“Above?” If God were incapable of being understood then we accept the decision of the naturalists that all talk about God is without meaning. God is not unintelligible and our speaking of God is not without meaning. When people say things like this, it frankly sounds like they are just saying “I understand God but you do not.” I believe in an infinite God, and thus our learning about God will last forever. But it is an intelligible infinite God – one whom we CAN continue to learn about and understand better.
I believe God can and does change because our relationship with Him is where He is at. We change and He changes to be what we need.
When God chooses the rational hopeful course with us and it does not work, He has regrets and changes strategy looking for a way that will work better with us. What is true is that this is not about some inadequacy or failing of God but only our freedom of will. He is not the standoffish unchanging observer of the Deists but one who comes down to us where we are at to be what we need Him to be (not what we want Him to be), but what we need.
Natural laws like gravity do not change. They care nothing about what we want or choose. God is not a natural law but a person who involves Himself in our lives and responds to every one of those billions of people. God does care, and yes God changes for every one of those billions of people. God can. God chooses to do so. God has done so. God will.
You appear to assume that God will know things because He can, and you assume the future is fixed and already written. I think both of these assumptions are wrong.
No it is a way of objectively looking at things which God has shown us in what He created beyond the prejudiced opinions of clergy making up stuff to justify their occupation.
I do not, and I have no idea why you think I should think that, other than your warped view of knowledge and power.
How is that different?
Objectivity is, by definition, human understanding.
That is just your prejudice against clergy and organised religion. I am not a clergy as such, but my father was and I take deep offence at your assertions.
No more than I have any idea why you think I assume God will do things because He can, let alone that there is anything God does not have… other than your warped view of knowledge, power, and rationality.
The difference is that it is no more “human” than what you get from scripture… and actually good reason to think it is a great deal less so. The conclusions of science do not come from us and how we think things should be, but from that which God created and sometimes quite contrary to the way we think they should be.
That is your prejudice for clergy and organized religion. Clergy are no more immune from the corruption of sin, selfishness and abuse of power than anybody else. Unlike the more widely held views I constantly hear from people, I am not opposed to organized religion at all. I go to church on Sunday. I just won’t whitewash things either. Church organizations are no more or less prone to corruption and abuse for power than any other human organizations.
And I am sure that you no more think that you clergy is corrupt then I think my father was, so why you are making such blanket offensive assertions i have no idea.
that is precisely what you are doing.
Whether there was power grabbing in early church authority or not does not tarnish the whole movement.
I do not understand God or why He allows some things to happen but I do believe in Him.
We can know what He has informed about Himself to us, and I believe that the biblical scriptures are the most trustworthy source telling about Him. Even with the biblical scriptures there remains the challence of interpretation. Our interpretations seem to differ in some details.
One possible reason why we have different interpretations may be differing viewpoints to the relationship between time and God. If the future is open in the sense that even God cannot know what happens in the future, then God responds to what happens as the open future is about to get fixed to the current time. That might demand flexible responses, in other words ‘changing’ God.
If God knows or can accurately predict the choices of a human in the future, then there is less need for changes - God informs what happens if we chose something and then just sticks to it.
I assume (and interpret) that the anthropomorphic descriptions about the changing feelings of God in the biblical scriptures, especially in the OT, are ways to accommodate the message to a language that the receivers could understand. [The feelings of Jesus is another matter because he was fully human.]
I think the problem is that God has revealed and yet we still interpret those revelations in human terms and values.
If God is omniscient and / or omnipresent, then that is that, No preconceptions or complaints about power and freedom will change it. Its no good us saying "He can’t be… because… " or even “He must be… because…” God is what He (she/it) is. What we want or can’t except is irrelevant. We do not construct God.
It is not our place to judge, or anticipate, or criticise God, or to suggest how He does what He does or why He holds back.
To be frank it doesn’t matter whether God is or is not omniscient or omnipresent. God is God and that has to be enough. it is no use throwing a temper tantrum and claiming “Unfair”. It won’t change anything at all. I guess the best thing is not to even go there. We have the relationship, just keep it at that and let God worry about the details or the mechanics involved.
I sometimes think in terms of God being like a chess player who doesn’t just see a dozen moves ahead, but a dozen dozen.
And we know that what happens depends on human choices, a classic example being that of David asking if the people of Keilah would surrender him to Saul; God said they would, so David went somewhere else.
It struck me the other evening that there was a time when God felt the first human hug . . . .
This reminded me of the Dayenu from the Jewish Passover–
“If You had only called me, but did not know all things, it would have been enough.”
“If you had only died for me, and not been always present, it would have been enough.”
I don’t find YEC arguments to be compelling, but to be fair, there are animals that look built to be carnivores that nonetheless eat mostly plants. If we found the fossil remains of a giant panda and had no knowledge of the animal, would our first assumption be that it ate mostly bamboo? Maybe not after closer analysis, but if all we had was the skull…
What we see now is the consequence of the past, not the future.
The appearance of animals tells us about the living habits of their ancestors as the morphological adaptations may be slow to change, unless there is a very strong selection pressure.
The assumption that plant-eating animals were created with ‘pre-adaptations’ that made them efficient carnivores after killing started is strange. It would mean that God created animals that were far from perfect - with teeth and other features that gave the animals a serious disadvantage in feeding plants. It would mean that God created the animals not for the conditions of the pre-fall world but to the world after the fall - if we assume that killing only started after the fall of A&E.
Are there any examples of this other than the giant panda and human vegetarians?
Looks to me like the rather adaptive character of living organisms. They will do whatever works at the moment and are ready for doing things differently if the conditions change. Although 99% of their diet is bamboo, they can and do eat animals on occasion. I guess they fall of the vegetarian wagon like some humans. LOL
Wikipedia also gives spectacled bears, olingos, kinkajous, binturongs and palm civets in Carnivora, and parrot fish, iguanas, Indian green frogs and a host of other herbivorous species that would appear to be carnivorous at first glance.
Absolutely they will, because that’s the way its portrayed in the bible. We have the end of the biblical narrative correcting the corruption that came after the fall and restoring everything back to its prefall state. there is no way to deny this very obvious biblical theme.
Also, just in case you have forgotten,
Isaiah 11:6 reads, “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them”
Revelation 21
“Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more,”
Then of course the other significant problem is Christs statement about the second coming in Matthew 24…its a universal Global event and Christ then refers us back to the time of Noahs flood in illustrating the finality an extent of the second coming. Its not some insignificant local event…every eye shall see him.
Do YEC claim that adult TREX’s were on the ark? My belief is that the larger of the dinosaurs were not on the Ark and i would argue that the biggest of the apex predators in this example are highly unlikely to have been on it fully grown for a couple of very obvious reasons. 1. Keeping food stocks up to feeding something that large for a whole year would have been close to impossible and 2. there clearly wasnt enough room on the boat for fully grown animals of that size.
When considering whether or not Trex existed in that form in Eden…personally, i don’t think so.
I am not entirely convinced that the animal was even created actually, i am wavering on the notion that part of the reason for the destruction of the earth in the flood, and subsequent extinction of the dinosaurs…this suggests to me that God wiped out the earth because of the corruption of not only humanity, but also the animal kingdom. I simply don’t see that the extinction of large animals so soon had anything to do with environmental change over time. We know today that extinction is often caused by human factors…particularly due to change as a result of the industrial revolution and population growth…these things are clearly destroying habitat. However, for dinosaurs, i think its more likely that very rapid environmental change, initiated by the Creator is the cause there because the kinds of factors that we know today cause extinction of many species…some very significant factors are modern ones…not ancient.
I think that when the Bible says God looked upon the earth and saw nothing but corruption everywhere…He determined to put a stop to whatever it was that was going on at the time. I am unable to ignore the underlying feeling that these creatures were not created…I just don’t see any creation event where something that ferocious could have existed prefall.
I am of the view that these animals changed due to sin…how and by whose hand is not fully resolved for me yet.
Could it have been humanity doing something to create these animals? That’s not an easy one for me to entertain.
Could it be that Satan had the power to do it? This seems a very real possibility…especially given the bible tells us he entered the serpent that spoke to Eve.
Could it simply be that the way in which we are illustrating these creatures is flawed? Certainly, there is strong evidence for errors in the artists’ impressions for sure and we have some very clear examples where the ferocious look is inaccurate or at least open to a very different interpretation/illustration.
I have a tendency to be eclectic in my views on most things in life, so I’m in the camp of “all of the above”
One commonality YEC and ANE do have is that we know the environment changed significantly… global winter is widely talked about (whether that started with a global flood or asteroid impact).
I know they claim there were dinosaurs on the ark. Some claim all the animals were young and therefore smaller so they could all fit. Which dinosaurs were on the ark is unknowable using just the Bible.
The problem is the geologic column shows dinosaurs in various layers and there is no agreement in YEC as to which layer represents the period of the flood. So which dinosaurs would be on the ark is dependent on which layer you identify as the flood.
And a side note, there was an article mentioned on this site that used the results of several YEC researchers to demonstrate there was no global flood. Basically each researcher used their results to show the others were wrong in their selection of a layer.
Spectacled bears, olingos, kinkajous, binturongs, palm civets, and Indian green frogs are omnivores. In the last example it is herbivore as tadpoles and carnivorous as adults.
Parrot fish and iguanas look similar to giant panda, being primarily herbivore only rarely resorting to consuming other animals and thus capable of doing so. I would say they are technically omnivore.
However all these might be considered as in transition, having a history of being more carnivorous but turning to other foods as circumstances have changed. Maybe they actually drove their chosen prey species to extinction. But lets look closer…
For giant panda they think the diet switch may be the result of a loss of a gene which made meat taste better and thus they found the high protein bamboo shoots better tasting.
The ancestors of iguanas are thought to be herbivores, like they are, and thus any appearance of being predators is superficial. Perhaps it is a type of mimicry.
The parrot fish are likewise not thought to be descended from predators. Instead it is an adaptation to scraping algae off rocks which gave then more predatory like jaws and teeth. Though some species are now adapting to eating coral as well. So in this case it may be an example of herbivores becoming more predatory.
But it doesn’t say that its a global event. Yes, every eye shall see Him, but not all at the same time.
Rev 1:7 Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him—even those who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. So shall it be! Amen.
8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and was and is to come—the Almighty.
Clouds represent a multitude, the many membered body of Christ. This is His physical return, within the body of Christ. Root word for cloud is: nephos (3509.νέφος) - 2. (figuratively) a large, dense crowd, a great number of people
Notice that in every eye seeing Him, it includes those who pierced Him… not a future event.
He has come in Spirit, now and not yet. We all will see Him individually at different times… like multiple local flood events.
Except it isn’t – that’s something that YEC adds to the text. It’s a possible conclusion, but it makes for some weird secondary conclusions, such that the Fall was inevitable so God prepared for it.
In context refers just to people, specifically God’s people.
That’s not His point of comparison; the point of comparison is people blithely going on with normal life despite having been warned.
I’m surprised you don’t attribute it to the heavenly beings who took human wives – if they could change themselves sufficiently to manage having Nephilim, mixed offspring, why not the power to change animals?
ANE has nothing to do with environmental change. What do you think it stands for, anyway???
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T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
78
There’s also this “strange” correlation between relative depth in the geologic record and post-flood survival, both of which also “strangely” correlate with the ratio of parent and daughter isotopes in specific types of rocks.
