Right Divider
Body part
And yet here you are... with me not on ignore... seems like you love to be the supposed persecuted one.
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This is a new section being rolled out to attract people interested in exploring the origins of the universe and the earth from a biblical perspective. Debate is encouraged and opposing viewpoints are welcome to post but certain rules must be followed. 1. No abusive tagging - if abusive tags are found - they will be deleted and disabled by the Admin team 2. No calling the biblical accounts a fable - fairy tale ect. This is a Christian site, so members that participate here must be respectful in their disagreement.
My Problem with Creation Science
- Thread starter Trump Gurl
- Start date
I could do it. I could outline and argue for the other side better than they can.
But I've noticed this in a lot of venues. It isn't just forums, but arguments on FB and in the local laundromat. Leftists don't engage. They've found at best that they are winning politically and there is no need to win anywhere else, and at worst they know they can't defend their positions but they believe them anyway because they are evil. I think Alate is of the former and Barbarian of the latter.
I agree with you, I too could get on here and argue the left's side way more effectively than anyone on this website ever has but who wants to do that?
Trump Girl is no leftist, is she?
I mean, the name "Trump Girl" has got to mean that she's not like minded with the Nancy Pelosi's of the world. She seems to be Catholic and so there's probably a little leftist in her but that isn't the point either way. I don't really care what her politics are. Arguing politics isn't really my thing. I have an insatiable desire to think through, discuss and debate theology. Of course, that does often overlap with politics a great deal but my point is that I'd happily debate anyone, regardless of their politics, on nearly any doctrinal issue so long as they just simply engage the topic and make actual arguments that are germane to the topic being discussed and who didn't take every strongly worded retort as a personal insult.
I've been on TOL from practically the very beginning of its existence and I've never seen anyone so thin skinned as Trump Girl. When I try repeatedly to tell her that I'm not trying to insult her and that she needs to grow a thicker skin, she takes the "grow a thicker skin" portion as proof that I'm insulting her. I mean how irrationally victim minded do you have to be to hear hostility in someone telling you that no one is being hostile? I can tell you this, I don't care enough about TG's state of mind to bend over backward begging her to believe me. As far as I'm concerned if she doesn't want to debate then she's a waste of bandwidth and should leave and go try to find someplace where everyone agrees with every word she says or at the very least is full of people willing to treat her with kit gloves and walk around on the egg shells she got placed all around her.
Of course, Trump Girl is only just the latest waste of band width that has populated this website. It seems there are now only two classes of people on TOL (or any other theology forum I've ever been on for that matter), those who already agree with most everything I say and so have very little if anything to debate and those who disagree with me almost entirely but simply refuse to engage with anything that approaches intellectual honesty. A conditon that makes TOL far less than the enjoyable pass time that it was when people like Turbo, Hilston and Sozo where around. Trump Girl couldn't have standed TOL on those days. She wouldn't have been reduced to tears in less than a week.
There is a third possibility that keeps running through my mind that sort of scares me. What if Trump Girl and B57 and Nang and all the others who actively refuse to do anything like actual debate, aren't actually refusing to engage so much as they just don't know how? What if Trump Girl really does actually believe that any substantive argument against her beliefs is an actual personal attack? What if B57 believes that what he and Nanja do here is debate theology? What if, in the twenty or so years that I've been doing this, that we've matured a generation of people in this society that feel personally attacked by rational arguments (Trump Girl), think that the act of saying something actually does make it so (Beloved 57) and that what happens here on TOL is what debate is supposed to look like?
If so, not only is TOL on its way to internet oblivion but we are well and truly cooked as a society and biblical Christianity is on it's way to being illegal.
Clete
I was saying something similar years ago when Knight was asking what we could do to keep TOL a great place to hang out. I didn't have a good answer, but vaguely I thought there must be some way to minimize the Arthur Brains/Nangs/B57s/etc. and maximize genuine opposition with good points.
But I think you are on to something. I think we have reached a critical mass of adults that were raised in public school not to think. But the problem goes deeper; they were raised by parents that were also taught not to think - which were, when they were growing up, influenced to embrace a lifestyle where thinking was only to be used when non-thinking options didn't get them by. So, yeah, I think they don't know how to debate and the opulent environment they've been raised in, through at least 2 generations prior, allowed them to grow up that way.
Are we cooked as a society? I think we are in our current form. I think there is a time of trouble coming as we transition to whatever comes next. But I'm not sure it will be as bad and all-encompassing as some of the end-is-near doomsday prophets are claiming. There are still a lot of thinking people left in the world. And even the non-thinking people can start to think in some cases. And when the time comes where everyone can see the two sides clearly the thinking people have way more firepower with which to win.
But I might be wrong. The two sides may never be seen clearly. This might be the end of it all. We might be running up against a situation similar to the time of the flood where conditions were met that God hit the reset button. When I saw the "great reset" in the news, my ears perked up and thought it ironic. The kind of ironic that God seems to put over and over in scripture. And by reading scripture we can understand the nature of God and why He did what He did at the time of the flood. In my opinion, the two factors that God had in mind at the flood were that raising kids in a non-evil environment was hopeless, and having kids became difficult. It could be argued that a global system can insure continued public school for all, and that the upcoming vaccine's sterilization effects might be true...
Trump Gurl is very definitely right wing. But when it comes to theory of origins, she reflects a paradigm common to Catholics. They place science theory and religion into two different compartments. Not all of them are like this. There are some that are 6 day Creationists.
Exactly!
This general idea is what I was driving at when I was talking to her about how the compromises made are only ever in favor of science over scripture. When someone says "The bible isn't a science book." what they are saying is that we should expect that the bible got some of the scientific stuff wrong. Stuff like the age of the earth, how long God spent making the universe, whether Adam and Eve were ever really the ONLY two people alive, whether Eden was a real place, whether Methuselah actually lived to be 969 years old, whether Noah's flood was global or whether it happened at all, whether the Exodus of Israel from Egypt ever actually happened, whether the Red Sea actually split down to DRY land, whether God Himself actually physically wrote the Ten Commandments on stone tablets, whether Israel wondered in the desert for an actual forty year period of time, and pretty much anything else you want to question in the entire book of Genesis. All of it is up for grabs and on shaky foundations when peope are scared to trust that what God said in His word is the absolute truth.
Right Divider
Body part
Believing that Jesus died won't get you too far. Believing that He died to pay for all of your sins works much better.
Good point!
That point and others similar to it that I had seen being made on various threads over an extended period of time is what gave me the idea to take the time to try to figure out what was "enough". If simply believing that Jesus died, spent three days in the grave and then rose from the dead isn't enough, then what is?
Even your own statement is likely packed with more than what is explicitly stated because by "Jesus", you aren't referring to the guy who bricked my house. You're referring to a very specific Jesus and there are particular details about that Jesus that must necessarily be accepted or else you're putting your faith in the wrong Jesus. My 'gospel proper" attempts to get all of the particulars that are specifically necessary to ensure that you aren't mistaking some random Jesus for THE One Jesus.
Does that mean we shouldn't argue with people over how old the Earth is?
Idolater
"Foundation of the World" Dispensationalist χρ
Not with me. I believe it is the youngest as is biblically possible. I believe that God made the earth to be perfect for mankind, and that He made it with the fossils included. I believe He made the universe to be perfect for the earth, and He made it with as many stars and nebulas and dark matter and dark energy as it needs to be perfect for the earth. He set it all in motion, within six days. And I believe that Jesus is the king of the universe.
Right Divider
Body part
That is one of the craziest things that I've ever seen posted on TOL.
How do you justify this from scripture? You think that God CREATED the earth with lots of DEAD remains in it?
You should realize that "dark matter" is a rescue device for a failed theory. It has never been observed and only exists to save a failed theory that opposes God's Word.
What does that mean, exactly?
The Bible never actually uses a term like that, but I can see why you might say that.
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oatmeal
Well-known member
The God who created the heaven and the earth, Genesis 1:1 is the same God who is the sole author of scripture. God does not contradict himself
Trump Gurl
Credo in Unum Deum
So if I may just elaborate on that a little bit: It's not so much that I place them in different compartments, but rather, I recognize that a science book is dedicated to science and that the Bible is dedicated to those spiritual truths that God wanted to reveal. I don't think God was very interested in revealing the precise number of years between Adam and Abraham nor was he interested in presenting the exact measurable timeline of each "Day" in Genesis. I believe that in the book of Genesis God was interested revealing these basic spiritual truths, that he created all things and created man in His image, that man fell through sin, the effects of that sin, and finally the beginning of his reconciliation with Man by forming the people of God beginning with Abraham. That is Genesis in a nutshell.
The mission of the Church is to teach, baptize and hand on the teachings of Christ. Since Christ was not a science teacher, neither is the Church. Church doctrine cannot extend beyond faith and morals.
Science, things having to do with molecules and atoms and medical procedures, scientific procedures, how to launch a rocket to the moon and all that good stuff is just an entirely different subject to me. That is what this thread was about. Everybody here starts threads about their beliefs and I started one about mine. I think there have been a few seriously dishonest statements in this thread but it's Christmas and I'm not going to go into all that. But I do want to reiterate the official position about science from the Catholic church with which I think is very reasonable:
Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. ... Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God despite himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.
So in other words, real honest science that only has honest discovery as its motivation is a good thing and can never truly conflict with divine revelation because God is the creator of both. I think it is fair to say that if you have a Biblical belief that conflicts with a scientific fact , either the scientific fact is in error or your interpretation is in error, one of the two. I do believe that some people are so dead set, rigid like a rock about their personal interpretations of scripture that they do not even have the intellectual honesty to consider even just the possibility that their interpretation of the scripture could be wrong. That is what I have a real problem with. If a person absolutely 100% dismisses the possibility that their interpretation of scripture is wrong, then that is not a person who is truly open to either the Holy Spirit OR legitimate science. There is an irony in the fact that such people will say that papal infallibility is absolutely impossible and yet they are 100% uncompromising regarding their insistence on their own infallibility when it comes to interpreting scripture. Of course they will give lip service to saying that they are not infallible, but in practice they assume that they are.
And as a Catholic, according to the Church, you are perfectly free to hold that belief and not be in conflict with Catholic dogma for the simple fact that Catholic dogma can only be proclaimed in matters of faith and morals, not science. Science is not the purview of the Church and therefore it makes no dogmatic definitions on it one way or the other.
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Right Divider
Body part
Except that the Bible contains details about God's creation and lots of details about history. It includes a six day creation that is non-negotiable.
That is no way to read that scripture any other way than SIX normal DAYS.
What you think is simply incorrect.
Genesis contains the kind of details that you think God was not interested in.
Where in the Bible did you read that?
A view that any and all interpretations are OK isn't much of a faith at all.
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That last line of your post is the central point (or at least a very important one). The fact is that truth is truth. There are not multiple kinds of truth. There is not spiritual truth and scientific truth. There are truths that may fall into those separate categories in regards to their subject matter but not in regards to whether they are or are not true. Theology is simply logic applied to the things of God whereas science is logic applied to nature. Neither is any sort of higher form of thinking. It's just thinking applied to different topics and if the conclusions brought out by one contradicts the other then one or both are wrong. There is no such thing as truths that contradict each other. Such things are acceptable in Star Wars novel but not in either scripture or science.
Clete
I believe the first sentence in the Bible to be an absolute truth; In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth. The rest of the Bible is a lifetime journey to be encouraged and inspired by.
The creation of the universe is history, you can't change history. Ether at least one God created the universe or there is no god. You could be 100% right or wrong on the toss of a coin. There cannot be a maybe or probable god.
Now prove that the universe and life came into being purely by natural means. It can't be done.
In fact it can be proven that life COULD NOT have come into being purely by natural means.
The most fundamental laws of science and perhaps the most tested single idea in all of human history is the law on entropy. The effect very simply cannot be greater than the cause. Substance does not come from nothingness, life does not come from lifelessness, logic does not come from the irrational, intelligence does not come from mindlessness.
Clete
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