Why a Designer?

Faith & Science Conversation
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738

all sort of true but the conclusion i think is different to what we believe as SDA’s.

We see that the New Testament is an extension of the promises given thousands of years earlier in the Old Testament. God’s promises I believe are always conditional in that we have to seek to have them fulfilled. The Israelites over millenia were given chance after chance after chance to have the promise given to Eve then Abraham, fulfilled. They stuffed that chance and in the end, they killed “their” (to use your words) own Messiah!

The trouble was, it was the very fact they thought that the gospel was theirs only that caused them to stuff all this up in the first place!

you say that it was the apostle who started this…i dissagree…

luke 4: 16Then Jesus came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. As was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath. And when He stood up to read, 17the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it was written:

18“The Spirit of the Lord is on Me,

because He has anointed Me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captivesf

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to release the oppressed,

19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”g

20Then He rolled up the scroll, returned it to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on Him, 21and He began by saying, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

22All spoke well of Him and marveled at the gracious words that came from His lips. “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” they asked.

23Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to Me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in Your hometown what we have heard that You did in Capernaum.’ ”

24Then He added, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25But I tell you truthfully that there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and great famine swept over all the land. 26Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to the widow of Zarephath in Sidon. 27And there were many lepersh in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet. Yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

28On hearing this, all the people in the synagogue were enraged. 29They got up, drove Him out of the town

The rejection of the gospel narrative in His hometown of Nazareth i think is a parrallel with the rejection of the gospel and the promise of a Messiah by the Jews over a long period of time. Jesus told His disciples to take the gospel to all the world at His ascension

Matthew 28:18Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. 19Therefore go and make disciplesd of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

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739

I would say that Israelites tried to wipe the Canaanites out. God gave orders not to mix with the cultures that worshiped local gods and in some cases, also orders to wipe such cultures away.
That has been interpreted as a spiritual model for us (not to kill people but to avoid polytheistic habits) but it was also a way to preserve monotheism.

In the modern way of thinking, wiping servants of other gods away was cruel, use of too much violence, etc.
Numerous cases in the history of Israelites demonstrate that when Israelites mixed with other cultures, the result was polytheism, service of local idols, with cultural and religious habits that brought suffering.
That makes the orders to wipe the cultures away understandable, even if a modern person would think that it was unacceptable. We live in another kind of world than the ancient people.

I agree that scripture is biased towards God’s people, those who belong to Him. The great secret revealed to Paul was that believers in other nations could also be part of God’s people, in Christ. Peter learned that secret earlier through the vision you mentioned. The concept of God’s people did not disappear, there just was a revelation that these people could come from any nation.
That idea was not unknown even earlier, for example if we think how Israelites were told to treat strangers that lived among them, or the non-Israelite women that were part of the genealogy of David and Jesus.

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740

Sorry, I think you are stretching a point. He read from Isaiah. Isaiah is a Jewish Prophet.

You know Jesus said that he had come for the Jews. Remember His comments to the woman who asked for hid Help
First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

Your quote from Matthew is not as universal as you might claim. It can just mean “make everyone Jews”

Yes Jesus is for anyone, but only if they conform. That would apply to any group offering membership.

Richard

741

“> Intelligent design is a scientific theory that holds that many features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process like natural selection. ID aims to discriminate between objects generated by material mechanisms and those caused by intelligence.”

Quotation from evolutionnews.org article entitled, What is ID and how to best defend it.

Thank you, Buzzard. I would quite agree that “many features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause” (meaning GOD) “rather than an undirected process,” so I do have some real affinity with ID. However, Darwin and others have said that natural selection is NOT an undirected process. I think that evolution process is directed, but not controlled by GOD through ecology.

I agree and disagree with both Darwin and ID. I agree with Darwin that evolution is guided, but the way he understood it. I agree with ID that the universe is intelligently designed, but not the way they understand it. This is the way I put GOD, not ideology, in the center of my thinking.

742

Neither ecology nor Natual selection have purpose or direction. They are purely tests of compatibility and survival. There are more than one solutions at each stage so it is arbitrary which one is “found” first. The whole thing comes over as a sort of lottery where the winning DNA code is the one that actually works or maybe a series of combination locks and the first one to crack each one lives. And, as conditions change, what works at one time may, later on, be overturned. It is organised chaos at best. It does not match up to any positive view of God.

Richard

743

I still claim (and it is not just a claim, because it is so obvious and self-evident) you cannot distinguish between the natural and the supernatural (VFB & VFA) when it comes to scientific reality. You still want God to magically poke at the places where you claim that the God-instituted system of biological evolution is inadequate to overcome your incredulity.

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744

You are using a false method of doing so. VFA & VFB des not exist.

Then there is this fictitious DIvine Meter (or whatever you want to call it) All just diversionary from admitting that you separate your faith from reality.

I am perfectly aware of what a miracle is, but you seem to think it is nothing special.

The fact that many people think God does not act at all any more might give you some sort of clue about what is expected.

When God duplicated some printed flags for me, that was breaking natural laws because it involved the creation of matter from nothing. I challenge you to explain it away.

Richard

745

They are simple labels, Richard. Does the natural exist? The supernatural? Since you cannot get your head around the fact of the labels, I guess I shouldn’t expect anything more involved to be comprehendible either.

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746

I think they are wonderful, and I know Maggie did too.

Have we heard about these flags before? I don’t recall them, at any rate.

747

Jesus is for everyone when they conform to God’s Love. GOD’s People are those who love others. I have news for you if you think that Christians have a monopoly on loving. “God’s People” often get in serious trouble with GOD when they take GOD’s protection for granted.as we see today.

748

You can’t resist an insult can you.

It has nothing to do with getting my head round it. I understand it perfectly, I just do not agree with it!

Ever thought you might be wrong? Nah!

Richard

750

The natural exists. Science exists. Can science tell us anything about God? No. That is the view from the natural, ‘the view from below’.

God exists. The supernatural exists. We have special revelation about and from God via the Bible. God works miraculously into the natural. We agree. That is ‘the view from above’.

One way he does that is by suspending and overriding the natural laws he has instituted, but he does that rarely in our modern Western experience. Another way is by working within them, not suspending them, by orchestrating the timing and placing of natural events, such as the earthquake in Philippi. He has done that for a lot of people – he has done it for me, for Rich Stearns and many, many times for George Müller. Maggie is a wonderful, a wonder full example. That is what we call providence.

What don’t you agree with, that the natural exists? I doubt you disagree. Ergo, you have not understood perfectly and demonstrably so.

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751

I disagree that we can separate viewpoints

What part of VFA & VFB do not exist do you not understand

You are claiming that we can separate the viewpoints and therefore ignore the other. I am saying you cannot!

It has nothing to do with Natural or supernatural. It is to do with fooling yourself into thinking you do not have to talk about God all the time.(You think that can ignore HIm and talk about science.)

Richard

752

Natural selection has direction by definition: “Keep what works.” Whether God exercises an ultimate control on it is completely beyond science to answer and requires looking to theology/philosophy for answers.

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753

And you think the Christian TV meteorologist has to talk about God while on screen presenting the weather forecast. That is what you just said, right? I don’t know how else to take it.

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754

I do need to apologize. It was (and still is) beyond my comprehension that a Christian would believe that there is only God’s view (VFA) allowed in the conversation. I hadn’t realized that is what you were actually doing, denying the reality of the VFB. You would be okay if we had only used the label, the initialism, of ‘VFA’ and not both, right? Wrong, I guess – you said VFA & VFB do not exist. So I guess I agree with @mitchellmckain: you are not coherent in what you claim nor in what you insist upon.

You are in effect forbidding Christians from doing science, not unlike the one on TV.

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755

My point, as stated previously, is to question your assertions regarding the practical applications of ToE. As I have pointed out on more than one occasion, predictions of outcomes based on ToE have been erroneous, and in some cases catastrophic. This shows the theory is inadequate when compared to the applications of sound theories of the Sciences.

I cannot see any useful responses from you, so I end this exchange.

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756

Hi.
I think the only thing that the ToE predicts is that organisms will become better adapted to the prevailing environmental conditions over time. The fact that some drug therapies fail has nothing to do with ToE, but probably with misunderstandings of human physiology and side effects of chemicals in the drugs etc.

The fact that some introduced species have become invasive has nothing to do with a failure of ToE, but rather a failure of people to understand how the introduction of certain species would alter the prevailing environmental conditions for all the organisms in the ecological community. In other words, the ToE worked perfectly in this case (introduced species adapted well to its new habitat), it was just that people did not understand the complexity of the ecosystem beforehand, and hence people may have incorrectly predicted the result of the species introduction. That’s not a failure of evolution, though, but a failure of humans to understand ecological complexity.

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757

Hi klw,

The ToE, as indeed with all theories of science, are the product of human reasoning and understanding. Thus, my point is to show that the ToE as discussed and promoted fails to provide the outcomes that are often claimed. So, I maintain that the claims made for ToE are often exaggerated and a more modest narrative is appropriate, particularly when we discuss theological matters of the Christian faith.

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758

Thanks for clarifying. But what is “the outcome” of ToE that scientists claim? The only predicted outcome of ToE that I’m aware of is that organisms should become better adapted to their prevailing environmental conditions over time. (They will change if the environmental conditions change). In what way has that claim been exaggerated or shown not to be the case? I’m just curious because I can’t think of one.

Of course, I agree with you that there is more than ToE when it comes to theology and the Christian faith.

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