It had been the move many observers of this archbishopric had long been expecting. Having had problems knowing how to fit his view of origins with the biblical Christian data, Peter Jensen threw in the towel and began the debate with a mantra to Kali and Shiva. Of course this took the atheists by surprise but nevertheless they understood the man's stand as an apologetic for a schizophrenic god or gods of the far east and not the Christian orthodoxy handed down to us through the ages by Christ the Creator, the disciples and the early Church fathers.
In this week's debate Jensen, clearly demonstrating he's been “cheated through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ”, anaemically boasted that “it is not with evolution as science that I have a problem; it is with evolution as an idolatrous explanation of all things; it confuses mechanism with agency; science with theology.”
The atheist team perspicaciously responded to Pundit Jensen's calumny against the Creator by pointing out, “As we survey all the world's horrible circumstances, the endlessly varied kinds of excruciating pain, the deep suffering and sheer misery, inflicted on so many human beings and other vulnerable living things, it is not believable that a God of Love would have remotely adequate reasons to permit it all. And it's no use responding to such questions with talk of free will. If free will means anything, it means being able to act in accordance with your own nature and values. God is supposed to have free will, and yet we are assured by theologians that God will never act malevolently because it is not in his nature to do so. God will always freely choose to do good. Well, why wouldn't God create other beings with benevolent natures who will also freely choose to do good? Heaven is supposed to be like that, so why isn't Earth? And anyway, only a relatively small amount of the suffering there has been in the world over hundreds of millions of years could possibly have anything to do with the free choices of human beings. Why has an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love brought about the world's current life forms through the process of biological evolution, which has, as God could have foreseen, led to untold misery in the animal world? Why would God choose this as the process to bring about beings like us? Biologists tell us that the evolutionary process inevitably produces design flaws - often painful or debilitating for the creatures concerned. These are present everywhere in the natural world, and in fact in the human genome itself. These flaws are just part of the evidence that life on Earth has diversified over time through the blind process of evolution, rather than being the product of a guiding intelligence. So why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose a process that foreseeably produces so many atrocious outcomes for the creatures involved? Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose the cruel, brutal operation of evolution, in which species supersede each other? You can't reconcile the process of evolution with the existence of such a god.”
Well done, atheists! We salute you!
Jensen, you're an apostate knucklehead!
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I think Peter must be the 2011 Baddeley Award winner. You guys should send him a certificate: the award for those who do the least for the church by explaining that the Bible doesn't say what it does say. It could also be the Revelation 22:18 award.
Maybe Peter and George Pell should forge a relationship. I mean, both are unapologetic...ahh... apologetic! evolutionists. Of course, Peter would have to come under the authority of George, and I guess Peter wouldn't like that one bit. And then there's all that messy stuff about Mary, Rome, blah, blah, but at least they share common ground that Jesus is one heck of a nasty creator who deliberately caused pain and suffering in the world because that would demonstrate his glory.
It is a shame that someone held so long as being a staunch evangelical has to capitulate to the world, both on accepting evolution and then being open to defeat by the well presented argument from the Atheist.
Call yourself a Christian and accept creation by evolution and the Atheists have it over you every time.
I am not sure about the 'knucklehead' tag but criticism is due.
Sam Drucker
Sam Drucker
Jud 2:10 And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.
The contemporary Moore tribe long ago embraced a theology of paradox as the mark of a spiritually superior and enlightened institutional evangelicalism. So doing, they slid into the general downgrade of unbelief and irrationality characteristic of the dominant stream of intellectual apostasy raging through 'orthodox' schools.
The contemporary Sydney Anglican 'theology' is in fact existentialist. Hence, soteriology is sociology, eccessiology is anthropology, and pneumatology is psychology.
I delivered a warning over ten years ago in an editorial on a Southern Cross article concerning the 'Recognised Churches Ordinance'
But as a citation it won't fit within the parameters of this comment. I will email it if anyone wants to see a sharp reflection on the debate then.
Farel, I will follow up on your offer.
An interesting situation is to develop in the next couple of years with the Diocese appointing a new Archbishop.
No doubt the defenders of the present status quo are already laying down criteria for acceptability of candidates.
Sam Drucker
Bearing in mind that a widows mite has more influence in heaven than an archbishops mitre, experience suggests that Synod will seek out a 'middle-man' for fears sake. Fear is, after all, the most pervasive and potent influence on Sydney Anglican notables. The fear of man as a case in point. The fear of losing respect of the world, fear of losing influence,fear of losing academic credibility, fear of being laughed at,fear of being seen as 'narrow' or 'unkind'. And, it's probably fair to add, the fear of financial indigence (piety begat prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother, sic).
One of Barton-Babbage's favourite wry words was, 'reciprocity'. He couldn't use the word without invoking a homiletically indulgent self-chuckle. I suspect 'reciprocity' (as Stuart used it) and mediocrity will be the leading 'spiritual' principles invoking the anointing of fresh face for the future.
As an observation I note that in the last 30 years the Sydney Anglican 'leadership' has made great progress in developing the skill of finding the middle of something,anything or nothing. I think the disease started in the hallowed halls of Moore and quickly infected even the more spiritual and thoughtful 'lay' leadership.
Nowadays, its finding the middle of something that really counts.
However, standing in the middle all the time will only get you shot at from both sides. That is what is really going on here in this 'creation' debate. (I add that the Sydney leadership is not the only normative orthodox group sliding into unbelief and apostasy). Being in the middle in this case (biblical creation) is incoherent and plain stupid. There is no other accounting for it. Melanchtonian moderation is a fatal disorder as D'Aubigne noted, 'when truth and error are in each others presence the right side is not the middle'.
To save time we need to 'get down where the rubber hits the road'. The flaw in the Jenson approach is an epistemological one. It is fatal to his own position. He grants legitimacy to empiricism, rationalism and existentialism (ERE for short here) as ways of knowing or coming to know. Essentially he puts himself on the Devil's ground for the sake of debate and has lost before he begins. This was the subtle blend of the satanic seduction in the garden. Read his approach to Eve closely and think it through on his pre-suppositional level. The devil suggested there were ways of 'knowing' something other than God's Word. That is, to come to a 'true' knowledge independent of the only (real)source of knowledge for a creature. The devil's proposed ERE as the path to knowledge. He was lying. ERE give you nothing in the realm of knowledge. At best you can end up with statistical probabilities, but you never get certainty, you never attain knowledge in the biblical sense of the term. There is only one way to get knowledge or have certainty about anything for a creature, Prov.22:17-21
Theistic evolution is not taught by God's word. It is not. It is a half-baked mishmash of the veriest philosophical trash promoted by men who have already succumbed to the devil's lie that there are other ways of knowing than the testimony of the Creator.
Science, even as method, (not that you can ever divorce action from presupposition-procedure) never gives knowledge. It never gives certainty. It can't. Neither can rationalism and existentialism denies even the possibility. The 'archangel' did not dispute with the devil over Moses' body. The archbishop shouldn't bother disputing with the devil over the body of truth. But, the archbishop has, and he lost before he opened his mouth because for the sake of argument, he granted legitimacy to the devil's proposed ground for debate. A ground upon which knowledge (in the biblical sense of certainty, Heb 11:3) becomes impossible to attain.
The late Gordon Haddon Clark thoroughly demolished this unbelieving 'apologetic' tripe in his writings last century. It is amazing that the Sydney Anglican leadership have either never read him, or if they have, never appropriated the substance of his biblical critique. But then, it comes down to 'let God be true and every man a liar'.
God has said He created this world and all that herein is, in six days. He did it easily. It wasn't hard for Him. The demonstration of the superlative infinite genius of the WORD and the outcome of even (marginally) applied unlimited power did nothing but excite the devil's jealousy, meanness and bile. Satan has always sought to impugn the veracity of the WORD. Peter Jenson thinks that's a legitimate point for debate. I don't. Anyway, that's enough from me. God can speak for Himself in His book.
Job.12:7-10 But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.
Farel,
Thanks for your comments. There is plenty to chew over and some already addressed earlier in the life of this blogspot.
Let me consider further what you have said while I am out for the next little while and I will comment again later today.
BTW, check your emails I have sent a request via your website.
Sam Drucker
Farel, thank you for sendingyour article. I haven't had time to do much at all on the computer in the past 36 hourse nor did circumstances alow me to read your article but I will do so over the weekend.
Your experience and observation of the slide in the Episcopalian Diocese od Sydney reflects so much our experience and observation. We each, however, are not alone nor are our assessments off the mark. Take a look here at the experience of a man Andrew Mackinnon in his encounter some 12 months ago with Michael Jensen, son of the Archbishop, Lecturer at Moore College and those that gather around him.
Sam Drucker
Just as an astute commentator said about the theistic evolutionary organization BioLogos:
"I hope that the TE/OE compromisers learned a very important truth from the sneering visitors. By your compromise, (A) you are not winning them over, but (B) are signalling to them that they are winning you over. They will simply wait you out, until you continue in your process of jettisoning everything the world hates about you as a Christian.
"After all, if they can get you to toss such a straightforward chapter, the rest should be child's play."
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