At some point I decided some version of evolution would be all right. After all, my smarter science friends report that microevolution is empirically observable. So the predicament becomes what to do with creation, or at least the Genesis account of the same. My park ranger friend Lanny tells me he believes God created evolution. My recent conversation with my friend Singleton, has shed some light on God and time--though I still won’t commit to timelessness, I think there is something to…for God a thousand years is like a day. Given these I’ve become comfortable (especially with my commitment to O.T.) with a belief that humans have evolved. So in what sense did God create? I like that answer that in the process of evolvement God picked a critical moment in man’s development and breathed His Spirit and consequently the image of Himself on us, which I believed is expressed chiefly through relationality Call me dualistic…call me Platonic…call me NorthEastern…I don’t care. If you want to know where I get this one from--Carney 1:1. Fry that on your Southern Baptist toes—I’m demergent!!!
Saturday, December 16, 2006
UnBiblical thoughts that answer theological questions
I remember the first time I heard that Genesis 1-11 might not be trying to explicitly communicate the details of early geological history. Commitment to this tenet soon led me down a road of other theological/geologica/biological/chemicaliological (I can use that word because I almost have a masters degree) conundrums. For example, some sort of Bill Craig’s version of the cosmological argument…God must have been the first cause of something…namely matter. Here is my favorite though. 
At some point I decided some version of evolution would be all right. After all, my smarter science friends report that microevolution is empirically observable. So the predicament becomes what to do with creation, or at least the Genesis account of the same. My park ranger friend Lanny tells me he believes God created evolution. My recent conversation with my friend Singleton, has shed some light on God and time--though I still won’t commit to timelessness, I think there is something to…for God a thousand years is like a day. Given these I’ve become comfortable (especially with my commitment to O.T.) with a belief that humans have evolved. So in what sense did God create? I like that answer that in the process of evolvement God picked a critical moment in man’s development and breathed His Spirit and consequently the image of Himself on us, which I believed is expressed chiefly through relationality Call me dualistic…call me Platonic…call me NorthEastern…I don’t care. If you want to know where I get this one from--Carney 1:1. Fry that on your Southern Baptist toes—I’m demergent!!!
At some point I decided some version of evolution would be all right. After all, my smarter science friends report that microevolution is empirically observable. So the predicament becomes what to do with creation, or at least the Genesis account of the same. My park ranger friend Lanny tells me he believes God created evolution. My recent conversation with my friend Singleton, has shed some light on God and time--though I still won’t commit to timelessness, I think there is something to…for God a thousand years is like a day. Given these I’ve become comfortable (especially with my commitment to O.T.) with a belief that humans have evolved. So in what sense did God create? I like that answer that in the process of evolvement God picked a critical moment in man’s development and breathed His Spirit and consequently the image of Himself on us, which I believed is expressed chiefly through relationality Call me dualistic…call me Platonic…call me NorthEastern…I don’t care. If you want to know where I get this one from--Carney 1:1. Fry that on your Southern Baptist toes—I’m demergent!!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I would think that we had evolved beyond name-calling and pejorative references only meant to provoke reaction. Since your post indicates otherwise, evolution is disproved. Air-tight logic.
Tom,
on time,
I'm not as good on this discussion as I should be, but here goes. I've concluded that there is the semantic side of this discussion and the philosophical side of the discussion. Most evangelicals grow up reading their Psalms et all. that aim at demonstrating the glory and grandeur of God. Consequently, Plato/Tom Aquinas’s simple perfect being slips into the connotations that this language creates and we get an impersonal omni-hyper overly transcendent God who has nothing to do with the revealed and suffering Jesus Christ of the Biblical narrative.
All that to say, I'm will to grant people that through Einsteinian physics, etc., you might be able to demonstrate this measurement of time compared to this one proves this...,but as my friend who goes to seminary and majored in physics in undergrad--and I'm taking his word for it--tells me nothing proves that time ever stops or that time travel backwards is possible even at the speed of light. So on the semantic/scientific point of view I'm willing to grant that God experiences time differently or I might even go as far as to say that God does not experience time depending on what you mean by that.
However, on the more philosophical nature of the coin I think it is difficult to show that God does not experience duration. That is God was both God with creation and without. God was God before the incarnation and now he is God after. I think the reason God's experiencing duration is important is because of relationality. Nick Wolterstorff does an admirable job of demonstrating this point. Nothing in the Biblical data requires or suggests that God is outside of time, rather it merely states that God is everlasting and will endure forever.
So I'm with Wolterstorff on this one. I believe in the Biblical depiction of God's everlastingness.
On Singleton
Singleton is a good guy who brings us our weekly comical announcements at church and is always good for commentary on the latest food or a enjoying a beer.
On microevolution
I knew I shouldn't have put that comment in there, but here goes. It's as simple as this--at least for me-- if you put a fish ...say a catfish in a fish tank...its growth will adapt to the size of the tank. Does that make sense? At least that is what my seventh grade science teacher Sam Eddy tells me...remember him?
On Lanny and intelligent design
On lanny
Lanny will be up-front about being a working guy who shovels shit for a living. That is a bit tongue and cheek, but it is actually how he refers to himself sometimes;). I think his statement is to make the bigger statement that on the one hand he has Genesis and on the other he has biology and he's fine with both.
On intelligent design,
I've only read Behe and Dembski, who are both extremely bright. The problem with me reading material like this is that I'll never be smart enough to know if they are lying. I don't put a whole lot of stock in their work, not because I think they are wrong, more because as far as soteriology is concerned not many people know Christ because of their work. That is not a knock on them, just an observation.
Let me throw this last thing out there though. And I could be totally wrong because I'm not in the science world...but sometimes I feel like the reaction to intelligent design seems a bit more elitist than scientific. Of course I really shouldn't say that not knowing the science of it, but it seems to me that most of the people who are against intelligent design are leftest nut jobs on NPR who have a small fear that if some headway would made in this research, their Kafka reading, cappuccino drinking, old ten-speed bicycle riding, counter cultural clubs might be disrupted by a bit of "Truth." God forbid that exists.
just a thought,
Carney
Tom,
I feel like we should maybe take this one to the discussion boards. See you there.
Carney
Thanks :)
--
http://www.miriadafilms.ru/ приобрести кино
для сайта carn-dogcomments.blogspot.com
Post a Comment