The Sabbath’s relevance to the debate about origins
The truth is that the Sabbath is so basic to a literal Creation week that it is impossible to ignore “SIX days you shall labor…for in SIX DAYS the Lord made” – is impossible to ignore, bend or mutilate. All one has to do is “Read”. The fact that in Genesis 1 each day is 1 “evening and morning” sequence and that in Gen 2:3 God “makes it a holy day” is all the worse for those intent on ignoring the meaning of the text.

But the same mind open to the fiction that “birds come from reptiles” will lend itself to the fiction that “six days you shall labor…for in six days the Lord Made” did not actually mean “six days” (As if Moses was a closet darwinist trying to hide darwinism under the cover of creationism).

in Christ,

Bob

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The Sabbath’s relevance to the debate about origins
Shining – you are welcome.

Also consider this thought from Paul in

Acts 20 –

28 “”Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
29 “”I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;
30 and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

31 “”Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.
32 “”And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

By way of “Exhibit 1” – in reference to Paul’s prediction above –
Spectrum recently released an article claiming that all SDA doctrine should be tested by the Bible EXCEPT Fundamental Belief 6.

Titled

“10 August 2010
Is the Church Creating a Brain Drain Over Belief Number Six?”
http://www.spectrummagazine.org/blog/2010/08/10/church_creating_brain_drain_over_belief_number_six”

My response to that –Fundamental Belief #6 exempt from testing sola-scriptura — idea was

BobRyan replies –

That is the key to the entire gap in this discussion.

As Christians we believe that all doctrine is to be tested sola scriptura and not by simply eisegeting what you “wish the Bible said” into the text, or “evolutionist doctrines on origins NEED the Bible to say”.

For “some” the idea that the Bible might not match the ever changing demands of evolutionist demands for a doctrine on origins is “a bad thing”.

For others – it is pretty much “obvious” that the Bible doctrine on orgins is nothing like “birds come from reptiles over a few million years of time”.

But intellectual honesty in Bible doctrine begins with “What does the bible say” long before you get to “yes but my belief in evolutionism and the doctrine on origins that I find there require that I bend the Bible”.

The predictable fact that those two doctrines are “different” is not an excuse to bend-the-bible to fit evolutionism or to engage in a scorched-bible model of rendering scripture or belief in scripture in a sacrifice-all effort to accomodate the alchemist myth and proven blunder, fraud and fiction of evolutionism.

in Christ,

Bob

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Academic Freedom Strikes Again!

george:
By definition, I don’t believe in miracles or apocryphal, anthropomorphic stories about same.Why aren’t scientists observing them today if they occur?

Circular argument. If they were naturally occurring we would expect scientists to see that they are still occurring today. If they are singular events caused by an intelligent being – that being would be under no obligation to “keep causing world wide floods” as if “to do it once you must continually do it”. Armstrong went to the moon.. shall we argue that unless he keeps going to the moon so each new generation can see it … then it did not happen?

Your argument is of the form “all eye witness evidence to some event in the past is no evidence at all unless that event keeps repeating itself so we too can witness it”. Seems less than compelling.

“Could it be that science is better able to detect hoaxes and false claims?” As a rule for dismissing every eye witness account in the past – it is less than compelling. (even when that event cannot be repeated)

Evolutionists “claim” that dust, rocks and gas (in sufficient quantity and over sufficient time and a lot of luck) self organized into rabbits via prokaryote-then-eukaryote-then-more-complexity. But such self-organization cannot be “observed” today.

(What is worse – such a sequence cannot even be intelligently manipulated to occur in the lab)

By your own argument then you should not believe in evolution.

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Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
@Sean Pitman:

Suppose you were at a crime scene … there is a tree limb on the ground and a bullet hole in the victim — “all natural causes”? or is one ‘not natural’? Those who say that nothing can be detected as “not naturally occurring in nature” – because all results, all observations make it appear that every result “naturally occurred without intelligent design” seem to be missing a very big part of “the obvious”.

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Academic Freedom Strikes Again!

george:
Gentlemen,

What just God would allow an innocent child to be born guilty for the sins of a distant ancestor? …What if there was only One Commandment? Do Good. ‘Kant’ see a problem with that.

An atheist point of view is not often found here – but this is interesting.

1. God does not punish babies for what someone else did – but I suppose that is a reductionist option that is not so uncommon among atheists. The “details” of the subject you are commenting on – yet according to you “not reading” – is that humans are born with sinful natures. A “bent” toward evil. That is the first gap right out of the gate between atheism and God’s Word..

2. But still God supernaturally enables “free will” even in that bent scenario, the one that mankind lives in – ever since the free-will choice of the first humans on planet earth – was to cast their lot in with Satan and rebellion..(apparently they wanted to see what a wonderful result that poor choice would create). John 16 “the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin and righteousness and judgment”. And of course “I will draw ALL mankind unto Me” John 12:32. (not “just Christians”). Thus supernatural agency promotes free will in a world that would otherwise be unrestrained in its bent to evil.

3.God says “The wages of sin is death” — so then your “complaint” is essentially “that you exist”. A just and loving God created planet Earth – no death or disease or suffering – a perfect paradise where mankind could live forever … and only one tiny restriction… yet Adam and Eve allowed themselves to be duped by Satan… tossing it all away. The “Just God” scenario could easily just have let them suffer the death sentence they chose. He did not do that… hence “you exist” – to then “complain about it”.

4. Of course you might also complain that Satan exists – and Satan might complain that “you exist”. There is no shortage on planet earth of avenues for complaint. But God steps in – offers salvation to mankind at infinite cost to himself – – and the “Few” of Matthew 7 eventually end up accepting that offer of eternal life. The rest seem to prefer the lake of fire option… sort of like Adam and Eve choosing disease and death over eternal life (without fully appreciating the massive fail in that short-sighted choice).

In any case – this thread is about the logic/reason that should be taken into account when a Christian owned and operated institution chooses to stay faithful to its Christian mission — rather then getting blown about by every wind of doctrine. Why let the alchemy of “wild guessing” be the ‘source of truth’ when we have the Bible?? We really have no excuse for that. As for science – we can be thankful that it has come as far along as it has – but no matter how far back you rewind the clock of our science history – we should always have chosen the Bible over wild guessing.

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Newly Discovered Human Footprints Undermine Evolutionary Assumptions

Ervin Taylor:
Perhaps Dr. Pitman would enlighten his readers what on earth “the neo-Darwinian story of origins” might be. Darwin did not address origins.

Origins of what?? the first eukaryote??
Or “origins of mankind”??

Darwin himself claimed that his own false doctrine on origins was totally incompatible with Genesis and that because of this – Genesis must be tossed under a bus.

hint: Genesis is an account of “Origins” as we all know — even though “bacteria” and “amoeba” are terms that don’t show up in the text.

The point remains – Darwin was promoting his own religion on origins totally counter to the Bible doctrine on origins. He himself addresses this point of the two views.

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Newly Discovered Human Footprints Undermine Evolutionary Assumptions

Ervin Taylor:
Here we go again.If the footprints upon close examination, are determined not to be from a hominim/hominid, I wonder if Educate Truth (sic) will announce that determination.Or if the date of the surface is determined to be much younger, will there be a notice placed on fundamentalist web-sites.If you believe the answer to these questions are yes, I have a big bridge that I would like to sell you for pennies on the dollar.

Here we go again … hope piled upon hope…no matter the “observations in nature” that disconfirm the classic evolutionary hypothesis

Reminds me of “What we still don’t know” by Martin Reese and Leonard Suskind

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