Comment on Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation by Sean Pitman.
You can not present any “falsifiable” evidence that God created this world in six days and rested the seventh. And some of us fear you are backing yourself into a corner you can not get out of.
Unlike evolution that claims they can “prove” by science what they believe, we as Christians make no such claim. And our basic argument against evolution is neither can they “prove” what they claim either.
As I’ve explained to you before, this is about evidence with predictive value, not absolute proof – which is impossible in science.
What Christians have is the weight of empirical evidence… which is required for a rational form of faith to exist. Otherwise, what you have isn’t faith – it’s wishful thinking.
Neither do we play their game by claiming we can prove God created the world. The best evidence we can produce is bible prophecy, not science.
Bible prophecy, as I’ve pointed out endless times for you, is based on science – on the historical science. Without the empirical evidence of the historical sciences, Biblical prophecy would be nothing but just-so story telling devoid of any predictive value for establishing the credibility of the Bible.
Our final argument is this, they can’t prove evolution and we don’t intend to try and prove the biblical account by science.
In which case, it is a matter of faith no matter which side you want to stand on.
There is always a component of faith to science. That is why it is impossible to absolutely prove a scientific theory. A leap of faith, to one degree or another, is always required in science.
It is for this reason that science does not trump faith and faith does not trump science. Both are required. They both must walk hand-in-hand before a rational religion can be realized.
We won’t play their game on their ground by their rules. This is what Eve did, and look where it got her and all the rest of us by way of Adam.
Not true. God provided Adam and Eve with plenty of evidence to support His claims – to include His own identity and His love for them. In comparison, Satan provided very very little evidence. It is for this reason that they really did sin against what they knew to be true… and started all of us off on the painful path we are currently walking. If they hadn’t been given enough evidence to truly know right from wrong, to truly know that they needed to trust God vs. the serpent, they would not have been guilty of sin (John 9:41).
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman Also Commented
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen:
The Bible makes claims about the future. It does not cause the future. It therefore is not “self-validating”. It’s just a book after all. It can be read, but it cannot itself act to perform any tasks. Therefore, it’s claims, if they are to be rationally understood to be “true” must obviously be supported by external evidence based on the historical sciences. In other words, its own claims regarding history are validated by external sources – based on independent evidence that comes from outside of itself. How is this concept not self-evident?
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Professor Kent:
Let’s get a few things straight. I have not attacked the claims of scripture regarding the “the recent origin of all life on this planet, created within just six literal days, and the worldwide nature of the Noachian Flood.” All I did was point out that the physical evidence supporting flood geology has serious problems.
That is an attack on Scripture. When you attempt to undermine the empirical claims of Scripture as being contrary to the weight of empirical evidence, you are in fact undermining the rational basis for Scriptural credibility.
Don’t you recognize that in claiming that the weight of scientific evidence clearly favors the neo-Darwinian perspective, a perspective which is diametrically opposed to the Biblical perspective, you do in fact undermine the credibility of the Biblical account? Your faith-only approach, regardless of the evidence, simply doesn’t do it for many people. For many many people such arguments as you are presenting do in fact undermine the rational basis for their faith despite your own ability to be able to have faith despite the weight evidence. Many people see this as irrational – and for good reason.
Faith, without a need for a basis in the weight of evidence, is irrational by definition. It is blind-faith in that it cannot be rationally distinguished from a form of wishful thinking.
And you were the one, not me, who has asserted that the flood did not create all of the layers of the geological column.
Of course. I fail to see why this might be a problem?
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Eddie:
By implication Nebuchadnezzar won the battle with Egypt – just as Ezekiel prophesied. Otherwise, it is unlikely that the Babylonians would have recorded the event…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
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