Featured Evolutionary Creationism

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...rdin_reconciles_evangelical_christianity.html

Great Article. Be sure to listen to the podcasts


http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/FAFNov2014-Jeff-Hardin-presentation.mp3

http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/FAFNov2014-Jeff-Hardin-QA1.mp3

http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/FAFNov2014-Jeff-Hardin-QA1.mp3

http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/FAFNov2014-Jeff-Hardin-QA3.mp3

 

I disafree with you in the strongest possible terms while still attempting to mainta in some semblance of decorum.

 

I am not ARGUING anything. I am attempting to give YOU something to consider and contemplate. And YES I am fully convinced that death existed before the fall of mankind into sin and disobedience.

My greatest concern is for young people who so often leave the church, and in many ways abandon their faith when they are confronted with science, evolution and the like. I want them to know that they can indeed maintain and grow in their faith without holding onto the YEC (Ken Ham) position regarding origins.

I have spent my entire career and professional life working with such students and I have counseled many who had walked away from their faith and heritage because of such tensions. I want them to know that there are thinking, rational, educated people of faith who struggle and seek answer and ponder such questions.

 

Oh yes Matt why don't you just toss out hand grenades of invectives. Keep on making your childish claims. No one has addressed the virgin birth or resurrection.

 

Sorry Deacon.....I do am not following your thought.

 

I am going to be careful what I say here as part of me wishes to respond more viscerally. I am not calling you simple minded. I do not take away anything, power, authority, grandeur or sovereignty from God by taking and sharing a position of evolutionary creation. It aggravates ME immensely the expression of your pride. I have NEVER set aside the miracles of scripture. Unless you think it NOT a miracle that God has the ability to create from his word and watch it all unfold (anthropomorphism).

My point....disagree....fine but refrain from referring to me as evil, wicked, godless etc in the "round about" way that you do.

I am a "sinner saved by grace and faith" EXACTLY like YOU.

 

Humility (by us) and Praise (for God)
The Bible clearly states that God used miracles in creating the universe and in salvation history, but is less clear about miracles in formative history, so each view — proposing a formative history with or without miracles, with two modes of action or only one — seems compatible with what the Bible clearly teaches. Most of the arguments above (all except those based on atheistic theology) are rational, but none seems strong enough to negate what we learn by a scientific study of nature, in our efforts to determine if the universe actually IS capable of total self-assembly by natural process.
By using the evidence and logic of science, we can try to determine whether everything could be produced by divinely designed natural process (as claimed in theistic evolution) or if (as claimed in old-earth creation) God also used occasional miraculous-appearing divine action. But with our current state of knowledge it seems impossible to know with certainty.
Therefore, instead of criticizing either view as being "less worthy" it seems wise to adopt a humble attitude. Each of us should admit, like Job, that "surely I speak of things I do not understand, things too wonderful for me to know," and we should decide that God's plan for design-and-creation was wonderful and is worthy of our praise, whether he did it with two modes of action or one.
When science helps us discover any aspect of God's clever design for self-assembly in nature — for example, how a balance of forces lets stars (like our sun) operate for billions of years, and how this operation eventually produced the atoms that form our bodies and our planet (yes, we and our home are made from stardust) — we should praise God. We should also praise God for miracles, in salvation history or formative history. Whether a feature of the universe (stars or stardust, first life or complex life) was created by natural process and/or by miracle, we can praise God for his intelligence, power, and wisdom, for what he created and how he created it.

applications: A proponent of old-earth creation (or young-earth creation) should be willing to praise God for designing a universe that was totally self-assembling by natural process, with no formative miracles, in case this is how He did it. Similarly, a proponent of evolutionary creation should be willing to praise God for using both modes of creative action, for cleverly designing nature to produce most phenomena without miracles, and for powerfully doing miracles when natural process was not sufficient, since this might be the way He did it.

Appropriate Humility
In theology and science, our humility should be appropriate — not too little, and not too much. We can make some claims, but not others, with confidence.
For the WHEN of creation, scientific confidence is justified, while theological humility (regarding our interpretations of what Genesis teaches about timing) is justified.
For the HOW of creation, scientific humility and theological humility are both justifiable, so Christians should be humble about God's methods of creation. You and I should say in public — and believe in private, in our hearts and minds — that "IF God created using another method (differing from the way I think He created), then God is worthy of our praise."
But this humility (if... then...) is compatible with also explaining why we think a particular view is most likely to be true. We can be humble while we explain — using arguments based on theology and science, based on our interpretations of scripture and nature — why we think one view is more plausible than other views.
We should respect each other, but respect does not require agreement. We can respect someone and their views, while vigorously criticizing their views. If we are searching for truth, we should avoid the intellectual laziness of postmodern relativism, because for most questions about origins a skillful use of evidence and logic can be a valuable source of knowledge, leading to improved understanding.
For dedicated Christians who care for both people and ideas, the goal is an appropriate humility that requires a balance between two desirable qualities — confidence (which if overdeveloped can become rude arrogance) and humility (which can become timid relativism or aggressive postmodernism) — that are in tension. But most of us tend to err in the direction of overconfidence in our own theories, so trying to develop the virtue of modest humility usually has a beneficial effect. {more about appropriate humility when interpreting the two books of God}

Humility and Love
When we ask "HOW did God create?" we cannot know for certain what the truth is, so humility is justified. But even when Christians disagree about the details of creation, we are brothers and sisters in Christ, and we can join together in our praise of the creator, joyously proclaiming that "you are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being. (Revelation 4:11)"
How does God want us to treat each other? Jesus said, "As I have loved you, so you must love one another. If you have love for one another, then everyone will know that you are my disciples. (John 13:34-35)"


http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/te-cr.htm

 

I guess, I have not been clear enough. I completely concur, as a matter of fact just began reading "Lost World of Genesis".

I hope I have never communicated that the revelation of nature, under constant discovery of mankind, is opposition to the revelation of God and scripture. Teleology, I think is perhaps the crux of matter relative to tension between the naturalist and the theist.