The breadth of Darwin

In the latest issue of "Look" the Art Gallery Society of NSW magazine, subtitled "A man who influenced the whole of western culture" I came across this quote:

Roger Fry, the great English art critic, is our best guide to the matter. He explained (in 1894) that modern art corresponds to a dsitinctively modern conception of "the world as process" -- because, post Darwin, "we have exchanged the static for the dynamic position...The species is not longer a fixed and unchangeable type, ethical codes are regarded as part of the varying modes of adaptation of the human species to varying conditions...

In 1867 the novelist Emile Zola began imagining complex family histories that weave throughout his 20-volume Rougon Macquart series, where heredity became a dramatic force determining the fate of his characters -- an early highly disconcerting application of "social Darwinism". A boyhood friend of Emile Zola and Paul Cezanne, Fortune Marion, was an eminent Darwinian; there were Darwinians who cropped up in the social circle of Karl Marx, there were Darwinians who influenced Nietzsche, Bergson and a myriad of others.

In his manifesto, Towards and Architcture (1923) Le Corbusier depended on the Darwinian paradigm of natural selection to explain how progress occured in the realm of architecture and design.

If you're interested, there's a lecture series on Darwin's influence coming up.

Film Review

I had the opportunity last weekend to view the recently released film "The Voyage that Shook the World".

I understand it is being shown at selected film theatres, yet, it is a Creationist film, or should I say documentary, presenting a short history of Charles Darwin's influences, his observations of the world and his propositions on the origin of life.

This writer is a harsh critic of all things put on the big screen purporting to portray the reality of biblical events and persons so I would also judge harshly any Christian attempt to show the world the story of Charles Darwin and his propositions.

As a documentary it stands with the best I have seen. Cinematography is excellent. Portrayals of the boy and man Charles Darwin are as good as one could expect without having the most acclaimed of actors. Interviews of scientists both pro and anti evolution are well formatted to maintain a theme of influences leading to development of Darwin's paradigm of evolution by natural selection. Most striking are the now known errors of assumption made by Darwin in the formulation of his paradigm.

This was, no doubt, an expensive venture by the financial backers of the film to produce something with the quality to be screened in secular venues. The venture is a success as the film merits screening by fair minded operators of theatres, universities and schools around the globe.

Even the hardest hearted critics of Young Earth Creationism should see the film to see how well armed their adversary is in the battle for truth.

I thoroughly recommend the film/documentary "The Voyage that Shook the World". It is quality!

Neil

Hello? Is anyone at home? (or has Bishop Forsyth terminally Disconnected himself in 09?)

Here’s how it played itself out, according to Rob’s recent article in Southern Cross.

Rob is piqued at a documentary maker’s advertisement for virgins and their being paid $20,000 to auction their chastity. Rob appears on radio. The next day the filmmaker telephones Rob and arranges a meeting. The maker wants Rob to appear in his doco. Rob, putting Disconnect 09 principles into action, can’t let such an opportunity slip away and agrees. Rob provides the camera with reasons why he’s a Christian, namely, Jesus rose from the dead. And what was the filmmaker’s response? He wanted to know where he could find God now and that the historical Jesus was irrelevant to his life, now.

Totally unsurprising!

Rob doesn’t record what he said next but he does say that he “probably fluffed” the answer. Again, totally unsurprising given that Rob really doesn’t believe in the miraculous:

(i) He’s on record as being completely incredulous that the parting of the Red Sea was a miracle
(ii) He doesn’t believe that God miraculously created the heavens and the earth
(iii) He believes that God used secondary principles to create and not his Son.
(iv) He believes that death is natural
(v) He believes that death is God’s preferred method of creation
(vi) He believes that time and chance are the means by which things happen in nature
(vii) He doesn’t believe that God used wisdom in the creation
(viii) He believes that God incorporated errors into the creation from the beginning
(ix) He believes that secular science should interpret the Bible
(x) He doesn’t really take God at his word and prefers to make his own story up about how God did it, even mocking those who trust God and take his word as it is.
(xi) Rob parts company with all theologians prior to Darwin on origins, including Paul and the earliest of Christians, preferring to align himself with men like Spong and Dawkins.


It may interest you, Rob, what Jesus had to say. Jesus said that Moses wrote of him, the Creator (you at least in theory do believe Jesus is the Creator, don’t you, Rob?), and stated,

“If you do not believe Moses’ writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:47)

and,

“If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.” (Luke 16:31)

Rob, the filmmaker wanted to know what evidence there is now for God. It’s quite easy. The miraculous evidence is all around you:

“God, who made the world and everything in it…From the creation of the world his invisible attributes are CLEARLY SEEN, being UNDERSTOOD by the things which are made.” (Act 17:24 & Romans 1:20)

But what did our good bishop do instead? He gave him a copy of Tim Keller’s The Reason for God. Keller is another pseudo-Christian in a long line of wolves who believe that Exodus 20:8-11 and 31:12-18 is some form of poetic allegorical myth and that God uses death, pain, suffering and imperceptible change to create, if one can aptly even call it that.

Rob, if you paid more attention to your Bible and what Jesus and Moses said you may not have “fluffed” the answer.

‘And Jesus spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, saying: ‘My Sabbaths are a sign between me and you forever…because in 6 days YHWH made the heavens and the earth.” And when Jesus had made an end of speaking with Moses, he gave Moses two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of Jesus.’

USELESS IDIOTS

I almost missed this wonderful blog over at Post-Darwinist on our heterdoxical friends.

Tune in for a boost!

Theological Scallywags

The blogging parsnip sometimes says some great things (well, greatish).

For instance, in his blog on the Centre for Public Christianity he says:

Furthermore, the plethora of scallywag accounts of Jesus' life is allowed to grow because theologians have said 'it doesn't matter'. No - it does matter, theologically, that we can go Israel and see with our own eyes the ground on which Jesus walked. He was not a fantasy, or a principle. He was a man of flesh and blood and bone, and as far as any man of flesh and blood and bone may be traced in history so we should expect and in fact rejoice that traces of Jesus' presence among us are there to be found.

Well, Michael, for the Holy Spirit's revelation of creation as for Jesus (is there a hint that we are backing away from Barth here?). It does matter, theologically, and for the same reasons as it matters for Jesus: the scene is set for the grand covenant between God and his creation in concrete terms, in terms congruent with the manner in which the setting and scene interact and play out. If not, then the God merges with the demiurge, or something worse. See my earlier post, and my comment upon same.

Leupold Genesis part 14

Analogous to the above point is this: when the different aspects of a case are presented, critics quite regularly fail to discern the deeper harmony that prevails in spite of the surface disagreement. So very frequently, after one motive for a deed has been indicated, the mention of a second motive is treated as proof of a divergent approach by a different writer, as though life were always so simple a thing, as to allow for the operation of but one motive at a time, instead of the complex thing that it is, where motives, counter-motives, and subsidiary motives run crisscross through one another.

Of the failings of the critical approach perhaps the greatest of all is the failure to evaluate rightly the attitude and the words of Christ and His apostles in reference to books like those of Moses. As Christ treated Moses' writings so should we. His clear words attributing them to Moses dare not be ignored. This is not treating the Old Testament without regard for the distinction between the Old and the New Testament. This is following the excellent Reformation principle: "Interpret Scripture by Scripture"; and a sounder principle cannot be found. Critics dismiss the Saviour's attitude with a shrug of the shoulder.

Science is Religious!

Over at Duane's mind (one of the blogs we watch) I caught the post: Can Science Disprove God?.

I liked Duane's post that headbutted the very idea, and well done to IMO.

But there's more.

Science depends upon religion. That is, science depends on our initial belief structure, or our 'religion', our religious inclination as to what we think is real and how we understand and respond to what we think is real, and will therefore produce real knowledge.

So Dawkins, whose first belief is a sort of unarticulated and internally contradictory materialism will naturally not find anything outside of his first belief in his take on science. That's not news. What is news is that his first belief will not produce the science he espouses. History has shown us that: it took classic Christian theism to produce a world view that was congenial to the development of modern science. Toss that out and you will eventually toss out the modern science that relies upon it.

Exciting!

Hop over to the ABC-TV science program Catalyst for this program on an aspect of Einstein's general relativity theory.

If you don't find this exciting, then...well, there's no comparison really!

Disbelief

"There is one race of men, one race of gods; both have breath of life from a single mother [Gaia]" Pindar, Nemean 6.

The question of origins is at root a question of belief.

The ancient Greeks, who invented evolution: that is, what is seen was prepared from things which are visible had to, as they saw their gods as also being within their world; within the cosmos.

Theistic evolution borrows this from materialism which starts from the same place as the ancient Greeks: but without the god bit.

The actions that God takes with his people are uniformily presented as immediate actions: Christ's work was accomplished on the cross at the moment of his death; his status as first born the moment he resurrected; we have new life at the moment of belief as a gift from God; the return of Christ will be an event, not a process, as I take it the Bible says of the bringing of the new creation.

Of course, the creation also was done quick smart (in 6 days, which Augustine thought was rather too long!) too. But this is denied widely in SAD in lieu of the position that derives from non-belief. Ultimately, the SAD, on this point, has to set aside belief on a number of grounds: that God is a reliable propositional communicator, that words have meaning, and that as he refers to the creation as his chief credential in relationship with us. Disbelief here is more complex. God represents his creation as coming from his will (and nothing else, no system or operation, no elaborate machine, which reeks of paganism, not the majesty and power of God). And then going back the other way, consideration of the creation (except that which at first denies God, but even this must finally fail to achieve credibility), leads to recognition of the creator.

But if consideration of the creation leads one to think that the creation could reasonably have made itself, we have come, not to the God of Abraham, but the gods of the Greeks: gods within the cosmos, not independent of it!

The key point at which creation is represented as not possibly being confused for the work of the creation itself, and non-god, is that we are told it happened in 6 days. There's the recipe for creating a cosmos: 6 steps not able to be achieved by other than God. This stands directly in the path of materialist-naturalist alternatives. Which alternatives the SAD seems to seriously entertain as being in the stream of the history of salvation! Well, gag me with a spoon!

To set this as naught, which is the habit in SAD, is to disbelieve God: to disbelieve that he can tell us what he did (ref. Numbers 12:8a), that what he tells as and what he did is unimportant in detail, and finally indistiguisable from that done by non-God.

That sounds a lot like rejection of God, to me!

On Time #2

Slip over to the Anglican Origins site for this piece on time.

It's the question of time that the SADists don't properly deal with. They put to one side anything that the Bible has to say about time and the cosmos to keep up with the materialist vision of a cosmos that slowly made itself. But what this does to human self-view is neglected. It submerges humanity in the dust of death (to quote Os Guinness' book title) when the Bible sets out that 'it all has just happened'. Peter picks up on the question of time to when he deals with those who deny the flood: huge time periods put events out of mind and break links that we have with past events as their relationships disperse across eons.

My Brother Ishmael

The content of my earlier posting about Islam reactivated a subject I have pondered in the past.

Do readers ever wonder what was going on in the lives of the greater number of inhabitants of the world after Babel? I mean descendants of those people who moved to different parts of the world and lived, procreated and died without any mention in the Bible.

Was God relationally active in their life as he was with decendants of Abraham or with those who had contact with the descendants of Abraham?

From where I sit it is difficult to form a clear picture of God relating to the unknown as He did with the descendants of Abraham. I guess I risk opening the debate on Arminiasm vs Calvinism but I don't wish to do that. I would just like to focus on the historical record of God's relational activity in the world contained within the Bible and which centres on the fulfilment of the covenant God made with Abram cum Abraham.

It is dangerous to be definite regarding the unknowns who had no knowledge of the Abramic covenant but the man Job, who is known to us, may be representative of others from nations or tribes unknown to biblical history but righteous in Jesus Christ. *

The Apostle Paul makes it clear that the Abramic promise is fulfilled in Jesus Christ and applies to all who belong to Christ, ie Jew and Gentile alike (Galations 3:29).

In light of the Abramic promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ we tend to view the activity of God in the world as being the incorporation of individuals into Jesus Christ. Therefore, there is only Christ and the world and the struggle between the two.

I wonder, though, is there another dimension to the world which is based in promise and will consume or significantly impact all that is the world?

There was another promise to Abram, who by this time was renamed Abraham, and it concerns lineal issue of Abraham but by Hagar, Egyptian maidservant to Sarai cum Sarah. It concerns Ishmael and Genesis Chs. 12, 15, 16, 17, 21 and 25 provide information.

As you know, Ishmael, was the product of either or all of misunderstanding, impatience and weak faith on the part of Abraham and Sarah. Sarah convinced Abraham that the Lord's promise of an heir for Abraham might have meant by agency of Abraham procreating with Hagar. This was not God's intended means of fulfilling His promise to Abraham yet it did not go without a blessing or promise on this son of Abraham albeit not the great promise that was to be established with Isaac and ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

The promise of God concerning Ishmael was that Ishmael would be fruitful and his descendants would be too numerous to count. He would be the father of twelve rulers and he will be a great nation. This promise certainly has some parallels with the promise established with Isaac and borne out through Jacob, son of Isaac, having twelve sons who were to be the nation Israel.

Another promise of God concerning Ishmael is found at Genesis 16:12, "He will be a wild donkey of a man, and his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers (or he shall dwell in the presence of all his brothers)".

It is interesting to note that after the birth and weaning of Isaac, Ishmael was seen to be mocking him (Genesis 21:8-9). Enmity existed, resulting in Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, being banished from Abraham's camp.

What does this mean to us today. Well, Ishmael became the father of the nomadic Arabs. Further, he is the ancestor of the 'prophet' Muhammad from whom ensues the religion Islam.

It is nothing new for me to inform you of the enmity that exists toward Jews by adherents to Islam. It does not stop there. Enmity also exists toward Christians and "infidels."

Are not the promises of God to Abraham concerning Isaac and Ishmael being worked out poignantly in their respective descendants viz Israel, Christ and Muhammad? Do we not see enmity in some adherents of Islam appropriated to the behaviour of a "wild donkey of a man" in so much as we can't rationalise the hatred motivating it?

Never, in the history of the world has Ishmael (in Muhammad) been better placed to make assault on Isaac (in Israel and Jesus Christ). Multiculturalism - man's attempt, without Christ, to undo the effects of God's judgement at Babel - has allowed Ishmael back into the camp of Isaac. The conflict has well and truly resumed. In some respects it reflects the bigger picture battle between the Lord Jesus Christ and Satan foretold at Genesis 3:15.

I can't help wondering whether all we see happening in the United Kingdom is, in miniature, the playing out of a world and celestial battle - the Christian Church once rich in blessing from God and triumphant in rule but since weakened through lack of trust in the Word of God now under assault from the march of Islam.

Could it be that, ultimately, future world events point simply to the fulfilment of God's promises to Abraham concerning both Isaac and Ishmael? Are all inhabitants of earth, with or without knowledge of these promises, just caught up in the consequences of these promises of God?

Neil

* There are some Scriptural passages which give cause to regard all others estranged from God (Romans 3:9-20 for one). Unless there were those unknowns who (sinners as they were) believed in the reality of the Creator God, were conscious of a broken relationship with Him, sought to be right with Him and had some sort of trust in the promise of God recorded at Genesis 3:15 (fulfilled in Jesus Christ), then they were dead in their sins. The man Job presents as an early Gentile without knowledge of the Abramic covenant, was deemed righteous and could say "I know that my redeemer lives." (Job 19:25) He, of course, is not an unknown but was he the only one of like nature and hope?

For the slow learners

It's come up at least once before on this blog: various SADs, have not wanted to repeat the church's mistake made when it rejected Galileo's work and so reject the truth content of Genesis 1, but here we go again, just for the slow learners in St. Andrew's House, Moore College and the rest.

In trying to avoid the church's mistake back then they are doing precisely what the Roman church did; repeating the mistake (thus 'slow learners'). They are adopting the current popular philosophical view and rejecting observational science!! They are absorbing the speculation and rejecting what refutes it.

Hop over to the ABC Morning Interview (big file) where Throsby adulates (as she does) Dr Peter Slezak of UNSW, a lecturer in the phil. of science.

The interview celebrates the restaging of the trial of Galileo. Slezak chats on about this and other things.

He tells us about the role of dissidents in advancing science, that Galileo ran up against the Aristoteleans (not the church) who wanted to stick with their 'common sense' view of the world (common sense then, but not regarded as common sense now, only going to show how even the ordinary person is influenced by the ideas of the day); and importantly makes this remark, paraphrased:

"it wasn't the church that was resistant, as is the popular view, but the philosophers who refused to take seriously his observations".

The problem was, the church had read the philosphers' presumptions back into the Bible, just like theistic evolutionists do, in their philosophical juvenescence. Just like the SAD does, reading the Bible and making their theology on the basis of a world view in basic conflict with that of the Bible.

The story is more complex, of course, but I'll leave that research to you, dear reader.

Good one!

Leupold Genesis part 13 g-w failings

There are other failings that mark the critical approach to the problem. The argument in a circle is, for example, employed frequently. We shall draw attention to quite a number of instances in the course of the following exposition. Passages having a certain type of vocabulary are assumed to belong to one source; when that type of vocabulary is discovered, the proof that there is such a source is treated as complete. Again, when added details appear that were not indicated at the commencement of a narrative, these added details, though they are merely supplementary to the original statements, are construed as being at variance with the original, and so evidence for the existence of two or more separate sources is manufactured, whereas, in reality, other sides of the matter are merely coming to the surface, as every unbiased reader can readily detect.

Again and again the critical approach gives evidence of being guided by purely subjective opinion instead of by valid logical proof. The critic expected that the writer would proceed to follow up a certain approach by a certain type of statement--at least the critic would have followed up by such a statement. The author's failure to offer what the critic expected is supposed to constitute sufficient proof that the case in point is an instance where two documents have been welded together rather crudely. Equally common is the critical practice of conjecturing how the Hebrew text may originally have read, especially if the Hebrew text offers material conflicting, with the critical theories, and the Septuagint happens to disagree more or less with the Hebrew. Strangely, in such cases the conjectures as to the original form of the text always offer support to the critical position.

Not too barbed

I see that one of the blots we report has got airplay on one of the blogs we also report.
Check it here.

Two of our members have had a go at the Blogging Parsnip for his blog on fundamentalists. Watcher takes it further. We all wonder why the Parsnip didn't.

All down to the speed of the net and late night reading!!

Margaret Thatcher on Creation

Caught this at Frontpagemag the other day:

The Religious Left will never quote her, but Margaret Thatcher outclassed Brueggemann when she articulated Christianity's stance towards economics in her 1988 speech to the Church of Scotland. "We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth," she
recalled of the Scriptures, citing St.Paul's admonition:, "If a man will not work he shall not eat." She observed: "Abundance rather than poverty has a legitimacy which derives from the very nature of Creation."

Now, if she meant by creation theistic evolution, we'd have socialism of course: because that's what attention to Darwin in political life has often lead to: and clearly spelt out, of course.

Did Darwin Kill God?

Cop this great quote from Science and Values blog: Did Darwin Kill God?

Peter Harrison, an Oxford Professor of theology, has also argued that the Protestant commitment to reading scripture literally actually enabled science to get going because the reformers then read creation literally, and not symbolically as had been the case in the past. Cunningham failed to mention this evidence, nor those Christians such as the Wesley’s and Luther who argued for a literal interpretation of Genesis in history.

We've mentioned Harrison a few times on this blog, but he's always worth another mention, particularly for the historial illiterates who claim that as its not a science text book, the book of Genesis has nothing to do with modern science. People, taking Genesis seriously underpins modern science and is arguably is primarily causal!

Leupold Genesis part 12 rebuttal of g-w hypothesis

The seemingly formidable argument from vocabulary, separate and distinct vocabularies for the four source documents--especially where long lists of words appear used only in the one document--this argument we say loses its imposing character when we discern on what ground it is built. Leaving J and E aside because the argument carries little convincing weight under this head, we notice what happens in the case of P and D. Everything of a priestly legislative character is primarily assigned to P as well as everything that is presented after a more or less formal pattern like Gen. I as well as summaries. From these portions primarily deductions are made as to P's vocabulary. Naturally quite a substantial list results. Then other passages in the Pentateuch that use these distinctive terms are stamped as coming from P, whenever possible. Note how in the last analysis in legislative portions like Leviticus, where matters of priestly interest certainly predominate, a distinctive vocabulary has to be used and can very readily be listed. The fact of the matter really is not that a different writer is at work but that the same writer is dealing with an entirely different subject. No man can write a law book with the vocabulary of a book on history. From another point of view the argument practically amounts to this that one man could not write E or J and also P, because one man could not write both history and law. In like manner D's style, which is supposed to involve "a long development of the art of public oratory," covers the major part of the book of Deuteronomy as well as of later books whenever they con, in hortatory passages after the manner of Deuteronomy. One can quite readily build up a separate vocabulary out of such sections. In the final analysis this is tantamount to saying that Moses could not have written such admonitions and exhortations as well as laws and history. The critics operate on the assumption that such flexibility of style is beyond the range of the capabilities of one man.

The other peculiarities that these major sources are supposed to display are most readily understood on the following assumption: take any longer work and divide it up into four portions on the basis of an approach that groups kindred things together, and the resultant four parts will naturally each have something distinctive.

Like Water for Chocolate

I couldn't believe this. An anglican church on the north shore of Sydney has on its notice board the great news that it will be door knocking the local area to give out Easter eggs!

Sorry Michael (that's the rector) Darrell Lea has already made that connection with Sydney.

I can see it now...'oh wow, the church is dropping off chocolate eggs, now its really connecting with my deepest needs'

Another dull idea from Connect09...Connect..oh dear!

Atheism’s Plagiarism

Outright atheism, certainly in its modern incarnation, has always had a minority following (see http://www.investigatingatheism.info/history.html & http://www.investigatingatheism.info/historyeighteenth.html), despite its adherents' claims to the contrary. The atheist complains that open disavowal of God’s existence was not only proscribed but was met with painful, and often deadly, punishment. While there is some truth to this - though an exaggerated and emotionally-charged polemic is pushed forward - it is more true that formerly people in all likelihood were less likely to jettison their commonsense. The ordinary ploughboy was eminently qualified to reason from the physical world, to its being a perspicuously created order, to a Creator. Today people are less capable because the contemporary “intellectual” environment is vociferously weighted toward a naturalistic, evolutionary worldview. This Stratonician attitude “comprehends” the way things are by means of a worldview in which on a priori philosophical grounds any actual or theoretical involvement by God is excluded. Of course, a presumption of Stratonician atheism is logically unwarranted because it is just that, a preconception or bias.

The real intellectual battle is whether or not excluding God can, in the least, explain how life came to be. Undeniably evolution is the atheist’s major tool in her apologist’s arsenal for this task. Evolution historically relies on Stratonician atheism, Sydney Anglican Diocese remonstration notwithstanding that evolution is God’s way of doing things because “science” has demonstrated this. (Boy, talk about getting one’s scientific apples mixed up with religion’s oranges!) But I digress from my purpose.

Arguably the most common explanation why atheism is so conspicuous in modern times is that it is a Christian heresy: it could only emerge from, and is a reaction to, the ubiquity of Christian thought. Genuine ancient atheism is probably and more accurately described as agnosticism. In any case, it never gained anywhere near the popularity of its modern incarnation and certainly did not devote its energies on solely promoting a view of a cosmos sans God.

That our modern atheism parasites off Christianity is humorously seen in its latest indefatigable program plastered prominently on the sides of British buses. The ‘Probably no God’ campaign wasn’t an original idea but one that derived its existence from comedy writer Ariane Sherine’s spotting a Christian message on the side of a bus. This spurred her to raise close to half a million dollars on an indulgent campaign. Ironically, the verse that Sherine saw was a misunderstanding of a critical comment Christ made against believers. Correctly comprehended it would have lent powerful support to atheists’ accurate assessment that Christians frequently sanctimoniously self-promote.

In the Gospel according to Luke, this doctor-historian wrote that the Creator stated, “[Nevertheless w]hen the son of man comes, will he really find faith on the earth?” Christ immediately follows up with the parable about the self-effacing tax collector and the self-righteous religious authority. His disciples then tried to prevent children from accessing him and were rebuked for this. Christ’s message was that we, as Christians, have got to be ever so aware that we do not indulge in self-promotion, that we in fact do not end up turning the Gospel on its head by having our “righteousness” replace his. This “death” of self, may I suggest, is the faith Christ queried would be found when he returns. It is the type of faith that derives from that never-ceasing battle Christians should wage internally against themselves: pride in their own righteousness.

Sherine and the atheists missed an opportunity to bring our communities a little closer to each other. After all, regardless of our differences, one thing is sure: we both have a common origin. The question is which is the true answer, the atheist’s pond scum or God’s love for all of us?

BTW, to all our atheist friends, have a joyous Easter and thank Christ for those penalty rates or the day off.

Question for Biblical Creationists, Sydney Anglican Diocese and Church of England - "Why Were Our Reformers Burned?"

Why were our Reformers burned?

The question was raised by Bishop J. C. Ryle in his book "Light From Old Times" published in 1890. In fact, he devoted a whole chapter to the question.

In general, those Reformers burned at the stake were resistant to the Church of England going back from where it came - to Roman Catholicism. The time was the reign of Queen Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Arragon. Mary (or "Bloody Mary") had been brought up a staunch Roman Catholic. Upon ascendancy to the Crown she set about bringing down all that had been achieved by the Reformers.

It was not enough to change the order of services, reinstate the Mass, banish foreign Protestants from England and prohibit the writings of key Reformers. From early 1555 Protestants were targeted and, under threat to life, were ordered to recant principles of the Reformation. There was staunch resistance and, while statistics vary, a conservative count shows 288 Protestants were burned at the stake between 1555 and 1558 for refusing to recant.

In his chapter "Why Were Our Reformers Burned?" Bishop Ryle looks at leading Reformers of the day to answer the question for all. John Rogers, Anglican Minister in London; John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester; Rowland Taylor, Rector of Hadleigh; Robert Ferar, Bishop of St David's, Wales; John Bradford, Chaplain to Bishop Ridley; Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London; Hugh Latimer, once Bishop of Worcester; John Philpot, Archdeacon of Winchester; Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; are each examined.

Each may have had additional charges pertaining to the Reformation laid against them but, according to Bishop Ryle, "The principal reason why they were burned was because they refused one of the peculiar doctrines of the Romish Church. On that doctrine, in almost every case, hinged their life or death. If they admitted it they might live; if they refused it, they must die."

The doctrine in question was the real presence [transubstantiation] of the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated elements of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper."

If the Reformers declared that our Lord Jesus Christ was bodily present in the bread and wine they would live. If they refused they were burned by faggot.

In an act he later regretted, Thomas Cranmer recanted but such was the hatred of his enemies toward him that they went ahead with his burning. This afforded Cranmer a glorious opportunity to triumph for he withdrew his recantation and thrust the hand with which he signed the recantation into the flame while uttering the words "This unworthy right hand." He then steadily lifted his left hand toward heaven. Bishop Ryle also provides as a footnote a comment attested by Soames and other historians that "when the fire had had burned down to ashes, Cranmer's heart was found unconsumed and uninjured."

Transubstantiation or Real Presence - why were the Reformers so dogged in rejecting it, even to death? After all, isn't the Gospel all that matters and isn't Romans 10:9 ("That if you confess with mouth, 'Jesus is Lord' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.") a summary of that Gospel? Isn't it possible that Jesus Christ, our Creator in Spirit and Flesh could somehow be bodily present in the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper - remember when amongst His disciples he turned a small amount of bread into a multitude of bread and, on another occasion, turned mere water into fermented wine. Couldn't He do something mighty and beyond earthly understanding with the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper? Why get hung up on a point such as this? Wouldn't it have been better for peace and harmony to just accept the doctrine of Transubstantiation or Real Presence? To accept it meant survival and the opportunity to go about the nation sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Doesn't this make sense?

Bishop Ryle provides the answer to all the foregoing questions on page 45 of his book:

"Whatever men please to think or say, the Romish doctrine of the Real Presence, if pursued to its legitimate consequences, obscures every leading doctrine of the Gospel, and damages and interferes with the whole system of Christ's truth. Grant for a moment that the Lord's Supper is a sacrifice and not a sacrament ... [and all the contingencies of the Real Presence]- You spoil the blessed doctrine of Christ's finished work when he died on the cross. A sacrifice that needs to be repeated is not a perfect and complete thing. - You spoil the priestly office of Christ. If there are priests that can offer an acceptable sacrifice to God besides Him, the great High Priest is robbed of His glory. - You spoil the Scriptural doctrine of the Christian ministry. You exalt sinful men into the position of mediators between God and man. - You give to the sacramental elements of bread and wine an honour and veneration they were never meant to receive and produce an idolatry to be abhorred of faithful Christians. - Last, but not least, you overthrow the true doctrine of Christ's human nature. If the body born of the Virgin Mary can be in more places than one at the same time, it is not a body like our own, and Jesus was not 'the second Adam' in the truth of our nature." [emphasis mine]

So there you have the reasons why Reformers were prepared to die. There were legitimate consequences of the doctrine of the Real Presence which obscured every leading doctrine of the Gospel while damaging and interfering with the whole truth of Christ Jesus.

Would the people of influence in the Church of England today and the Sydney Anglican Diocese have the conviction and courage of the Reformers to resist, to death, the doctrine of the Real Presence or Transubstantiation? If talk means anything, I suspect those in Sydney Anglican Diocese would be saying "Yes" at this point. I don't know enough about those in the Church of England to comment on how they would respond.

Let me now make life a little uncomfortable for those same people.

For most of your Christian life you have taken all means to avoid Biblical Creationists who first gently called you back to Scripture concerning the Creation account but who, on occasions, have become antagonistic at your repeated avoidance and failure to relate. Biblical Creationists are one with the Reformers on the subject of the Creation account because both have read Genesis 1 as implying each of the six days of Creation were of 24 hours and the age of the earth amounts to something near 6,000 years.

You have become selective in your reading of Scripture and selective in those who you listen to on the subject of the Creation event. Having admired and given assent to those Reformers who resisted the odious doctrine of the Real Presence to point of death, are you selective in how you apply the criteria of those Reformers when it comes to the subject of the Creation event?

Theistic Evolution, which you hold dear, is an odious doctrine. By embracing that doctrine - you spoil Christ's finished work of Creation completed as "very good" on day six as Gen 1:31, Gen 2:2 and Ex 20:11 make clear (John 5:17 refers to God working continuously post-Fall and cannot be applied here). - You spoil Christ's office as Creator by applying to Him a faltering, dead-end, mutation and death filled process of Creation. You rob Him of His glory as Creator. - You spoil the doctrine of authority of Scripture (or Word of God) by exalting sinful men to knowledge of origins to subjugation of the inspired writing of Moses. In so doing you engage in idolatry. - Last, but not least, you overthrow the true doctrine of the righteousness of Christ by asserting He created by causing the weak to suffer and die for the strong (natural selection) which is a complete reversal of His nature expressed in Law, Teaching, Redemptive Work and Person. In your doctrine, death is not an enemy which invaded the created order through sin. It is simply an outworking of the Nature of Christ before and after Creation and therefore no reason for Him to take on flesh to redeem the Creation by dying on the Cross.

With appropriate adjustment for your offence I repeat Bishop Ryle: "Whatever men please to think or say, the [worldly doctrine of Theistic Evolution], if pursued to its legitimate consequences, obscures every leading doctrine of the Gospel, and damages and interferes with the whole system of Christ's truth." [emphasis mine]

The Reformers saw the doctrine of the Real Presence as heresy. The same charge applies to the doctrine of Theistic Evolution. This then gives cause for some tough questions:

1) Isn't the Gospel, in all its strength, something more than a simple, tract-like presentation that is commonly offered today?

2) Would Biblical Creationists today be prepared to resist, to the point of death, the doctrine of Theistic Evolution?

3) Would the Sydney Anglican Diocese or the Church of England be prepared to persecute or sit idly by while the world persecuted, to the point of death, Biblical Creationists who by another label are "fundamentalists"?

4) How long will the Sydney Anglican Diocese and the Church of England give succour to practitioners of the heresy of Theistic Evolution?

Neil

Dawkins Deceived?

As many of us know, Dawkins, a few years back, was left speechless by a simple question that asked him to provide one unambiguous example of an observable mutation adding new information to the genome. The I-could-hear-a-pin-drop silence is truly a spectacle. Peter, our now very much absent atheist friend, had earlier tried to explain away Dawkins' fatuous confusion by claiming....ohh, I can't remember what Peter's excuse was but it amply demonstrated, once again, how keen evolutionists are to assist their spiritual high priest out of his tongue-tied moments.

Well, anyway, here's what the film-maker had to say after Big Bad Baz Williams, our very own Aussie-bred arch-sceptic and all-round atheist bother boy, fulminated and cast down fire and brimstone against us creationists, charging us with deceit and all sorts of other nasties. Baz tried to come to Dawkins' rescue but, alas, he didn't get his facts right so he kind of came off second best.

The point of this question is clear to anyone who isn't a knucklehead. If evolution is truly happening, it requires trillions of zillions of novel information adding mutation events to occur. If amoebas have become man, so to speak, it takes an awful lot of new information to get from there to here. Photocopying 'Mary had a little lamb" a billion times will not give you Bleak House. Similarly, "photocopying" an amoeba a billion times will not give you a grasshopper, a redwood or a cow. Furthermore, evolution has obtained the status of law and so must be an on-going "fact". It must be happening as we speak. Any evolutionist should be able to point to quite a large number of these potentially observable phenomena.

If you haven't seen the video it's well worth the watch and has become a classic.

http://www.trueorigin.org//ca_gb_01.asp

Darwin's Devilishly Dangerous Idea

Here's a valuable little piece from the 'Science and values' people analysing a new BBC production commemorating, [yawn]once again, Darwin's birth.

http://science-and-values.blogspot.com/2009/03/bbc-baulks-at-full-implications-of.html

Who Cares About Sydney Anglican Diocese and Church of England?

History is once again a great teacher. The late J.C. Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, England, wrote in 1890, a book called "Light from Olden Times".

Bishop Ryle sought to bring to his readers' attention the faith and works of Protestants who suffered, some even to death, for the sake of the truth. He devoted the final chapter of the book to "James II and the Seven Bishops". I have referred to the activities of James II in a recent comment to Gordon Cheng and I now wish to draw out a deeper lesson from the incident of James II and the seven Bishops. I apologise to those who know the story but for others it may help them gain a brief summary of the event.

To reestablish Popery into the Church of England in the 17th Century, James II had proclaimed the "Declaration of Indulgence". The sweetener was that it suspended all penal laws against the Nonconformists (those Protestants who would not submit to the infamous "Law of Uniformity"). Further, the Declaration authorised both Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters to perform their worship publicly. It forbade the King's subjects, on pain of his displeasure, to molest any assembly. It abrogated all those Acts of Parliament which imposed any religious test as a qualification for any civil or military office. As Bishop Ryle put it "To us who live in the present century, the Declaration may seem very reasonable and harmless. To the England of the seventeenth century it wore a different aspect! Men knew the hand from which it came, and saw the latest intention. Under the specious plea of toleration and liberty, the object of the Declaration was to advance Popery and give license and free scope to the Church of Rome, and to all its schemes, for reconquering England."

Little time presented for Bishops and Clergy to organise resistance to the proposed Declaration of Indulgence and to prevent its being read in churches around the realm. A marvelous thing occurred inasmuch as Nonconformists, who had suffered much under the deprivations of the Law of Uniformity, saw through this veiled offer of relief, as Bishop Ryle wrote "Young Defoe said to his Nonconformist brethren, 'I had rather the Church of England should pull our clothes off by fines and forfeitures, than the Papists fall both upon the Church and Dissenters, and pull our skins off by fire and faggot'."

In the end it came down to seven Bishops who were available in London and who bravely went before the King with a petition declining to present the Declaration to congregations. The angered King James II set in train the means for them to be prosecuted for libel and they were shortly committed to the Tower. In the interim, the petition of the Bishops had been published and distributed to the public. Clergy around the country had now been fully informed and rallied in support. Feelings of admiration for the Bishops flared higher and higher. From every part of England and from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland came daily words of kindness and approbation. Thousands rallied around the Bishops as they were taken from Tower to court and return and at least ten thousand waited outside the court for a well argued defence and the eventual decision of "not guilty" from the jury. Space limits me from detailing the reaction of joy across London. The whole incident presents great theatre.

The action of the seven Bishops and the resultant court case and decision were the means for the end of the reign of James II. Within twenty four hours of the court decision a letter, signed by seven leading Englishmen, left England for Holland inviting the Prince of Orange to go to England with an army to overthrow the Stuart dynasty. And so it was!

In concluding his chapter on the aforesaid incident, Bishop Ryle provides helpful instruction for Biblical Creationists today. We are seen as unwanted agitators, a threat to the good order and harmony of the Church. Peace and harmony are declared above all else. We are made to feel like offenders when we uphold the integrity of the Genesis account of origins. My friends, take heart, be strong of faith and noble in cause. I quote Bishop Ryle's concluding remarks:

"Controversy and religious strife, no doubt, are odious things; but there are times when they are a positive necessity. Unity and peace are very delightful; but they are bought too dear if they are bought at the expense of truth. There is a vast amount of maundering, childish, weak talk now-a-days in some quarters about unity and peace, which I cannot reconcile with the language of St. Paul. It is a pity that there should be so much controversy; but it also a pity that human nature should be so bad as it is, and the devil should be loose in the world. It was a pity that Arius taught error about Christ's person: but it would have been a greater pity if Athanasius had not opposed him. It was a pity that Tetzel went about preaching up the Pope's indulgencies: it would have been a far greater pity if Luther had not withstood him. Controversy, in fact, is one of the conditions under which truth in every age has to be defended and maintained , and it is nonsense to ignore it.

Of one thing I am certain. Whether men will come forward or not to oppose the Romanizing movement of these days, if the Church of England once gives formal legal sanction to the revived Popish Mass and the revived detestable confessional, the people of this land will soon get rid of the Established Church of England. True to the mighty principles of the Reformation, our Church will stand and retain its hold on the affections of the country, and no weapon formed against us will prosper. False to these principles, and re-admitting Popery, she will certainly fall, and no amount of histrionic, sensuous ceremonial will prevent her ruin. Like Ephesus, which left her first love, - like Thyatira, which suffered Jezebel to teach, - like Laodicea, which became lukewarm, - her candlestick will be taken away. The glory will depart from her. The pillar of cloud and fire will be removed. The best and most loyal of her children will forsake her in disgust, and like an army whose soldiers have gone away, leaving nothing behind but officers and band, the Church will perish, and perish deservedly, for want of Churchmen."

Clearly, Bishop Ryle was addressing the threat of Popery in a century past. However, the principle and argument he presents has vital application to other Reformation truths and the future of the Church in Great Britain and Australia.

It is not Popery taking over England it is Islam. While the Church of England continues its decline in numbers and relevance to Great Britain, Islam grows in both respects. The same is true in Australia. Something has happened within the Church for the Lord to withdraw his hand from the Church in such a demonstrable way. Where is the life that came upon the Church in the Reformation? Think about it.

Our Glorious Creator Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is defiled when those who purport to love and submit to Him stain Him with the cloak of a creative method far beneath His capacity and far removed from His attested works. If only Theistic Evolutionists had Mary's haste and devotion when she threw herself and her attentive ear at the feet of our Lord. Instead they have gone after and inclined their ear to Charles Darwin who, as Dr Sandra Herbert, Geology Historian, Library of Congress has said, was out to destroy the idea that Genesis was real history when he first set foot on the Beagle.

Biblical Creationists can give no peace to those who put on the stained raiment of Darwin and draw near to our Creator, Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Church of England has become defiled in laying the carcass of Charles Darwin within it at Westminster Abbey. The receiving of his remains takes on the semblance of the abomination which causes desolation standing where it does not belong. The man alive set out to bring down Christ. The man dead is alive in his teaching and continues his assault on Christ from within the Church.

The Church of England first and now the Sydney Anglican Diocese has admitted Charles Darwin. While this is not Popery there is a parallel. The desolation of the Church has commenced and an alien religion (Islam) is on the march. Remember Bishop Ryle's words " ... False to these [Reformation] principles, ... she will certainly fall, and no amount of histrionic, sensuous ceremonial will prevent her ruin."

Like with Gideon's three hundred men the hope of Church and nation rests with a few in the hand of our Lord. These few are Biblical Creationists who truly love and trust the Lord. Hold to 'Scripture interpreting Scripture', affirm the historical narrative of Genesis and stay with Luther and Calvin on origins.

May our Glorious Creator Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ be free from stain and always lifted up on high. May His cleansed Church be the hope of the people of the land against a planned takeover by Islam.

Neil Moore

Seven Stanzas

I found this poem on the SAD Greg Clark's site, the same fellow who is able to mock God with metaphor, analogy and sidestepping paganism, etc. It's called Seven Stanzas, and although it's about the Resurrection, this stanza is ironically germane and could be easily stated apropos the creation event.


"The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that - pierced - died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of
enduring Might new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of
earlier ages:
let us walk through the door."

An atheist stumbles over a poetic [non]hurdle

Occasionally some of us get momentarily sidetracked from our specific objective of exposing the stench of heresy within the Sydney Anglican Diocese that emanates from its leaders, priests (oh, btw, our cure of souls, Hosea has something to say: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for me, because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children [and Connect 09]”) and its putative intellectual heart, Moore College. It is not that we are unconsciously diverted from this aim; we do welcome setting any worthwhile issue aright.

Peter, a perennial atheist visitor to our blog, has recently attempted to undermine the monotheism of Christianity by isolating two verses in the Old Testament that, on his and a few theological hacks’ reckoning, most of whom are unapologetically Mormon, evince at first blush a polytheism with YHWH standing as some sort of celestial council overlord. Just 2 verses are supposed to undo 4000 years of Jewish-Christian history. That is, 10 seconds – the time taken to read these few lines – checkmates 4000 years.

Peter, our atheist fellow traveller, suffers from the opposite condition infecting, sorry, affecting, our SAD brothers and sisters. Whereas SADs are wont to draw malleable non-literal theological “truths” from the literal, Peter reverses this epistemology by deducing from the poetic, theological absolutes. Of course, there is nothing wrong per se with Peter’s practice – there’s much to learn from biblical poetry - unless of course there are a myriad of history passages which categorically rule out Peter’s polytheistic conclusion.

The two poetic passages of any consequence that Peter mentions are Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32. The latter, as Peter alluded, gains its far from perspicuous polytheistic purpose from the DSS and some versions of the LXX. I won’t be expressing any thoughts on this. On the other hand, Psalm 82 is considerably less ambiguous and is thus the more interesting.

Asaph, the author of this psalm, states that God judges “among the gods” and asks them why they haven’t pursued justice and protected the powerless in Israelite society. No where in Jewish writing is there, as far as I am aware, any prose that records that there are literally gods who serve on the Jewish judiciary. It is thus clear that this is a metaphor indicating the extreme high office that judges partake of in order to carry out the judicial responsibilities that any society, let alone a theocracy, demands. In any case, these “gods” are determined to die like men: only men die like men, certainly not gods, notwithstanding their non-existence, a fact the Bible makes clear in more than one place, something Peter conveniently ignores.

Jesus uses this psalm to prove that a certain group of Jews had yet another misunderstanding – though subtly different from the error in John 8 - about who he was. In John 10 this group took up stones because they thought he was identifying himself, a mere man in their eyes, with the Father. He then distinguishes himself from the Father by stating his Sonship with the Father and further that, though his office was eternal, they too had once shared in the transcendent by being “gods” in ancient Israel’s courts of justice.

That this is a metaphor, though serving in the judiciary was not, can be seen from Moses interaction with God. In Exodus 4:16 God calls Moses to speak to the children of Israel. God tells Moses he will be like God to Aaron and Aaron will be [God’s] mouthpiece. The other verse is Exodus 7:1 in which again Moses is God, but this time over Pharaoh. In both places Moses serves in God’s role of judge, the very role that Psalm 82 is discussing. Moses literally can’t be God and the judges of the Israelite kingdoms can’t be literally gods but both stand in for God in his role as judge because they were supposed to be acting as God would, impartially, wisely and morally.

Peter’s attempt to strip Israel of her monotheism fails principally because he is unable to distinguish between the poetic and the actual.