Theistic evolutionism hits brick wall in Last day Events

[BobRyan]

Very often if you go to non-clubAdventist non-SDA discussion boards and talk to theistic evolutionists they will tell you that in order to avoid the huge embarrassment of the flat-earth and geo-centric then helio-centric errors of the RCC in the Dark Ages -- Christians need to be pro-active in embracing some kind of marriage between science and religion that includes a marriage between evolutionism and the Bible.

They argue that it will be really really embarassing for Chistiianity once evolutionists start evolving living cells from "dirt" and then start evolving horses from corn. (you get the point).

In essence they argue that evolutionism will one day be able to prove its case in "real science" just like man was able in the dark ages to start proving that the world was neither flat nor the center of the solar system -and he was doing so using 'real science'.

(Of course there is another thread here where we explore that problem showing that in no case did we have hebrew Law stating that "the earth is flat so God is the Creator and worship the God of flat earth". There was no law codifying a flat earth or codifing the idea that the sun was the center of the Universe.

But there is a Law codifying the fact that God created the World in 6 real days. In any case - the issue of Sabbath is one for another thread.)

The point of this one is the impact of "Last Day Events" on evolutionism and Adventists.

We are told that in the last days "every miracle worked by Christ will yet be accounted for by Satan".

We are told that we will eventually have to come to the point of disbeliving our own "senses" when clinging to our faith and holding to the Sabbath and seal of God - vs the mark of the Beast.

But IF you rule is "As soon as I see it --- I change the bible" then you have a failing model.

Worse - in the case of evolutionism we seem to have the rule 'As soon as an atheist evolutionist imagines it -- I change the Bible meaning to accomodate it".

It would appear that there is a huge problem with that model given what we expect regarding last day events.

What are your thoughts?

in Christ,

Bob

[Twilight]

I think it comes down to a point I made on an earlier thread.

Mankind has discovered a few things about the Created.

They have overstepped themselves.

Now they are trying to tell the Creator He got it all wrong.

For me, it is a simple question:

How did God cope before this "science" of evolution came onto the scene to help Him figure out how He did it?

Why do we think we need a fallen man like "Darwin" to correct the Prophets.

Because if the prophets were wrong about Genesis, then they are wrong about Revelation.

If God could not show them the literal past, how can He show them the literal future?

Maybe it would have been easier if the Lord had checked with Darwin first, before He gave us the literal account of Genesis?

Mark

[Bravus]

Expelled: No Rationality Allowed

[Bravus]

PS I think you've confused theistic evolutionism with deism.

[Dr. Shane]

If God could not show them the literal past, how can He show them the literal future?

Mark

Good point. If the Bible authors could not get history right, why should we think they could get prophecy right?

[Guest]

Amen my brotha

[Bravus]

(a) how could God convey the ideas of '14 billion' (approximate age of the universe) and '3.5' billion' (approximate age of the earth) to people who had not yet even invented the concept of 'zero', let alone scientific notation.

( In telling any story, the storyteller selects what is most important for his/her purposes. What is *most important* about the Creation story?

[phkrause]

To me it seems that that would be the Sabbath.

pk

[Dr. Shane]

I think God seemed to summarize the important points when He wrote them in stone in the Ten Commandments. The Fourth Commandment is kind of like the Cliff Notes of Creation.

[BobRyan]

Expelled: No Rationality Allowed

Expelled "no intelligence allowed" is about the agenda of some evolutionists to deny the Romans 1 doctrine about God's invisible attributes being clearly seen in the things that were made by Him.

A theistic evolutionist that denies Intelligent Design as well as believing in evolutionism - has mistakenly and perhaps without really thinking it through --- adopted a distinctively atheist argument.

But in that movie an interesting fact surfaces about Dawkins, Provine and Meyers -- they all admit that the doctrines of evolutionism crushed their believe in the Bible.

Darwin admits to the same thing - as it turns out.

But this thread is speaks to a different problem entirely. It is about the fact that ALTHOUGH we would normally GIVE Evolutionists the valid playing field we shall call "seeing is believing", yet in the special case of Last Day events - that rule is predicted NOT to work at all -- no not even for belief in Christ!!

in Christ,

Bob

[BobRyan]

(a) how could God convey the ideas of '14 billion' (approximate age of the universe) and '3.5' billion' (approximate age of the earth) to people who had not yet even invented the concept of 'zero', let alone scientific notation.

( In telling any story, the storyteller selects what is most important for his/her purposes. What is *most important* about the Creation story?

in the creation story of Genesis 1-2:3 the point is continually made

"evening and morning were the X-day" -- it is a literal chronological sequence with each unit of time explicitly identified.

It states that God created all life in such a short time that plants came about "the day before" the sun for example.

It states that God created land animals and mankind on the same day.

It states that God created two humans in a perfect peaceful happy painless protected environement where "all was good" instead of "all was death, starvation, disease fear and competition".

It states that this perfect condition could have been sustained for all eternity with full access to the tree of life - had Adam and Eve obeyed God.

Of course Ellen White also reports being shown that Adam and Eve were larger than humans today and were much more intelligent than humans today.

In other words it was a good example of a paradise home to which mankind would WANT to be "restored" back to instead of mankind being so horrified by it that by comparison TODAY is paradise.

Still - that is another topic entirely. Fits the 28 FB doctrines impacted by evolutionism thread better.

in Christ,

Bob

[Twilight]

(a) how could God convey the ideas of '14 billion' (approximate age of the universe) and '3.5' billion' (approximate age of the earth) to people who had not yet even invented the concept of 'zero', let alone scientific notation.

( In telling any story, the storyteller selects what is most important for his/her purposes. What is *most important* about the Creation story?

With that logic, I can remove Prophecy...

If God could not communicate long ages of time to "Moses", if He did not have the ability to communicate the length of time it took Him to create life on this earth....

Then we are all in big trouble...

He must have been so pleased when the Intellectuals turned up to help Him out Bravus...

---------------------------

Your argument rests on the concept that man was not intelligent enough in the beginning to undertand origins.

That comes solely from an evolutionary mindset applied to the bible.

Do you consider the ages of Adam, Noah, Abraham to be literal?

Or are they some type of "code" that we need the evolutionary theory to "understand"?

Maybe God could not communicate the age of Adam to Moses, maybe they were struggling because their tails confused them and they could not figure out a base of 10 mathematically?

At what point did God gain the ability to communicate "years" to humanity?

Mark

[Bravus]

No, not at all. I was riffing on something Bob said. God can do anything. The question is why he chose either (a) to create the world a long time ago but let the Bible suggest he did it recently or ( to create the world recently but make it look very old. Nothing to do with man coming along, everything to do with the mismatch between (your interpretation of) the Bible and the world around us.

But really, just keep on believing what you believe. I'm done being mislabelled and insulted.

[Tom Wetmore]

...Because if the prophets were wrong about Genesis, then they are wrong about Revelation.

If God could not show them the literal past, how can He show them the literal future?...

Are you even paying attention to what you, yourself, are saying?!?!

The "literal" future you reference is introduced by the clear statement "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this." and described thusly:

Quote:

... I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth... And out of the smoke[from the Abyss] locusts came down on the earth and were given power like scorpions... [which] looked like horses prepared for battle [wearing] something like crowns of gold... faces like human faces.. hair...like women's hair... teeth...like lion's teeth... a beast coming out of the sea... another beast coming out of the earth... a woman sitting on a scarlet beast... Fallen is Babylon the Great!...

That same prophecy described time in terminology of real, literal time - hours, days, weeks.

Actual events, past and future. Descripions - literal? Really?

[Twilight]

Originally Posted By: Twilight

...Because if the prophets were wrong about Genesis, then they are wrong about Revelation.

If God could not show them the literal past, how can He show them the literal future?...

Are you even paying attention to what you, yourself, are saying?!?!

The "literal" future you reference is introduced by the clear statement "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this." and described thusly:

Quote:

... I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth... And out of the smoke[from the Abyss] locusts came down on the earth and were given power like scorpions... [which] looked like horses prepared for battle [wearing] something like crowns of gold... faces like human faces.. hair...like women's hair... teeth...like lion's teeth... a beast coming out of the sea... another beast coming out of the earth... a woman sitting on a scarlet beast... Fallen is Babylon the Great!...

That same prophecy described time in terminology of real, literal time - hours, days, weeks.

Actual events, past and future. Descripions - literal? Really?

Couching the language of the future in types and symbols, does not preclude it from being the "literal" future... :-)

[olger]

But really, just keep on believing what you believe. I'm done being mislabelled and insulted.

Oh please DG..

This is the same lead-in that characterized your "martyrdom" with Ed Dickerson. Remember?

g

[Woody]

Let's keep to the topic and not personal issues.

[Tom Wetmore]

And likewise, the real past event does not preclude it from being described in less than literal terms, or you phrased it, "couching the language [of the past] in types and symbols".

(You might want to check the dictionary meaning of the word "literal".)

[BobRyan]

No, not at all. I was riffing on something Bob said. God can do anything. The question is why he chose either (a) to create the world a long time ago but let the Bible suggest he did it recently or ( to create the world recently but make it look very old.

When we read the genesis account of origins in Gen 1-2:3 we see plants created on day 3 and the Sun on Day 4 that acutally shines -- and fish and birds on day 5 and animals and man on day 6.

The text tells us that instead of Adam-zygote and Eve-zygote they were man and woman. They were adults. The same is true for the plants -- instead of seeds planted on day 3 it appears that the whole thing took root and sprang to adult life (thus something for animals to eat on day 5 and 6).

Clearly God created a fully sustained fully functioning Planet with eco-system that had the appearance of age so as to function.

We get that much from the story without looking at our first radiometric.

in Christ,

Bob

[BobRyan]

But the question in the OP of this thread goes beyond that point. It asks about the model of changing the bible each time we find a question that is not completely answered in light of the details regarding last day events.

If the model up until one of those Last Day events is to always change the bible to match current guesswork -- then what about those "you will have to deny your own senses" cases predicted in last day events. Is the idea to "suddenly switch models"? No longer "seeing is believing"???

in Christ,

Bob

[jasd]

>>The bacteria in the former posts was able to develop a resistance to a drug but did not change into a new species of bacteria nor did it even acquire a new gene on it's DNA. Plasmid RNA is free floating RNA bits in the nucleus of the cell and is kind of like another animal living with the host organism.<<

This post more naturally belongs to the thread “How evolutionism destroys SDA theology” from where I pulled the above quote, for RNA/DNA proved to be an irresistible segue. That said, I am posting the contents of this post here instead, as it seems, not so much “Theistic”, but more naturally to address “...Last day Events”.

“...that Nimrod became afflicted with a retrovirus that integrated with his genome and, in essence, “rewrote” his genetic makeup, fashioning him into a “fit extension” for an under-worldly spirit. When I asked Sharon Gilbert, author of The Armageddon Strain whose formal education includes molecular biology and genetics if she thought this was possible, she said, “Absolutely, Tom. Retroviruses essentially inject single-stranded RNA strands into somatic (body) cells during ‘infection’. These ssRNA strands access nucleotide pools in the host cell and form a double-stranded DNA copy. This dsDNA can then incorporate itself into the host chromosome using a viral enzyme called ‘integrase.’ The new ‘fake gene’ then orders the cell to make more mRNA copies of the original virus RNA. These then travel out of the cell and infect the next cell, and so on.” ”

Might it not obtain that – given the numbers of successful 'in vitro applications’ churning out genetically-modified or ‘chimeric’ creatures – there exists some credence in the fact that “a retrovirus may integrate with a host’s genome and rewrite the specimen’s DNA”? (we might want to rethink ‘receiving the mark’ – should it be legitimate architecture in concept mapping – and what that might actually entail; such as, its rendering the recipient bestial-like, an inhuman creature)

Mechanics aside, I tend towards the idea that we are about to witness ubiquitous ‘evolution’. Operative terminologies would center upon how ‘evolution’ will be incorporated in our common conversation – should the above obtain.

Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston collaborated in a fictional work titled “The Relic”, which dealt with biologic morphing occurring through specific application of herbal enzymes, etc...

[BobRyan]

The problem for evolutionism in "Last Day Events" is that we are all told that in the last days such compelling "evidence" will be produced by Satan who will "yet account for all the miracles of Christ" and who will "cause fire to come down from heaven" and will as 2Thess 2 states provide "lying wonders" for all the world to see -- that as Ellen White says "we will have to disbelieve our own senses" to continue with a 28FB belief model unchanged.

However the basic montra of theistic evolutionists has been shown to be "change change change your beliefs with every hint of new evidence to the contrary - even if it is only imagined evidence because someday in the future real evidence to the contrary just might surface".

Given that model - how in the world will an evolutionist bent toward downsizing-or-deleting doctrine with every imagined scenario that confronts doctrine - ever survive Last Day events???

in Christ,

Bob

[Guest]

Answer: They won't.

[Twilight]

The problem for evolutionism in "Last Day Events" is that we are all told that in the last days such compelling "evidence" will be produced by Satan who will "yet account for all the miracles of Christ" and who will "cause fire to come down from heaven" and will as 2Thess 2 states provide "lying wonders" for all the world to see -- that as Ellen White says "we will have to disbelieve our own senses" to continue with a 28FB belief model unchanged.

However the basic montra of theistic evolutionists has been shown to be "change change change your beliefs with every hint of new evidence to the contrary - even if it is only imagined evidence because someday in the future real evidence to the contrary just might surface".

Given that model - how in the world will an evolutionist bent toward downsiizig-or-deleting doctrine with every imagined scenario that confronts doctrine - ever survive Last Day events???

in Christ,

Bob

This is a very good point Bob.

To go through that time means we have to have believe the bible is self contained.

Please see the "The bible interprets itself" thread, this might be a good point to make there, as I think it has wider implications than theistic evolutionists. :-)

Mark :-)

[Bravus]

Flawed premise yields flawed conclusion