Lifeway Calculations

[Dave Roberts]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Dave Roberts]

Ed, you may be right. It certainly doesn't sound right for the SBC after the Calvinism efforts from Frank Page last year.

[ET]

Well, Sandy, I'm in the YEC crowd with you. I don't buy Dave's claim of , nor do I intend to get into the subject. My only comment is this:

In college chemistry we got into some work on carbon dating. Well, since none of us had been around for "billions" of years, at least two critical assumptions had to be made. One was assuming the decay rate to be constant. Another was assuming a starting quantity of carbon.

Of course, the obvious scientific questions to ask are: How do you know the decay rate has been constant over "billions" of years and how do you know the starting amount of carbon. So any "s.w.a.g." (Scientific Wild-A$$ed Guess) as to the age of the earth rests completely on assumptions which, if wrong, obliterate or significantly alter the old-age premise.

In the end, for me, it comes down to this: Man is a stupid creature (compared to God's knowledge). I have lived long enough in my short 50 years to observe that man in all his scientific "glory" is a vain, stupid creature. What man claimed as "settled science" in one age has been revised and continues to revise. God created man. God created science, the universe and all of the scientific laws we document. However, the created is not superior to the Creator. HE is superior to his creation and operates outside of the boundaries which are imposed on man.

To claim that God may have put "false evidence" in front of us implies that because the currently fashionable explanation for our origins can't, in our infinite ignorance, seemingly be reconciled with God's account of creation in Genesis just means to me that man is trying to explain with his finite mind the creative power of the Infinite One.

[Sandy]

[Dave Roberts]

The false evidence to test our faith claim is not mine. It was in the writing of a prof at SBTS who was defending YEC. His name has escaped me, but the claim was that God put false evidence there to test our faith.

[Haruo]

Well, according to the Book of Job, Satan works for God. Prosecuting Attorney in the Justice Dept., I believe. "The Bible says it, and that settles it." Never mind that much of the Bible takes a different view. In the case of YEC, the main support is a reading of the first two-three chapters of Genesis, and even there a p'shat reading of the first account is contradicted in a p'shat reading of the second.

[ET]

[William Thornton]

...and I am an old earth creationist. One of these days I will do an OE/YE topic, we've done them for years. I seldom find fruitful discussions possible because YE proponents generally follow the pattern below:

Young earth position = bible believer
Old earth position = rejects scripture, either an unbeliever or foolhardy in siding with unbelievers

I would expect a profitable discussion here and see no way sandy could hang it all on evil corporate miscreants and my fellow greedy capitalist pig ET though opposite me in this has shown a capacity for sober thinking.

[Sandy]

[Chris]

In the Sunday School lesson I am teaching, tomorrow -- Smith & Helwys Formations series, --- writer Joshua Hearne (a CBF missionary) cites James Ussher's calculations. He doesn't endorse it, merely uses it as an example of "our preoccupation with this story". Fortunately, I have enough supplemental information from Guy Sayles and Cecil Sherman, on Genesis 1, that I think I have enuf material to fill 40 minutes. I will use the Ussher story only if I'm running "long" on time.

[Stephen Fox]

That's one thing Lifeway SS literature proves. Tom Nettles and Mohler have made a laughing stock out of SBC SS lit. Giberson and Stephens, I have been shouting their names for three years now and their book The Anointed.

Bring Mohler and Nettles to Duke to discuss this mess with G and S and Molly Worthen. Most Public school teachers with college prep kids have to dismiss the SBC now as a laughing stock.

[William Thornton]

[Sandy]

[Stephen Fox]

Let me know when both of you have read Gioberson and Stephens. G and S have good chapter on kid from Athens Ga Christian school who goes to smart fundy camp for tenth graders in Dayton Tn so that should be worth the price of the book for Thornton right there to see what is going on in the neighborhood.

To Sandy's Credit, he has waded through at least first few chapters of Molly Worthen before he got chapped on Francis Schaeffer. Still waitin on Thornton.

FTR have a major public school event coming up soon. Will let you know how it goes down. May See President Clinton and his Sec Ed on the same Day. A Double Whammy in My world.

Hope all else is well!

[Sandy]

[Stephen Fox]

come approved by James Wood, Harvard Literary Critic, the New York Review of Books and the Christian Century.

I can't remember if you read the professing Christian and Pulitzer Prize Winner Marilynne Robinson's novel, Gilead, but I hope you did. Lot of good theology in it.

Time is short. You should read Giberson and Stephens; Thanks for reading Worthen but it seems you missed the point.

Charles Marsh work on Bonhoeffer and Randall Balmer on President Carter to be published next month. I hope you read it and get word to your friends at FBC Spartanburg.

I just finished Pat Conroy's The Death of Santini and returned it to the Crossville, Alabama Lyberry. I hope Thornton reads it soon. Lot in it a good Georgia boy will like, even a reference to Yates Frady's son!