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A Succinct Defense of Christendom
A Bigger Issue Than We Tend to Think
Some arguments for why we should embrace six-day creation.
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Just Another Quiet Day on the Lake
Amazing boat skills. pic.twitter.com/Wkgf2ARh6Q
— Car Crash TV (@Crashingtv) February 7, 2018
More Open Roadery
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The Cost of Failing to Maintain Your Core Competency
Re: The Cost of Failing to Maintain Your Core Competency”
That was me yesterday…but like most males there was no admitting help was needed (Nah, I got this.)…same part of the wiring that goes along with not asking for directions. {[:-)
“Christendom need not necessarily be different from the content of any society governed by simple natural law”
This is pretty much where I am on the theocracy question. If we can present the reasonableness of God’s law for mankind we can effectively argue for what Christ’s authority requires of a civic order, even making and potentially winning that argument with non-believers.
Nathan, if we were talking of what non-Christians believed a couple of centuries ago, I agree you might win that argument. Most people, religious or not, took for granted that an orderly society required external conformity, that the state had the right to impose capital punishment for heinous crimes, that caring for the young and the old was the function of the family, that it was reasonable for the law to prohibit sexual conduct seen as morally repulsive, and that legislation should make it very difficult for people to abandon their spouses and children. But, even among the Christians I… Read more »
I think the missing ingredient is publicizing the winning arguments. As far as I can tell, most Christians know essentially nothing of natural law. We are virtually as ignorant as the heathen.
Anyway, my point isn’t that any of it is easy, but that it’s something we could work towards with some hope of seeing successes.
I’d recommend Charles Rice’s book:
50 Questions on the Natural Law: What It Is and Why We Need It
as one of the best attempts to tackle the task of explaining Natural Law in print.
Edward Feser and Ben Shapiro are two very skilled contemporary voices who are publicizing winning arguments.
Thanks for this.
“Most people simply don’t see a compelling societal need to penalize fornication, for example.”
That may be beginning to change. We may be at a turning point in history similar to the shift from the Georgian Era to the Victorian Era.
The logical progression of the #MeToo movement leads in that direction. There is a dawning realization that the sexual revolution that took hold in the 1960’s (and which had its start in the 1920’s) has been a net negative for women; societal penalties may follow.
Challies post covered some important points. I think the issue about thorns and thistles being part of the curse is quite a strong point in creationism’s favour. They exist post fall and evidence of them in the fossil record show that these fossils postdate the Fall. (I did find the use of the term “reformed” somewhat irksome. 11 times in the essay. But how is the issue relevant to reformed Christians in a way that it is not relevant to non-reformed Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox? Maybe Challies sees his ministry to a small sub-group of Christians for some reason… Read more »
Bethyada, i can really only speak with sureness about Catholics and some mainstream Protestant denominations. But, I’m aware of some evangelical churches that take an OE perspective (Jack Hayford’s FourSquare, Pat Robertson’s denomination, the Nazarenes, and a few other charismatic groups.) Hugh Ross confirmed with the Southern Baptists by email that they take no official position on the age of the earth. The Catholic church leaves this up to the individual believer while stating an opinion that there is no conflict between Christian theology and acceptance of the Big Bang, evolutionary theory, and a very old universe. It was, in… Read more »
I would probably believe what I was taught to believe. How much I would be convinced of an alternative worldview at a later may depend a little on what else I knew, how much I learnt. I am quite open to contrarian ideas. Many of the things I believe are quite contrary to my friends and many Christians I know. I can see how people think that the world is old, and I think there is evidence for it. Radiodating, the size of the universe. But, at least how I am now, I think that evidence that disputes a concept… Read more »
Bethyada,
Could you point to an example of a legit polystrate tree fossil? I looked for a long time and I never could find one that didn’t seem easy to explain as a tree rooted into a coal seam that was buried by one or several floods.
I think the fact is that I am prepared to accept polystrate fossils because I think that coal seams were laid down at about the same time and we know that uprooted trees can float vertically. You are not predisposed to accept them so therefore you find explanation like you gave plausible.
It may be better to say that ancient coal has been carbon dated younger than age claims and I don’t think it is contamination. Likewise diamonds. And I find the diffusion data of helium released from uranium decay plausible. Measureable helium should not be present.
I don’t understand how a large tree could be rooted in a coal seam if they were buried together? Many coal seam rooted trees have very fine root structures preserved?
Coal samples are often contaminated in situ, they aren’t very good for absolute dating due to their porosity. I would be really interested in any diamond samples done that were far above background. I know diamond is hard to analyze due to difficulty of combustion, but they should be pretty much impregnable.
Edited for typos…autocorrect
Possibly, but that is also what you want to believe, it fits with your old earth system. This is not unique to you, I do it also. Because coal can be contaminated it is contaminated. But we see this everywhere. Young rocks from witnessed volcano eruptions: the old age is from incomplete melting of old rock in the lava. Volcano flows over the top of strata (they must be relatively younger by the nature of the situation) dating older than the strata: some contamination. There is always an ad hoc explanation. If you were convinced that the earth was 6000… Read more »
Contamination of coal isn’t an ad hoc explanation. It is based on the fact that many coal seams are quite shallow and they are within ground water tables that are influenced by surface water. They are also permeable (to a greater or lesser degree based on rank). When unmelted rock is mixed with a new volcanic flow it is evident by microscopy (and often with the naked eye) it is easy to see the boundaries, you can find tons of these sorts of samples in granite and ryolite, many of them are quite beautiful. If you have examples of volcanic… Read more »
Jilly,
Interestingly enough (I’m sure you know this) the big bang was vigorously protested by many atheists, it was extremely distasteful to them to not have a steady state eternal cosmos. it is odd to me that YECers implicate it as part of “evolutionary science.”
The hard part of answering such a question, (if I may butt in), is imagining a life in which one was not raised to believe the bible, but somehow was exposed to all the holes in the old-earth/evolutionary perspective. Does anyone take the problems with old-earth and evolution seriously except YEC Christians? There certainly are problems, as Bethyada mentions, but who even considers them?
“Does anyone take the problems with old-earth and evolution seriously except YEC Christians? ”
There do not seem to be many. David Berlinski springs to mind, though.
I’ve heard of a few non-Christians who are skeptical about evolution. Most are in somewhat fringe-ish camps. However, it would be career suicide for most academics, scientists or even other intellectual figures (famous authors, well-known journalists, etc.) to question it. I’m sure there are some skeptics who will never make their views public.
I don’t know what counts as taking problems with old-earth and evolution seriously; but there are loads of scientists, mostly christians, who have spent a lot of effort on this topic. Guys like Joel Duff at Naturalis Historia (and University of Akron) have put in lots of effort here. The BioLogos guys take the issue more or less seriously, if you look at Talk Origins many of the contributors are conservative Christians who have some degree of sympathy for, or history with, a YEC position. The position paper “PCA Geologists on the Antiquity of the Earth” is taking YEC seriously,… Read more »
@Jill Smith “OKR, do you think it is possible that differences of opinions on trifling issues were sometimes given so much weight that they became proxy battles in the culture wars?” I agree that some minor or even trivial issues have been overly emphasized by some “Christian” groups. Unfortunately, that easily leads to “the boy who cried wolf” syndrome. So, even when the issue is truly important, such as abortion, cohabitation, sex outside of marriage, homosexual marriage, etc., the non-Christian response is conditioned to consider the Christian position as misguided or even irrelevant. I don’t think that Christians should “pick… Read more »