Wow, it's amazing to see you presenting cogent arguments I can actually agree with for a change!
What's even odder is Spalding Rigdon is easier to get than what I am arguing here. ;)
Which can only mean one thing... I'm not as dumb as you give me credit for.
To my way of thinking macro-evolution from a single celled ancestor is incompatible with the Christian concept of "God" which is what Buffalo seems to be arguing.
I would need this concept fleshed out, I am utilizing the concept of God that has had tradition since the church fathers, through Augustine through Aquinas and is represented today from many traditions including Newman, Barth, Tillich, Pannenberg, even the last Pope and I think the current one.
I'm not that deep. I am just thinking in terms of a creator who designed you and me for some purpose as opposed to natural selection simply favoring the fittest and who knows how the first of us erupted from non-living material.
Macro-evolution is a clear remaining idea from Creationism lore (I would recommend Ronald L. Numbers book the Creationists) If one doesn't accept "macroevolution" I see no reason to have intellectual agreement with any of it. The evidence for macro-evolution of species and for humans is remarkable.
Of course I've seen that asserted many times but I'm not sure I buy it. While micro-evolution--limited change within species--has has been established by empirical evidence I'm not convinced inter-species macro from amoebas to humans has. But I'm certainly not an expert.
Not capitalizing, making sure context is kept. A completely fulfilling concept of God without some mystery is without meaning to me, we are discussing a transcendent being for heavens sakes. Let us also understand any opposing paradigm is not without mystery in this area.
Yes, I fully agree with that.
The universe from scientific perspectives has been articulated recently as a hologram, part of a multiverse and/or multi/dimensional strata, even a simulation possibility by Nick Bostrom among others. All with compelling evidence, math and conclusions. Quite frankly, the age old philosophical debate about realism and idealism is still being fought the book Biocentrism by Lanza and Berman a good example of this. I don't think a Christian is compelled to accept or reject any of the many viable possibilities. Mystery is not something anyone is without presently. I certainly don't hesitate to state that it is part of my view or that it weakens it.
Well that's certainly bold. I am interested in better understanding how you reconcile what seems to me to be incompatible points of view.
I suppose it all matters on perspective. To me science adds and helps us in conceptualizing God. It can narrow proper and rational conceptualizations. If one begins with what they believe is a rigid conceptualization and it seems to conflict with science I understand the angst - I just didn't over conceptualize like they did. I can understand a conservative right wing evangelical having conceptual difficulties, or a Mormon as I was, but that group(s) is in the minority presently and historically among Christians in general. The literalistic just have a loud voice in america presently.
Well the Evangelical God is radically different from the anthropomorphic Mormon deity. It sounds to me like your concept of God has moved more in the direction of the Evangelical, no? If not, how does your conception of God differ from that of the average Evangelical?
But, I am still confused, I would find it odd for the most rigid of right wing evangelicals to say that evolution conflicts with their idea that God floated down from the clouds and tinkered with bacteria cells, or dropped Adam off a potter's wheel. I think even the most unsophisticated are more sophisticated than that.
If I am following you here, I disagree. The average Evangelical views Adam and Eve as our literal parents, created from dust as specified in Genesis and placed in a literal garden until having eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I speak from experience as that was my literal view for most of my life. It has only been within recent years that thinkers who may not necessarily be Evangelical but market to them have been able to get away with speculating that Adam and Eve might have been allegorical. But I suspect the vast majority still hold to a literal Genesis.
Second, it seems literal interpretations of Adam and Eve are what are more conflicting than conceptions of God. This seems to me what John Haught has called a reading problem. His analogy of Moby Dick I think is apt. I read Moby Dick as a teenager and didn't take much from it but a story about a whale that a crazy man is hunting down. As an adult the depth on some levels probably still escapes me but I recognize depth that I didn't as a teenager. Story is like that, it can evolve with our understanding and our maturity and we don't battle those conceptions against each other in other contexts, we mature. Story presents to different levels. The creation accounts are just so obviously story and story as symbol to me I have never concerned myself over the literalness from a Christian perspective - I was stuck with that literalness as a Mormon. (FYI, this is another reason S/R is wrong - a Dartmouth graduate would have never made the literalistic mistakes J.S. did, we'll save that for later).
Which is exactly my point about how error patterns fall across the Book of Mormon... but, we'll save that for later.
Mikwut you have to understand that admitting Genesis might be allegory is akin to backsliding where I come from. It demonstrates a lack of faith. But when one simply approaches it with an open, honest, rational mind... as you say, it is just so obviously story. But the down side is that once you throw out the literalness of Genesis, you are left questioning how much of the rest can be accepted at face value? Jesus quotes from Genesis. What are the implications of that?
As a life-long theist, that is becoming an increasingly difficult pill for me to swallow. In the end, unless I find some profound solution, I may be forced to radically alter my conception of "God." You seem to have already done that to a certain extent.
I still need your conception of God to be articulated, as of right now all I can say is it seems to be a literal conception of scripture not God per se that your struggling with, that isn't a radical shift at all. Augustine, other church fathers, even the author of the Epistle John have you by nearly two thousand years.
Perhaps, but my concept of God does indeed come from "a literal conception of scripture."
I am certainly with you on the notion that Dawkins is a "fundamentalist." Dawkins, and people like him, defend atheism with equal (or greater) zeal than many theists defend religion. To the point where a central tenant of the religion of atheism is the need to disprove the Christian God--as evidenced here by Buffalo's logic. Atheism, in that sense, becomes more than a casual disbelief (based on asserted lack of evidence) but instead a dogma to be defended at any and all costs and on multiple fronts.
Here I think I agree, I think the current atheism is a much less sophisticated expression than its historical parents were, maybe just pandering to a different audience - maybe just not as sophisticated at all.
Well I've certainly never seen a compelling argument for atheism. The problem of pain is about the best I've seen, but to me that merely throws some doubt on the concept of a benevolent God, not God in general. And there are, of course, reasonable answers to the problem of pain, although I'm not sure I buy them all. I do see the issue of millions of years of struggle and death as directly contradicting the traditional Biblical creation account.
Which exact issue? Generally I recommend, Read. think. Then Read and think. Then Read and think. Never over read one side, you'll end up like Buffalo (tongue in cheek Buff) or Dinosaurs and cavemen in museums. I might recommend John Polkinghorne, Denis Alexander, and John Haught to start with, but don't read them like it has to be biblical truth from heaven. Take the other conceptual constructs out for a spin.
In short, the idea that a purposeful God wanted to create free moral agents like you and me in his own likeness and chose to do it by a process that necessarily involved hundreds of millions of years of struggle and death for trillions of his creations before life ever got to the point where he could instill the first soul. That seems to be what a compromise between current evolutionary thinking and traditional western theism boils down to. Simply stated, I just don't like that concept.
Ya know, your a lot more pleasant over here.
No doubt even Hitler could behave himself on occasions. : )
