Nest of Anti-Semites Exposed in Anglican Diocese of Sydney

In his blog (two blogs prior to this) John exposed a vile nest of anti-semites plying their hate and, at least until now, allowed to do so or even sponsored by the Anglican Diocese of Sydney via its website forum page.

That they are anti-semitic is well demonstrated by John and now confirmed by the Diocese because a search of the forum at www.your.sydneyanglicans.net/ indicates the thread has been unceremoniously pulled from the forum page. Even the 'Dead Horses' component of the forum page denies existence of the thread and its poisonous comments.

What is now required is disciplining of the anti-semites or it will be clear to the world that this Diocese condones anti-semitism within its number.

Neil Moore

K-D: THE CREATION OF THE WORLD Part 3

In contrast with all these mythical inventions, the biblical account shines out in the clear light of truth, and proves itself by its contents to be an integral part of the revealed history, of which it is accepted as the pedestal throughout the whole of the sacred Scriptures. This is not the case with the Old Testament only; but in the New Testament also it is accepted and taught by Christ and the apostles as the basis of the divine revelation. The select only a few from the many passages of the Old and New Testaments, in which God is referred to as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and the almighty operations of the living God in the world are based upon the fact of its creation: In Ex 20:9-11; 31:12-17, the command to keep the Sabbath is founded upon the fact that God rested on the seventh day, when the work of creation was complete; and in Ps 8 and 104, the creation is depicted as a work of divine omnipotence in close adherence to the narrative before us. From the creation of man, as described in Ge 1:27 and 2:24, Christ demonstrates the indissoluble character of marriage as a divine ordinance (Mt 19:4-6); Peter speaks of the earth as standing out of the water and in the water by the word of God (2 Pe 3:5); and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "starting from Ge 2:2, describes it as the motive principle of all history, that the Sabbath of God is to become the Sabbath of the creature" (Delitzsch).

The biblical account of the creation can also vindicate its claim to be true and actual history, in the presence of the doctrines of philosophy and the established results of natural science. So long, indeed, as philosophy undertakes to construct the universe from general ideas, it will be utterly unable to comprehend the creation; but ideas will never explain the existence of things. Creation is an act of the personal God, not a process of nature, the development of which can be traced to the laws of birth and decay that prevail in the created world. But the work of God, as described in the history of creation, is in perfect harmony with the correct notions of divine omnipotence, wisdom and goodness. The assertion, so frequently made, that the course of the creation takes its form from the Hebrew week, which was already in existence, and the idea of God's resting on the seventh day, from the institution of the Hebrew Sabbath, is entirely without foundation.

A belated Happy 60th, Israel (part 1)

Let’s not mince our words

 “Israel shouldn’t have taken land that didn’t belong to them. “Thou shalt not steal”

 “[The Jews] displacement of the people in Palestine was real, cruel and wrong…[and the Arabs] were removed by violence.”

 “[The Jews instigate] collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza, which contravenes the Geneva convention.”

 “The Jews took the land by force. They did it with some viciousness….I think the West is becoming less supportive of Israel [because the Jews have caused] the dreadful conditions imposed on the state of Palestine, the overkill of many Israeli reprisal attacks and the assassination campaigns that also caused civilian casualties and…it is hard to justify the way Israel came into being…and the US kow towing to Israel’s demand….Israel has a right to exist insofar as…nothing can [now] be done about it. But, until it owns up to the atrocities it has perpetrated in doing so I will refrain from being overjoyed about its birthday.”

 “[The Jews caused] the Gaza blockade and the collective punishment of the 1.4 million citizens of Gaza [and caused] raw sewage [to pool] in the streets.”

One could be pardoned for thinking that the above represented the typical “incontestable facts” a Green Left Weekly tout spits at you when challenged about Israel. They could even be understood as one of those Leninist-inspired reinventions of history that a tenured Political Science lecturer drones on about at a Peace and Conflicts’ meeting. It’s a hoary and familiar line: Denying all the time that they are racist, they hold up Israel as the world’s number 2 bad boy and that these awful Jews upset the region’s peace and stability by invading and stealing the Arabs’ land. For 2,000 years, the polemic implies, not a Jew in sight and all those happy-chappy Arabs were growing the world’s best oranges and actually, if asked, could promptly produce the deeds to all that land.

Imagine, then, how surprised I was when recently checking the Sydney Diocese’s website to read the above anti-Semitic rants. And who were the interlocutors responsible for this bilious swill? It’s the same old gang of heretics who periodically leave the safe haven from behind their mothers’ skirts and venture over to this site to try and score a few self-righteous points and who, not arrogantly satisfied with beating up on Moses, are now zealously committed to taking up the cudgels against all Jews (the exceptions being the self-loathing Jews, like Antony Loewenstein, who for reasons known only to themselves and their psychiatrists, routinely betray their Jewish culture). On earlier posts I’d stated that the Anglicans’ liberal postmodern understanding of Genesis exposes a deeply-rooted anti-Semitism (“Well, just because Moses talked to the Creator doesn’t necessarily mean he’d have a clue about the age of the Earth, would it! It just wouldn’t be an important issue for him. In any case, we know far more about the universe than Moses did.”); and so now that it has come to the surface can I say, I told you so?

From its beginning this blog explicitly communicated that it was dedicated to exposing the parlous state of the Sydney Anglican Diocese’s creation theology, if indeed they even possess one. Before long we were accused of being one-topic wonders, as though this criticism summarily negated our arguments and was sufficiently robust to challenge our love of truth for truth’s sake. These anti-Semitic attacks require a response but nevertheless, its rise is unsurprising. As our Lord said, “Wherever there is a dead body, there the vultures will flock”

Before I rebutt these Anglican anti-Semites’ pseudo-arguments I want to present an analogy.

During the 80’s I lived in London for 3 years. In all that time I never paid a penny in rent as I squatted properties owned by the Crown, local councils or housing which was plainly abandoned. Not once did my friends and I consider ourselves the actual owners of the property. We fully understood the concept of an absent landlord. That is not to say that we didn’t argue our case in court when we thought, for example, the Crown was being unfair to kick us out of a house that they had bought from a private owner in order to demolish and that the plans for this had been shelved.

Another thing we didn’t do was to attack the returning owners with knives and rocks, plant bombs in their places of entertainment and recreation or fire rockets at the schools where their children attended. And, most importantly, we didn’t cry, “God is great!”, “Praise be to God” or “Death to the owner of this house!”

Let me not be misunderstood: I am unequivocally stating that the Muslims’ demand for this Jewish land is the moral equivalent to my arguing that I had a right to live permanently in the squatted houses in London.

Let’s blame the victim.

One of these Anglican anti-Semites, Gordon Cheng (Remember him? He’s our armchair naturalist, the creationism-can’t-be-true-because-koala-pouches-are-poorly-designed-so-much-so-that-baby-koalas-are-falling-out-of-trees-all-over-the-place-and-therefore-God-couldn’t-have-designed-them guy!), believes that these Arab Muslims have been hard-done by. He states that the Jews “shouldn’t have taken land that didn’t belong to them”, citing the 8th commandment to make his case watertight. So what moves these Anglicans to express such wicked ideas? It could be they are what they are, anti-Semitic and are consequently inexcusably immoral. However, judging by how factually vapid their posts are, I tend to think that they are intellectually lazy and can’t be bothered to pursue a moderate amount of historical investigation. What follows is a snapshot of Jewish history in the Levantine, the Jewish place of origin and homeland.

 Romans invaded Judea in 63 B.C.
 Romans put down Jewish independence revolt in 135 AD leading to deaths, expulsion or slavery of Jewish population from in and around Jerusalem
 Muslims invade in and steal all the land from Jewish owners in 638 AD
 In 1917 the Balfour Declaration signed by English promising the right to Jews to set up a state for themselves in the Middle East.
 Israel is again an independent country in 1948, the only human rights’ based, democracy in the region

There you have it: Jews owned the land; dispossessed by a European colonial power; moved back in, again disposed by another colonial power, albeit a local one; reasserted their ownership of the land after 1300 years of Islamic squatting.


A Judea without Jews

The anti-Semite gang over at Anglo-land tacitly perpetuates the myth that the “country” of “Palestine” was productive and had had generations of the same Arab families living in it, working the land and exporting its goods to the world. Then these rascally Jews invaded and just took over all those highly efficient farms and factories. Apparently it had never entered these guys’ minds that the Jews may have even bought land from Arabs very willing to accept cash for quite unfertile land. I guess this is why Jordon’s King Abdullah once remarked that “the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in…weeping [about it].” Benny Morris, one of the darling of the Left, revisionist historians, stated that “[h]istorians have concluded that only ‘several thousand’ families were displaced following land sales to Jews between the 1880s and the late 1930s.” As John Lewis Burkhardt stated in the earliest part of the 19th century, “[f]ew individuals…die in the same village in which they were born. Families are continually moving from one place to another…in a few years…they fly to some other place, where they have heard that their brethren are better treated.”

One important fact that the Anglican anti-Semites are unaware of is that the majority of the land before 1948 was "owned" by wealthy, absent Arab landlords living in Damascus or other major cities in the Ottoman Empire. Most of the land was farmed by Arab serfs or tenants. They weren't the actual "owners", so when the Jews bought land they bought it from the "owners" outside of what's now Israel.

Apparently it never occurred to these anti-Semites that Jews may have lost land and valuables far exceeding that of the Arabs when they were thrown out of Arab states after the establishment of Israel. Have Jews anywhere, at any place, asked for compensation? (Several years ago one estimate of the loss was set at $US30 billion!)

This Anglicans’ anti-Israel stance and the arguments supporting it are not dissimilar to the Left’s. It recalls Maxime Rodinson’s perspicacious insight that “the anti-colonial left, whether Christian or not, often goes so far as to sanctify Islam and the contemporary ideologies of the Muslim world…Understanding has given away to apologetics pure and simple.”

So what is the alternative?

The mantra of the Left is the right of return. The Anglican anti-Semites probably know very little about this, judging by their wholesale ignorance of Middle Eastern history. Nonetheless, cerebrally it takes little effort to see what that would lead to: Israel would no longer be Israel but would become just one other undistinguished, underdeveloped, corrupt, backward Muslim state. (Here’s a quick quiz I usually give to anyone dumb enough to support Israel’s enemies: Take a look around the room you’re in and point out one object that was actually invented by a Muslim, one which significantly improved modern living. And please, don’t say algebra – the Babylonians were doing quadratic equations in three unknowns more than 1000 years before Muhammad. Nor mention 0 as this was most likely an Indian “invention” but it took Venetian accountants to put it to its best use.)

So what would Israel look like if it were no longer a country that could guarantee the safety of its Jewish (and non-Jewish!) citizenry? Well, we know what it would be like. 1400 years of living under Sharia leaves remarkable testimony to the barbarism of these societies. But first a word from our sponsor, Muhammad:

 ‘Fight against such of those who have been given the Scriptures as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.’ (Sura 9:29)
 'That is because they [i.e. Jews] say: We have no duty to the Gentiles. They knowingly speak a lie concerning Allah.' (3:75)
 'And of the Jews: listeners for the sake of falsehood, listeners on behalf of other folk.' (5:41)
 ‘[The Jews] distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture.' (3:78)
 'If a lucky chance befall you, it is evil unto them [Jews], and if disaster strike you they rejoice thereat.' (3:120)
 'And of their taking usury when they were forbidden it, and of their devouring people's wealth by false pretences.' (4:161)
 'Some of those who are Jews change words from their context and say: We hear and disobey; hear thou as one who heareth not, and Listen to us!, distorting with their tongues and slandering religion. If they had said: We hear and we obey; hear thou, and look at us, it had been better for them, and more upright. But Allah hath cursed them for their disbelief, so they believe not, save for a few.' (4:46)
 'They restrained not one another from the wickedness they did. Verily, evil was what they used to do!' (5:79)
 'Ye [Muslims] are more awful as fear in their [the Jews'] bosoms than Allah. That is because they are people who understand not. They will not fight against you in a group save in fortified villages or from behind walls. Their adversity among themselves is very great. Ye think of them as a whole whereas their hearts are diverse.' (59:13-14)
 'And thou wilt find them [Jews] greediest of mankind for life and (greedier) than the idolaters.' (2: 96)
 'Or have they even a share in the Sovereignty? Then in that case, they would not give mankind even the speck on a date stone.' (4: 53)
 And certainly you have known those among you who exceeded the limits of the Sabbath, so We said to them[the Jews]: Be (as) apes, despised and hated.” (2.65)
 Therefore when they revoltingly persisted in what they had been forbidden, We said to them: Be (as) apes, despised and hated. (7.166)

Thank you, Muhammad, for your candidness and clarity of purpose. Let’s now see if your contemporaries and later followers carried through with your message.

* Ibn Taymiyya, the famous and influential 14th century legal scholar, wrote that “[e]ven when the Muslim conquest was achieved through surrender and a peace treaty resulting in the Jews and Christians being allowed to retain their places of worship, nevertheless even then Umar laid down the condition that new ones were not to be erected in the conquered territories, and certainly not in the cities founded by Muslims. In the case of lands that had been conquered by force and in which the Muslims have built cities, they are even empowered to remove the synagogues and churches already standing, so that no more synagogues and churches would remain, unless authorities had been granted by a contract.”

* Ibn ar-Rijal, writing in 17th century Yemen, stated that “[i]f the Jews ignore these conditions and conduct their funeral processions in broad daylight and embellish and beautify their synagogues..they must be humiliated by the destruction of their synagogues…it is a principle to destroy synagogues, so that the only trace of them is to be found in their books of history.”

* In Persia a little more than a 100 years ago Jews were “forbidden to leave their houses when it rains or snows [to prevent the impurity of the Jews being transmitted to the Shiite Muslims].

These are not isolated instances but form the quintessential history of Islam because of the Koran’s and hadiths’ calls to transform the Jew to dhimmi status, a second-class “citizen”. And these Anglican anti-Semites want the Jews to share the land with these guys. Have these anti-Semites had a corporate lobotomy?

God no longer keeps a covenant with Israel

The Anglican’s anti-Semitic argument runs something along the line that since modern Eretz Israel was founded upon a secular basis, then they, the Jews, have no legal or religious right to the land because God was not involved. Armchair philosophers, like these anti-Semites, always have problems relating the real world to the ideas in their own heads. Conversely, we realists have a real problem relating their ideas to the real world. So, consider the following:

• When I was living in Israel for the second time, some 16 years ago, one Jewish Christian mentioned to me that it was estimated that of the 15 million or so Jews in the world, at least 150,000 were Fulfilled Jews, that is, Jews who believed Jesus was ha-Meshiach.
• Several of my Israeli friends were Fulfilled Jews and they often spoke about the secret network of FJs in Eretz Israel
• The ultra-orthodox in Israel fought to ban FJs from the land, particularly the Russian ones who were then flooding into Israel as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc
• Last Saturday two of my secular Israeli friends and I ate pork at Cabramatta (heavy emphasis on ‘secular’!). One of them, unprompted, mentioned how another Israeli secularite acquaintance of his, reported, without any malice, how he’s been noticing just how many Messianic Jews there are in Israel lately.
• Sure, the Bible is mentioned on the Anglican Forum and various verses are thrown up in support of their racist worldview that God can’t be behind Israel’s contemporary existence, an appearance 2000 years after a European colonial power forcefully removed Jews from Eretz. Yes, what was nothing more than a Jew’s perfunctory petition to heaven, now, in these end days, against ALL odds, we witness Jews from inside and out gathered together and now run their own country. And this is what is so manifestly obtuse about these Anglican anti-Semites: If God is the God of history and God has his finger, so to speak, in everything, are these lads actually implying that against God’s will, these Jews somehow, miraculously, out-witted God and established a return of worldwide Jewry? Well, are they?
• Much has been made out of the secular nature of modern Israel and how this ipso facto indicates that God can’t be behind this “evil”. So, in other words, God can’t use an “evil” to bring good! Ever heard of the cross, you anti-Semites over there at Anglo-land? It’s because Israel is secular that Christians can go there and can establish missionary work. Maybe if you’d go and live in Israel, you anti-Semites, you’d learn something. If the Muslims or the ultra-religious Right were in charge you’d never be able to step a foot there.
• Following from this, religious Jews have previously tried to establish a religious Israel and failed. For example, the Maccabeans tried but were eventually ousted. And this is why quite possibly Israel today was founded as a secular state.
• Given what the message of Sura 9:29 is and what Christians would expect under a country run along Islamic jurisprudence, the security of Christians within Israel is guaranteed by the fact that there is a secular society there.

Move over Jew: We have taken your place in Abraham

Some of these Anglican anti-Semites even have the chutzpah to argue for some sort of covenantal replacement theology in which the Church is the real Israel. This of course self-righteously presumes that Jews no longer seek the Messiah.
A warning against your hubris.
“Now a word to you who are Gentiles. I should like you to know that I make as much as I can of my ministry as "God's messenger to the Gentiles" so as to make my kinsfolk jealous and thus save some of them.
“For if their exclusion from the pale of salvation has meant the reconciliation of the rest of mankind to God, what would their inclusion mean? It would be nothing less than life from the dead! If the flour is consecrated to God so is the whole loaf, and if the roots of a tree are dedicated to God every branch will belong to him also.
“But if some of the branches of the tree have been broken off, while you, like shoots of wild-olive, have been grafted in, and don't share like a natural branch the rich nourishment of the root, don't let yourself feel superior to those former branches. (If you feel inclined that way, remind yourself that you do not support the root, the root supports you.) You may make the natural retort, "But the branches were broken off to make room for my grafting!" It wasn't quite like that. They lost their position because they failed to believe; you only maintain yours because you do believe. The situation does not call for conceit but for a certain wholesome fear. If God removed the natural branches for a good reason, take care that you don't give him the same reason for removing you.
“You must try to appreciate both the kindness and the strict justice of God. Those who fell experienced his justice, while you are experiencing his kindness, and will continue to do so as long as you do not abuse that kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off from the tree. And as for the fallen branches, unless they are obstinate in their unbelief, they will be grafted in again. Such a restoration is by no means beyond the power of God. And, in any case, if you who were, so to speak, cuttings from a wild-olive, were grafted in, is it not a far simpler matter for the natural branches to be grafted back onto the parent stem?
“Now I don't want you, my brothers, to start imagining things, and I must therefore share with you my knowledge of God's secret plan. It is this, that the partial insensibility which has come to Israel is only to last until the full number of the Gentiles has been called in. Once this has happened, all Israel will be saved, as the scripture says: 'The deliverer will come out of Zion, and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob, for this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins'.”

A last word

You may have asked yourself why I am so harsh in tone against these Anglican anti-Semites. Martin Luther King expressed it well:

"You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely 'anti-Zionist.' And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is God's own truth.
"Antisemitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionist is inherently antisemitic, and ever will be so.
"Why is this? You know that Zionism is nothing less than the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land. The Jewish people, the Scriptures tell us, once enjoyed a flourishing Commonwealth in the Holy Land. From this they were expelled by the Roman tyrant, the same Romans who cruelly murdered Our Lord. Driven from their homeland, their nation in ashes, forced to wander the globe, the Jewish people time and again suffered the lash of whichever tyrant happened to rule over them.
"The Negro people, my friend, know what it is to suffer the torment of tyranny under rulers not of our choosing. Our brothers in Africa have begged, pleaded, requested--DEMANDED the recognition and realization of our inborn right to live in peace under our own sovereignty in our own country.
"How easy it should be, for anyone who holds dear this inalienable right of all mankind, to understand and support the right of the Jewish People to live in their ancient Land of Israel. All men of good will exult in the fulfilment of God's promise, that his People should return in joy to rebuild their plundered land.
“This is Zionism, nothing more, nothing less.
"And what is anti-Zionist? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the Globe. It is discrimination against Jews, my friend, because they are Jews. In short, it is antisemitism.
"The antisemite rejoices at any opportunity to vent his malice. The times have made it unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being the case, the antisemite must constantly seek new forms and forums for his poison. How he must revel in the new masquerade! He does not hate the Jews, he is just 'anti-Zionist'!
"My friend, I do not accuse you of deliberate antisemitism. I know you feel, as I do, a deep love of truth and justice and a revulsion for racism, prejudice, and discrimination. But I know you have been misled--as others have been--into thinking you can be 'anti-Zionist' and yet remain true to these heartfelt principles that you and I share.
“Let my words echo in the depths of your soul: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--make no mistake about it."

Genesis sermons

I haven't read all the material here, but these sermons on Genesis 1 are something you'd never hear in a SAD assembly! Green Bagins says some things I wouldn't, but has some interesting observations. Enjoy!

Another site I've turned up, with some articles of value on Genesis and origins.

Also, an essay on Genesian authorship, that might be of interest.

On Genesis and its interpretation

Check out this book by Hoeksema: In the Beginning God

A neat little article on Genesis and its literary form. This came up a while ago on this blog. Someone asked had we considered the question of 'genre', as though this was the defeater of our view. It wasn't of course, unless the reader rules out the text's chronological anchor from the start. One of the chief characteristics of myth and similar dislocated discourse is its blurring of time references. Genesis 1, on the other hand, goes the long way round to ensure that the time references are clearly communicated.

Hans-Georg throws light

A quote today from Hans-Georg Gadamer:

"(H)istory does not belong to us; but we belong to it." (Truth and Method p 276)

One implication is that we have no chance of understanding what others mean in their writing and speaking without first coming to appreciate our own historical way we arrived here today.

(A comment on Reforming Project Management)

Just think of this in terms of the gospel, where an historical context is provided in the chain of ontological dependencies reaching back to creation where both God and we are grounded and given our setting, and why we are in the mess requiring salvation. We belong, through Christ, to the history that links us in real time and space to the events of creation and fall. Deny this, as does the SAD, and we end up endorsing the behaviour of the settlers Stan Grant mentions, who see in evolution the encouragement of genocide: the fruit of 'evolution' is death (and its requirement), not life as it is of the gospel and the God who created the very good.

Aboriginal mission and evolution

In his book "The Tears of Strangers" Stan Grant says this, on p. 159:

The early Wesleyan missions at Wellington Valley and Lake Macquarie had been established and abandoned by the time Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. The theory of evolution allowed settlers to see Aboriginies as a prehistoric human relic, destined to die out. Missionaries, anthrolopogists and, in turn, policy makers saw their role as protecting the blacks from extinction.


Stan Grant is an Australian journalist with aboriginal forebears.

Opps: typo corrected: it's 'from extinction' not 'for'!

The obstinate making the blind

In the latest edition of Moore Matters: the Moore College bulletin, Dr Woodhouse makes the statement:

Today's atheistic secularists consistently assume that the future of the human race will be the complete triumph of secularism and the abolition of every kind of belief in God...

Now, why would they assume that?

It might be because they have said in their heart that there is no God. Now, what does that mean "there is no God"?

As God's chief credential, repeated throughout the Bible, is that he is creator, then it must mean that there is no creator: secular humanism claws after neodarwinian evolution to provide evidence for its rejection of God.

But SADists adopt the same end result: the universe as it appears was made from other things that are within the universe (contrary to Hebrews 11:3) and so is identical to a universe made without God; effectively, to all appearances, then, they must say that there is 'virtually' no God.

Are the SADists then found out to be fools of the Psalm 14:1 variety?

Just for the record, I should add that Dr Woodhouse, the principal of Moore College, once debated on the veracity of Genesis 1. He exhibited in this debate (at Christ Church St Ives) a degree of biblical illiteracy that is astonishing for an OT scholar. He seemed to think that the Bible had multiple creation accounts! He seemed to include the psalms in his list. Hmm, odd!

Pass Me the Cigarette Lighter Will Ya!

A mass book burning is about to break out in the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church or, at the very least, one theologian is about to have his books placed on the "NOT RECOMMENDED" list of publications within the Diocese.

Noted author R.C. Sproul has, after many years of consideration, reverted to the Reformation Hermeneutic on interpretion of Genesis. In effect, R.C. Sproul has become a Young Earth Creationist. You know, the much despised hillbillies, those seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

More information on this can be found at:
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5774

R.C. Sproul sets himself apart from many in the Sydney Anglican Diocese in this and in another very important feature - he was prepared to allow Holy Spirit to lead him away from the thinking of the world and, instead, toward the Word of God.

He is courageous. Pity there aren't a few more like him in this Diocese of the Anglican Church.

Neil Moore

Hebrews 9

Mediating through Hebrews 9 recently, I came to verse 26:

Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

It seems that there is an acknowlegement of continuous history connected with human's soteriological need extending to the foundation of the world.

Within the Bible's frame of reference, the reference to the foundation of the world can only be to the opening chapter of Genesis 1. It also seems to be in presumptive harmony with the chronological milestones marked through the OT, from which the Jews calculate the age of the world to be a mark under 6000 years.

Here we have, it would seem, a statement of the necessity of a salvation connection extending to the year dot, implying pretty obviously that humans in need of salvation had a history coextensive with the history of creation.

Along with Hebrews 11:3 (By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.) this would seem to eliminate realist views of origins that reject the biblical conception of time that is woven through the OT, and reinforced in the NT. The purely realist treatment of Cain and Abel and their connection to the original man made in Genesis would also seem to set the dependence of these concepts on a continuity in the biblical time-frame of reference that is denied systematically and without real biblical warrant (to my mind) by the SADs and their pals.

The biblical language and flow of historical ideas do not allow the extended periods of earth history that is insisted by materialist views.

darwin dissent

Just came across a newish blog:

Question Darwin

Its run by a medical doctor; don't know his views on age, but he certainly sticks it to Darwinism.

to versify or not

Quote from a review of the RATE project report v. 2

Chapter 9 summarizes the results of the new topic added late in the RATE project—the grammatical analysis of poetic and historical texts by Steven Boyd. In analyzing poetic and historical texts, he found that historical texts predominantly use the preterite verb form (one type out of four), while poetic texts hardly use it at all. Boyd’s analysis and research are superb; the difference between historical narrative and poetic texts is stark. Genesis 1–2:3 uses predominantly preterite verbs. So the probability that these verses are historical narrative is in the neighbourhood of 99.99%. Genesis is real history, intended to be read as real history! A larger glossary would have been helpful, since Boyd uses many Hebrew grammatical terms that would be unfamiliar to non-Hebraists.

K-D: THE CREATION OF THE WORLD Part 2

If we pass on to the contents of our account of the creation, they differ as widely from all other cosmogonies as truth from fiction. Those of heathen nations are either hylozoistical, deducing the origin of life and living beings from some primeval matter; or pantheistical, regarding the whole world as emanating from a common divine substance; or mythological, tracing both gods and men to a chaos or world-egg. They do not even rise to the notion of a creation, much less to the knowledge of an almighty God, as the Creator of all things.

(Note: According to Berosus and Syncellus, the Chaldean myth represents the "All" as consisting of darkness and water, filled with monstrous creatures, and ruled by a woman, Markaya, or Aomo'rooka (? Ocean). Bel divided the darkness, and cut the woman into two halves, of which he formed the heaven and the earth; he then cut off his own head, and from the drops of blood men were formed. - According to the Phoenician myth of Sanchuniathon, the beginning of the All was a movement of dark air, and a dark, turbid chaos. By the union of the spirit with the All, Eoo't, i.e., slime, was formed, from which every seed of creation and the universe was developed; and the heavens were made in the form of an egg, from which the sun and moon, the stars and constellations, sprang. By the heating of the earth and sea there arose winds, clouds and rain, lightning and thunder, the roaring of which wakened up sensitive beings, so that living creatures of both sexes moved in the waters and upon the earth. In another passage Sanchuniathon represents Colpi'a (probably piyach (OT:6368) qowl (OT:6963), the moaning of the wind) and his wife Ba'au (bohu) as producing Aioo'n (NT:165) and prooto'gonos (NT:4416), two mortal men, from whom sprang Ge'nos (NT:1085) and Genea' (NT:1074), the inhabitants of Phoenicia. - It is well known from Hesiod's theogony how the Grecian myth represents the gods as coming into existence at the same time as the world. The numerous inventions of the Indians, again, all agree in this, that they picture the origin of the world as an emanation from the absolute, through Brahma's thinking, or through the contemplation of a primeval being called Tad (it). - Buddhism also acknowledges no God as creator of the world, teaches no creation, but simply describes the origin of the world and the beings that inhabit it as the necessary consequence of former acts performed by these beings themselves.)

Even in the Etruscan and Persian myths, which correspond so remarkably to the biblical account that they must have been derived from it, the successive acts of creation are arranged according to the suggestions of human probability and adaptation.

(Note: According to the Etruscan saga, which Suidas quotes from a historian, who was a "parr' autoi's (the Tyrrhenians) e'mpeiros anee'r (therefore not a native)," God created the world in six periods of one thousand years each: in the first, the heavens and the earth; in the second, the firmament; in the third, the sea and other waters of the earth; in the fourth, sun moon, and stars; in the fifth, the beasts of the air, the water, and the land; in the sixth, men. The world will last twelve thousand years, the human race six thousand. - According to the saga of the Zend in Avesta, the supreme Being Ormuzd created the visible world by his word in six periods or thousands of years: (1) the heaven, with the stars; (2) the water on the earth, with the clouds; (3) the earth, with the mountain Alborj and the other mountains; (4) the trees; (5) the beasts, which sprang from the primeval beast; (6) men, the first of whom was Kajomorts. Every one of these separate creations is celebrated by a festival. The world will last twelve thousand years.)

Wilderness or Promised Land for Sydney Episcopalian Diocese?

This site's exposure of heretics of the Sydney Episcopalian Diocese must continue. Moore College, the theological seminary of the Diocese continues to churn out potential 'cures of souls' with a heretical, even unbelieving, view of the Word of God recorded in Genesis.

The spurious view prevails among them that non reference to "evening and morning" for the seventh day, as recorded in Genesis 2:2-3, implies the Creation Week did not comprise seven 24 hour days and that the 'rest' or 'sabbath' of the seventh day continues to the present and beyond.

Most of them, at least, will accept that Jesus Christ is a type of Adam, a type of Israel, a type of Moses, a type of Joshua (but superior to them) and yet Adam, Israel, Moses and Joshua are historical beings or entities who have existed in real time and space. But, as if to give appearance of being gnostics or mystics, they inconsistently apply the principles of observing 'types'. In their desperation to stay in with the world on origins these people elevate the concept (or 'type') of "God's rest" to the exclusion of the particular. For these heretics of the Sydney Episcopalian Diocese, the "seventh day" spoken of in Genesis 2:2-3 is only about the eternal Kingdom of God and not a real day and that this "unending" one day out of seven nullifies the historical reality of the previous six days of Creation Week.

They draw upon Hebrews 3 & 4 to support their claim. Perhaps they defer here to Canadian Astronomer, Hugh Ross, of 'Reason to Believe' ministry, California, USA, who was feted several years ago in the Sydney Episcopalian Diocese. Hugh Ross holds a similar view of the "seventh day" and has expressed a belief that the world was occupied by some man-like spiritless beings prior to the creation of Adam. Also feted within the Diocese some years ago was John Polkinghorne, Physicist, who has expressed doubts about the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. Such are some of the influences within the Sydney Episcopalian Diocese.

Jonathon Sarfati, Ph.D., in his book 'Refuting Compromise' (published by Master Books, 2004) competently deals with Hugh Ross and fellow compromisers. On page 83 of his book, Sarfati says: "However, the evening and morning mark the beginning and end of a day respectively. So if Ross thinks the absence of both means the seventh day has not ended, then to be consistent, it would follow that the seventh day had not begun either!"

Sarfati later says " Ross also argues that Hebrews 4:1-11 teaches 'that the seventh creation day began after the creation of Adam and Eve, continues through the present, and extends into the future' (GQ ie The Genesis Question:64). However, again Ross repeats an argument rebutted in VB&T [ie Creation and Time: A Report on the Progressive Creationist Book by Hugh Ross]: 69-73. Hebrews 4 never says that the seventh day of creation is continuing to the present; it merely says that God's rest is continuing. If someone says on Monday that he rested on Saturday and is still resting, it in no way implies that Saturday lasted until Monday. Kulikovsky carefully analyzes the grammar of Hebrews 4 and concludes:

'The "rest" of Hebrews 4 clearly refers to the Kingdom of God. This type of rest was aluded [sic] to right back at the time of creation, as well as the time of the Exodus. Nowhere in the text is it equated with the seventh day of creation, nor is there any grammatical or contextual data suggesting any such equation. Thus, the progressive creationists' claim that the seventh day of creation is still continuing is without any exegetical foundation whatsoever, making it a worthless argument for non-literal creation days' [A.S. Kulikovsky, "God's Rest in Hebrews 4: 1-11," TJ 13(2): 61-61, 1999]"

The heretics of the Sydney Episcopalian Diocese need to regard with all seriousness the Hebrews passage they are 'dallying' with to oppose those who trust God's Word. For the author of Hebrews goes at length to remind readers of the Psalm 95 caution against unbelief. Psalm 95 recalls the historical event of Israel on the verge of the Promised Land but refusing to enter the land because of unbelief (well, most of them!). Their unbelief angered God and He said of them "They shall not enter my rest" (Psalm 95:11b).

Who were they who heard and rebelled? Those who Moses led out of Egypt to the verge of the Promised Land.

Dear Sydney Episcopalian heretic, you have been led out of total captivity to the world. You have professed faith in the One who led you out. How much do you trust Him? Do you trust His Word thoroughly? There are those about appealing to you to trust the Lord to give you victory over the seeming giants of the land He promised you. They appeal to you to cast off your longing for the fish, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic of Egypt. Overcoming the weight and might of a world opposed to God will be a challenge but God is on our side. The food of Egypt might have been full of taste but the Manna from God will sustain you to eternity.

Great is your sin of ill-informed propagation of a heresy, greater still is the deliberate sin of unbelief. It is now unacceptable for you to delude yourself with the thought that it is acceptable to reinterpret the Word of God to make sense of it in this largely Godless society. God has raised up people to tell you quite clearly, without shadow of doubt, that His Word clearly stated holds true and cannot be wilfully compromised without consequence.

"See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." (Hebrews 3:12)

Archbishop Peter Jensen, examine your faith. Look upon those to whom you have a responsibility in the Lord. Where and to what will your belief lead you and where and to what will it lead those to whom you have responsibility - death in the wilderness or life in the Promised Land?

Sam

K-D: THE CREATION OF THE WORLD Part 1

Here follows the prologue and commentary on Genesis 1-2:3 from Keil and Delitzsch’s classic conservative commentary.

(from Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament: New Updated Edition, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1996 by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.)

As with the earlier post from Leupold, the astute reader will see that nothing is new under the sun when it comes to heterodox readings of Genesis. K&D deal with those that pop up.

Genesis Ch. 1:1-2:3

The account of the creation, its commencement, progress, and completion, bears the marks, both in form and substance, of a historical document in which it is intended that we should accept as actual truth, not only the assertion that God created the heavens, and the earth, and all that lives and moves in the world, but also the description of the creation itself in all its several stages. If we look merely at the form of this document, its place at the beginning of the book of Genesis is sufficient to warrant the expectation that it will give us history, and not fiction, or human speculation. As the development of the human family has been from the first a historical fact, and as man really occupies that place in the world which this record assigns him, the creation of man, as well as that of the earth on which, and the heaven for which, he is to live, must also be a work of God, i.e., a fact of objective truth and reality.

The grand simplicity of the account is in perfect harmony with the fact. "The whole narrative is sober, definite, clear, and concrete. The historical events described contain a rich treasury of speculative thoughts and poetical glory; but they themselves are free from the influence of human invention and human philosophizing" (Delitzsch). This is also true of the arrangement of the whole.

The work of creation does not fall, as Herder and others maintain, into two triads of days, with the work of the second answering to that of the first. For although the creation of the light on the first day seems to correspond to that of the light-bearing stars on the fourth, there is no reality in the parallelism which some discover between the second and third days on the one hand, and the third and fourth on the other. On the second day the firmament or atmosphere is formed; on the fifth, the fish and fowl. On the third, after the sea and land are separated, the plants are formed; on the sixth, the animals of the dry land and man. Now, if the creation of the fowls which fill the air answers to that of the firmament, the formation of the fish as the inhabitants of the waters ought to be assigned to the sixth day, and not to the fifth, as being parallel to the creation of the seas. The creation of the fish and fowl on the same day is an evident proof that a parallelism between the first three days of creation and the last three is not intended, and does not exist.

Moreover, if the division of the work of creation into so many days had been the result of human reflection; the creation of man, who was appointed lord of the earth, would certainly not have been assigned to the same day as that of the beasts and reptiles, but would have been kept distinct from the creation of the beasts, and allotted to the seventh day, in which the creation was completed-a meaning which Richers and Keerl have actually tried to force upon the text of the Bible. In the different acts of creation we perceive indeed an evident progress from the general to the particular, from the lower to the higher orders of creatures, or rather a steady advance towards more and more concrete forms. But on the fourth day this progress is interrupted in a way which we cannot explain. In the transition from the creation of the plants to that of sun, moon, and stars, it is impossible to discover either a "well-arranged and constant progress," or "a genetic advance," since the stars are not intermediate links between plants and animals, and, in fact, have no place at all in the scale of earthly creatures.

Blot saving

I saw this post from Critias on the Son of Peter blot. Just thought I'd save it in case it was removed by MJ in a fit of the 'boo hoos' (refer to MJ's old comment on this blog where his incisive comment was ... "boo hoo"... yep, that's what they must teach at Moore!).

The blog its from is the Evangelical Manifesto

"I like it that it doesn't mention 'creationism' "... [quoting another comment] do we also like it that it doesn't set our faith on the ground of God's creation as he sets his 'manifesto'; that is, the Bible?
No. . .well, ho hum, another human attempt to substitute for the word of God and appeal to the world in its terms, instead of God's.
But, that said, I don't see the point. Who is the M supposed to influence? World media? They won't care. It certainly will have no effect on the next taxi driver I ask "so, do you think we descended from monkeys?".

The some bright spark, with no irony function, scolded for the 'evolved from monkeys' faux pas, and Crit, said:

Mike, I am aware of standard evolutionary doctrine on this point. However, if discussing with a taxi driver, my conversational tactic is to arouse a response that will enable me to steer a conversation to Christ. This is a pretty reliable opener.
If I was writing a paper on the matter I would adopt a diffent course.
Incidently natural selection is a conservative, not an innovative process: it selects and eliminates from the gene pool, but does not expand it. It was first discussed in any detail, to my knowledge, by Edward Blyth, who influenced Darwin. More on Blyth here: creationontheweb.com/content/view/493/

Blots?

Blots are blogs that undo things.

I've added a set of links to blots that represent some of the SAD teaching against the Bible.

I was thinking of calling them "Plods": they're very ordinary blogs. Some of the links really are "Plods", but I've tried to be nice and just call them "Blots".

I've also done some other fine tuning of this blog.

Biblical vs Darwinian?

Browsing Henry Mintzberg's website I came across this article:

The Planning Dilemma, (with James Hekimian), The Management Review (May, 1968)—first paper, recurrent theme, biblical vs. Darwinian approaches.

Now I wonder if he sees a difference between biblical and Darwinian (evolutionary) approaches? I must grab the article and find out.

Connect 09, 10, 11, 12, 13...

Connect 09, like the 10 year mission, reminds me of the futility of 'management by slogan'.

If that's all the SAD has to offer, I think it should change its mission!

Packer packs it in.

Famed Theologian Quits Anglican Church of Canada!!!

I was interested to read this article by Lillian Kwon, Christian Post Reporter dated Mon, Apr. 28, 2008, on Packer (not Jamie, but James I) quitting the Anglican Church of Canada.

“Packer, who has outlined a conservative Christian theology in his 1973 bestseller Knowing God, described the Bible as "absolute" authority on divine truth and that it clearly describes homosexuality as a grave sin, reported by The Vancouver Sun. The Rev. Kevin Dixon, priest at St. Mary's Anglican Church in Kerrisdale, meanwhile believes Packer is adopting a "literalistic" reading of the Bible. "It's important for people to understand that the Holy Scriptures is a very nuanced document. I think we need to allow people room to come to a new understanding," said Dixon, the local newspaper reported.

I’ve got to stick up for our dear brother here. He is reading the Bible ‘naturally’. The term ‘literalistic’ has a bovver boy pejorative flavour that sets out to discredit one's opponent. Here it consciously disregards Packer’s great learning and intellect, as well as his spirituality, I dare say. The term also betrays a hollow dismissive rhetoric at work, not engagement or real debate. It says that we're sewn up before we've cut the cloth.

But how amazing it is, that when it comes to the Spirit’s revelation about creation, the SADs do just what Dixon does!

I could hear any Sydney Bishop say: oh dear, those ‘creationists’ (as though there is an alternative in Christian theology), they adopt a "literalistic" reading of the Bible. "It's important for people to understand that the Holy Scriptures is a very nuanced document. I think we need to allow people room to come to a new understanding," For instance, we need to absorb the conclusions of materialism into our theology; we need to be able to disregard those parts of the Bible that attract the scorn of people who deny that God is or that he can speak clearly to us; we need the freedom to be able to blur people’s generative relationship with their creator and help them head to hell on rails. We just need to relax, unhinge, and be cool about the prophets, apostles and our Lord’s teaching, because, after all, science proves…”

And there we have it. A critical disengagement from what ‘science’ is, a failure of intellect in cultural analysis, and a refusal to bear the prophet's burden and speak God’s words, instead of man’s.

Leupold on Genesis, from his introduction.

Some snippets from Leupold's commentary on Genesis. Its an oldie but a goodie, and only goes to show that the SADist position is one that is well known and discredited.

The issue involved briefly stated is: Have we history or legend in Genesis? A notable array of famous scholars can be cited in support of what the great majority of writers on the subject in our day regard as the only tenable view, namely Genesis is legend. From Wellhausen down outstanding names are Gunkel, Jeremias, Driver, Skinner, Procksch, etc., etc. However, we are not impressed by this array of learning, which we must without reservation class as pseudo-science on matters of this sort. Strong dogmatic presuppositions are too definitely displayed by these scholars: miracles are considered as practically impossible; so is plenary inspiration; Israel’s history can rise to no higher levels than the Babylonian or the Egyptian; an arbitrary evolutionary standard is to be employed in measuring historical evidence. Besides, the following facts of Israel’s history are overlooked:
a) the utter dissimilarity of the Genesis record and the legends of the nations (the sober common sense of average Christians has always been able to detect this difference much more clearly than the overtrained scholar, who often loses entirely his sense of perspective);
b) the clear distinction preserved by Israel’s sacred records of the successive stages of revelation (4:26; 17:22-27; Exod. 6:3; Exod. 20; Deut. 18:15,19; I Sam. 3:1, etc.);
c) the accuracy of Israel’s historical tradition (13:10; chapter 14; 20:20-24; chapter 25; 26:1; cf. also chapter 5 and chapter 10);
d) distinct efforts by the patriarchs to perpetuate the remembrance of events of outstanding religious importance (12:7; 13:18; 21:33; 33:20);
e) the sober tone displayed in recording the most exalted revelation (we refer to the following chapters 12, 15, 18, 22, and 32:23-32);
…
We may at this point take issue with the claim commonly raised in our day that Genesis, as to its contents, as well as other older Biblical books falls in the category of poetry rather than history. Apparently, they who take this position are reluctant about claiming that such books are legendary in character. That would seem derogatory to their distinctive character. Yet they would prefer not to be bound to accept the Creation account, the record of the Fall, and the like as literal history. Then these ancient tales would be a grand poetic conception, involving a deeper view of truth yet allowing for a great variety of interpretations such as may be suited to the fancy of the individual. We are utterly out of sympathy with such an attitude; for it does not conform to the facts of the [matter].

It is rather a straightforward, strictly historical account, rising, indeed, to heights of poetic beauty of expression in the Creation account, in the Flood story, in the record of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, in Judah’s plea before Joseph, and the like. But the writer of speech, grammatical and rhetorical uses no more of figurative language than any gifted historian might, who merely adorns a strictly .literal account with the ordinary run of current figures.
…
There are several modes of interpretation current in our day that deserve to be stigmatized as inadequate and unsatisfactory. Some still prefer to allegorize portions of Scripture rejecting the literal sense and seeking a hidden spiritual meaning, although hardly any would venture to follow this procedure exclusively and consistently. In rejecting this type of interpretation we do not question the validity of the interpretation that sees types of Christ in outstanding Old Testament characters especially where the New Testament suggests such a use. Much more common in our day is the fault of attempting to press Old Testament Scriptures down to the level of the sacred writings of the heathen, making them to be works patterned particularly after Babylonian source material.
…
In a general way it would be correct to say that this book is singular in its kind, for it offers the only correct and satisfactory information that we possess concerning prehistoric times and the Urgeschichte ("history of the primitive ages"). It goes back beyond the reach of available historical sources and offers not mythical suppositions, not poetical fancies, not vague suggestions, but a positive record of things as they actually transpired and, at the same time, of matters of infinite moment for all mankind.
…
Before God can be known as Saviour, He must be understood as the Creator of humankind and of the world. Just what manner of Father and Creator He is we find displayed in the two Creation chapters, Genesis I and 2. In like manner no adequate and correct conception of man is possible without a knowledge of the essentials concerning his creation, his original state, the image of God, and the like. Again, the problem of sin will constitute much more of a problem if the origin of sin, that is to say, the Fall into sin be not understood.

On comparison with other cosmogonies

This account of creation is so pronouncedly different from the Biblical account that the points of difference completely overshadow the incidental points of resemblance. To speak of a "striking resemblance between the two cosmogonies" certainly is a partisan overstatement of the case; and to go on to say that "the cosmogony of Genesis I rests on a conception of the process of creation fundamentally identical with that of the Enuma elis (the opening words of the Chaldean Genesis) tablets" is simply a distortion of the truth.

The natural 'god'?

Some snippets from an article by Kauffmann, attempting to build a 'natural divinity: this is the natural theology that theistic evolution may ultimately lead to: a complete collapse of the personal theism of the Bible! SAD in its mad adulation of materialism's rejection of the Bible is part of the problem, I would say.

Despite his atheism, Kauffmann's remarks are fascinating, as he identifies some of the consequences of materialism in its failure to cope with the world as we live it.

I also like his understanding of the Jewish 'situated history', which, of course, is grounded well and truly in the real time and space creation.

Over to Kauffmann:

If no natural law suffices to describe the evolution of the biosphere, of technological evolution, of human history, what replaces it? In its place is a wondrous radical creativity without a supernatural Creator. Look out your window at the life teeming about you. All that has been going on is that the sun has been shining on the earth for some 5 billion years. Life is about 3.8 billion years old. The vast tangled bank of life, as Darwin phrased it, arose all on its own.

It is important to the Western Hebraic-Hellenic tradition that the ancient Greeks relied preeminently on reason to seek, with Plato, the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. The ancient Jews, living with their God, relied more broadly on their full humanity. The ancient Jews and Greeks split the ancient Western world. The Jews, as Paul Johnson wrote in his History of the Jews, were the best historians of the ancient world, stubbornly commemorating the situated history of a people and their universal, single God, our Abrahamic God.

Is it, then, more amazing to think that an Abrahamic transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient God created everything around us, all that we participate in, in six days, or that it all arose with no transcendent Creator God, all on its own? I believe the latter is so stunning, so overwhelming, so worthy of awe, gratitude, and respect, that it is God enough for many of us. God, a fully natural God, is the very creativity in the universe. It is this view that I hope can be shared across all our religious traditions, embracing those like myself, who do not believe in a Creator God, as well as those who do. This view of God can be a shared religious and spiritual space for us all.

Science itself is more limited by the un-prestatable, unpredictable creativity in the universe than we have realized, and, in any case, science is not the only path to knowledge and understanding. Science cannot explain the intricate, context-dependent, creative, situated aspects of much of human action and invention, or the historicity that embraces and partially defines us. These, however, are just the domains of the humanities, from art and literature to history and law. Truth abides here, too.

The French existentialist philosophers struggled with the same issue, the view that the real universe is devoid of values. Our lives are full of value and meaning, yet no single framework offers a secure place for these facets of our humanity to coexist with fundamental science. We need a worldview in which brute facts yield values, a way to derive ought from is, just the step that Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume warned against. Agency, values, and “doing” did not come into being separately from the rest of existence; they are emergent in the evolution of the biosphere. We are the products of that evolution, and our values are real features of the universe.

Newtonian physicists

Nice little quote from an old Quandrant magazine (March 2003): Darwinisim by Jenny Teichman:

Modern physicists do not claim to spend their lives studing Newtonism and it is worth asking why there is this difference between biologists and physicists. The probable answer is that the admiration of Darwin has more to do with atheism than with science, for he is wrongly thought to have refuted religion. Some biologists of the twenty-first century resembe the denizens of America's Bible Belt; they think the evolutionary hpothesis logically incompatible with creationsim. That is a mistake: the idea of evolution is quite compatible with creationism as such, thought not, of course, with the literal truth of the first chapter of Genesis.

Now, lots of layers for discussion there; I note, though, that a woman as bright as Teichman is clearly impressed by the 'literal truth' of the first chapter of Genesis being a result of the text, and alternative meanings having to be added to the text (from where, one must ask...Peter?).

Her article then goes on to draw readers' attention to the weaknesses in Darwinism exposed in Darwin's own work, in Malthus, in David Stove's "Darwinian Fairytales" and Mary Midgley's "Evolution as a Religion".

The brightest light in the article is her overturning the notion of 'struggle' when species in fact largely cooperate: people certainly do. The notion of struggle is the reverse of the Victorian obsession with 'progress' and "improvement" and so says more about Darwinian evolution's cultural roots than anything he observed.

Quaint it is then that SADism can defer to the rhetoric of modern evolution and leave the prophetic purpose of biblical revelation to one side as they fail to take the critical debate to those souls in prison!

The Sydney Anglican Diocese’s Quadune God

Neil personally expressed to me that he was left somewhat confused regarding my most recent post stating that the SADs have introduced another god to Christendom, namely ‘Time’. Let me try and further explain what I mean by this by offering up an analogy. (Of course, there is a rider attached to all analogous relationships because – and this is what most people forget – analogies will always be somewhat disanalogous because if two things didn’t have some dissimilarity then they would be absolutely indistinguishable and an analogous argument would be pointless. It is the degree of “sameness” that authenticates the relationship and people are free to argue over its strength but not to dismiss the proposed likeness out of hand.)

Imagine an architect and a builder who draw up a blueprint for an elaborate tool shed and who then immediately put their plan into action by constructing it and completing it without a break, not so much as a smoko or holiday being taken. An observer would quite rightly praise these master craftsmen for their, and theirs alone, skill and wisdom.

Now, imagine the same architect and builder who take years to draw up a plan (several in fact, because most were found to be in error), adjusted, erased, augmented, and who took another age to “complete” this structure (again, not all the components were in their correct place, but a shed is a shed is a lean to). Furthermore, you could never tell when the job reached perfection because it never really ended. In between the beginning and “end” were enormous periods of non-activity in which the ravages of time took effect by allowing the structure to, well, fall to pieces ever so incrementally and where “unplanned things” just happened because time allows the entrance of the accidental. Now, would the same observer then be rational to rightly praise these craftsmen for their, and theirs alone, skill and wisdom? Obviously not? The structure – and that is all that it could be called because it certainly would not resemble a shed like the first – would exist in its present form because time has been allowed an input. Time has usurped some of the glory of these craftsmen, hasn’t it?

Similarly, when the SADs Peter Jensen, Rob Forsyth, Gordon Cheng et al hand over some of the Creator’s glory to ‘time’ they’ve apotheosised another “power”. Let us not forget that before Darwin, Lyle and Hutton wanted to remove any trace of God from the scientific world and, in particular, from discussion about the Earth’s history. To succeed they realised that increasing the amount of time was the key. It’s simple: They understood that the Creator needs no time to bring his plans to existence and thus to explain reality without God they just increased time to a degree that “allowed” anything, a whole world in fact, to come into being.

The Sydney Anglican Heretics have robbed God of his glory and it is because of this lie they continue to tell the world and their parishioners they remain heretics.