that can be bridged.
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Job is a piece of ancient literature, it is not explaining meterology. I don’t think Job records a historical event, it’s a theological drama.
“Another example” of what? An angel appearing in a physical form is not at all related to an angel mastering all the knowlege of the centuries or an angel “having control of things like weather.” Just because the narrative doesn’t explicitly say “they walked” doesn’t mean Satan teleported people. The whole thing was probably some kind of vision anyway.
No, it’s an example of preferring interpretations that make sense based on other things I know. I don’t feel obligated to twist everything I know so it fits into some set of inflexible Bible interpretations as some sort of proof of my faith or wisdom. We aren’t the same.
This has to do to with epistemology and hermeneutics. And yes, I already told you we had no common ground, and I’m not interested in making my views fit your hermeneutics and epistemology, because I reject your givens. You can’t get to my understanding with your presuppositions.
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Curious… I am aware of this view… but saying you believe this only seems to reinforce Adam’s underlying belief
This was a breathtaking admission. But it is probably why I’ve noticed more often an acceptance of an eternal universe around here.
I’d rather not make any digs, but I have to say I don’t see how a post-modernist can make a super far reaching claim like this. It makes me very uncomfortable when someone says the Bible and science are operating in seperate domains. Either those domains overlap or you are literally going to fall off the edge of one map or the other.
HIs underlying belief that we have completely incompatible perspectives and approaches to the Bible and mine is unacceptable to him? Yeah, I know. That’s been my point. I’m not going to be able to “convince” him of anything or “explain” my perspective in a way he finds compelling because we fundamentally do not share the same approach to Scripture interpretation in particular and knowledge in general.
I’m speaking of domains of discourse, not domains of reality. If you want two disciplines to be in conversation, they need to share a discourse domain. We do have domains of discourse related to some intersections of faith and science, like the application of Christian ethics to technology use or how the biblical mandate to steward creation motivates people to participate in ecological justice initiatives informed by ecology and climate science or how understanding of stochastic processes related to divine sovereignty.
What we should not do is cut and paste Bible verses into psychology or biology discussions as if their discourse domains use the same vocabulary and concepts. They don’t. The way the Bible talks about human spiritual flourishing should not be placed “over” the way psychology or biology talks about human flourishing, they should be placed alongside each other. Both can be used to inform our views of reality, but that doesn’t make them automatically conversant with each other. We have to create new discourse domains of intersection, which is kind of the point of this forum.
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Wow! You still surprise me! I agree with this and can also appreciate the difficulty of the task and would also warn against oversimplification of the way in which psychology or biology intersect with the story of the Bible. Just because they may appear to be conversant, doesn’t necessarily mean they are or that they cannot be.
I remember trying to engage Adam about death before the fall, and I wish he would have pursued the conversation with me.
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One of these days, I need to sit down and spend some time looking at the analogical use of language
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I just went back and read the OP four times, trying to convince myself it was partisan – and failed.
Data that point to a partisan divide on some topic does not make discussion of that topic a matter of politics.
You did notice that the OP ends with some questions, right?
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I couldn’t help but laugh here because the argument being made is one that forty years ago was decried by conservatives as a liberal fallacy: “debate both sides” was justifiably seen as an effort to drag in irrational arguments justifying them as a way to achieve “balance”.
This illustrates another of what was once regarded as a liberal fallacy: defining an argument in terms that purposely exclude any but two views.
This isn’t a matter of “both sides”, it’s a matter of at least four, possibly five sides. Defining it as YEC v TE is a rhetorical device meant to exclude anything not covered in the YEC talking points . . . and its employment merely points to validity in the ideas of the OP.
Except that artificially restricting it to just two views as selected by one party is actually about excluding educated choice.
While you insist on excluding the millennia of belief in an ancient Earth and more ancient universe.
Nor is the theological position of the Bible one that teaches that the Earth is young. Indeed, there are no biblical arguments in favor of that!
But you’re the only one saying that – and you’ve been corrected in it several times.
That statement is not consistent with what the Bible itself says; believing it requires maintaining that Jesus lied and Paul was in error.
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