Comment on Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation by Sean Pitman.
In other words, it’s great that we have evidence, but it really isn’t required. You would be able to keep believing and have “faith” even if there were no empirical evidence in support of your chosen “faith”.
That’s the problem here. You’re apparently arguing for an irrational form of faith that need not be based on evidence; that can even be completely opposed to any and all forms of empirical evidence…
This is not what God has or ever does require of anyone. God desires faith to be based on the “weight of evidence” – as Mrs. White explains many times. You need to know to whom or what you’re praying. People have and do pray to all kinds of things – even rocks or other non-living idols. The rational person must know that the God to whom he/she is praying actually exists and is personally interested. You can’t have a meaningful relationship without empirical evidence being provided by the other party regarding His existence and personal interest in you.
Again, the God of the Bible does not expect faith in the face of a complete lack of evidence or without the clear weight of evidence. He always provides the weight of evidence. Consider again the story of Pharaoh and his resistance to God’s evidence. Pharaoh’s rejection of God wasn’t because God didn’t provide the clear weight of evidence. It is because Pharaoh consciously chose to accept what he knew was the weaker evidence because of his own personal desire to reject God.
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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