Proofs of Evolution: A Mediocre Debate (Faith, robinrohan and their invitees)

It's like the cart before the horse.

Not really. All the ingredients for faith are there. You just have to believe. But it's only when you DO believe that it all begins to make sense.By the way, a Calvinist preacher is not going to tell you to give up smoking and drinking. That's what the kind of preacher you call sentimental is likely to do however.Of course the Calvinist is probably going to require you to leave the building for the purpose.(Oops, I guess this came up on the other thread. Should have answered it there. Oh well.)This message has been edited by Faith, 02-17-2006 09:51 PM

There's no such thing as the "First Calvinist Church"--just Baptists and Presbyterians and other offshoots.And the Baptists are notorious teetotalers. The Catholics are more lenient.

Presbyterians are just as lenient about alcohol as the Catholics in my experience. And I don't know about Baptists in general but Calvinist Baptists are not necessarily teetotalers. Drunkenness is of course forbidden by the Bible itself, but wine or beer from time to time is no problem. Wine is in the Bible practically as a staple, and Martin Luther was a famous beer-drinker they say.Have we finished with the discussion of the tribal god?This message has been edited by Faith, 02-18-2006 12:08 PM

No. Are you suggesting that the way they date these different parts of the Old Testament is through a question-begging procedure, in which they assume ahead of time the movement from Paganism to monotheism and then work out the dates according to how God is pictured in a given part of the Bible?But there was this trend toward monotheism--and not just among the Jews, correct?

What you have never explained and cannot explain is why it's my fault if I'm not a believer. We talked about it and you just said, in effect, that you couldn't explain it. That is a crucial issue.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 02-18-2006 11:22 AM

Yes. Assuming of course that by "they" you mean modern scholars, the ones I call the revisionists.There is one notorious one where the "scholar" arrived at a very recent date for the book of Daniel based strictly on the fact that he denies the possibility of genuine prophecy and honestly admitted that was his criterion for the date. I don't remember the man's name, I wonder if I can find it. Many of Daniel's prophecies were fulfilled over the next few centuries, so this man dated the book after the events, thus making a liar out of Daniel who clearly lived in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, and destroying the kind of evidence that people need in order to come to faith. I think that is completely a fabrication of modern [Darwinist atheist anti-supernatural] scholarship too. I learned it in school but since becoming a Bible-believer I don't see any evidence for it. There are only three "monotheistic" religions, right? Well the Bible accounts for the first two and partly accounts for the third. In other words it took the revelation of God's word to remind people that there is only one God. Otherwise the entire world had forgotten him and gone for tribal gods.This message has been edited by Faith, 02-18-2006 12:25 PM

I forget how that discussion went.It is God who chooses whom to save. However, anyone who wants to believe and does everything possible to make belief possible is not going to be rejected. Jesus said simply, "...him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." (Jhn 6:37)But perhaps this is the wrong question. Maybe the question really is "Why do you deserve Hell?" In that case the answer is Because we all do. It's the default position of being human and therefore sinners.But again, the gospel is preached because Jesus said that is how people are to be saved. "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God." Read the gospel, ask God to give you faith. If you want to believe, you won't be turned away.

And I believe you would also say that this question-begging procedure also occurs when scientists provide proof for evolution, correct? (the evidence from DNA samples, for example). I'm just trying to understand your overall position.In regard to dating of the Bible, C. S. Lewis said exactly the same thing you did:

See message #241 of this thread.

DNA samples? You mean like comparing chimpanzee and human DNA and claiming the similarities are proof of descent? My answer is that descent isn't proved by this, that similarity of design explains it just fine. Not sure where question-begging comes into this or if I've understood what you are referring to. Yes, good old Lewis. Glad you're on top of that. I can't find the specific quote I wanted to find about Daniel, but there's plenty of online discussion of this dating problem.

OK I'm looking at it. You could do what I proposed and find out for yourself: Give yourself to Jesus Christ. Talk to him. Ask him to save you, to take you into His kingdom. Ask him to explain all these things to you. I've found Him to be very very willing to answer my questions about such things. Even to take me back and continue to answer my questions after I've been such a traitor I know beyond a doubt that I deserve hell forever.The formal answer is again something people just aren't going to accept unless they already believe. You can't believe because you are fallen. Being fallen is a state of guilt before God, that we are all born into. Nobody's innocent. There is no such thing as making a mistake in choosing to believe evolution over God. There is enough evidence to make you guilty in that case.It takes a supernatural act of God to give you faith. God can give you that faith at any time.Sometimes he gives it in small increments so that a person simply finds himself interested in knowing more about it and is led to seek Him. There are many ways of seeking. Listening to preachers is a main one. Reading good theology books and the Bible is another. Prayer is a big one. Prayer is just talking to God as you'd talk to any person, but He can hear your very thoughts. He hears them whether you direct them to Him or not but if you direct them to Him, that's prayer. The Kingdom of God grows by stages from a tiny mustard-seed-sized beginning.This message has been edited by Faith, 02-18-2006 01:50 PM

There's evidence on the other side as well--plenty of it.Speaking of proofs of evolution, which, after all, is supposed to be the topic of this thread (ha, ha), after studying up on it some (the book by Mayr and a few other things I read on the Internet), I've decided that the real physical evidence is the fossils. I don't think there would be much of a case for it if it wasn't for the fossils. What is one to do with them if one wishes to reject evolution? All those hominid skulls, for example.The other types of evidence consists of the following: If evolution is true, such and such would have to be the case. Such-and-such is in fact the case. This is what we find with DNA evidence (and redundantly, with morphological evidence).ABE: I think I've convinced myself that if evolution is true, there can be no God.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 02-18-2006 03:19 PM

Really, the fossil evidence huh? I think the fossil evidence is ridiculous. The only thing about the fossils that is a problem, sort of, is their seeming to be arranged from "primitive" to "highly evolved." But I don't think the lower ones are all that primitive really, and I think the arrangement suggests how a Flood would have deposited them -- land animals toward the top. I think it's crazy to suggest they got arranged as they did in such neat layers by type all over the earth by the normal ravages of time.What's so convincing about the "hominid" skulls? They were either human or they were something else. Human beings in our own time come in an enormous variety of sizes and shapes. Human skulls vary enormously naturally in size and shape. There is no such thing as a hominid. What's the evidence that you find so convincing? But this isn't as convincing to you as the fossils. Interesting.This message has been edited by Faith, 02-18-2006 04:44 PM

The brain cavity gradually gets bigger in the hominids. The arrangement of the fossils is very telling. A Flood would have deposited them haphazardly.Also there are those fossils--lots of them--of those lizard-cows--from whom we came.