“And his [Christ’s] gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.”
… not to mention Jesus’ prayer in John 17:20-23 …
“‘I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.’”
I’m asking for an explanation, as I do not have the knowledge to correctly read Paraleptopecten’s statements. I can’t give an accurate and relevant response until I understand the argument being made. My question was not sarcastic.
For example, the rhetorical question, “The earth stayed vaporized for longer than just the flood?” makes no sense to me, as it assumes the earth was vaporized in the first place. And similar for the statement “we can get an estimate of the energy released by looking at them (radioactive isotopes).” which seems to have no qualifying statements.
The heat problem is essential to the extra-Biblical speculations of YEC organizations ( Genesis itself speaks only of springs and rain ). For speeded up radioactive decay, the heat unleashed by compressing the time interval from billions of years to a few months, according to E=mc2, would essentially nuke the planet.
As far as rapid tectonic movement, the friction from colossal shifts of tectonic plates would melt the crust.
But even high school physics tells you that the heat problem is more fundamental.
Moving continental plates is work, in the engineering sense of the word, to generate movement and overcome friction. Earth quakes such as make today’s news are powered by the heat from radioactivity within the Earth. Planets lose seismic activity as their cores cool. Tectonic drift on Earth is typically on the order of a couple of centimeters per year, and that draws from the entire supply of energy of measured decay rates of isotopes within the Earth. Without an enormous availability of free energy, the tectonic velocities envisioned by YEC would not happen. But it is exactly that enormous supply of energy that melts the crust, which is why we never witness rapid plate tectonics. The idea is gibberish, like boiling water to make ice.
Why does unity have to mean agreement in doctrine? I think that is your interpretation. Why can’t it be unity in repentance, thankfulness to Jesus, selfless living and helping the poor?
James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Doctrine is important but overrated. I suspect many people who have the “correct” doctrine will be turned away by Jesus because they He never knew them.
These two statements are not the same, nor does either of them imply the other.
This is important: many scholars will say that some part or another of the Old Testament is myth, and people take that to mean it is fiction, but in the scholarly world myth is a neutral term that indicates neither fiction nor non-fiction.
A better term for laymen is “mythologized”, i.e. an account with a factual core is spun into a story with mythological elements. All of the opening chapters of Genesis fall into this category to one extent or another, right up through the Flood and the Table of Nations. But in one important sense that is irrelevant because what is historical and what is added are not important; what is important is the story as it has come to us by and through the Holy Spirit, first in inspiration and then in canonization. Yet in another sense it is critical because it reminds us to not read any of it as a source for history or for science.
Why would you presume such a thing? As with any literature, to understand the various parts of the Pentateuch it is necessary to read them from the perspective of the original writer, what he intended to say, and the original audience, what they would have understood. Thus the foundational presumption about the Pentateuch must be that it is acnient literaature that has to be read as the ancient literature it is.
Actually there is: shaking a tectonic plate that hard for that long would turn it into gravel. Given that no tectonic plate exhibits such a composition, there is solid reason to suggest that your proposed shaking did not happen.
In which case we must ask why did there need to be an Ark? Surely God could have provided enough rafts of debris for all the animals to survive on!
If the beach stayed solid, frequently you could. My stretch of the Oregon coast has experienced three tsunamis while I’ve lived here, and only one of them was worth watching, which is true for the simple reason that without special instruments the other two weren’t even measurable. The one which was was dangerous to people on the beach not because of the waves, which were easily survivable, but because those waves lifted every piece of driftwood from wood chips to stumps to longs and swirled them about – and in fact where the beaches were clear of driftwood there were people who went down to experience it.
Now I said “if the beach stayed stable” for a reason: if the quake producing the tsunami is close enough to the epicenter, the entire beach may effectively liquefy, all the sand jiggled into a sort of mush suspended in water – instant quicksand! (BTW, this is a good reason to not build on sand in an earthquake zone: if it’s late in the rainy season so that the sand under your house is saturated, there’s a good chance the house will actually sink.)
Concerning the radioactive decay issue: We start with the knowledge of the physical makeup of the Earth from standard physics. This includes the proportions of different elements, some of which are radioactive. The rate at which these elements decay are known from laboratory measurements. Since we have a basic idea of the original proportions, by measuring the present proportions we can make a reasonable estimate of the ages of continental rocks. Measuring these gives dates up to four and a half billion years.
Flood geology requires that the Earth be only on the order of ten thousand years old. That means that somewhere along the line those elements must have decayed extremely rapidly. This rapid decay is assigned to the flood year, which means that four and a half billion years of decay products were produced in just one year.
One product of decay is heat – that’s why nuclear reactors work. If you calculate the amount of heat released by the decay of those elements and pack it into a single year, the result is that in a few seconds the planet’s entire crust is melted, in a few more the atmosphere and water have all boiled away, and before a minute is up the remaining rock is boiling, with the result that not much later the rock is turning to vapor and being boiled off into space. Long before the year is up, the remnants that hadn’t boiled off would turn to plasma, and instead of a planet there would now be a gap where Earth;s orbit was because the solar wind would have blown all the atoms out into the rest of the solar system.
So there’s no assumption; what there is is a calculation using well-known basic physics.
It doesn’t mean agreeing on everything; it means agreeing on “all the truth” revealed by God:
“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13)
St. Augustine used to say, “In what is necessary, unity; in what is not necessary, liberty; and in all things charity.”
Scripture (as well as common sense) says unity of faith comes from believing the same doctrine of faith:
“… for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine …” (Eph 4:12-14)
Romans 14 deals with the mistake of judging others over trivial, irrelevant matters, which fosters disunity.
Falsehoods and misinformation cease to be trivial and irrelevant if:
They present a danger to life, health and safety, or the environment
They interfere with people’s ability to do their jobs properly
They undermine the credibility of the Body of Christ or the Gospel message
They sow confusion about the fundamental basics of science, honesty, or critical thinking
They breed conspiratorial thinking, or an undue scepticism or hostility towards subject matter experts
They are peddled for profit, or in pursuit of an agenda
They come from people who should reasonably be expected to know better.
Arguments against evolution do not necessarily fall into all of the above categories. But many of them fall into at least some of them. Blatantly bad arguments—those that demonstrate an ignorance of basic mathematics or the ability to use Google, or that repeat the same falsehoods parrot fashion even after having been told that they are false—fall into categories 3 and 4, for example.
“14 We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine by people’s trickery**, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming;**
Not being tossed and blown about by every wind of doctrine from deceitful schemers is not the same as all having the same doctrine. It’s good advice. When Paul wrote that there wasn’t even a New Testament and he is talking mostly to people who couldn’t read, who didn’t have Bibles and had limited access to libraries etc.
Scripture is hardly clear on countless issues. As I said, doctrine is overrated. Do you think God cares how accurate your beliefs are or where your heart is at and how much you are trying to help other people?
Proof-text hunting the Bible doesn’t change reality.
What do you think the Council of Jerusalem was about? (Hint: doctrine)
If 500 years of Protestantism has taught anyone anything, it’s that disagreements over doctrine produces disunity. Accepting the same doctrines is essential for unity - come on, it ain’t rocket science.
What a Christian should believe is “overrated”? I don’t think so.
Glad to see that you think works are very important to God - after all, James also said "a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. (2:24); Christ judges the seven churches (Rev 2, 3), the nations (Matt 25) and the “dead” (Rev 20:22) according to their works.
Do you realize that you’re actually discussing doctrine here?
Sure, but it doesn’t follow that doctrine is of secondary importance.
Maybe learn from the council of Jerusalem which imposed the bare minimum straight out of the OT. It was about Gentiles coming into an inclusive Jewish religion and what to do about it. There also was no agreement. Paul had to oppose Peter to his face. I’d love to see Peter’s side as despite his rhetoric, I doubt Paul won that argument that day.
Maybe we can learn from the Nicene Creed which doesn’t have 5000 doctrines in it.
Unity in the person of Christ. Everything else is not salvific and not as important.
Oh and since we disagree on an issue clearly you are wrong, not a Christian and don’t have the Holy Spirit in you. The Holy Spirit would not lead you to doctrinal error. Jesus said the Holy Spirit was coming to his followers. So agree with me or you are not a Christian. The Bible says so. QED.
I failed to make it visible that my post was for Leo Greer. Yet allow me to address one or two of your points:
“…we’re talking about the theory of evolution (ToE), which says the history of life on earth is the result of known biological mechanism”
I am unsure why this distinction is supportable. When we speak of science and theory, the word theory implies a full and satisfactory explanation for a suite of observed facts. Evolution is fact. Your statement here is teleological not scientific. The alternative implied by your ToE is that Creator God reached into the guts of Creation and pulled strings such that life arose by divine intervention not by known biological mechanism.
That leap, that assumption, declares that Creation wasn’t self-starting. Yet from the Big Bang onward, everything supports the idea of a perfect Creation - one that unfolds as designed to result in life.
For that matter the University of Chicago, one year ago, hired Jack Szostak (2009 Nobel in Medicine) to continue his groundbreaking work on the biological mechanisms effective in the Early Earth environment that led to a functioning, self-reproducing, metabolic collection of RNAs in a protected vesicle. Google him, if you care. Across the past dozen-odd years he has demonstrated the likelihood of multiple of those necessary steps.
To suggest a Theory which permits God to have made a less-than-perfect universe? In my most humble view that is, well, not fully pious
