The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

PDN

As this seems to be developing into a Creationism Mark II thread - let's just take it over there.

wolfsbane

jmark wrote: »

Rev. Dr. Robert Beckett, formerly an animal geneticist with a PhD in animal genetics, now minister of Crosscollyer Street Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Belfast - speaks on creation. Knowledgable bloke, and nice too.

Alsop came across these people

Both up north, not sure of any organisations here

Yes, Robert is a lovely brother.

Most of the Evangelical churches in Ulster that I know are Creationist. From Pentecostals, through Baptist and Brethren, to the Free Presbyterians. A lot in the Evangelical wing of the Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist churches too. Some Evangelical here are Theistic Evolutionists.

I expect the same can be said for similar churches in the Republic.
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Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,

Zombrex

PatricaMcKay wrote: »

This is quite a brillant book showing that no evidence exists for one species transforming into another

Three points.

1. That book is ridiculously out of date, having been published in 1957 based on the work of Dewar in the 1940s.

2. Dewar was a barrister and ornitologist, not a trained or working biologist. He seems to have not understood some of the biology that he described in his book. Which leads to the 3rd point

3. Even when published the book was full of inaccuracies, as was pointed out at the time by actual biologists of the time. (an example)

Douglas Dewar died in 1957, before the book was published.

Turtwig

PDN wrote: »

As this seems to be developing into a Creationism Mark II thread - let's just take it over there.

I shudder to think what a Mark III Creationism Generator Thread might be like. :eek:

CiaranMT

jmark wrote: »

Rev. Dr. Robert Beckett, formerly an animal geneticist with a PhD in animal genetics, now minister of Crosscollyer Street Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Belfast - speaks on creation. Knowledgable bloke, and nice too.

Alsop came across these people

Both up north, not sure of any organisations here

If indeed he has such a PhD in animal genetics, then that's a waste of a mind.

It's on the level on a PhD carrying geologist/astronaut believing the world is flat.

jmark

CiaranMT wrote: »

If indeed he has such a PhD in animal genetics, then that's a waste of a mind.

It's on the level on a PhD carrying geologist/astronaut believing the world is flat.

A more reasoned response might be to say, 'That's interesting. I wonder what he has learnt that has made him question evolution" instead of assuming that he switched off his brain after he got his PhD.

If memory serves me correctly he has a double PhD. (Twice the waste, I hear you say!)

Monty Burnz

PatricaMcKay wrote: »

I used to believe in evolution, without thinking much about it all, than as I started to take a serious interest in theology and just seem to find myself not believing in it. Im not going to argue science because its not a strong point of mine, however it should be crystal clear that you cant believe in evolution and be a Christian.

Why not? Do you have to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible, even the bits that contradict other bits?

Do you believe that the whole universe moves around the earth, as described in Psalm 93, 96 and 104? So you reject the theory of gravity, as well as the theory of evolution?

jmark

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Why not? Do you have to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible, even the bits that contradict other bits?

Do you believe that the whole universe moves around the earth, as described in Psalm 93, 96 and 104? So you reject the theory of gravity, as well as the theory of evolution?

It all depends on what you mean by 'literal' - Do you take poetry literally or as literature? Do rivers clap their hands and mountains sing (Ps 98) any more than daffodils dance (Wordswrth)?

The Bible is a library made up of many books, and different genres of writing. Each genre is to be taken and read according to its form of literature - same as we would do with any book today.

There is history, poetry, law, wisdom, apocalyptic, prophetic - to name the main ones.

As for the science question - it believe the bible in places is non-scientific without being un-scientific. ie it puts things in a non-scientific way because it is not a scientific text book. It can also speak of the sun rising, the same way we do, without being unscientific.

Why would one reject the theory of gravity - are you thinking of the verse that says "not one sparrow falls to the ground without my father knowing"? It doesnt follow therefore that there is no gravity.

And yes, I take the bits that are presented as historical fact as historical fact.

jmark

Posted By PatriciaMcKay
however it should be crystal clear that you cant believe in evolution and be a Christian

As a Christian who believes in 6 day creation - I dont agree with this. The core of Christianity is to do with salvation by grace through the completed work of Jesus Christ. A person can believe this and be wrong about other things, or disagree about other things.

Monty Burnz

jmark wrote: »

And yes, I take the bits that are presented as historical fact as historical fact.

It seems like you are trying to write off the bits of the Bible where it states the earth stands fixed and the universe moves around it as 'poetry'. For me, it's a clear example of a statement of presumed fact in the Bible that we now know to be completely bogus. And I'm hardly the only person who views it as claimed factual information - it was the basis of Galileo's persecution.

jmark wrote: »

Why would one reject the theory of gravity - are you thinking of the verse that says "not one sparrow falls to the ground without my father knowing"? It doesnt follow therefore that there is no gravity.

Right, but claiming that the universe revolves around the earth means that the theory of gravity is wrong. Or else the claim is wrong.

Can you reconcile this, or will you just declare something 'poetry' or 'fact' depending on what suits your argument?

jmark

I hear what you're saying - am I at liberty to decide what is fact and what is poetry? It seems a handy device to shove the 'difficult buts' aside!!

However the literary forms are fairly set. Hebrew poetry is fairly recognisable - with its own stylistic patterns eg parallelism - where something is stated one way and then said again in slightly different words.

People regularly tear bits of the bible out of context - Christians too, who should know better! It is important that we read the Bible in context and according to the genre of each book. Thats just intellectual honesty. There is a book called "How to read the Bible for all its worth" that gives a good intro to this.

As for Gallileo, it might be worth doing a but of reading around Gallileo, it seems that the whole thing was more about politics and personality rather than truth claims. Also I would be hesitant to equate the positions/decisions of the Catholic church as an institution in the Middle Ages with biblical Christianity.

However none of this gets round the fact that Genesis 1-2 looks like it was written as history (although some might differ), and I believe that it should be interpreted as history.

That's all I've time for at the moment. Have a good day

Sorry - forgot to answer your last question. Where does it say the sun revolves around the earth? Other than using the same conventions we use today in normal speech (sunrise etc) I cant think of anywhere. The usual contenders seem to be Ps. 93:1, Ps. 19:1-6, and Joshua 10:12-14. THe first two are poetry -Ps 93 making the point that God is king over the world, set against the cosmic mythologies of the other nations - he has put the world in its place. The third describes the event as it would seem from here. There arent any clear statements saying anything like "God made the world at the centre etc"

Zombrex

jmark wrote: »

A more reasoned response might be to say, 'That's interesting. I wonder what he has learnt that has made him question evolution" instead of assuming that he switched off his brain after he got his PhD.

That's interesting. I wonder what he has learnt that has made him question that the world is round.

Nope, doesn't really work, does it.

jmark

Wicknight wrote: »

That's interesting. I wonder what he has learnt that has made him question that the world is round.

Nope, doesn't really work, does it.

I know Robert Beckett and he doesn't question the roundness of the world!

But he does question evolution.

Monty Burnz

jmark wrote: »

Sorry - forgot to answer your last question. Where does it say the sun revolves around the earth?

Psalm 96: "The world will surely stand fast, never to be moved."
Psalm 104: "You fixed the earth on its foundation, never to be moved."

There's a lot of emphasis on the world never moving. Clearly this indicates that the sun (and everything else in the sky, presumably) is moving, not the earth.

Some Orthodox Jews also still hold that the sun etc. revolve around the earth. Clearly they need assistance in correctly interpreting the Bible too...

Monty Burnz

jmark wrote: »

Rev. Dr. Robert Beckett, formerly an animal geneticist with a PhD in animal genetics, now minister of Crosscollyer Street Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Belfast - speaks on creation. Knowledgable bloke, and nice too.

Alsop came across these people

Both up north, not sure of any organisations here

You may also be interested in this guy:

In 1984 Van der Kamp retired as leader of the Tychonian Society and Gerardus Bouw, an amateur cosmologist with a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Case Western Reserve University and a B.S. in astrophysics from the University of Rochester (Rochester, NY) succeeded him. In 1991 Bouw reorganized the Tychonian Society as the "Association for Biblical Astronomy" and changed the name of the Bulletin to The Biblical Astronomer.[3]
Previous works include Bouw's earlier With Every Wind of Doctrine (1984), Walter van der Kamp's De Labor Solis (1989), and Marshall Hall's The Earth is Not Moving (1991). Other modern geocentrists include Malcolm Bowden, James Hanson, Paul Ellwanger, R. G. Elmendorf, Paula Haigh, and Robert Sungenis (president of Bellarmine Theological Forum, author of the 2006 book Galileo Was Wrong).

He has a PhD in astronomy, and he believes the universe revolves around the earth, in the face of the mountain of evidence to the contrary. It's funny, isn't it, how religious beliefs affect how you interpret reality?

Zombrex

jmark wrote: »

But he does question evolution.

Which is as silly as questioning the world is round. No one would say Well he has a PhD, maybe he has a point about the roundness of the Earth.

So why would they say Well he has a PhD, maybe he has a point about evolution?

PatricaMcKay

Wicknight wrote: »

Which is as silly as questioning the world is round. No one would say Well he has a PhD, maybe he has a point about the roundness of the Earth.

So why would they say Well he has a PhD, maybe he has a point about evolution?

Because there is no hard evidence for evolution and there is for the world's roundness.

Monty Burnz

PatricaMcKay wrote: »

Because there is no hard evidence for evolution and there is for the world's roundness.

There is an enormous mountain of hard evidence for evolution. This comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding about how science works, and perhaps indicates that teaching children about science is at least as important as teaching them scientific 'facts'.

But this is the situation: evolution is an extremely well supported theory, but like every theory, there are still gaps. Science researches those gaps and tries to fill them in. There's a chance that in one of those gaps they will learn something that affects how they perceive all of the other evidence. But they will work on filling up those gaps indefinitely.

Along come the creationists, who already 'know' the answer (whatever the bible says) and they point at some of the gaps and say 'you have a gap there, so your whole theory is wrong'. They also misunderstand lots of the theory (accidentally or deliberately), and also put out loads of disinformation to deliberately confuse non-experts (which seems a lot like lying - very unChristian?).

A question I don't understand is why people reject the results of scientific research - the same science that has given them cars, planes, televisions, heart transplants, moon landings, the internet? Either science works or it doesn't. It seems to me that it does.

By the way, I still don't know if you accept or reject the theory of gravity, which the Bible also says is wrong?

Zombrex

PatricaMcKay wrote: »

Because there is no hard evidence for evolution and there is for the world's roundness.

A couple of million biologists who use this hard evidence every day would no doubt disagree with you.

I could just as easily say there is no hard evidence the world is round. There is no hard evidence if I just ignore all the hard evidence. :P

jmark

Monty Burnz wrote: »

There is an enormous mountain of hard evidence for evolution.

As I understand it there is plenty of evidence for micro evolution - ie adaptation within species, but very little for macro evolution, ie transition from one species to another.

To call them both evolution is fair enough as long as you understand the difference, but to shift the mountain of evidence from one side of the room to the other and claim that there is a lot of hard evidence for macro evolution is a different matter.

Anyhow...

PatricaMcKay

Wicknight wrote: »

A couple of million biologists who use this hard evidence every day would no doubt disagree with you.

Its a theory, an explanation.

There is NO hard evidence for macro-evolution, and no one argues that micro evolution doesnt exist.

Zombrex

PatricaMcKay wrote: »

Its a theory, an explanation.

Support by tons of hard evidence

PatricaMcKay wrote: »

There is NO hard evidence for macro-evolution, and no one argues that micro evolution doesnt exist.

Again the millions of biologists who use the hard evidence for macro-evolution would no doubt disagree.

Ignorance is not an alternative theory

jmark

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Psalm 96: "The world will surely stand fast, never to be moved."

Why must that be taken as a purely scientific statement concerned with motion and not a comment on the permanence of the world? The Hebrew word in that tense refers being toppled, overthrown, cast aside.

Psalm 104: "You fixed the earth on its foundation, never to be moved."

Same as above,, and in its context it is contrasted with the seas and the floods which seem to destroy all in their path.

There's a lot of emphasis on the world never moving. Clearly this indicates that the sun (and everything else in the sky, presumably) is moving, not the earth.

These references are all poetic, and literary integrity requires they be treated as such, rather than scientific statements. Similarly if you say you arent going to move on this, I will not hold you to be motionless, but rather fixed in your opinion.

Some Orthodox Jews also still hold that the sun etc. revolve around the earth. Clearly they need assistance in correctly interpreting the Bible too...

Doubtless there are some Orthodox Jews who would also say that they are wrong. Orthodox Jewry has nothing to do with it.

Zombrex

jmark wrote: »

As I understand it there is plenty of evidence for micro evolution - ie adaptation within species, but very little for macro evolution, ie transition from one species to another.

You understand it wrong them. There is tons of evidence for macro-evolution, from the fossil record to the genetic record to laboratory experiments that actually observe transition from one species to another.

There is more evidence for evolution (all of it) than there is for most other scientific theories.

jmark wrote: »

To call them both evolution is fair enough as long as you understand the difference, but to shift the mountain of evidence from one side of the room to the other and claim that there is a lot of hard evidence for macro evolution is a different matter.

Creationists are the only ones who make much of the difference between micro and macro evolution, because they are forced by the overwhelming evidence to accept that evolution takes place, but say it only happens in a micro time frame.

Macro evolution is micro evolution with a longer time line. Divergence in species and new species arise due to the accumulation of micro changes over a long period of time.

There is no separate process at play with macro evolution. There is nothing different that happens to cause two species to diverge and a new species to arise. It is simply a continuation of what happens in micro evolution.

To a biologist the distinction between micro and macro is largely irrelevant. It is simply a distinction based on what time scale you are looking at, they are not different processes.

jmark

Wicknight wrote: »

laboratory experiments that actually observe transition from one species to another.

I'd be interested in some examples. Throw us a few links would you?

Cheers

Monty Burnz

jmark wrote: »

Doubtless there are some Orthodox Jews who would also say that they are wrong. Orthodox Jewry has nothing to do with it.

Orthodox Jewry per se has nothing to do with it, but the fact that the Bible has a billion interpretations, and every passage can be interpreted several ways, means that the odds that a modern reader will strike upon the correct interpretation is...extremely long. And that's if we leave aside the question as to whether the Bible is the word of God in the first place.

How can you be confident that your interpretation is the correct one, in the face of so many other interpretations that are equally held to be correct? (Ideally, cite a reason other than that God is guiding you, because I'm pretty confident everyone else thinks the same about their interpretation )

Zombrex

jmark wrote: »

I'd be interested in some examples. Throw us a few links would you?

Cheers

Sure
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/VC1fEvidenceSpeciation.shtml

As I like to say to our Creationist friends, scientists are not just making this stuff up. If there was no evidence for evolution it would be a proposed hypothesis (like multiple universes or M-theory or quantum gravity), not an established working theory (which in science means a model that produces accurate predictions and is supported by observed evidence).

The reality is that evolution is one of the most supported scientific theories in existences, so much so that for most biologists it is as safe to consider it a fact as it is to consider something like the existence of the electron a fact.

The people who have trouble with this are religious people who believe such a conclusion contradicts with their holy books (not just Christians). I have sympathy with this position, as I said above, but really it is not the responsibility of science to pretend we don't know what we know just because it annoys or upsets religious people. Christians can either accept it or reject it, that is up to them. But the scientific community does not need to pander to Creationist notions that none of this stuff is supported with evidence.

jmark

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Orthodox Jewry per se has nothing to do with it, but the fact that the Bible has a billion interpretations, and every passage can be interpreted several ways, means that the odds that a modern reader will strike upon the correct interpretation is...extremely long. And that's if we leave aside the question as to whether the Bible is the word of God in the first place.

That depends on a postmodern view of literature in which the meaning lies within the reader and not the text. Sorry, but I'm a bit of a dinosaur, and believe that words mean something, usage means something, context means something and genre means something - otherwise I could take whatever meaning I liked out of your sentence.

How can you be confident that your interpretation is the correct one, in the face of so many other interpretations that are equally held to be correct? (Ideally, cite a reason other than that God is guiding you, because I'm pretty confident everyone else thinks the same about their interpretation )

"God is guiding me" would be a particularly poor reason Agreed

Literary study of the language, literature, society - whats called historio-grammatical exegesis. In other words know what the words mean in their context as used by writers of the time.

That kind of narrows down the odds.

All I'm saying is that you dont have to read the words in a narrowly scientific way, and to insist on doing so doesnt do justice to the science of reading.

jmark

Wicknight wrote: »

Sure
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/VC1fEvidenceSpeciation.shtml

As I like to say to our Creationist friends, scientists are not just making this stuff up. If there was no evidence for evolution it would be a proposed hypothesis (like multiple universes or M-theory or quantum gravity), not an established working theory (which in science means a model that produces accurate predictions and is supported by observed evidence).

Thanks - I've had a look. Humour me for a moment with my Christian view of micro and macro. You have nothing to lose if they are truly opposite ends of the same stick.

All those examples are at the micro end of the stick. Fruit flies are still fruit flies Rats are still rats. Plants are still plants. The TalkOrigins article defines scepies in a more narrow way, and thats ok. But everything listed here is at the micro end of the stick.

I'm not denying that this happens within categories (call them what you will). It is the way change and variation works. I just have a problem with this being the mechanism by which we all got here.

Could you give me links to examples at the macro end of the stick?

Zombrex

jmark wrote: »

Thanks - I've had a look. Humour me for a moment with my Christian view of micro and macro. You have nothing to lose if they are truly opposite ends of the same stick.

All those examples are at the micro end of the stick. Fruit flies are still fruit flies Rats are still rats. Plants are still plants.

Micro-evolution is general considered evolution within species, such as African and Asian humans.

Macro-evolution is generally considered evolution into a new species. Really there isn't anything else after that, the other groups or categories are just categories of similar species.

But again these terms are not particularly well defined as they tend to come from Creationism circles, rather than biology. In biology there is just evolution, the time scale effects the extend of the changes, not the process.

Since what you seem to be talking about takes millions of years, you won't be able to observe it in real time, any more than you can observe the formation of Everest in real time.

Just like looking at the rocks though can tell you about Everest you can observe it in the fossil record. A good example of this, one that is very well supported, is the evolution of whales.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans

This is basically the evolution of a land mammals into whales over a space of about 50 million years. It involves many instances of new species arising (macro-evolution) and would have involved millions of instances of individual micro-evolutionary changes.