Least as I see it...

Whole thread.

If I was an atheist like Robert Price or Dan Barker...I'd be having a FIELD DAY with this.

It’s incredible that this would be a controversy at all until you realize it’s only a problem in the Evangelical Christian world. And it’s only a problem there because reality is overlapping with their theology. They’re going to lose this battle eventually. It’s hard to keep the truth covered up and it gets more embarrassing the longer they do it (especially when everyone knows it). I love how some Christians are debating things that secular science figured out a long fu--ing time ago.

Galileo all over again, right, Brandon?

3. They go on to say that the study of DNA which began decades after Darwin has “enabled our understanding of human origin to achieve a level of detail Darwin never could have imagined” such that the “evidence for macroevolution that has emerged in the past few years is now overwhelming.”

4. As such, when evolution is so widely accepted and grounded and established, Christians look like buffoons when they contradict it especially via questionable interpretations.

Post Edited (One Love) : 6/25/2011 10:22:54 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 6/25/2011 10:27:47 AM (GMT-5)

Well, I have Giberson's and Collin's book.   A good portion of the book is about science and faith and how they intermingle. What is science. How far science can go and how far it can't.  What are the proper questions it is supposed to ask and what is beyond it's reach.  Is evolution trotted out by secularist humanists to undermine religion?  Probably in some cases.  They mention the Galileo thing. According to them, Galileo wanted to rescue Christians from reading the Bible as science.  So he used the new science of his day to "remove a misunderstanding" about what the Bible was teaching about the motion of the earth.  According to Donald McKay scientific enquiry is not to "verify nor add to inspired picture but to help us in  eliminating improper ways of reading it."  Thus, your old man D is a fuddy duddy.  LOL!  (J/K)  But he's simply painting with a broad brush, "This is what they are all like and this is what they are set out on doing."  As such, Giberson and Collins say that because Darwin's theory of evolution has "now been confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt" that it can offer us ways to better understand the Genesis creation.   With regard to Galileo, they say, that it is always assumed that "science won" and religion lost" but they find that absurd because Galileo was a committed Catholic until his death and he was "speaking for a group of Catholic astronomers working to reform THEIR church.  The conflict was between two different groups within their the Catholic Church.  Culturally, however, the Church lost in the sense that it was embarrassed and held up to ridicule for its decision , unfairly in the opinion of many scholars."  They go on to say that the Church won in the sense that "Galileo's position was eventually validated--by Christian scientists--and the Church moved away from an erroneous interpretation of those Bible verses suggesting that the earth was stationary."

I'm gonna place another quote from the book:

"Today, as Christians wrestle with evolution, we see the same dynamics.  Many Christians are ridiculed by the secular world and by the more scientifically educated wing of Christianity because of their opposition to Darwin.  Many insist on a particular literalist interpretation of a few Bible verses that is not actually consistent with the original Hebrew and close their minds to evolution.  This, of course, is a highly negative interaction.  But at the same time, as the evidence for evolution becomes ever more com-pelling, many Christians are embracing alternative interpretations of Genesis and moving away from error." 

So the point I'm making and I think that Tommy is making is not only the question of the historicity of Adam and Eve.  There are many scientific findings that contradict that account.  Most of what you read about the creation of a literal Adam and Eve can't be taken as literal.  The Bible says, that man was made from the "dust of the earth" yet human beings are mostly water.  The Bible says that the woman came from the rib of  Adam and yet there is no process by which an adult can be made from a rib that quickly.  So the Bible doesn't tell us HOW God created only that he did and that human's were a special part of that plan.  As such, because there is no "how" question in the Bible, this leaves room for possible scientific insights.  And that is something you seem to brush aside say, "Well Paul took it as literal!"  For myself and I think Tommy the question is how do we put all this together--both the scientific compelling evidence and the biblical data.  In so far as Giberson and Collin's are concerned, one could posit both representational humanity as well as an Adamic couple.

By the way, Enns is coming out with a new book:  "The Evolution of Adam" 

Here is what he says about it:   

Post Edited (Similitude) : 6/25/2011 8:52:42 PM (GMT-5)

When evolutionists say DNA proves macroevolution, they are really saying that DNA tells the same tale that fossils always did. Namely, there are more similarities in DNA for very similar species. But that data has the exact problems that fossils were shown to have. They are riddled with homoplasy. And MORE of it is found all the time, thereby rendering similarity less and less relevant for inferring common descent once you get away from VERY similar species. The literature is literally full of such admissions. But for those who just prefer naturalistic explanations, the data isn't the issue. Extrapolation is always possible if you're willing to fill in the gaps with your imagination as opposed to deductions from hypotheses.

All I would like for people to remember is that the groupings of critters corresponds eerily well with the way humans CLASSIFY. Humans NEED systematic differences to readily identify members of a class and to even demarcate classes non-arbitrarily. That speaks volumes all by itself from a teleological perspective. But it creates problems for the view that evolution is limitless and relatively gradual.

Post Edited (Similitude) : 6/25/2011 9:18:18 PM (GMT-5)

Basically, what I want to know is this: Looking at all the evidence we have, is it REASONABLE to say, in agreement with Wright, that Paul, while aware of the mythical and/or metaphorical elements of the account, STILL "clearly believed that there had been a single first pair..."?  YES or NO.

If the answer is "yes", then what is being said is that for Paul to NOT be in error, it must be the case that there was a "single first pair" from whom all humanity (and sin) came into the world.

Post Edited (One Love) : 6/26/2011 6:58:26 AM (GMT-5)

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,  nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.  And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him.

Acts 17:22-27a 

Post Edited (One Love) : 6/26/2011 7:02:10 AM (GMT-5)

In a recent pro-evolution book from InterVarsity Press, The Language of Science and Faith, Collins and co-author Karl W. Giberson escalate matters, announcing that "unfortunately" the concepts of Adam and Eve as the literal first couple and the ancestors of all humans simply "do not fit the evidence."

The Adam account in Genesis has long been subjected to scientific challenges, but "there was a lot of wiggle room in the past. The human genome sequencing took that wiggle room away" during the past decade, said Randall Isaac, executive director of the American Scientific Affiliation (asa), which has been discussing Adam issues for decades. The organization's 1,600 members, Collins among them, affirm the Bible's "divine inspiration, trustworthiness, and authority" on "faith and conduct," though not on scientific concepts.

Post Edited (Similitude) : 6/26/2011 7:30:10 AM (GMT-5)

I already KNOW that everyone here believes that death/deterioration/entropy antedated humanity. (No one here has bought into Greg's restoration idea, right?  I call it the "Pandora's Box" idea where God "traps" all the evil before creating humans and then the Adamic couple "releases" it back into the world.  ) So, we've already crossed into that space ANYWAYS.  This is just one more thing... 

Post Edited (One Love) : 6/26/2011 7:40:56 AM (GMT-5)

Think about it.  If something like this can make a person DOUBT--or even NEGATE--that they had a genuine personal relationship with the Risen Jesus, what does that say about the ACTUALITY of the relationship?

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The Spirit so radically expands the horizons of awareness, of space and time, of life and death (as noted by Calvin and others in the Reformed tradition such as Torrance and Barth), that such reductionistic notions become almost trivial.  Thus is should be stressed that the main thrust of 1 Cor. 2 is not negative but overwhelmingly affirmative.  It is not to denegrate nous or mind but to proclaim what is in the nous Christou (OL's Note: the mind of Christ).  It is here that one sees and participates in "what eye has not seen and ear has not heard."  What has not entered into the human mind, God has prepared for those who love him.  This is open to those whose spirits, in agreement with the Holy Spirit, search out the deep things of creation and of God, and whose relationship to God preserves the vital relationality that marks them as bearers of the image of God.  To be endowed by the Holy Spirit with the nous Christou is not other-worldly, but it is instead to perceive and to behold this world as if for the first time because it is knowing the world through the Logos, the One through whom all things have been made.  The natural order then becomes, remarkably, the creation of God in which every moment is sustained by God's grace alone.

That's what I love about David Berlinski. He's an agnostic, but he sides with the ID'ists because he knows their arguments are good and that the world without the hope of a benevolent God renders ALL MEANINGLESS--even SCIENCE.

Post Edited (Tom) : 6/26/2011 8:09:00 AM (GMT-5)