Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor has an opinion piece in the Times that affirms the Roman Catholic position: faith and science have no problems, and evolution and Christianity are compatible.
This week we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, one of Britain’s most extraordinary scientists. His theory of evolution, one of the greatest discoveries of all time, gives us a way of understanding the connectedness of all life and the uniqueness of human life within it. Together with other branches of scientific exploration, evolution begins to unfold and illuminate the interplay of forces that make our universe such an extraordinary dynamic reality. In this sense, science is itself a journey of learning and exploration. This I find exciting and humbling.Towards the end of his life Darwin wrote: “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist.†The science opens me not only to puzzles and to questions about the world I live in; it leads me to marvel at its complexity. Here, I find science is a good friend to my faith. It also calls me to a journey of learning and understanding. One of the things that mars our culture is the fracture between faith and science. It impoverishes our inquiry into the realities that make up our life and world. This is a false opposition.
Apart from whatever I may think, it will do all evangelicals good to read what a Cardinal of the Roman Church has to say on an issue that, frankly, drives evangelicals nuts.
I’ve never quite figured out how the Catholic position on science is so progressive, but when it comes to Marian dogmas and how Mary’s house wound up in Italy, Catholics sound like Baptist fundamentalists protesting that the Creation Museum is too liberal, but I don’t have to understand hard things. I just like everyone to see that you don’t have to keep hitting yourself in the head over these issues of faith and science.
I’d also like to know if there are any creationist evangelicals who have converted to the RCC and embraced this view of science, evolution and origins.
I can appreciate Cardinal O’Conner’s open-mindedness concerning the marriage of science and faith….but I don’t agree with his thoughts. If I can believe that creator God made all things living/non-living, believing in the literal creation account in Genesis is easy. I can accept that God, possibly, made ready the earth over billions of years….as a habitation for the last of His creation….man. For me to accept the evolution of man from a particle of dust or from apes, I still would have to assign Intelligent Design as the catalyst. I don’t think Darwin himself intended his work to cast shadows over scripture.
Martha – To all that I will say –
I would rather be descended from an ape than directly from a heap of dirt.
But I tend to think it is, alas, both.
Back to Galileo –
Now that we “know” that the Universe has neither center nor edge, can we now agree that by saying that the earth was not the center of the Universe, Galileo was, in fact, saying nothing …?
J. Vernon McGee is called an evangelical, yet in his introductions to Mark and John he refers to the earth as “scwillions or billions” of years old. Spurgeon remarked that science had shown the Earth Millions of years old,” Oh that god has loved us so long” was his reply. I have heard people claim him as an evangelical. That someone would turn to the RCC over old earth would surprise both those great men. It baffles me.
This young earth stuff is just one more sin a segment of the Church committed. We are not to add to god’s teaching.[see monk's list of things he was taught as a youth] Just sinful.
Darwin was a great naturalist, on the level with Audubon, but the reason evolution is still called a theory is that it is poor science. The guiding hand of a master Creator can be seen on many levels. Evolution has far to many flaws and logical stumbles. I just do not have faith enough to believe in that theory, and can not tie half my brain in a knot to swallow it.
Willoh: In my corner of the Bible belt, YECs are relentless. It has affected relationships for years. Very painful and stressful situation.
Joel Hunter,
“In what way(s) is the distinction simplistic?”
It’s simplistic in the sense that it seems to assume that the Bible only reveals the “why” and not any of the “how”.
“However, isn’t it also true that God has revealed himself to us through His creation (Rom 1:20, various Psalms)?”
Romans 1:20 is referring to the “immediate” knowledge of God that one receives through the creation, not merely knowledge that one receives in the process of time–since Romans chapter 1 reveals that all men are accountable.
“Shouldn’t we expect to find traces in the physical and living world of His character?”
I would think so–but “always keep your Bible lens glasses on” is my encouragement.
“Isn’t it possible that genetics and the mechanism of natural selection also reveal something of their Creator?”
Genetics–again, keep the glasses on.
Natural Selection–if it contradicts Scripture, then “no”.
“But perhaps you could explain what having ‘Bible lens glasses on’ allows, and how it automatically takes evolution off the table?”
I don’t want to type more material than IMonk’s post:)
If we are talking “Big Bang” and “evolving from monkeys”, then the Bible reveals “In the Beginning God created…” and Adam and Eve being a separate creation from the animal sphere.
No one comes to bones or the Bible with a blank slate. People come to the “data” with presuppositions–entrenched commitments–and it is those commitments that determine how one “interprets” the evidence [if I may use that word].
If we are arguing over whether the cheesburger at Hardees is a $1.50 or $2.25, then we could both go over to Hardees and one of us would admit that the other is right?
Why?
Because there isn’t that much to loose over being wrong.
But when it comes to bold evolution and the Christian faith, the stakes are a tad higher.
Yes, a major understatement.
Grace to you,
Benji
P.S. By the way, my personal opinion is that there is rich typology that is missed in Gen 1-3 because of this controversy.
Willoh -
I’m afraid I have to disagree with your statement as to why evolution is “still called a theory.” Evolution is called a theory because it is a coherent explanation of the physical processes behind an observable fact – that species have changed over long periods of time – and because it is supported by such a tremendous body of physical evidence that there is no scientifically coherent alternative explanation. That’s what the word “theory” actually means – an explanation of how something works that is accepted as a proven fact. Something doesn’t get to be called a theory unless it is good science.
Creationists have gotten a lot of milage out of a deliberate misrepresentation of the word “theory” -implying that it means something that is not yet proven. The word for that is “hypothesis”. I know this will offend some people here, but evolution is one of the most well-proven things around (“creation science” notwithstanding.) It is central to and borne out in everything we know about the biological sciences and there is really no way around it that fits into our larger understanding of the sciences. In short, if it isn’t true, we still don’t really understand where babies come from or why the lights come on when we flip the switch.
Gee, I guess everyone now knows where I stand on this. I’m in the “theistic evolution” camp. My apologies for the lecture and the diversion from the real topic. This is a fantastic thread and I don’t mean to throw down a gauntlet. It’s just that my educational backgound is in the sciences and engineering so that misinterpretation of the word “theory” has always been a red flag for me.
Dave, you are right that the Orthodox position on the Fall is that there is no inherited guilt, rather there is an inherited weakness, twistedness, damage, that inevitably leads us into sin. And, yes, the Orthodox position on the Fall and the Incarnation do make it easier if one wishes to believe in theistic evolution, as long as one remembers that the Orthodox Church has not pronounced itself on one or another view of Genesis.
To the rest, let me point out that one of my seminary professors a long time ago, a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church pointed out that Genesis could be regarded as a poem in which day one parallels day four, day two parallels day five, and day three parallels day six. Day seven is then a capstone to the poetic parallel.
If Genesis one is viewed that way, then there are three creative periods. On the first creative period God ordered light to appear and then caused discrete points of light as well as “lesser” lights (the moon, etc.) to orbit around the “greater” lights. In the second creative period, God caused dry land and seas to appear and then sea creatures appeared (or developed). In the third creative period, God caused the land to be fruitful and land creatures appeared, and finally man. Then God rested.
If that professor is anywhere near right, then the poetic parallelism that he saw is astonishingly close to the actual developmental scheme of evolution. Just a thought for you all.
iMonk
Willoh: In my corner of the Bible belt, YECs are relentless. It has affected relationships for years. Very painful and stressful situation.
Knowing ‘How’ God made all things is outside the capacity of man. I have a simple faith which allows me to, unequivocally, believe every Word of scripture. Pain and stress in and on relationships only come when one attempts to ‘prove’ what cannot be proved.
The theories of human evolution are fascinating; there are still disagreements over which species are species, sub-species, ancestors, cousins, or just confused
There are also interesting little data blips thrown up, such as “Y-chromosomal Adam, the patrilineal human most recent common ancestor (MRCA) from whom all Y chromosomes in living men are descended. By analyzing the Y-chromosome DNA from males in all regions of the world, geneticist Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago.” and that the human population may have been reduced to between 10,000 or even as few as 2,000 due to the Toba catastrophe theory, which speculates that “70,000 to 75,000 years ago a supervolcanic event at Lake Toba, on Sumatra, reduced the world’s human population to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution.”
So the Biblical notions of a common human ancestor from whom we are all descended, or a global catastrophe reducing the population drastically, are not in themselves implausible. Using the Bible as a check-list of history, though, and calculating dates and ages is a poor idea; for instance, I have seen it proposed that the extended lifespans of the patriarchs is not because they lived for 900 years, but because of an error in translation – the calculations were done in Babylonian mathematics, which was done on base 60 rather than our base 10 (I leave this to the mathematicians amongst you to work that one out). Did Seth live to be 912 years old? I don’t know, and I don’t feel that this is a point to live or die on.
Fr. Ernesto-
Thank you for your clarification.
Does the Orthodox Church have a position on the question of a literal Adam?
Evan F.
I have read every National Geographic from 1921 on. I have read Natural History since the 80′s. Keep that in mind a minute. A theory is an explanation to a set of observations. It has nothing to do with how good the Science is. I am a graduate of a secular University . All that said, I have never seen a fossil of an intermediate specie.
It is possible for educated intelligent people to disagree with Darwin. I guess I am intelligent, They sent me to school for free for some reason. As an engineer you have seen systems evolve. There was a designer behind each new model, building on the old, but at times, with great jumps in functionality.
Give God’s creation the same respect.
I live in coal country. We have many fossils. How can Darwin explain the Cambrian explosion? Oh that is right, he didn’t know about it.
Please do not join the crowd that condemns me to believe in this poor explanation to a set of observations. I have had this debate for 30 years with people from all walks of life, doctors, plumbers, and when you peal away why people believe Darwin it is because they think it is the “right thing” to believe. It is a faith system. Not a Science.
Not to be pedantic, but there are lots of fossils of intermediate species.
(In a way of course every species is intermediate)
But there is a lot of fossil evidence for the following transitions
Fish – amphibian (tiktaalik)
Reptile – mammal like reptile – mammal (lots of intermediates for the ear-bones, which were once thought impossible in the creationist pamphlets)
Theropod dinosaur – birds (the fact that a large group of dinosaurs actually had feathers is now commonly accepted. As is the fact that their lungs had the same structure as birds’. I actually read some bloggers refer to ‘non-avian dinosaurs’ and ‘avian dinosaurs’. I like the fact that dinosaurs are not extinct. I see them every day)
Land mammal – whale. (Again one of the examples from the creationist books, that is now disproved by several intermediates).
And let me put this one out there:
primate – man. (If only that the ape-like australopithecus had an upright walk).
I’m not even talking about the similarities between the ‘tree of life’ as it can be constructed from fossils and their estimated ages, and the one that can be constructed based on the genome, and similarities in the genetic material.
I think it’s pretty convincing from a scientific point of view.
Here in the Netherlands the discussion on this subject rages as well. Some prominent believers have changed their opinions and publicly anounced they are no longer young earth creationists (not even ID) but accept evolution as a process. At the same time some christian organizations plan to spread a creationist booklet to more than 600.000 households, ‘explaining’ why evolution is wrong and christians are right. Deep sigh.
I attend an evangelical church that accepts ‘theistic evolutionists’. One of our worship leaders is a professor in biological physics, who had published in Science and Nature, and published three books on the creation-evolution debate in het Netherlands.
On the other hand I have lost friends when they discovered I was not a young earth creationist any more.
For some it doesn’t matter, as they just don’t think it’s important to have an opinion on this.
With others I’m starting to think our difference in opinion is symptomatic to a larger divide, a different approach to faith and rtuth, to the purpose of the human mind, culture and the physical world.
Johan
I could never understand how people could be agnostic or athiest, i just figured they were being rebellious and that they knew full well there was a God and they just didn’t want to submit to him. It is only recently that I have come to see their point of view and I realize that they aren’t all God haters but that many just cannot honestly believe in God. Also, I’m having to accept that being religious involves believing in things that can’t be seen, and I’m wondering if I can continue to do that. If I become agnostic I would hope that I’d be the honest kind and not the kind that just chooses to hate God, but maybe I’d be a bit of both.
This debate has been going on for centuries. Let’s consider what Augustine has to say. First, here is his most famous statement on this issue:
Next, he shows the proper humility about this interpretive process that we all can learn from, and he acknowledges that the writing of Genesis was NOT done with a meaning that was “obvious†or “plainâ€. but instead was “obscure†:
This seems dramatically contrary to the current polemics and dogmatism we see today. [...] Overall, I think the “take away†message from Augustine is that we should avoid dogmatism in these non-essentials, since there is great danger in doing so. Taking a dogmatic “either/or†stance can be a stumbling-block to non-believers and even other Christians, and it can even damage our own faith. I am all for battling for truth, but let’s choose our battles wisely.
G.K. Chesterton, “The Everlasting Man”; chapter 1–The Man in the Cave; esp. pg. 27, 32.
Not necessarily saying I agree with everything, but I nevertheless encourage you to take a look.
Is it OK to be an ancient Earth, Ancient Creator who actually ‘creates’, believer? And Johan, The “evolution of the species” looks a lot more like stair steps than it does like a ramp. Some of the steps are really high. Nobody ever explained step 1. Just because you don’t think Adam rode a dinosaur , doesn’t mean you must be a Darwinist. trust me, there are other explanations and beliefs.
Sometimes what “they say” [i.e., the supposed experts] might contradict each other–word to the wise.
What will you do then if you take a Dalmatian view of the Bible [i.e., there's a lot of white, but this spot and that spot is in error...]?
Do you look at what the majority of experts say and go with that?
Do you close your eyes and say “Eenie meenie miny moe…”
Rub a rabbit’s foot?
What if the future experts end up debunking what today’s experts say as, ehem, “progression” marches on?
What are you going to do when the hardcore evolutionist presses you on faith?
yell “exxpperrrriiieeeeeeeence!!!!”
or “I believe [most of] the Bible!!!!”
I’m sure that will fly with him.
“What will you do then if you take a Dalmatian view of the Bible [i.e., there’s a lot of white, but this spot and that spot is in error…]?
Do you look at what the majority of experts say and go with that?
Do you close your eyes and say “Eenie meenie miny moe…â€
Rub a rabbit’s foot?
What if the future experts end up debunking what today’s experts say as, ehem, “progression†marches on?”
You THINK about it. And keep thinking about it. And since you have to live, too, you take responsibility for the conclusions you come to and trust that God isn’t going to punish you for being a person and living your life.
You know, just like everybody else, Christian or not.
By analyzing the Y-chromosome DNA from males in all regions of the world, geneticist Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago.†and that the human population may have been reduced to between 10,000 or even as few as 2,000 due to the Toba catastrophe theory, which speculates that “70,000 to 75,000 years ago a supervolcanic event at Lake Toba, on Sumatra, reduced the world’s human population to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution.†— Martha
There is also some evidence that post-Toba saw an abrupt increase in the complexity of human culture (artifacts, art, and the like) leading some to theorize that recovering from Toba saw the emergence of complex language. (Indirect evidence, of course; post-Toba humans didn’t create and bury detailed time capsules for today’s archeologists/anthropologists.)
Given Toba’s genetic bottleneck and the sea change in complexity before-and-after, Toba sounds like the ideal time to place humanity’s “ensoulment”, the time of Adam & Eve. If YEC’s weren’t so committed to Bishop Ussher’s chronology…
Given Toba’s genetic bottleneck and the sea change in complexity before-and-after, Toba sounds like the ideal time to place humanity’s “ensoulmentâ€, the time of Adam & Eve. If YEC’s weren’t so committed to Bishop Ussher’s chronology…
yeah! somebody gets it! Why a bunch of people who can stand nothing Catholic, cling to the teachings of a bishop.. unreal.
Benji, Jesus spoke in parables. Jesus is the exact representation of God. Could God not teach in parables? So many people seem to miss the whole point, many points, in Gen. 1-3, as they major in minors.
Patrick,
“You THINK about it.”
Oh really?
By what standard?
Willoh,
The parables of Jesus do not have further revelation revealing that the parables were something other than parables.
The New Testament is further revelation that takes Genesis 1-3 as actual history [at least to a great extent] with an actual Adam.
However, let me emphasize that I do not believe the actual history cancels the rich typology I think is in the text.
Willoh:
It is always rude to lecture someone that you don’t know about their choice of words and the meaning of those words. I yielded to the temptation to do that to you, and I apologize. I hope you will note that I did not say that you were either unintelligent or uneducated. I can see how you might think that was implied by my choice of words, but that was not my intent.
I have had these discussions for quite a few years myself, and I am well aware that any number of smart, educated people do indeed disagree with Darwin. Obviously I don’t think that they’re correct, but I also don’t think that they’re unintelligent. I was intrigued by your comment that from where you sit it seems that those who accept evolution ultimately believe in it because it is the “right thing†to believe. To me it has always seemed just the opposite –that those who do not accept evolution want so much not to believe it that their view of the facts is distorted through that lens. You have clearly thought about this for a long time, as have I, so neither you nor I are likely to convince the other that our view is correct. This thread wasn’t supposed to be about debates on the merits of evolution anyway.
I’m Catholic so I never encounter this as an issue in church – hence my focus on the science. There are Catholics who believe in YEC (heck, there’s at least one who still believes in a geocentric universe) and others like me who accept evolution as proven. It’s not an issue that ever seems to come up as a litmus test on anyone’s faith and our faith is, in the end, what’s important.
I gather from your other posts that we at least both believe the earth is old, right?
Peace be with you.
There are no [uninterpreted] facts…
Tim W, you wrote
There is an illustration of this in physics. Dark matter cannot, in principle, be observed. Yet it is inferred to exist because of certain effects that we can observe in the universe. “Belief in” dark matter is reasonable because it contributes coherence–sense–to our systematic web of beliefs with respect to the physical. “Belief in” a religious article of faith (Jesus is God incarnate), though unproveable by the standards of empirical investigation, should nevertheless correlate with explanations for certain of our experiences (e.g., our sense that the world is out of joint, our sense that the brokenness of our relationships is not the way our relationships are supposed to be, etc.) that resist humanly determined solutions. So I guess I’m trying to draw a comparison here between two different kinds of conjectures about something unseen (and in principle unseeable!), but both reasonable given their different subject matter: one which concerns the order and structure of the visible universe, the other which concerns the ultimate meaning and significance of human life.
willoh, Johan provided concrete details in response to an earlier claim that there is no evidence for transitional fossils/species. You counter this with an ad hoc standard of “ramp” vs. “stair steps.” What does that even mean? What evolutionary claims require a “ramp” progression, whatever that is? You see, this is the frustrating thing about this discussion. The requested evidence is demanded. It is then provided. But after the fact we find that some other standard must also be met. And so on, ad infinitum. So the earlier creationist argument that “there are no transitional fossils” has been answered, but instead of acknowledging that it has been answered, it continues to be disputed under another set of conditions which were neither implied nor stated in the original dispute. Ad hoc arguments and criteria are frustrating because of their arbitrariness. It would be helpful to state up front what are the conditions for a reasonable person to, by force of logic and evidence, reconsider their interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and the meaning of divine creation. I appreciate that this is asking a lot, and historically, we don’t have much hope of getting those criteria explicitly stated, if we take the example of the paradigm shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism as a recent example.
This question was not asked. This is a red herring.
Granted. Who has said that YEC and “Darwinism” are the only options, that the refutation of YEC entails evolution? I mean, besides YECers, who DO make just that argument. Johan’s comment concerns what to make of the evidence. As evidence has been collected (and YEC must account for evidence from geology and physics, in addition to biology), the plausibility of evolutionary theory has strengthened, not weakened. No one has said that this increase in evolution’s plausibility somehow entails the theory’s metaphysical necessity (which is impossible for any scientific theory anyway). At worst (for the creationist) it means that as evolutionary theory increases in likelihood, it becomes more unreasonable to deny it. Again, compare to heliocentrism or the theories of relativity or the big bang.
Indeed. The story of Prometheus and Epimetheus is another belief and explanation. There’s the Tao, the mother of the ten thousand things. There’s the Ainulindalë, Tolkien’s story of the music of the Ainur and Iluvatar. But if we’re talking about explanations and beliefs about causal mechanisms for species change, then none of these says anything relevant to what evolution describes. In other words, they’re not actually genuine alternatives. I do not know why the divine creation described by Genesis must be seen as an alternative to evolution in this exclusive way, because it seems apparent that the two accounts are answering entirely different questions.
The mere possibility of conceiving different explanations, nor the fact that there are (or have been) hundreds of different explanations, does not refute anything actually claimed or implied by evolutionary theory.
willoh, i’m sorry if my frustration with your earlier comment is coming out as intemperate remarks. i’ve been in other threads recently and this medium seems to provoke some participants taking the claim that “you are wrong about that” as a personal insult. I do not mean it to be, and I wanted you to know that I appreciate your contributions to iMonk’s posts. I simply found this particular comment of yours important to respond to and register my disagreement. peace…
Joel hunter,
You said “It would be helpful to state up front what are the conditions for a reasonable person to, by force of logic and evidence, reconsider their interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and the meaning of divine creation.”
“logic” is not even material–a problem for the hardcore evolutionist in the first place.
“evidence” is interpreted according to presuppositions. Therefore, which set of presuppositions allows one to make sense out of life in the first place?
You probably already know what my answer would be.
“All I can say for the Genesis version [of Creation] is that it strikes me as more plausible than Professor Hoyle’s” — Malcolm Muggeridge
Benji: ““logic†is not even material–a problem for the hardcore evolutionist in the first place.”
Neither is the number “5″, but that doesn’t seem to pose a problem to mathematicians…
““evidence†is interpreted according to presuppositions. Therefore, which set of presuppositions allows one to make sense out of life in the first place?”
Unfortunately it’s not a good test because there are many sets of presuppositions which accomplish this.
And I don’t believe anyone responded to nedbrek’s assertion (“Evolutionary theory (specifically, common descent, and development across kinds) has provided no useful inventions…”).
This isn’t the case at all; all sorts of modern medicines depended on genetics (much of which is based on evolutionary ideas) for their development. We understand many human genes by studying what their equivalents do in yeast and mice. I could go on, but this is sufficient.
Benji, in his Phaedo Plato has Socrates in prison, just before his execution, admonish his students that no matter the difficulty of philosophy, never to become misologues, which people can become in the same way as those who become misanthropes (frequent or acute disappointment of trust, the one in discourse, the other in men). “There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.”
Were this the 17th century, your glib bons mots about logic and evidence would be especially fitting, as these assertions do nothing but declare your immunity from having to peer through the telescope, for you know in advance the correct answers. Bellarmine also was quite sure that Galileo was wrong because the esteemed Cardinal knew that he had the right presuppositions and no experiential evidence for the Copernican thesis presented by Galileo could invalidate them. But he was wrong. (Actually, I’m being a bit unfair to the good Cardinal, who was willing to state his evidential standards and was open to the possibility, at least for the sake of argument, that the Church’s geocentric inference from Scripture was mistaken.)
“Oh really?
By what standard?”
Thoughts don’t come in ‘standards’.
Given Toba’s genetic bottleneck and the sea change in complexity before-and-after, Toba sounds like the ideal time to place humanity’s “ensoulmentâ€, the time of Adam & Eve. If YEC’s weren’t so committed to Bishop Ussher’s chronology…
yeah! somebody gets it! Why a bunch of people who can stand nothing Catholic, cling to the teachings of a bishop.. unreal. — Willoh
Well, Ussher was an ANGLICAN Bishop, not Roman…
But Toba’s chronology and implications DO fly in the face of today’s YEC Orthodoxy/Dogma. Here’s a little “what-if” thought-experiment I used for an alien faith’s Creation story in a novella:
Imagine Genesis 1 implying Uplift from a non-sentient (“soulless”) predecessor species, and the only living Primates on Earth were humans and lemurs. Imagine the rational/skeptical arguments debunking that Creation account…
I do plan on coming back fellows if you are interested.
Duke/Carolina basketball game awaits me.
Probably tomorrow.
Take care
Benji
P.S. I’d encourage you to try and watch or listen to Dr. Greg Bahnsen and Dr. Stein debate if you tube has it [and if it's legal]. I come from Bahnsen’s perspective. I don’t believe you can justify “any” knowledge–including math–apart from biblical revelation.
Since a human is not omniscient there is always the possibility that there is some “fact” or “truth” out there that he does not know about that could contradict whatever he might claim to know for certain. The God who has provided Scripture, on the other hand, does not have this problem. Plus, God controls all past, present, and future facts as well. Man doesn’t.
The Bible affirms the reality of the seen and unseen, math, logic, etc.
The hardcore–nothing can be proven to exist but matter–evolutionist has forfeited his right to:
A. use immaterial logic.
B. use his immaterial mind.
C. say it was wrong when he got beat up a school since law is immaterial.
D. receive or give immaterial love.
There are “consequences” to rejecting Scripture.
God Bless,
Benji
Patrick,
What standard do you use to determine if something is true or not true?
Grace to you,
Benji
@Joel Hunter – “Were this the 17th century, your glib bons mots about logic and evidence would be especially fitting, as these assertions do nothing but declare your immunity from having to peer through the telescope, for you know in advance the correct answers.”
I’ve never understood presuppositionalism. No offense to Benji, but Van Tilian presuppositionalism is petitio principii writ large. Clarkian presuppositionalism avoids that charge, but not by much. Of course, a presuppositionalist would say that by using terms of logic like petitio principii I am accepting their presuppositions. Thus the circular argument grows tighter and tighter, threatening to collapse into a singularity.
There is no counter to a presuppositionalist argument that they will accept because they’ve already declared victory. It would be more productive to argue theology and logic with my three year old nephew. I hold no animosity toward presuppositionalists. I just treat them like thinks aliens are communicating with them through the fillings in their teeth: a bit odd, but probably harmless.
@Benji – “Since a human is not omniscient there is always the possibility that there is some “fact†or “truth†out there that he does not know about that could contradict whatever he might claim to know for certain.”
I may be missing something here, but you seem to not understand the difference between analytic and synthetic propositions.
@Benji – “Since a human is not omniscient there is always the possibility that there is some “fact†or “truth†out there that he does not know about that could contradict whatever he might claim to know for certain.â€
And you seem not to understand the concept of the incorrigibility of first person authority. e.g. I cannot be mistaken that I am feeling a pain in my right knee. There is no “fact or truth” out there that can contradict my certain knowledge that I am experiencing a pain in my right knee.
Benji, I’m having difficulty following your point as it pertains to the earlier comments. I had this same difficulty with our earlier exchange in this thread–you responded but I must lack the specialized vocabulary to interpret what you meant. I just looked back at my earlier comment to willoh and the comments of others, and I’m just stumped what this latest comment of yours has to do with them. If you care to, you’ll need to fill in some of the ellipses between the various assertions you’re making above.
Your first paragraph is plain enough, nothing out of the ordinary for a theist with empiricist/positivist intuitions or commitments. But then,
Is there a passage or passages from the Bible that you could direct me to that “affirm the reality of math?” And logic? I wasn’t aware that the Bible affirms, for example, the principle of non-contradiction. Is there a proposition in the biblical text, or even a reasonable inference, for this claim of yours?
What is a “hardcore evolutionist?” I’m not sure how construe “hardcore.” Has a “softcore” evolutionist forfeited all or some of the same “rights” you’ve enumerated?
Here’s a specific question that might help clarify my confusion. When you say the “hardcore” evolutionist has forfeited his right to use immaterial logic [not sure what 'immaterial' adds to the term 'logic'--is there a "material logic"?] are you claiming that such an individual is unable to formulate a valid syllogism? I’m somewhat reminded of Bacon’s description of the four eidola that distort our thinking. I guess my confusion is your use of the language of ethics–rights–in your judgment. In any event, your claims here aren’t obvious. Since I don’t “reject” Scripture, it seems that I should be worried about not getting what you are presenting as practically axiomatic.
Lastly, your last assertion,
Who would disagree with the claim, even someone who does in fact reject Scripture? In any event, why the scare quotes around “consequences?”
Ah, K Bryan is a more careful reader than me of your first paragraph, Benji. I stand corrected: the first sentence isn’t plain.
“The hardcore–nothing can be proven to exist but matter–evolutionist has forfeited his right to:
A. use immaterial logic.
B. use his immaterial mind.
C. say it was wrong when he got beat up a school since law is immaterial.
D. receive or give immaterial love.
There are “consequences†to rejecting Scripture.”
This doesn’t make sense, dude.
Absconding the relevance of magic or theology has absolutely no effect on how people live, love, or socialize.
You don’t need God to underwrite the reality of love, for instance. Love is something that you feel, and an idea you have about that feeling. “Love” is a word that describes a compound of effects noted by a consciousness: a feeling in the body and your identifying it in relationship to an object. The flush of emotion that comes with love, when you divide it from its object, is actually a generic effect the body produces – there is no specific experience of emotion unique to love, on other words. So, you know “what love is” primarily through connecting that effect with the object that produces it in you.
Love being a powerful and sometimes destabilizing chemical experience in the brain and the body, we have devised for ourselves a vast rituary of social customs, norms, and reflections on the experience. Experiencing love and attendant sensations is sort of the primal recreational pastime of humanity, where norms have made a sport out of the reproductive impulse.
And that’s love, without the metaphysics. You can describe a lot of things without ever having to leave your body.
As for “right and wrong”, well? Lots of different theories on that, none of which succeed or fail to gain adherents based on what they invoke God to explain. Confucius, Demosthenes, Plato, Rousseau, Hobbes, Jefferson, Nussbaum, Rorty, etc. all largely do fine without Him, philosophically.
“What standard do you use to determine if something is true or not true?”
Same as everybody else: a little discursive logic and collective rationalization hitched to observation gives us the certainty we need to persist in our opinions, which survive until we break with the group who socialized us to their dialectic, until the logic breaks down by making predictions inconsistent with reality and we’re forced to abandon it, or our ability to observe “something” ceases for whatever reason.
I get the feeling this thread is already degenerating into an undergrad philosophy department…
Thing is, Benji, that’s not a “standard”. Thats just a rough description of the process of thinking about stuff. And thinking about stuff is what everybody does. It’s not “pure reason”, it’s just the process. I interpret your talk of judging stuff “by the Bible” or whatever as leaning more heavily than I do on a particular dialectic you’re socialized to while you’re thinking – though when it’s causing you to discard your observations or clouds your logic so that you can’t explain your beliefs coherently to others, I suspect that it’s not helping you to make sense of the world, and tend to assume that you cling to a dialectic that doesn’t help you for some other reason.
Curtis…..The ancients were as clueless about the true nature of the physical world as we are about the spiritual world. Nobody thinks the Bible accurately describes spiritual beings as they really are… we don’t expect angels as they truly are to be the same as the one described in Isaiah.
The ancients who were not given understanding from the contractor and builder…
god, were cluless about the true nature of the physical world. And not all, today, are clueless about the spiritual world. Protestants are like other religious groups, some see scripture as the revealed truths from God….others do not. I completely know that Isaiah’s vision was given to him for spiritual discernment about the power and spirit of God. I’ve seen my guardian angel twice. He is as Daniel was described, ‘without spot or blemish.’ He’s about twenty-five and he is so MEEK. He was present in the delivery room when my third child was born and dying. With him was another young man…equally as lovely and kind. They mourned with me. Then they left with my little one to the place of God.
BENJI RAMSAUR…..very well said. I understand perfectly….what you are saying.
“Love is something that you feel, and an idea you have about that feeling.”
Which kind of love are we talking about here? There is a love which is a feeling, and there is a love — the important one from a Christian standpoint — which is a commitment irrespective of feeling. Our language unfortunately conflates the two.
Let me encourage you guys to do a little experiment.
Why don’t you sit down with a piece of paper and draw yourself a circle on one side of the paper and on the other side draw a cresent moon* (boy fishing on it being optional).
Now, I want to imagine that the whole of your knowledge is contained in that circle. And so you look at that circle and notice that your knowledge has limits. You do not have “unlimited knowledge” in other words.
Now, I want you to look at the other side of that moon. Now, you don’t know what is on the other side of that moon. After all, your knowledge is limited within that circle. Therefore, if left to yourself you cannot PROVE anything within that circle to be absolutely right because there might be something on the other side of that crescent moon that contradicts what you think is true.
That’s why PRESUPPOSING the total truthfulness of the Bible (which is from the God who knows all things) is the only way you or anybody else can prove anything at all.
So, let’s take logic for example. If left to yourself you might confidently assert that logic is valid. However, there might be something on the other side of the moon that contradicts what you think.
However, the Bible both assumes the validity of logic and communicates things logically (Is. 5:20 for example). Therefore, I am able to be certain that logic is valid because I am depending upon the word of God who DOES KNOW WHAT IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON.
In other words, I believe Cornelius Van Til was right when he said that the proof that the Bible is true is that if the Bible were not true, you could not prove anything at all.
Let’s take another idea. How do you know that the seasons will come in the future the way they have come in the past?
Well, you might say that you know that the seasons will come in the future the way they have come in the past because that is the way you have always seen them to come.
But how do you know that the way you have always seen the seasons come in the PAST will be the way the seasons will come in the FUTURE?
Remember, there might be something on the other side of the moon…
However, if you depend upon what God says in Genesis about the seasons, then you can know for certain that the seasons will come in the future the way they have come in the past since God does know what is on the other side of the moon.
You can’t depend upon the past to prove the uniformity of nature because that would be assuming that the future will be like the past.
Remember, everything you know is in that little circle.
God Bless
Benji Ramsaur
* Something not known on the other side of the moon idea is taken by me from Richard Pratt’s book “Every Thought Captive”
Fellows,
How do you know you are not just having biochemical events going on in your brain that causes you to think the way you do?
Why might it not be that (to borrow some imagery from Douglas Wilson) your brain fizzes evolutionary thinking and my brain fizzes creation thinking?
Why might it not be that it’s just a waste of time to talk to me since I might be biologically determined to think the way I do in the first place.
I wish your mind well (assuming you have one and not just a brain)
Benji
Guys,
I’ve got sermon prep and two folks that are members of the church I pastor who might die soon.
I am one of those guys who can have a hard time pulling out of a conversation like this and thus it can take away from other responsibilities I have.
In other words, I can get obsessive:)
If you want to know more of my perspective, then I would encourage you to read “Always Ready” by Dr. Greg Bahnsen.
I think Van Til can be hard to understand but I think Bahnsen is clearer.
God Bless,
Benji
“Why might it not be that it’s just a waste of time to talk to me since I might be biologically determined to think the way I do in the first place.”
Hmmmmmm…you make a compelling case…
Seriously though, I grew up with YEC theories clouding my mind, but this line of thinking is exceptionally bizarre and, frankly, unscriptural.