@Art Chadwick: Hi Art, It seems to me that we’re not …

Comment on Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull by Sean Pitman.

@Art Chadwick:

Hi Art,

It seems to me that we’re not talking about the subtleties of scientific theories here, especially when it comes to medical science. We’re talking about the observations of modern science that are uncontroversial, even among creationists.

For example, do you think God revealed to Moses the structure of our universe or solar system in detail? – like the “66 confirmed moons of Jupiter” or the structure of the bacterial rotary flagellum or other sub-cellular structures – like ATPsynthase, etc? I think it very unlikely that God revealed to Moses all the details of empirical knowledge that are actually known to modern scientists.

Did God reveal certain empirical truths to Moses, some of which are still not known to modern science? – absolutely! This does not mean, however, that God revealed all information or even all of what modern scientists know to Moses. In other words, there are most certainly empirical truths that are currently known to modern science that Moses did not know… despite the fact that Moses had a closer association and walk with God than any other prophet.

Either way, the argument of “limited perspective” is irrelevant to the fact that God can and often has reveal privileged empirical information to various humans throughout history without revealing to them all empirical truths. In other words, all prophets that we know of were given limited privileged information which they were left to describe from their own limited perspective with their own limited vocabulary and background experiences and understanding. No human, not even among the greatest of human prophets, was made omniscient by God nor was anyone that we know of given access to all of what modern human scientific investigation currently knows or might one day discover about God’s empirical universe.

This means that access to all knowledge is not a necessary requirement before a particular revelation about empirical reality can be recognized as having been inspired, in a very special way, by God – and therefore become an aid to establishing faith or trust in the associated metaphysical claims of such inspired statements.

Also, I don’t think one has to be an acknowledged expert in Hebrew before one can form rational opinions about what the original Hebrew authors were trying to get across (let’s give Brian and Fritz the benefit of the doubt to at least this degree when it comes to their potential or theoretical ability to perform valid research outside of their primary fields of formal training). The same thing is true of empirical/scientific concepts. I don’t think one has to be an acknowledged expert in mainstream science before one can be well-read and well-able to form useful opinions, hypotheses, and theories about the validity of the claims of modern scientists. Some pretty spectacular scientific discoveries have been made by laypeople you know. After all, if this were not possible, no lay person would be able to have any rational basis to doubt the validity of neo-Darwinism – a position claimed to be the only rational scientific conclusion on origins by the vast majority of mainstream scientists today.

Therefore, it seems to me best to base one’s conclusions primary on the argument presented rather than on the formal educational background of the one(s) presenting the argument.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
Consider the following comments from the E.G.. White Estate regarding the origin of disease, suffering and death:

Suffering, other than sickness due to neglect of physical laws, is also caused by Satan and not the deliberate intervention of God. On many occasions she reinforced the teaching of Jesus on this point…

Her teachings regarding the cause of death, as well as suffering, flowed from the big picture of the great controversy between God and Satan:

“It is true that all suffering results from the transgression of God’s law, but this truth had become perverted. Satan, the author of sin and all its results, had led men to look upon disease and death as proceeding from God—as punishment arbitrarily inflicted on account of sin… Sickness, suffering, and death are [the] work of an antagonistic power. Satan is the destroyer; God is the restorer.”

Ellen White, The Desire of Ages, p. 471. and The Ministry of Healing, p. 113

http://www.whiteestate.org/books/mol/Chapt7.html

So, again, neither the Bible nor Mrs. White see diseases, like childhood leukemia, as being the result of a deliberate act or intervention of God…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

Where talking about the ability to detect the need to invoke intelligent design to explain various phenomena that exist in nature – regardless of if the intelligent agent is God or your wife or some alien from Zorg.

The loaves of bread that Jesus made by Divine power were the obvious result of intelligent design. They looked like regular loaves of bread that your wife might make. No one could tell the difference by looking at them if they were placed side-by-side. Yet, one loaf would have been made by God and the other by your wife. The fact is that God can make what humans can make. What would be obvious, however, is that both loaves of bread required intelligence to produce. In other words, they weren’t the product of mindless process of nature or natural laws that had no access to deliberate intelligence.

In short, just because your wife’s intelligence is “natural” doesn’t mean that all natural processes have access to intelligence or that every natural phenomena requires intelligence to explain beyond the basic non-intelligent laws of nature.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

So, you think that if God is directly responsible for the death of anyone that He is therefore the direct cause of all sickness, disease, death, and destruction? Every natural disaster is God’s doing? – a miracle of Divine design and creative power?

Do you not see the difference between the miracle of something like Lazarus being raised from the dead and a tornado wiping out an entire town the other day in the Midwest?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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