Alas, yet another wall-of-text ahead …(I’m going to be away until next month, so I’m not ignoring anyone. Feel free to dissect without me.)
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I realized that I didn’t answer
Stylteralmado’s excellent question.
Wouldn't rejecting the One who paid for it be a sin? Therefore Jesus didn't take care of the sins for everyone or at the very least it seems that some shall indeed perish on account of their sins.
Before I was reminded of the
1 John 2:2 verse, I thought much the same way. Now I’m not sure if rejecting Christ is a grave sin or a grave error. Among humans, it isn’t a sin for one person not to love another person, is it? Is mutual consent required? And is love a feeling, a choice, a course of action, all of the above, none of the above, other? Consider this paradox: Scripture commands children to honor their father and mother, but does not command children to love them. Yet Scripture also commands husbands to love their wives, even as Christ loves His Church. Is it, in fact, a sin not to want someone who wants you, not to love someone who loves you?
So I’m not as sure now what grave situation it is to reject Christ, only still sure that it is grave.
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Regarding Creationism (old school), Intelligent Design (new school), secular evolution, and theistic evolution: To any and all, sorry if I’ve been too rough with what is only intended as light teasing.
Yes, I am a Creationist (we capitalized it back in the day), just not a modern one. Yes, we did not believe in dinosaurs. Yes, that stand was taken partly because it was secular science that first proposed them. (Like I said,
Cotton Mather on the subject.)
As a result, some years ago when I first saw that picture from the Creationism Museum of a dinosaur with a saddle, accompanied by the explanation that this was how Adam rode his pet dino, … well, I confess to a surge of almost anger. I thought they were making fun of the Bible.
When I realized they were new-school I.D. moderns, and that they were serious, then I felt a profound sense of embarrassment. I thought that nonbelievers would think that 1) Christians are morons; and 2) Christians are wimps who will back down/switch sides if their opponents just remain steadfast for just long enough.
Obviously, since the majority of Creationists around today tend to be new-school, I’ve had to learn restraint and patience. Admittedly, still working on those, in part because I still don’t agree with what they’re teaching. At best I think I’ve gotten to the level of amused tolerance. (Having relatives who disagree on rapture vs. no-rapture and are willing to throw things to prove how correct they are has provided some instructional value in that regard.)
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Regarding why, specifically, dinosaurs exasperate me in ways that other disagreements do not:
I think it’s because there is no place for them that fits in the Bible, in my opinion. I don’t mean in the sense that, say, cats are not mentioned in the Bible (except for the great cats: lion, etc.) so therefore cats are not real. Clearly, cats are real. We see them every day.
Rather, I think that new school I.D. moderns would have the hardest time explaining why dinosaurs are no longer around.
We old-schoolers have the easiest time. The bones belonged to something Bad. Therefore the creatures—Nephilim, I was told—were destroyed in a cataclysm (Noah’s Flood), and we needn’t worry about it anymore.
Secular evolution states that the bones belonged to dinosaurs. This would have been bad for anything that wanted to evolve into a human race. So it was good for us that the creatures were destroyed in a cataclysm (the Chicxulub comet strike of 65 million years ago). Most evolutionists argue that some dinosaurs survived, and evolved into birds.
Theistic evolution also states that the bones belonged to dinosaurs; Chicxulub; destroyed in cataclysm; good for us; maybe birds. The dispute between theistic and secular evolution is the difference between appealing to God’s guiding hand versus random chance as the explanation.
Even pagan religions have an answer to those strange bone-things. They would have called them dragons. Since dragons were Bad, human heroes went in for dragon-slaying both as sport and as a laudable moral activity.
Notice that in every one of these four categories, the conclusion is that, whatever these creatures were, it is good for us (and therefore Good, morally speaking) that they are no longer around.
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Side note: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, both devout Christians, utilized the pagan tales of dragons as agents of storytelling. Lewis used them to destroy the world in
The last battle. Tolkien characterized them as evil spirits inside monstrous bodies. Neither writer tells us how “dragons” came to exist although Tolkien does show us that Morgoth, Sauron, Ungoliant, and Saruman can take Iluvatar’s good Created creatures and mutilate them into monsters. )
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Another side note: Recently, scientists attempted to nickname a fossil “the Hobbit”—presumably because it was small but otherwise insufficiently “Dwarvish.” The Tolkien estate forced them to stop.)
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Still another side note: There are modern pagan/scientific blends that argue that dinosaurs were space aliens: that is, they didn’t live on earth. They lived on a “twin planet” of Earth. This is why creatures that “never” could have flown in our atmosphere and “never” could have walked on dry land in our gravity could turn up on our planet. They lived on the other planet, usually asserted to be a planet with a lot of granite. Don’t ask me why. Eventually the larger planet dragged the smaller one out of the sky. This is why the southern half of earth is almost all water—it is the impact site. This also is why the bones are preserved differently than other “ancient” finds. This “granite twin planet of the dinosaurs” stuff is probably new to all of you. To help you find it, if so interested, just search the phrase I put in quotes. That will steer you toward the right one, as opposed to the Mars-sized object called Theia, Theiaand, or Orpheus that secular science declares collided with Earth to create the Moon.)
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What were we talking about, again? Oh, yes. Why is it that new-school Intelligent Design modern Creationists are in the worst spot regarding why dinosaurs are not around anymore.
To believe in the Great Chain of Being is to argue that everything was Created with a purpose, and that everything was created
ki tov, “very good.” So if dinosaurs were Created as Good, then their loss would be bad.
Humans can and do make individual species of creatures go extinct. Humans also can and may make entire categories of species go extinct. If, say, whales, elephants (including mammoths, etc.) or great cats (lion, tiger, etc.) are extinct when Jesus returns, that will be our doing. We have hunted them to the point that they may not recover. We even destroy ecosystems such as rainforests without knowing what was in them in the first place. That is, we discover we made them extinct before we discover that they existed.
So where do dinosaurs fit? If they were Bad, or at least bad for us, naturally Noah wouldn’t have been brought aboard the Ark. So when did they go bad, and why?
But if they were
ki tov, “Good,” why aren’t they around anymore? Did humans declare war on them, or did we just eat them all? If Noah brought them aboard the Ark, then his descendants have exterminated them or else God did. In either case, why?
And if dinosaurs were real, and humans were supposed to take care of them, then their loss means Bad Stewardship on our part. I mean, worse than our usual Bad Stewardship.
In fact, it would be so bad that I can think of only one other discussion/dispute that matches it. This makes sense, as one actually leads to another. This kind of Bad Stewardship would mean that dinosaur adherents don’t have much of a leg to stand on when they object to the concept of man-made climate change.
I do believe that human activity can change and damage us ontologically (
Gen. 2:17; Gen. 3:15-16). I do believe that human activity can change and damage the Creation (
Gen. 3:17-18; Gen. 5:29; Rom. 8:19-22).
So it raises my eyebrow to hear Christians insist that man-made climate change cannot be real. Granted, assorted scams and scam artists have attached themselves to it, and that interferes with thoughtful discussion.
But if I believe that Adam and Eve wrecked the Creation and themselves (and us) just by eating a piece of forbidden fruit, I think it plausible that Adam and Eve’s descendants have inherited their ability to wreck Creation a little more.
And if humans can’t, really, truly create man-made climate change and it’s-all-just-a-scam, then does that mean that the person arguing this position isn’t quite convinced that Adam and Eve and a piece of fruit could do much damage in the first place? It goes back to admitting to Bad Stewardship—in this case, on our part, rather than on theirs. And that would be uncomfortable—even as we schlep to a procession of doctors to treat the sicknesses caused by the chemically-drenched foods we eat, the contaminated water we drink, and the poisoned air we breathe. Not to believe in man-made climate change sounds a lot like insisting that pollution doesn’t pollute.
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Side note: Of course, I grew up in the era of lead paint, lead in the garden hose from which we were drinking, lead in the gasoline—and people who calculated just how many times Earth could be reduced to a new asteroid belt if all of the nukes on Earth were to Go Boom at the same time. How did we cope with these crises? By screaming and hollering at Anyone Who Left The Lights On During The Energy Crisis. The lights, that you could control! Booms, not so much. Lead, yes, eventually, but it was
such an effort, dear! )
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Anyhow, long story made short—I know, I know,
way too late—I just find dinosaurs inconsistent, and that irks me. I much prefer them as the monsters I heard about growing up, because then it’s okay for them to be gone. In the new school of modern I.D. Creationism, it’s not okay for them to be gone. It’s not even okay for someone like me to be okay with them being gone.
Now, if there is a modern I.D. Creationist explanation as to why they now endorse dinosaurs and where these things went, could someone link to it in the thread? I can’t be the only person here who has never heard that story.
Look, I can appreciate the secular versions, much as I can appreciate
Star Trek and a good comic-book movie (despite the fact that Gene Roddenberry and Joss Whedon are atheists). I appreciate them as storytelling, and evaluate them accordingly: both for logic and for entertainment value. I can also appreciate the intentional borrowing of Christian writers such as Lewis (fauns, dryads, etc.) and Tolkien (dwarves, dragons, etc.). I even appreciate the irony of Clair Patterson, the man who saved us all from lead poisoning, also being the man who dated the Earth as being 4.55 billion years old—which is slightly older than Bishop Ussher dated it, I do believe.
There’s just something about dinosaurs that seriously bugs me. I was taught that to affirm them was to “accommodate” or syncretize with the world, and it still feels that way.
With all of the other sciences, I can just shrug and say, “I think you might have got the dates wrong” and finish reading the fun parts of the story. (“Planet X versus Nemesis versus The Nice Theory? You’ve got my attention. Entertain me.”)
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And now some odds-n-ends:
waggawerewolf27 wrote:
But I do have an English translation of the Hebrew Tanakh.
Is it the JPS/Stone version? That’s the version I have. The
Schocken Bible series translated by Everett Fox is much more poetic, but they’re only up to
Five Books of Moses (vol. 1) and
The Early Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings (vol. 2). Volume 2 is scheduled for sale in November 2014.
waggawerewolf27 wrote:
[regarding 7th Day Adventists]
A literal seven day week, starting on Sunday and finishing on Saturday, is certainly the Adventist stance, and why it is called Seventh Day Adventist in the first place. This Church was started in USA in the 1800s by people who felt, among other matters, that we should be resting on the Seventh day, the way the Jews do to this day, not the First day, Sunday, a day of worship for much of Christendom, being the Lord's Day.
[snip to another post]
Oh dear!
I thought you were having a shot at me because of my remarks about Seventh Day Adventists, which I hope were respectful enough. I used to attend Sabbath School, you see.
No, not a shot at you at all! I thought your description of SDA to our fellow posters who haven’t heard much about it was pretty balanced. Although, to be fair, I’m not one, so if there was a dig in there that you didn’t intend, I didn’t recognize it either.
Just for general thought:
TOM wrote in
blog:
Adventists strenuously reject the first-century decision to worship on Sundays instead of on the Jewish Shabbat as required by the Ten Commandments. In response [David] Currie produces a prophecy in
Zechariah 14 that, he says, authorizes this change. According to Currie’s interpretation of
Zech. 14, after Messiah comes most of the Jewish holidays will cease to be observed as they have served their purpose. However
Zech. 14:16-19 prophesies that the Festival of Booths (sometimes translated the Festival of Tabernacles) will continue to be celebrated. What day does Torah declare to be the day of rest during the Feast of Booths? It is on the first day of the week, on Sunday. (See
Lev. 23:33-36.) Therefore according to Currie, Jews worship on Shabbat as a testimony that they are waiting for Messiah. Christians worship on Sunday as a testimony that they believe Jesus is that Messiah.
So that’s a proposed explanation as to why SDA worships on Saturday and other Christians worship on Sunday.
waggawerewolf27 wrote:
My question is, why doesn't Judaism and its congregations have the same difficulty with Evolution that Christians seem to?
My guess is, two reasons.
One, Judaism doesn’t regard Adam and Eve’s transgression the way that we do. They do regard it as disobedience, but not the major sin on a level to crack open the very Creation like an egg dropped on the floor, never to be whole again while this world lasts. So we are beginning from different places.
Two, they remind us of something that we Christians also already know (but sometimes need to be reminded): that the Bible wasn’t written to the stars and plants and creatures. It was written to people, to us.
I have never heard of a Jewish version of whether dinosaurs existed and whether they were/were not deemed worthy to board the Ark. (I have heard the Irish Rovers warbling about the unicorns missing the boat and that’s why you’ll never see a unicorn to this very day …)
But I have heard—going back to the spiritual state of children—a Jewish discussion about Noah and the pagan babies. Nothing specific about whether Noah could have/should have brought a few pagan babies on board and fed them with the milk animals on the third floor, or a discussion about whether babies are spiritually “innocent” or merely physically helpless as per Augustine (and
Twilight Zone).
No, the argument was this: God took pity on Noah for his faithfulness. Therefore God “closed Noah’s stream” for 500 years. Noah was the only Antediluvian Patriarch who did not have children promptly. The rabbis reasoned that if Noah had children when he was young, it would only create hardship for him. If they were wicked, he would have mourned their deaths in the Flood, but if they were righteous, he would have had to build many Arks. Instead, God let Noah wait until Noah’s children would be legal minors (yet old enough to work) so that they could go with him into the Ark.
An extension of this discussion was the rabbis wondering if any other minors could have been spared. There were two schools of thought. Some rabbis argued that any minors who lived at the time of the Flood must have been as wicked as their parents. Therefore, no matter what one believed about an Age of Accountability, these children would have been Accountable as adults. But the second school of rabbis proposed that God closed off all humans from having children for the last 120 years before the Flood. Thus there would be no children to worry about—Noah’s own children would be the youngest people on Earth, and the only legal minors.
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Side note:I wonder how this discussion would have taken place if they had heard of the modern tale called
Children of Men by P.D. James. I have seen the film. I have not read the novel. The reviews state that film and book are not much like each other. But I was told that the characters do whatever they wish to destroy the earth, since the best reason to preserve it was to make a home for the children that they would no longer have. In other words, wickedness increased because of despair, loneliness, and “last person off earth, please turn off the lights.” Children were a restraint against some of the earth’s many evils.
In Judaism there is a belief that all souls spend eternity in the presence of the Eternal discussing Torah all day, which is paradise for the righteous and torment for everyone else. It would not surprise me if they were to incorporate
Children of Men into the discussion, much as we sometimes discuss Narnia when discussing the Bible.)
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Yes, I really am finished. See you in a month!
With luck, anyone who is still interested will have finished reading this by then.