I’m making that claim to a large degree because you regularly employ false dichotomies. A great example is how you absolutely ignore any view of the Earth being immensely ancient that doesn’t fit into your insistence that the Bible teaches science and thus you define everything as either YEC or EC (or something; the science doesn’t interest me except that people should get the science right, so I don’t pay much attention to that label you use).
I can’t really recall any deep questions from you; what I recall are questions based on false dichotomies, on trying to force humanistic worldviews onto the scriptures, and on misrepresentations of what other people have said . . . as illustrated again here:
In posts I have made about the Garden stories, I have defended a literal reading, a mythological reading, even a morality story reading, but the closest I have come to calling it allegorical is that if someone doesn’t want to bother with working to grasp the possibilities from a scholarly point of view then “allegory” isn’t terribly misleading plus that some of the theological “greats” in Christian history have treated it that way. Your assertion here just illustrates the false dichotomy issue once again because you ignore all the other ways people have described the accounts and insist that the Garden stories are either history or allegory with no other options.
No, it isn’t. You keep claiming that the Job story shows Satan has immense power, but what it really shows is that Satan has to get permission directly and specifically from God to do the least little thing to God’s people – in other words, Satan has only the power that God specifically allows him to exercise after asking permission to do so.
There’s a name for that heresy that I can’t recall at the moment. For starters it’s totally contrary to Jude, who says that Michael couldn’t rebuke Satan directly – something that doesn’t describe Christ at all. It’s also contrary to Daniel, who tells us that Michael is “one of the chief princes”, which isn’t true about Christ – first because in that context “princes” are the created heavenly beings God put in charge of various nations, and second because Jesus is King of Kings and not a mere prince. It’s also contrary to Revelation, because Michael is described as waging war against “the dragon”, which can’t apply to Christ because Christ as Creator has no need to wage war, He only has to command. For that matter it directly contradicts Hebrews, where we learn that the Father never called any angel His Son!
It’s sort of the error of dualism, though, the idea that Satan is somehow the enemy of Jesus – he isn’t, because there’s not even a contest there since Jesus is God from all eternity while Lucifer is a created being. The name “Michael” is a taunt deriding Lucifer’s declaration, a question to which the answer is “Jesus”. And it verges on Arianism because angels are created beings and Arius taught that Jesus was created just as you or I are (whereas the apostle tells us that Jesus is superior to angels, which would result in the nonsense of saying that Jesus is superior to Himself). Heck, it verges on Apollonarianism because saying Christ is an angel reduces His humanity and even denies the Incarnation!
I mentioned it because it shows how little power Satan actually has: only one word is required to defeat Satan because it knocks him back on his presumptuous posterior and collapses his audacious assertion that he will be like God. “Micheal” is a question to whom/which “Jesus” is the answer.
I didn’t follow your previous conversations that closely. Once in awhile I’d take a look and my impression was you were doing a fair and respectable job holding to your beliefs.
This comment is disappointing. I thought we’d be able to engage the issue of death before the fall of man better than this.
Adam, people here read your posts repeatedly to try to get some sense out of false claims about us, logical errors, and what Jammy calls incoherence. I’ve read every one of your scripture citations in the original text – not in translation – and I suspect that at least one other person here is doing the same.
Your claim here is another example of conspiracy theory thinking: the assumption that people disagree because they haven’t followed your thinking. Yet it isn’t just an assumption all too often, it requires deliberately ignoring what people have actually said to you – and that makes you look not just incoherent but dishonest.
No – but your claim that it is constitutes a violation of one of those ten Words.
That has been answered a half dozen times I can think of. The question at this point is whether you have a mental block that blinds you against seeing the answers or if you are deliberately ignoring them?
But that’s been done. The real issue is that you are falsely attributing one worldview you’ve selected to people rather than actually paying attention to what they’ve said.
For example, my worldview here is that the text is above all. You’ve ignored that, both by acting as though I haven’t pointed that out and by insisting on imposing a modern humanistic worldview on the text.
That’s also been done.
No, we don’t, we defend our stuff because we regard ourselves as the center of the universe – out of selfishness.
I thought you’d say something like that, Adam. It’s a super-spiritual way of saying “I’m not listening.”
It’s not the question itself that’s rambling, Adam. It’s the context in which you’re raising it. It’s a perfectly legitimate question, but only in the context of a discussion about salvation.
Throwing Bible verses such as that into a conversation about something completely different and then accusing people of “avoiding the question” when they don’t respond to it is, again, simply another super-spiritual way of saying, “I’m not listening.” It makes you sound like you’re trying to use it as a diversionary tactic.
A distinction without a difference since they get their “science” or at least their rules about what science is allowed to conclude, from their interpretation of Scripture.
Does scripture ever actually call Creation “perfect”? I think the closest it comes is the term “very good” that’s bestowed once all the parts have been put in place and called “good”.
Of course using the better meaning of “perfect” as functioning towards a goal, we get a different definition of sin as that which is not “good”, i.e. it is not something that leads towards the goal. Yet with respect to that, regardless of the status of Creation, the plan of redemption is perfect because everything that happens ends up moving us towards redemption – not of itself but because the plan of redemption overrides all else and turns it towards the goal (and thus Peter can explain to us that suffering moves us towards the goal, and Paul can expound that God makes everything work together towards the goal, and James can admonish us to rejoice at suffering [and other trials] because they too move us towards the goal.
Though there’s that little caveat of “to those who love God” and being “in Christ”; for those who do not, sin and suffering move them now this way, now that, and yet again elsewhere because being outside the march of redemption there is no guarantee of any direction except that it isn’t likely to be towards God.
And that thought brings me around to lion and Lamb again: to those not caught up in the perfect plan, Christ is a terrifying lion, but to those caught in His hands He is always the Lamb – even when He is still the Lion.
I agree it’s pretty much without a difference, but the root isn’t their interpretation of scripture; that’s a symptom of the insistence that their uninformed worldview that is imbued thoroughly with scientific materialism is the only proper guide for interpreting scripture. They will say they use scripture to interpret scripture, but unless they let go of that modern humanistic worldview they can’t actually interpret scripture because they don’t stop and be still and ask what the worldview of any given piece of scripture actually is.
So long as they insist that scripture has to be 100% scientifically and historically accurate, it is valid to say that they aren’t even reading the scriptures, they’re reading their modern worldview into them.
That is my point, to counter YECism’s contention of perfection. It was a two-creation plan from the start, the first being destined to futility before it began.
That’s the exact opposite of what Job describes – Job sets out the situation as being that Satan can’t touch anyone without getting God’s explicit permission.
You’re adding to the statement that Luke and Matthew make.
For what it’s worth, for someone in good shape and good health a forty day fast doesn’t result in “extreme weakness” – I had college friends who did forty day fasts and they kept up their regular swimming and/or running schedules the whole time.
Enough with false accusations already! Go back and read Exodus 20!
Also please stop with the approach that the scriptures have to conform to modern science any time you want them to. That’s the root of the YEC error, demanding that ancient literature has to conform to YOUR modern worldview – besides being insulting to the Holy Spirit and the inspired writers as well as the audiences the scriptures were addressed to!
No, we’re not, because you’re going to go right back to claiming that Satan can alter Creation itself to deceive people because he has the power to do that, plus claiming that Satan has all this immense power to the point that he is effectively a rival to Jesus.
People attempting acaloric (water only) 40 day fasts for religious reasons routinely end up hospitalized, google it. If you try to go without food and water for 40 days, you will probably die.
The old rule of thumb was you could go 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food. Those numbers are a little conservative, and I think they refer to being in a survival situation and stressed, and probably also refer to time elapsed and still being able to function. In taking care of terminal patients, once you stop drinking, death comes usually in about a week assuming functioning organs otherwise, dependent of course on starting condition and no IVs etc.
Yes that is exactly the intention for which these things are given to us in the bible. Thats the whole point.
See the trouble is, some people give the impression that they believe things are evolving into something better. That is absolutely the complete opposite to what the bible teaches.
I have never ventured away from the claim Satan alterred creation…how else does one intepret the bible statements about what happened after the fall.? Lets face it, Cain diidnt kill Abel before the fall did he!
I really dont need to prove the power of Satan…the first chapter of Job deals with that as does Christs temptation amd indeed even the description of Satan causing a snake to talk to Eve. It makes no difference whether it really did or, Eve heard it talk in her own head. I cant telepathically enter your head can i? The fact Satan can is a huge step forward from our capabilities.
There are other examples in the bible and id suggest attempting to explain away this theological fact is flogging a dead horse. Its a scholarly fact …just accept it is what it is, and move forward.
You coment about satan vs christ is making claims that arent biblically referenced. If you intend making statements that satans power rivals Christs, then please reference it in a manner that supports your claim to that effect (even if its someone elses doctrine, it must be referenced so it can be academically tested).
Day Two - just water; God places the vault of the sky, the firmament, in the midst of the waters such that half are above the vault and half below - these will be seas.
Day Four - God places the sun, moon, and stars within the vault of the sky, able to cross freely without traversing through any of that water set above the firmament.
Flood - God opens gates in the firmament for the waters to descend, then closes those gates when the flood is deep enough. Experiencing the mortal anguish of a world-ful of drowning pagans moves God to leave the water up above, i.e. cause no successive Flood.
Genesis 1:1,3 show God causing the Big Bang as of 13.78 billion years ago. But Genesis 1:2 adds, as detail, the prior pagan view of the cosmology of the universe, and extrapolates upon in on Day 2 (placing half the waters of Creation above the vault of the sky) and Day 4 (placing sun moon and stars within the vault of the sky hence out of the way of (below) those waters. Yet Planet Earth orbits the nearest star.
One chapter of Genesis, using the extant pagan perception-is-reality, demonstrates the Creator but presents only Sunday School flannel-board images in place of fact. We have spent the last 250 years, i.e. the Age of Science, to put that number, 13.78, into play. To burden Genesis with a “just the facts” view of Creation, such as to the extent we have it today, would have hidden the Creator behind thousands of pages of techno-speak.
Viewing Genesis v. science from this end of the telescope, story accomplishes the important work of God communicating theology.
Viewing Genesis vs. science from this end of the telescope, story accomplishes the important work of presenting profound theological truths to six-year-olds in Sunday School, and ordinary pre-literate adult early Hebrew minds. One page presents the Creator not creation note the small c.
I understand your discomfort - it was mine also, some time ago. Since then I have developed the opinion that facts have no value until interpreted by spirit (mind, soul, consciousness, what have you) which implies that truth or value or importance of meaning or truth. Two plus two equals four isn’t true, it is fact. The difference is critical when discussing the truth of Scripture. Science is fact; when a reading of Scripture violates fact, the reading has to give way. Creation is fact; so is the Big Bang.
So, yes, I am saying that Spirit and Science operate in parallel but not necessarily in concordance.
Creation is material. Spirit is of God. Material is of God. Material is fact; Spirit is in the realm of meaning purpose soul importance love and God.