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1. #456544
   On September 15th, 2008 at 11:14 pm, purplepeep said:

   Trollman said:
   It is very strange to be sure, and I probably would have thought someone who believed this to be a heretic not long ago. But this is where my own personal study has led me. Perhaps I am wrong about this, but this is the result of my own honest struggle with this difficult subject.

   Well, TMan, I won’t call you a heretic, lol. I will say your take is unique in some ways, but familiar to other speculation that I’d consider more “way out there” than yours.

   Suppose mankind already existed before God created Adam. Suppose that man had already arrived on the Earth as a result of some natural process that God had set in motion, like evolution.

   I’ve heard various theories that offer the idea of “ancient astronauts” came here. (In fact that’s actually part of one of the competing theories of human evolution.)

   I follow your line of reasoning and I think you are somewhat on the same track with most folks who are biblical literalists. But you diverge from them in your starting hypothesis and conclusions.

   I believe most literalists will note that with the fall of man sin and death entered this world. Mankind was built to live forever. But with the introduction of sin decay set in – as a result, as you have noted, lifespans become increasingly shorter as the ages rolled along. Sin upon sin, century after century.

   I think you get off track, though, for a couple of reasons.

   It seems you are trying to reconcile bad science, i.e. “evolution”, with “what really happened”. Although evolution changes every 10 years or so and is riddled with mistakes & fraud (e.g. “Piltown Man”), I would expect God, in contrast, to be a truthful and constant reliable source.

   What’s hard for me to reconcile in your thoughtline is the One capable of the creation of the heavens and earth would have to fall back on Darwinism at any point. To me, there’s no logic or reason to that. That is, if we’re talkin’ about an omnipotent Deity here

   Another point – Eve was so named, as Genesis tells us, because she was “the mother of ALL living”.

   But as I sez, it’s an “IMHO” the big error is in trying to reconcile changing fiction (Darwinism) with God’s established, clear word. It would be like a court considering both true and false evidence & testimony as equally valid evidence in coming to a judicial decision.

   I’m not discouraging you from pondering and considering such things at length, you’re obviously considering things deeply. I’m just saying I think you might consider the possibility there may be some chaff in with the wheat. Or, to use another of Jesus’ allegories, even tiny bit of leaven can mess up the matzah. (Well, that’s more my translation of His words, lol)

   There just happens to be a current series by the “Grace To You” ministry titled “The Battle for the Beginning” that may be of interest, since it’s going over things you’ve brought up – if you’re so inclined. (Nothing cult-like, it’s “generic” evangelical Christian teaching.)

   You can download the MP3s of the daily talks or read them online (or do both, for free) at this page:
   The Battle for the Beginning

   I’ve been finding them interesting, your take may be different. But it’s all the different takes folks have that just adds to making life more interesting!

   Thanks for expanding on your thoughtline, TMan.

2. #456555
   On September 15th, 2008 at 11:42 pm, padikiller said:

   uhangtight

   While you are correct about the quote, you are definitely wrong about being deist. As George Washington was an Episcopalian, he was also an Episcopalian Parish Leader. As far as ‘many’ being deists, this is patently false, as there is only one that flirted with being a deist that was Jefferson, he was actually a unitarian.

   Jefferson, who was not a Christian, was also an Episcopalian Parish Leader, in Albemarle. So was George Wythe, an avowed Deist. Any leader who wanted power had to be a church leader – the church then performed most of the day-to-day government and social functions. Such was the political reality – non-Christians were oppressed. For example, until Jefferson changed it, Virginia law provided that Christian apostates could be punished by loss of rights and even imprisonment.

   
   uhangtight

   You see, diests do not believe in the providence of God

   This is simply not true. A central tenet of classical Deism was the belied in Divine Providence – the belief that a Creator provided the Universe and then left it large alone to be dealt with by human reasoning.

   Classical deism held that a human’s relationship with God was impersonal: God created the world and set it in motion but does not actively intervene in individual human affairs but rather through Divine Providence. What this means is that God will give humanity such things as reason and compassion but this applies to all and not individual intervention.

   What we know of Washington does not support the contention that he was a Christian. He attended church very infrequently, and when he did go, he would hang around outside while Martha took communion.

   There is no reference in any of his adult writing of any reference to Jesus and the Constitution drafted by the Constitutional Convention over which he presided, deliberately excludes any reference to God at all.

3. #456580
   On September 16th, 2008 at 12:56 am, Trollman said:

   If you are interested in studying the Genesis creation account, I highly recommend checking out Dr. Sailhammer’s Genesis Unbound. His take on the 6 days of creation is that it is a literal week, but is far different from the usual YEC (Young Earth Creationist) interpretation. It doesn’t describe the creation of the universe, but the miraculous recreation of the Holy Land.

   The Fall
   I’ve always had a problem with the view that there was no death in creation until the fall. Adam needs to partake of the fruit of the tree of life in order to live forever. That suggests that death was built into him, and only through this fruit is he able to stave off natural death. Death seems to have been built into creation from the beginning, not just as a result of the fall. I believe the death that came from the fall is spiritual death, not physical.

   Lifespans
   I don’t see how sin would cause people’s longevity to go from 900+ to 120+ (I believe Gen. 6:3 refers to how long Noah was to preach before God brought judgment through the flood, as opposed to making a new arbitrary age limit). If you look at the lifespans, they are steady for several generations, even as you go from no sin to a world filled with violence, corruption, and wickedness. The lifespans should have already been decreasing if sin was the cause of the drop in lifespan.

   Evolution
   As far as evolution goes, yes, I believe it does have problems. The origin of life is perhaps the greatest problem for the atheist who seeks to explain life apart from God. Perhaps evolution isn’t correct, but at least something like it appears to have happened. In general, you see that early life was very simple, and you only get complex life forms later.

   I wasn’t very religious growing up. I was taught evolution was a fact, and never even questioned it. Then I became a Christian, and many of the people I admired rejected evolution. So I began to study the matter, and over a period of years, I came to reject it myself – I thought it was a total sham.

   I was so convinced that evolution was bogus science, that when I decided to go back to college, I seriously considered pursuing graduate studies in biology in order to refute evolution. I wasn’t content to just complain about evolution, I was so outraged at how this pseudo-science was being beat into people, that I was determined to bring an end to it myself!

   I had a few months to study before school started, and as a budding Christian apologist, I was trying to make a choice. Should I study biology in order to refute evolution, or study philosophy to present arguments for the existence of God?

   I started reading college level text books in biology. I noticed that they were full of faulty arguments against God and so forth, the atheist authors made all kinds of mistakes. But something else happened. I noticed that some of the things that I had been taught by those opposed to evolution were wrong. In fact, I noticed that there was evidence for evolution, even good evidence.

   Look, I don’t want to get involved in a deep scientific debate on this subject, but let me say this. I went from having been completely convinced evolution was wrong, to believing that there really is something to it. I know that makes me anathema to many, but that is where the evidence led me. Just like I followed the evidence towards faith in Christ – that there is a God, and that Jesus rose from the dead, so the evidence convinced me that evolution, or something along those lines, has occurred.

   What’s hard for me to reconcile in your thoughtline is the One capable of the creation of the heavens and earth would have to fall back on Darwinism at any point. To me, there’s no logic or reason to that. That is, if we’re talkin’ about an omnipotent Deity here

   I don’t see it as God “falling back” or leaning on nature, as if God needed any help. There is a kind of elegance in evolution. You don’t have a bunch of little miracles all over the place, but you see the Great Mind having put it all together at the very beginning. Through one act, God created the great variety of planets, stars, galaxies, and life forms. That shows planning and genius to me.

   Sure, God has the power to have created the entire universe, fully functioning, ready for man, in a single instant. But He didn’t. Whether you believe God created the universe over 6 days or billions of years, the simple fact is, God created the world through a process, rather than a single instant.

   Another point – Eve was so named, as Genesis tells us, because she was “the mother of ALL living”.

   What exactly does it mean to say that she was the mother of all the living? It can’t mean mother of all living things, for she obviously isn’t the mother of the plants and animals.

   Does it mean she is the mother of all the living human beings? She wasn’t the mother of Adam. Just going from the Biblical text, the woman isn’t named Eve until after God pronounced His judgment on the serpent, Adam, & the woman. As far as we can tell, she is named Eve after God has declared that from her would come the seed that would crush the serpent.

   We know that Jesus was descended from Eve, and that (only) through Jesus & His cross can we have life. So Jesus’ cross becomes our tree of life. So I think it can be true that Eve was the mother of all the living, even if she wasn’t the mother of all human beings.

   I’ll be sure to take a look at The Battle for the Beginning when I get the time. Genesis is one of those subjects I never get tired of studying. Just when you think you’ve already heard all there is to say on the subject, there comes something new. That is why I never get tired of studying the Bible, it is such a deep book.

4. #456936
   On September 16th, 2008 at 11:05 am, cheapseat said:

   so if you live your life as a whoremongering sleazoid aka clinton, but go to church on sunday and cry on demand at funerals, your a good democrat christian. but if you live your life as a christian but don’t regularly feed the church coffers you are not a good christian. so what are you lgm if you regularly attend a u.s. hating race bating church where the minister builds tax free million dollar homes and seduces church goers wives?