Comment on Supreme Court Decision on Church Employment Case by Mack Ramsy.
If you accept that man’s interpretation of the bible is fallible and open to change, then you must therefore be open to the idea that inspiration found in Nature must lead you to ideas you had never before considered. The picture that science has of the world is subject to change (obviously) but it never goes backwards. Our understanding of the earth and it’s orbit around the sun has changed many times, but we’ll never go back to a flat earth, geocentric view of the universe. Each iteration of the scientific cycle gives us a better understanding of the world. Evolution is the same. It is real. In so much as anything can be considered a fact in our world, it is a fact and must be dealt with as such. How, and When, the order that creatures came into existence will change, but the underlying premise eternal. The question for the church shouldn’t be is evolution true or not, but knowing that it’s true, what light does that shed of the bible. The Church has had a very troubled relationship in the past including persecution of scientists. But why should we condemn the popes for their persecution of Gallelo and others? The pope BELIEVED as fervently (probably more) as you do, he had an interpretation that was just as justified as your own (a strict literal interpretation of the bible that was as correct so far as he knew). After centuries the church had to bend. The church must always bend, but usually only after a great deal of pain and sorrow and not a few religious wars. Our church obviously doesn’t have the political clout to do more than fire a few employees on the flimsiest excuses. (to which I think we are all thankful that such power is denied us). I think when it comes to LSU and other universities in our system we must make a real decision. Our our biology teachers scientists? or pastors? If they are pastors then send them to a seminary and religious officials can instruct our students. If they are scientists than do not judge them based on religious principles, but scientific ones. One does not judge a surgeon by his skills at welding or fencing, we judge him by the quality of the work he’s trained to do. Not only was their scientific instruction correct, it was no different than what is commonly taught in our schools. A biologist must study how life changes, because change it does. This is what it means to be a biologist. It’s what they think about, it’s what they care about, it’s how they honor and serve god and the work they do is just as meaningful as any pastor preaching from a pulpit (perhaps more). To deny that calling is to deny the calling of God. It is the height of arrogance to say that “god is thus and only thus”. God has written you a message in the language of DNA and you fling it back into his face and say, “the wonders of the universe can be no more grand than what I can understand. I am small an unchanging, thus the world is small and unchanging, and thus god is small and unchanging”.
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Mack Ramsy Also Commented
Supreme Court Decision on Church Employment Case
@all you guys hoping for “the shaking” probably shouldn’t hope to much. The church is as minuscule enough as it is. It also rather directly contradictory toward our evangelical goals. It’s awkward to go through purges when you’re trying to recruit new members.
Supreme Court Decision on Church Employment Case
@bill how can you imply that Liberals are secretly in control of the church when it was conservatives who got those researchers fired and the most conservative leadership in years has been elected into office? This rather suggests that political fortunes favor conservatives at this moment.
Supreme Court Decision on Church Employment Case
I think there is some confusion about the role of science here. Science is very explicit about “proof” and “certainty” in that there isn’t any. I presented you with a half dozen articles in a few minutes of searching. There might be better ones out there but from long experience I know that even the best evidence is unconvincing to the close-minded. Like I said before to be comprehensive would take libraries (and you’re welcome to the public access by the way, I included that in my search parameters). That said you’re right the sense that evolutionists may not have a perfect picture of how the world works, but they never claimed to. That claim is reserved by solely by creationists. I never said it would be convincing. In fact I said several times that it would not be. We all achieve the level of enlightenment that we work to obtain. For those who refuse to see truth or reason, libraries of evidence will never be persuasive. The Bar is set too high. You would have to go back in time and observe the events in person without disturbing the events in motion. The only “evidence” that could possibly be convincing is a notarized statement by god saying this is the way it is, which of course you believe you already have. That this doesn’t make sense is readily explained by being the foolishness of the Greeks. This is fine, let’s look at your story and see if that makes sense. The creation story blatantly contradicts itself between chapters 1 and 2, the flood has multiple problems such as number of animals, zoological necessities, sustainable ecology, the coming and going of all the water, the mysterious olive leaf, extant archaeological evidence predating the flood, lack of geological evidence for a truly global flood, the diversity of people and animals, the time it takes to spread from Ararat to the rest of the world, etc. When you look at the stories, it’s quite clear that Adam and Eve and Noah and the Ark are speaking about spiritual truths not literal ones. Ignoring all the physical evidence, logical idiocies, you have the language in the bible. It’s obviously spiritual in nature, the raven finds nothing, the Dove finds an olive leaf. It’s an blatantly spiritual story meant to have a spiritual lesson. This is a very different kind of language used in other places in the bible to talk about more or less literal events. There may well have been a regional disaster on the Mediterranean at some point, but it clearly didn’t destroy the entire world in a literal fashion. It would violate every known law of physics and biology that we know.
