That’s an astute and important observation, IMO.
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I think you are missing the point here…delusional individuals are quite often found in groups…even large groups. These are individuals who have clearly been conned and this is historically where the mainstream German population found itself…twice one might say (WW1 and again in WW2). That does not mean that what those of the population did was of Christian origins…one must argue from a biblical perspective, it was not even close to the model that Christ gave us in the gospels…that is evidence enough to prove my earlier point. The wider concensus among Christians was not supportive of the idea of tyranny and that was very obviously Hitlers aim.
In terms of whether or not Hitler believed himself to be Christian, i agree his position seems complex, however, he did believe his cause was of a Christian nature. However, it is my belief that his was a delusion. Despite the delusion, there are a large number of significant statements he made throughout his life that support the view that he believed his was a God fearing cause, however, my efforts to copy them to forums in the past have met with immediate removal for apparently promoting Nazism.
If you google statements that Hitler has made, he saw himself as some kind of cleansing figure for Christianity. One would reasonably conclude that he believed that the early church sufferings at the hands of the Romans (pushed by the Jewish leadership of the time) needed someone to make amends and purge the world of the Jewish nation in its entirety. Obviously, it did not help that he was mistreated by Jews when he was younger and i dont think he ever forgot that. Of one thing we can be sure, the ultimate aim of Hitler aligned with the decades old idea of Lebensraum…that all non Aryan races be wiped out of Europe (Poles, Ukraines, Russians…it wasnt just the Jews that he was aiming to purge)
one thing that is particularly interesting about fascism…its aligned with Social Darwinism. That raises red flags unfortuntely and is at the heart of my refusal to even entertain the idea of Darwinian Natural Selection…it is at its core anti God and certainly does not support the idea of the gospel and why Christ died for sin.
Another interesting quote i found this morning…(and you should be familiar with this here)
Several different theories address the origin of the Cambrian Explosion, proposing that dramatic environmental changes must have opened up new niches for natural selection to operate upon. These proposals include the runaway glaciation theory ,11 which proposes that glaciers briefly covered much of the earth, and the resultant loss of habitat created bottlenecks where evolution could act more rapidly. Another theory suggests that a change in atmospheric oxygen led to this sudden burst in evolutionary changes.12 Yet another proposal is that major changes in the seafloor, from algae mat-covered surfaces in the late Precambrian to soft muddy bottoms later in the Cambrian, had dramatic evolutionary and ecological impacts.
When i look at the proposed solutions in the above, we have essentially the following:
- compress the environment and evolution goes faster (bottlenecks)
- change the oxygen levels in the atmosphere (increased oxygen increases the rate of evolution)
- increase in mud on the sea floor has a dramatic change on the evolutionary process.
Now whether or not TEism wishes to ‘see what i see’ in the 3 above proposals…they are ironically very consistent with a global flood as the cause rather than a secular no God, no intelligent design view of origins and diversity. And these three proposed solutions above come from your own side of the debate! All of a sudden uniformitarianism is under attack from within its own ranks!
Please do not make the major logical fallacy in your reasoning that I have heard all too often in my discussions with my YEC relatives. Just because facism accepts Darwinian Natural Selection, it does not follow that all Darwinian Natural Selection adherents are facists!!! And be very careful when you claim that Darwinian Natural Selection is anti-God. Again, just because virtually all atheists believe Darwinian Natural Selection, that does not mean that all who believe Darwinian Natural Selection are atheists!!!
I have seen this kind of irrational reaction all too often from people who want to believe that something is so true that it must be true even for those who don’t believe it.
Darwinian Natural Selection, or evolutionary theory, when correctly described in good scientific terms, explicitly states that it says nothing about the existence, or lack of existence, of God. This is not anti God. And it obviously also does not claim to say anything about the gospel, or why Christ died for sin.
I have to leave it to others with much more knowledge to respond to your claims 1, 2, and 3 above, but it sure seems to me to be rather simplistic, and very much a failure to even think about the numbers, to imagine that the “speeding up” described in your quote would reduce the time scales to anything remotely resembling a few thousand years.
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It’s better summed up as assuming that their worldview is superior to all others so obviously God forced the ancient writers to conform to it rather than writing from within their own worldview. This is insulting both to the original audiences who by this reading were denied the chance to learn from something they could understand and to the Holy Spirit Who meant to communicate to the people back then with literary forms and a worldview they were familiar with.
Nicely put.
The first thing to learn is that the past is the past, so we don’t try to force it to fit our worldviews. We may not be able to totally grasp ancient worldviews, but it is better to make the attempt and get closer than to not even try and get everything wrong.
Part of that is to remind ourselves regularly that all this ancient literature was not written to us; we are reading someone else’s mail!
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I tend to think of it as, “Time’s up. Put your pencils down and close your exam booklets”.
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No Adam it is you who has missed the point. The way Hitler was viewed by the Christian populace in German was complex. You may want to believe a single simple story, but that’s not how history presents the situation.
Google is not a historical source. I’ve already established that Hitler presented a dual religious persona, one public, one private. Do you have evidence that says otherwise?
I don’t even know where to start with this…
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Just let me make clear…I do not believe that simply because you (oir any TEist) may believe in Darwinian theory that you are a fascist or a Nazi. I would never even imply such a thing.
The point is, we are warned in the bible about blurring lines…the prophet Samuel very specifically told King Saul…its better to obey than to sacrifice. King Saul compromised the true meaning of his purpose in order to justify his wishes to exercise power and riches like other kings around him and that is the point here. Following Darwinian theory is simply a means of attempting to compromise biblical theology with secular scientific views…these are driven by “there is no God” premises. The whole idea of uniformitarianism requires no God…all you have is a mismash of two in order to try to promote a modern day version of King Sauls compromise…which Samuel rejected.
No offense intended, but at its worst, I see this as “taking financial advice from a known criminal”. You might say the same of me and YECism, however, unfortunately for that claim…I am on the moral high ground in that if i am wrong it does not affect salvation, however, if TEists are wrong because they refuse to accept that the bible is Gods inspired word and the ultimate source of authority…they refuse to accept that Christ died physically as punishment for the wages of sin (death)… for them its kaput!
might i suggest Isaiah 53 is relevant here…
Isaiah 53:4-5 New International Version
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
there is nothing allegorical about that prophecy…Christ absolutely fulfilled it exactly as it was foretold by Isaiah
you cannot possibly use this as evidence in support of your view that YECism is false! That is the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard and an extremely poor intellectual argument.
To expand on this, all Christians have the same bible, the same moral authority…it is those individuals who do not adhear to the moral high ground who are at fault here, not the fundamental itself. Anyone who has read even the first book of the gospels knows full well, St Roymonds argument extrapolates into something that is absolute rubbish and at odds with the Gospel itself. We should be deeply offended when its taken to the point where atheism attempts to throw the moral argument as a defense of its own equally terrible track record.
The reality is, all have sinned and fall short of the expectations that have been laid out for us…neither religion nor atheism can exist outside of the human condition. It is our curse…its everyones curse. The only difference here is that Christians accept this is our curse, atheists blame Christians for it but appear to enjoy using that as absolution for their own contribution!
are you intentionally plucking at straws, or simply missing the point i made? No one claimed Hitler was a sane man…he was clearly delusional. The point was not whether or not the rest of the world believed Hitler was Christian, only that he saw himself as one who was doing the work of a higher authority (God).
What i said was, if you google statements made by hitler about religion, you will find he made numerous religious statements that clearly represent the view he was very religious…no one said google is your reference Liam.
I will further add to the above by reminding you that i also said, i have tried to post these statements by Hitler in other forums in the past and they have been removed because they may incite Nazism…of which i fundamentally am not even remotely Nazi…i detest it in the strongest possible way.
- If and when “dogmatic, anti-theistic evolution, YEC-cers” are able to break through the bubble wrap within which they wrap themselves, I would be well-entertained to watch them connect their false witness against TE directly and rationally to:
- Murray and Churchill’s “Mere Theistic Evolution”
"With a nod to C. S. Lewis, we will refer to this general characterization as mere theistic evolution. As we see it, all versions of theistic evolution, however they may differ from each other, are to be distinguished collectively from competing approaches by three features. - First and foremost, they are all theistic positions: they assume the existence of a Creator who bears all and only those attributes that are fitting to ascribe to God (for example, omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence).
- Second, all theistic-evolutionary accounts agree that the created universe as a whole, and the earth as a part of this creation, have existed for eons. (Reasonable estimates are approximately fourteen billion years for the age of the universe and four billion years for the earth.)
- Finally, all versions of theistic evolution affirm that the complexity and diversity of life are best explained by appeal to evolutionary processes that have been operative over long periods of time, where the relevant processes include those that constitute what is often called “the modern evolutionary synthesis.” (One key process in this synthesis is natural selection, acting on random mutations. But it need not be the only important biological process.) Included in this affirmation—and implicit in what follows—is an endorsement of evolution as a very good explanation of these phenomena, and not simply the best among a rather poor set of candidates.
- This third feature significantly narrows the scope of theistic evolution. For it means that it is not enough to affirm change over time, or even change over time plus common descent; theistic evolution in our sense comes with a confidence in the explanatory power of the evolutionary approaches employed in current biology. We prefer this narrow construal because we believe it better fits the way that people ordinarily ascribe the position to themselves or others. A broader understanding of theistic evolution—say, one that did not endorse natural selection as a primary driver of speciation—would be at odds with ordinary practice.
- Murray and Churchill’s “Mere Theistic Evolution”
- Moreover, the scurrilous among the YEC are bound, IMO, to demonstrate that TE diminishes the truth and glory of Jesus of Nazarth’s crucifixion, deat, burial, resurrection, and ascension.
I didn’t know that.
is this still in harmony with the the Old Age Intelligent Design group?
How does that align with Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe Doesnt ID cause problems with the standard TEist model i believe you have recited?
I hope im not interpreting your statement simply…it can obviously be taken two ways and i assume the sarcastic way was intended. However, i cant help but respond with the literal interpretation also…usually the fundamentalists are at fault in this, the radicals. And that is true of any world view (whether religous or otherwise…IRA for example although some might still call this religious at its core so maybe i didnt pick the best illustration)
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The problem i have with this is that you turn theory, built upon theory, built upon theory, built upon theory into apparently observable fact. When you talk biology, there is not a single instance that am aware of where new life has evolved in a laboratory under any conditions. Every attempt to replicate this apparent fact has failed with the life form dying before it did anything! Even the current mathematical agreement is that in fact 4.54 billion years is not anywhere near long enough for anything to evolve…the claim is actually likely that its not only statistically improbable, its impossible. You could throw in all the “elements” needed for life to evolve into a bucket and nothing will ever happen…that is the current observable scientific reality.
I dont know why it is that intelligent minds continue to harp on about observable science given the most basic premise of all fails miserably in our current observational timeframe. You follow a model that cannot even adequately come up with a solution to the origins of the energy and matter for the big bang…all TEism does is put God in that place and voila…problem is solved! My understanding is that mainstream scientists do not agree with the TE solution there!
I should imagine the argument is then put forward that we just dont have the technology yet to make it work!
I agree with this, i believe you are 100% right with this statement. You already know the reason why, Science cannot account for, explain, or provide a mechanism for Salvation. The only way in which it can be discussed is via philosophical domain. But therein lies the heart of the problem…
science says the bible must be allegorical because it cannot really test and therefore cannot really accept miracles. So the creation, the fall of mankind and entry of sin into this world bringing death with it, and particularly the Flood…or should i say the aftermath of these two events are both miracles. I do not blindlly say that the settling of the earth after the flood doesnt follow laws which God clearly set in place, however, we must remember, God is not bound by any of those laws (contrary to many TEism claims). Speaking anything into existence isnt scientific, its a miracle outside of science. If God wanted to completly wipe from the face of the earth evidence of the evil that existed prior to the flood, then that is what he has done.
I think that what we find today in coal/oil/mineral deposits are evidence of what God has done in purging the world of that evil, but to be honest, i am not convinced that we will ever see the true extent of what God purged from the face of the earth at the time of the flood.
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Maybe you’re referring to the religion of feminism. Every nation that has embraced feminism is now cursed with a below-replacement-level fertility rate (more people dying than are being born) … aka an aging population.
If a cattle breeder, for example, discovered that more of his cattle are dying than being born, he would rightly consider that an existential crisis and a recipe for extinction.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/23/asia/japan-kishida-birth-rate-population-intl-hnk/index.html
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Somehow they fail to see that this is a view of truth that is alien to the scriptures. Truth in the scriptures is not measured by scientific or historical standards from after the scientific revolution, it is measured in terms of relationships. The tree in the Garden wasn’t any different from any other tree except that to eat from it broke the relationship of loyalty towards God (which they proceeded to compound by refusing to admit what they’d done and accept responsibility). It is basically non-propositional even when it contains propositional truth: the truth of the Resurrection isn’t the datum that Jesus returned to life, it’s that by doing so the entire relationship of humans and creation with God underwent a shift; and projecting back, the truth of the Noah episode isn’t the days of rain or how long the flood lasted, it’s that God changed the way He was dealing with humans by taking a natural phenomenon due to the refraction of light through suspended water particles and declared that it now marks His arbitrary covenantal promise.
Which is one of the multiple errors of YEC: it doesn’t just undermine the Gospel by forcing false parameters on the scriptures, it is a giant waste of time that makes Christians look foolish that could be better spent out wandering the bars of one’s city in search of people in need of help – an activity in the essence of “Love your neighbor” whereas YEC just annoys neighbors.
To say nothing of the fact that the church got along just fine for nearly eighteen centuries with YEC; the great teachers of the church in the first millennium had widely differing views of the Creation account with respect to what we think of as history and most of us have probably not even scratched the surface of what those Spirit-given teachers had to say about Jesus!
Allowing that the view of the Sun was “cultural context” is like admitting that Willy Wonka’s factory had something to do with candy: it throws away the main point by admitting to a tiny piece of it.
I’ll just note in passing that the group in the United States which de facto promotes social Darwinism is the political party with which the great majority of YECists are involved.
And that’s how it has to be until someone invents a divine-o-meter that can detect divine intervention from among all other events.
Which is silly on the face of it since God is in control of it all – that comes with being Creator “of all things”, not just of the things at the start.
Yes – the “speeding up” of the Cambrian ‘explosion’ is a matter of dropping from many millions of years to just lots of millions.
In other words, as we have seen here, they have to violate the command against bearing false witness.
And that includes against people whose only aim is to see the text of the scriptures treated with respect.
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One of the things that made it easy to ditch the YECism of my youth was even as a school-age kid I didn’t like the contrived answers for how there was light before the sun existed – I did not see anything scriptural about them.
When a theory becomes a belief, science suffers.
Thousands of years of dog breeding, for example, has taught that there is only so much a species can change. Pushing the limits of genetic variation by breeders leads to a dead-end of weak, unfit dogs. Clearly, genetic limitations exist that seem to make macro-evolution impossible.
Why let scientific realities ruin a cherished belief?