YEC vs. EVO presuppositions / methodology

But since this discussion is about your disagreeing with me that there is a coherent theology shared by a significant group of Protestants, this still appears to imply that no matter what interpretation they arrive at, it must be accepted by the church body as valid as any other. Is this how you read it? I get the impression that you probably misunderstand this concept to imply that their interpretations are equal in the sense that they are not answerable to the official doctrine of the church. The fact that this is a Confession of Faith implies that there IS an official doctrine of the church, in other words this very coherent body of theology I've been talking about, to which its members must subscribe. Again, on the basis of the context of our discussion, you seem to read this to mean that there is no coherent theology as I have been maintaining, by which the individual's interpretation must be judged, so that for instance you would believe this to mean that a member of this body could be a YEC, another a follower of ID, and another a theistic evolutionist, and all would be welcome.This is not the case. This only means that the individual has the Holy Spirit who will guide him/her in the gospel doctrines personally, but his understanding does have to conform to the doctrines of the church or he will be judged not to have the Holy Spirit.Certainly an individual may be given more insight into the scriptures than another, bringing out new implications, as individuals are gifted differently by the Holy Spirit, but their insight must nevertheless be consistent with the doctrines of the church or this body of coherent theology I am talking about.You'd have to show me that these statements are understood by the holders of this Confession of Faith specifically to support significantly different viewpoints within this body of believers, such as the YEC position versus theistic evolutionism.

This is merely a semantic distinction. In fact our whole discussion is largely semantic. My phrase "equal in the sense that they are not answerable to the official doctrine of the church" is equivalent in meaning to your phrase "the Church does not impose an interpretation but requires each member to read the scriptures himself, no doubt with appropriate guidance."Even your phrase "appropriate guidance" IMPLIES a doctrine to which the interpretation must adhere. What other kind of "appropriate guidance" could there be? Somebody else's completely idiosyncratic interpretation? Of course not. There is a body of doctrine and the individual's reading of scripture must be consistent with it. No, I find the terms equivalent for purposes of this discussion. A Confession of Faith is a statement of the doctrines to which the members of a church body subscribe. Did you read this particular Confession of Faith? I read it and that's what it's doing and the doctrines are traditional conservative Christian doctrines. I don't know a lot about the Southern Baptist confession and I'd probably disagree with some facets of their views if I really studied it, but on the face of it the Confession is typically conservative Christian doctrine and in fact it includes a clear statement that they are affirming doctrines that are under attack in today's world. I have never seen a conservative church avoid declaring its doctrines to represent the word of God. That's the whole point of all creeds, confessions and catechisms, to eludicate the doctrines derived from the scriptures. If you read through the Confession of Faith in question you will see that they regard it as elucidating what the scripture, the Bible, that is, the word of God, is saying. You will have to demonstrate this to me. The differences in doctrine in evangelical circles concern minor points, and these are not debated within the churches proper, as each denomination simply affirms its own reading on these points. You have an entirely wrong interpretation of the "basic principles of evangelical protestantism" and I have no idea where you get your dogmatic authority to pronounce on this as you do. I have shown you that I read the Baptist Confession of Faith entirely differently than you do. The burden of proof is on you as the challenger to demonstrate that your interpretation is in fact held by anyone in that body or in fact anywhere in Protestantism.AbE: I mean of course conservative Protestantism. Liberal Protestantism is something else.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-25-2005 02:21 PM

What this means is perhaps not as obvious as you hope, so I may be wrong about your intention, but I'm not in favor of any kind of education that does not aim to teach truth to students. Teaching them to think does not preclude teaching them clear doctrines in any discipline and teaching the doctrines does not hamper them from thinking for themselves. However, you are not a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that involves a very high responsibility to be sure your congregation above all things clearly understand the salvation message and the Christian life as given in scripture. IN the setting of a church appropriate guidance is to be sure the doctrines of salvation and sanctification are clearly preached and explained for the wellbeing of the congregation. Any interpretations of the scripture the responsible leaders consider to be inimical to this purpose are taught only as what to avoid.You are simply suggesting a methodology that is contrary to Christian aims and methods. These are different frames of reference. The churches are teaching the meaning of God's supernatural revelation and they have a responsibility to their congregations to be sure they understand exactly what they need to be saved. You can't impose your utterly different model on the churches. No, you haven't asserted it but you talk like it. As I said, show me that they mean what you interpret them to mean. From hundreds upon hundreds of books and sermons and tapes of sermons and commentaries by well established leaders of Protestant Christianity. I am presenting the conventional orthodox understanding of Protestant tradition. I gave my orthodox traditional reading as argument. It absolutely does. You are simply bringing in this completely false point of view from I have no idea where.Actually I'm going to consider this off topic from now on as it is not helping to clarify the point of this thread. If you feel like starting a new thread for these questions, please do.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-25-2005 03:53 PM

Just not on this thread. I think a lot of the problem is semantic and that's going to mean unraveling terminological tangles which can get tedious and even produce further semantic miscommunications and so on, plus having to go dig up evidence that my point of view really is orthodox (since I gather you have no intention of looking for evidence that your interpretation of that Southern Baptist Confession of Faith really is what they mean), but if you think there's enough to get into about it, do start another thread for the purpose.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-25-2005 07:54 PM

Your evidence was the Baptist statement itself which in my view you misinterpreted, so it wasn't evidence of anything. The evidence you need to produce is evidence that they understand it the way you understand it.

I did mention but perhaps did not emphasize enough that this is not about individuals for this reason. The premise formulation is pretty useful as is, I think, simply pitting Biblical revelation against Evolutionist Science. Certainly evolutionists as a group believe that science has the right to judge the Bible. Do you disagree with that? That view is encountered at EvC all the time.What I've been doing, again perhaps not emphatically or clearly enough, is point out that there is an equally determined premise held by their opponents that doesn't get recognized as equal because it is only viewed through the eyes of the science premise, denigrated, scorned, ridiculed. It does get recognized but only in this way. And that is the premise that the Bible has the right to judge science.This neat parallel only purely applies to the classical argument between Evolutionists and YECs (or other Biblical creationists who believe that Genesis is to be read literally). It gets fuzzy when you bring in ID and theistic evolutionists who accept some of the Bible but may reinterpret Genesis to accommodate evolution, and there also isn't just one version of this. So I've stuck to the streamlined version of the debate between Young Earth Biblical Creationism and Evolutionary science because I think it makes the point most evidently.I think this formulation gets across what needs to be gotten across and that yours only adds unnecessary complications. No, I did not start there, I arrived there and have been fighting to get it across. ===============================================================
[My comments in the following are all added by edit down to the next double line]I must correct this as it completely misrepresents my argument here:1) This is not a "complaint."
2) I didn't use the term "faith." It is Science versus God's word.
3) This is not about the rules of science or the use of them, but strictly about the IDEA, the premise, the nonnegotiable presupposition held by evos that science has the right to judge God's word.
4) I also said that for the YEC God's authority trumps science, not just that for the evo science trumps God's word. The parallel or symmetrical formulation is what is of importance. 1) Again, this is not about subjective "faith" but about the objective positions or categories: what God says versus what science says.
2) The overlapping circles do not represent what I am trying to say. Straight conflict is what I'm talking about. Overlapping areas muddy up the whole thing.
=============================================================== You have added the overlap section of the science that is held in common, which is not related to what I was saying and I think just confuses the issue. You are apparently arguing something completely different from what I'm doing here. I'm not talking about the validity of evidence at all, I'm simply talking about the authoritative premise of each side that neither side will ever yield an inch on -- the science side absolutely refuses to allow the Biblical premise to dictate anything about science, and Bible believers absolutely refuse to allow science to dictate one thing about the Bible. Surely this is obvious as stated. It involves nothing about the validity of evidence at all. I think that's a secondary or derivative dispute. Well, I've been knocking myself out trying to make this point and I think it not only represents each group nicely but gets at the heart of the endless conflicts that make debate just about impossible. It's not about "faith" -- that doesn't state it well at all. It's about the authority of God's word, an objective factor as opposed to the subjective factor of faith. God's word versus Science, each claiming authority over the other, the right to judge the other, etc. I'd say this captures the essence of the problem. I think that would be a good idea, but I will think about the rest of your post anyway.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-26-2005 03:05 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 11-26-2005 03:09 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 11-26-2005 03:48 AM

Of course, but my objective IS to frame it as narrowly and precisely as posssible in order to demonstrate the defining conflict between Biblical creationism and scientific evolutionism, and that CAN fairly be called the "classical argument here. Reducing it to individual differences will simply obscure the whole point. You have some other objective and I'm not sure what it is, but mine is to show this central conflict and really, it does seem to me it gets at the root of it.It's very simple and it IS symmetrical: The scientific evolutionist side says science must judge the Bible; the Biblical creationist side says the Bible must judge science.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-26-2005 10:34 AM

The word of God has unquestioned validity to a Biblical creationist, RAZD, and this should be easy enough to recognize. It has ultimate authority over science as well as everything else.The same appears even more obviously to be true for science at EvC -- it has unquestioned validity and authority to define all scientific questions and to define the Bible, the word of God as well. I mean that science is treated as THE authoritative method here, which is ENFORCED. Ever since I showed up here it has been hammered at incessantly that the standard at EvC is science and the Bible is to be excluded from the science fora and subjected to scientific scrutiny as well. What I've tried to do here is illuminate the fact that the YEC side is no less immovably dogmatic in its position that the Bible is the ultimate authority than the science side is about science, and to emphasize this as the defining perspective against all the ridicule of it. But I have addressed this many times. It is authoritative to YECs, to whom I have restricted this discussion. I have restricted the category to BIBLICAL CREATIONISTS, YECs, or BIBLICAL INERRANTISTS, for whom Genesis is both literal and authoritative, and for whom there is no valid alternative reading. I would think it would be easily recognized that YECs represent the creationism most pointedly in conflict with the scientific evolutionism enforced at EvC. This is not the thread for questioning or analyzing the premises, but recognizing them and their consequences. The reason I'm so repetitive about this is that people keep changing the subject, as you are doing now -- as apparently it is hard to keep in focus for some reason. The same could be said for the Biblical premise. God's word has absolutely unquestionable finality for a Biblical Young Earth creationist. Again, I've addressed this. This is all irrelevant on this thread and I am not lumping anything together. I've been very specific about referring ONLY to the creationism that takes the Bible literally as God's word. Claiming belief in the Bible is not relevant, but only belief in a literal historical Genesis. Again, this is not the thread for analyzing the premises. What you think of the premise is irrelevant on this thread, it belongs elsewhere. The fact is that it is held by YECs as dogmatically as the science premise is by the evos. I've merely skimmed your post so far and found that it is not related to this thread, so for purposes of another thread I'll have to give it more thought.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-26-2005 11:09 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 11-26-2005 11:11 AM

I'm not worried about the inquiring minds. You have a false idea of the meaning of the priesthood of all believers and of Christian liberty and it is up to you to show that your idiosyncratic reading is shared by the Southern Baptists.

The YEC premise that God is above all is no more unchallengeable than the evo premise that science is above all.Yes, the premise is absolutely unchallengeable, and should not be challenged, of course, as certainly the word of God Himself is not to be disputed, but once again you miss the point, the context. It's an EXPLANATION of the situation at EvC. The point is that this is the reason the debate at EvC is impossible, not that EvC or anyone must change to accommodate God -- heaven forbid -- but that whichever premise dominates requires the other to yield. That's just the way it is.

You define the challenge to science on the basis of the science premise, demanding evidence. This you will allow. Of course. This is what I am talking about.What you will not allow is that the Bible, the revelation of God Himself, challenge science, but this is what demonstrates the symmetry of the opposing premises. Science can challenge science and can challenge the Bible too from the EvC perspective. From the YEC perspective it is the Bible that challenges science and everything else including wrong theologies based on the Bible.

Excuse me, ADMIN Phat, but that discussion is off topic here. Please move it.

You need me to defend the obvious fact that YECs hold the Bible as the judging authority over science? Or that the standard of correct Biblical interpretation is that the Bible is to be compared to the Bible? REALLY?This message has been edited by Faith, 11-26-2005 12:29 PM

What ARE you talking about, jar? The Bible is defended at EvC all the time as the word of God, the final authority for a YEC. This thread is for a different purpose which you are simply interfering with. The purpose is to demonstrate the EXISTENCE and CONSISTENT OPERATION of these premises on the two sides and the CONSEQUENCES of their neverending conflict. You are, in other words, seriously off topic.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-26-2005 12:34 PM

Not on this thread I don't. It is off topic here. Start another one for that purpose.