Hello everyone

I recognize some Christians have a problem with what they think to be the evidence for evolution. Kurt Wise solved it by conceding the evidence is there but he believes the Bible anyway and expects that eventually the evidence will give way to further study.I personally don't think the evidence is there. I think it's a lot of smoke and mirrors. It's all really just unproven and unprovable plausibilities at best anyway. Can you prove that the apparent order of the fossil record shows evolution over billions of years? No you can't, it's something the order suggests to your mind but you can't prove it.I take the position that YEC has no problem whatever with science, actual science, true science, but evolution is not science, it's just a collection of unprovable plausibilities.You are getting answers from some here who have their own self- invented version of Christianity so they are going to insist they believe in God, even the Christian God, even if they don't believe fully in the Bible. The lack of "wiggle room" you are talking about comes from believing in the Bible as our inerrant revelation, and there is no room for deviating from it because the Bible is the word of God. But there's plenty of wiggle room if you just make up your own God.So you've chosen to give up on the God of Bible based Christianity. But you are getting arguments from people who never had that belief. Just so you know. JAR will drive you crazy if you try to make sense out of what he's saying. He's a "devout Christian" who doesn't believe one thing Christians believe but that doesn't stop him from calling himself a Christian. I'm the only Bible believer on this thread and a YEC.But I don't really want to get into the argument here, just wanted to point out some areas of confusion I'm finding in the discussion for what it's worth. Maybe it's not worth anything. So carry on.

Just want to be clear: The religion that has no wiggle room when it comes to evolution is Biblical Christianity, which is what SIH must have in mind. Most other religions (I don't know of an exception) can be adjusted to accommodate evolution, even "Christianity" that feels free to discount the Bible wherever "science" seems to contradict it.

I'd like to know who you are but I have a feeling you aren't going to say.No, I don't really want to get into the old arguments at EvC any more. Sorry.

Oh, absolutely not. I know of people who came to recognize the truth of the Bible and put up a fight before giving in to it. I'm one of them.

As SIH already said, no he did not. He "apologized" for the sins of some of the Catholic "people" in the Church, sins that "some" committed, referring to "those who" without naming the actual perpetrators, which is blaming on nameless innocent members what the power hierarchy headed by the Pope in fact did.In fact what he describes as the sins themselves are a pretty vague lot. You'd never guess from what he said that the RCC is guilty of some 67 million tortured and murdered over six centuries, 50 million of them Bible-believing dissenters from Roman Catholicism, the rest being Jews, Muslims, witches and others. The average Catholic knows very little about the evils committed by their leaders.Here, let me quote from that official document itself, Tertio Millennio Adveniente. Scroll down a little past halfway to appreciate the language in which he "apologizes:" "...the Church should become more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children," her "children," not the Pope, but her poor innocent confused children; and "she always acknowledges as her own her sinful sons and daughters." Again, her sinful sons and daughters who are innocent of the enormities committed by the Vatican itself. You can read on to discover more blaming of the "children" and the "sons and daughters" for sins that don't even come close to the actual enormities committed throughout history.It is true that ordinary Catholics committed violence against the Jews in pogroms, even as recently as WWII, but where did they get the inclination to do that? From the Vatican. Also in uprisings in Ireland against the Protestants. Yes, of course you will have heard official Vatican denials and propaganda instead. But it was not the ordinary Catholics who murdered the Bible believers under the Inquisition down the centuries, that was the Pope's army under his orders or the orders of the Jesuits.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : To add details.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Perhaps you missed what I added to that post. Apologizing for the "children" of the Church or its "sons and daughters" amounts to a denial since it was the Vatican and its Jesuit bulldogs that did most of the dirty work down the centuries, not the average Catholic.Oh, and sins against "unity" is just a concern of the Vatican who wants all true believers in Christ to give up our true belief and come back under the authority of the Antichrist Pope.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No, the Vatican and the Jesuits are NOT included in "the Church" or he would have said so, AND named them specifically rather than implicating the millions of innocent members of the Church who had nothing to do with any of it. To apologize for the "children" and not name the true perpetrators, about which the average Catholic knows absolutely zip, is pure lying evil.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry, you're deceived. You don't understand how the Vatican works, you just believe whatever puts the prettiest face on it.An apology that specifically apologized for, say, the Bartholomew's Day Massacre, would carry some weight; or the burning at the stake of Tyndale, Latimer, Ridley and scores of other Bible believers, or Guy Fawkes Day / The Gunpowder Plot in England, that would carry some weight, or the multiple assassination attempts against the first Queen Elizabeth, or her successor James I, that would carry some weight, or the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (which was generally known to have been the work of the Jesuits until it got scrubbed out of our history books), or the Jedwabne massacre of the Jews by the local Catholics during WWII at the permission of the Nazi (Catholic) invaders, all that would have given credibility to the apology, and that's just the tip of the iceberg as they say, but that vague language used by the Pope is a lying fraud.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Gosh, Theodoric, CONTEXT CONTEXT for pete's sake. When the Pope "apologizes" for the "sons and daughters" of the Church, for the "children" of the Church it's obvious to all but the besotted that he is NOT apologizing for the Pope or the Jesuits who were the actual perpetrators of the crimes at issue. He means to be implicating nameless Catholics, NOT the power hierarchy. They will NEVER apologize for the enormities committed by the Pope himself.

I've been learning a lot about the Vatican that the average Catholic doesn't know because it's kept from them and the material has to be dug up from very old books.

P.S. I'm not a "Catholic hater," I keep saying the average Catholic is innocent of all these things and in fact I feel very sorry for all the good Catholics out there who haven't a clue about any of it, especially American Catholics where the Vatican's grasp isn't quite as tight, yet anyway, as it is in Europe and Latin America and other Catholic regions. I MIGHT be called a "Vatican hater" I suppose, after what I've been learning about all this.

You won't accept the evidence I have, you just dismiss it all based on your own bias, even though much of it comes from ex-Catholics who left the RCC because of what they found out about it. How about some evidence from Catholics who stayed Catholics then. You'll have to read the books yourself, I'm not going to wear myself out digging it up for you only to get the usual slap in the face for my efforts. Try Malachi Martin, The Jesuits; Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ, the Dark Side of the Papacy; John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope, Hans Kung (Kung is a theologian critical of the RCC but I haven't read him). I know well enough that even with Catholic sources you are likely to just dismiss them too, that's how this game is played. But if you are willing to face the truth you should recognize that there's so much testimony against the Popes from many sides that defending them gets pretty thin. I wish you good reading.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I know there's no point in trying to persuade you but the Bible is THE source of evidence for everything having to do with God for a Protestant (a real Protestant, not jar's weird claim to be a Protestant but one who considers the Reformers great teachers and great men.) In short Sola Scriptura. I have no idea what evidence Catholic Scientist might happen to have for his beliefs but that's my evidence for mine, plus all my own personal experience of God's faithfulness to me since I first believed, answered prayer and so on.But I already know from the fact that you trust archaeology over the Bible that there's no hope of persuading you. You believed in God without real evidence and you gave up God without real evidence. Unless God has mercy on you and you get born again that's the end of the story for you.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I hope you don't think this is the way Christians in general believe. I would never say I "have no evidence" for what I believe, the witness evidence of the Bible plus all the witnesses down the centuries plus my own personal experiences add up to lots of evidence. And I would never say it's about what I WANT to believe, it never was, it was a struggle in the beginning between things I'd formerly thought and what I was learning from Biblical revelation, and at one point I even complained to God about having to agree with certain Christians I'd formerly disliked. And I WOULD say that I "know for sure" what I believe, that God is real, that the Biblical witness is true and so on. When scripture says "Faith is the substance of things unseen and the evidence of things hoped for" that describes my faith -- it's a lot more substantive thing than unbelievers think. This is why I have to assume you only had a superficial intellectual assent type belief rather than true faith. That's not meant as an insult, just a description, and if that's true it's still possible for you to come to a REAL faith and be born again.

How do you verify what's in any books, meaning books that claim to report historical facts? You assess the attitude of the writer, you assess the totality of different witnesses against each other, you assess the information against other information you have, you assess what others say about the writer, you assess the source of the approval or the criticism, you assess the logic of the thinking, you check the bibliography for other sources and if possible check them out, you take notes on what still needs verification. The more you read the more you can make such assessments. You'll never have 100% certainty about anything but if you can't trust other human beings to be honestly and sincerely reporting what they know, unless you have good reason not to, then you are never going to have any knowledge at all.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.