You wrote:
>>If believing in Christ required you to believe something that was not true,
then there would be a problem. But that is different than having to believe
something that does not *appear* to be true, or that by some standard does
not appear reasonable. Such belief is faith.<<
Part of believing in Christ is believing that he paid a penalty for sin.
Without sin (which the Bible says was due to the Fall) there is no need for
Christ's sacrifice. The logic as outlined by H.G. Wells says it pretty
well.
"If all the animals and man have been evolved in this ascendant
manner, then there would have been no first parents, no Eden, and
no Fall. And if there had been no Fall, the entire historical
fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason
for an atonement, upon which current teaching bases Christian
emotion and morality, collapses like a house of cards."~H. G.
Wells, The Outline of History, (Garden City: Doubleday, 1961), p.
776-777
That is a significant portion of the importance of this issue for me. Wells'
logic is sound IF evolution is incompatible with the first parents and the
fall. Wells' assumption is wrong. Evolution can be compatible with Adam and
Eve and the Fall. This is also why people lose their faith over this issue.
I wrote:
> It does have a lot to do with what we think of God's character,
You replied
>>I don't see why it should. What difference would it have made if
God had created life through (seemingly) indirect processes?<<
I posted on this before but here it is again. If the Bible is inspired, as
it claims and the story of creation is wrong why could this be the case?
1 God is not powerful enough to convey to Moses a true story of creation
(denies omnipotence).
2. God is a bad judge of character. He chose Moses to write the message and
Moses mangled it so badly that we now can't tell what the message was.(denies
omniscience)
3. God doesn't know the real story of creation.(denies Omniscience)
4. God knows but doesn't want us to know. This implies:
a. He made up the story and told it to Moses, lying to him and us. If
He does this, can we trust His word about our salvation?. (denies
honesty and faithfulness)
b. Moses made up the story and was never told anything.
If this is true, then what confidence can we place in Genesis since
it is merely a work of fiction by Moses. And if Genesis is false,
then is the promise to Abraham false? (denies any form of inspiration)
You wrote:
>>But the Bible has so little to say on this topic, and what it does say
is quite ambiguous. The only conflict is when Science enters in and
says that science is all there is (yet science is not even *about* truth!)<<
My views on what an untrue creation story does to God's character explains
why I disagree that the only conflict is science saying it is all there is.
The problem is more fundamental. If it is not, show where my logic above is
in error.
You wrote:
>>In particular, how we view His dealings with us *is* critical, and derives
from whether we really *believe* upon the Son (Matt 25:24-27). If a belief
in evolution leads to a world view that says God is unwilling to intervene,
and that we are directly subject to the elemental principles, and not to
God, then we have accepted a form of religion, yet denied the power of it.<<
Intervention takes numerous forms. And God is not necessarily confined to
intervention in the way we want to think of it. What does Revelation 13:8
mean when it speaks of the "Lamb that was slain from the creation of the
world"? Jesus was slain in approximately 33 A.D. It would appear that God's
"intervention" was planned into the universe.
You wrote:
>>My pet peeve is Christians who view each new scientific discovery, or
political trend, or technological advance as validation of their faith
in Christ. We should not be looking to *external* witnesses. Period.<<
I agree we can not prove the faith we believe. I probably "peeve" your pet
here. :-) My peeve is a little different. I don't like it when Christians
proclaim with glee the scientific discoveries which support their faith but
ignore or disagree with any scientific discovery that is a problem for them.
However, our should be compatible with what we observe. Faith in an object
simply can't be faith in isolation of all other knowledge. If it reduces to
that, then it is totally existential. Your faith is no better than the faith
of the people who believe in the cargo cult.
You wrote:
>>You didn't seem to appreciate the OJ example, so let me pick on the
woman politician in Utah who has decided her husband was a lying thief.
She has apparently done so feeling that there is all this incredible
evidence proving that he was a fraud.
The same situation occurs with Christ. People start to present us with
evidence that He is a fraud. Do we stand by Him or bail?
How about the woman in Washington whose husband was convicted of
poisoning her with tainted tylenol to collect insurance? She chose
to stand by him (for quite a while, at least).
The point of these analogies (as well as OJ) is not that the evidence
in their cases is not correct, but that it offends our minds to
consider standing with somebody in light of seemingly overwhelming
evidence that they are a fraud.
To stand by someone in circumstances like that is faith. Sometimes
faith is vindicated, sometimes it is not. But my faith says that,
unlike in some of these human examples, my faith in Christ will *never*
be disappointed.
This doesn't mean that *I* won't be disappointed however.<<
This is an incredibly honest appraisal of our situation as believers. We do
believe through faith. And at the end of the day, there is no logical
assurance that we won't be disappointed.
You wrote:
>>I have believed in Christ. I believe that He is good, and kind, and
trustworthy. Now suppose that people start to present me evidence
that contradicts that view. And further suppose that some of their
evidence has validity, i.e. because I had inaccurate views of what 'good'
and 'kind' and 'trustworthy' actually meant. The choice is to stand
by Him or bail. Having stood by Him, I *do* have a conflict because
I didn't understand these qualities. But having chosen to stand, I
have to be willing to just rejoice in My heart even though my mind
doesn't understand. Eventually my understanding of 'good', etc, will
grow and the conflict will be resolved. At which point I will be
terribly glad that I didn't bail. (This is a description of a type
of testing of faith that is common, e.g. Deut 8).<<
This hits close to home for me. Now I am glad I didn't bail out of
Christianity, but I was most certainly tempted.
Your objections to Tipler's citation of Libet et al's work have merit. I
will get the original article and see if Tipler got the info correct.
glenn