Comments on: Another Atheist Jihad

By: Bill Muehlenberg

Bill Muehlenberg — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 06:15:59 +0000

Thanks Marius
But you need to be challenged here. What facts did they embellish? And why? Why would the early church make up the whole thing anyway? It was far too costly. All they got for their troubles was persecution, rejection and death. Not much of a deal there. And a liar usually has a selfish motive. What were the selfish motives of the early disciples? It is thus quite unlikely that they made up the gospel story.
Similarly, why did thousands of his followers suffer torture and death if they knew it was all a lie? Even under so much torture, not one ever confessed to making it all up.
Also, most of the early followers of Jesus were Jews. This kind of “myth” would have been the last thing they would have invented.
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

By: Marius Wytenburg

Marius Wytenburg — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 10:02:10 +0000

Johnathon,
If Bronwyn was present (which she states) at the meeting and heard the utterences first hand then it is not hearsay.

By the same token if you do not consider hearsay as evidence (like most criminal courts), then can we safely assume that you place no credence in the bible as we all know it was written many years after the events stated and rely totally on hearsay. Of course exception given to the gospels written by the apostles who were there first hand but let’s face it, they were on a recruitment drive and quite willing to embellish the facts.

My thanks to Bill for hosting a very interesting site.

Marius Wytenburg, Brisbane

By: Ewan

Ewan — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:20:15 +0000

Unfortunately, Andrew, you are wrong about science (yet again!). You said “Evolutionists did not start from a position of assumption about evolution.” Maybe not, but those scientists credited as the founders of evolution (and the uniformitarian geologists who preceded them) certainly did start from a position of assumed philosophical naturalism – this is the point. As Rebecca said above, the agenda was to invent a story to explain the creation without the need of a Creator. Only by doing this can one become an “intellectually fulfilled atheist”.

Ewan McDonald, Victoria

By: Jonathan Sarfati

Jonathan Sarfati — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 08:35:17 +0000

Actually, Ewan is quite rational, and Andrew Lake very selective, since he would dismiss the C-14 dates of diamonds because of his billions-of-years faith. Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

By: andrew lake

andrew lake — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 07:50:18 +0000

Hi Ewan

In case you hadn’t worked it out. The way you tell the time (on your computer etc) is ultimately based on the predictability of atomic processes. Just like isotopic dating.

Funny you’ll accept one but not the other.
Andrew Lake

By: andrew lake

andrew lake — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 07:41:31 +0000

Hi Rebecca,

I am not sure than many people who post here agree with your version of faith.

If you look through history you will see that anything written at a certain time aligned with human knowledge at that time. There are many ideas that we debate today and even live by which were not operant in biblical times – should we pretend that these don’t exist or have value because we have another 2,000 year of knowledge, history and culture on which to decide our personal lives and how we live togther?

The tragedy of a fundamentalist view of the bible is that it is stuck in that time warp and struggles to interpret any core meaning and thus becomes obsessed with issues such as creationism, homosexuality, abortion, etc. Most christians move beyond this, look for the core teachings and deal with the everyday realities of a society, whose whole wealth and existence depends on the productivity of science and technology.
Andrew Lake

By: Rebecca Field

Rebecca Field — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 06:05:17 +0000

Bronwyn,
We believe in science because we believe in the God who created science and who created our minds to study and interpret science. Just like we don’t worship trees, but the Creator of the tree and He is the one who gave us the tree to take care of and benefit from. To not worship the Creator of what we see is paganism, or at best neo-paganism.
It is the interpretation of data and any false data that we have problems with. And I believe there are a lot of lies fed to the public regarding so-called hard data in the evolutionist camp. And these lies are very difficult to call to account. I just remember not to believe everything I read just because it is in hard print.
Now the Bible is in hard print and I have chosen to believe that. The total sense of it has not changed at it has been handed down through different versions. I reject certain interpretations of the Bible because I go by the rule of thumb to let the Bible interpret itself. Inserting evolution into the Bible sends off warning bells that this is not consistent with the integrity of the 66 Books within as a whole document.
Andrew Lake, I believe that there was an original desire many evolution scientists to find an alternate theory to distract people from Creation. Many people who perpetuate the evolution theory want desperately to believe that there is no Creator, because if they had to believe there was, they obviously would have to worship Him and they prefer to worship any number of other things. However, if they desperately want to find the Creator, He promises that He is findable.
Rebecca Field, Victoria

By: Jonathan Sarfati

Jonathan Sarfati — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 01:19:31 +0000

Bronwyn, your report is still hearsay, and in any case would at best prove something about Dr DeYoung NOT about creationists in general. It is also disingenuous for a misotheist like you to cite with approval the Reasons to Believe crowd. In any case, Dr Humphreys has answered that lot, and I have refuted them in detail in my book Refuting Compromise. Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

By: Bronwyn Kingsley

Bronwyn Kingsley — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 12:41:50 +0000

Jonathan,

De Young’s statement is not hearsay. Your colleague Tas Walker was chairing the meeting. Why don’t you confirm it with him?

The reason young-earth creationists cannot get published in real scientific journals is because their theories don’t stand up to real peer review (as opposed to peer review by other creationists), and all too often they are publishing outside their specialist fields. Humphreys is a case in point and his theory has been widely debunked, even by other Christians who are actually qualified in cosmology.

Here’s one example from the “Reasons to Believe” website, a Christian website that aims to show that real science is not necessarily incompatible with faith:

The Unraveling of Starlight and Time
http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/unravelling.shtml

Some excerpts:
“Starlight and Time and related writings by Humphreys exhibit profound misunderstandings of relativity theory and cosmology. Humphreys’ theory is irremediably flawed. It is very unfortunate that these writings have been so widely distributed in the young-earth community and have misled so many Christians.”

“Jesus’ question to Nicodemus 2000 years ago suggests a set of challenges to Christian apologists today: if our claims about earthly, empirically testable things such as natural history are demonstrably untrue, how can we expect unbelievers to accept our testimony on subjects which are not empirically testable and which call for a faith response? The answer is clear: we cannot. If our testimony on scientific matters is demonstrably false, rather than giving unbelievers reasons to consider the Gospel, we will give them grounds to reject it. To put it another way, if the Church demonstrates itself to be unreliable in the interpretation of scientific matters which are subject to verification by unbelievers, it undermines, by association, the credibility of our claims that unbelievers need to pay attention to the Bible’s statements about spiritual matters which are not empirically verifiable by unbelievers. If Christians’ claims about physical reality cannot be trusted, what grounds do unbelievers have to trust our claims about spiritual realities? Demonstrably false “science” gives the lost “reasons to reject” the Gospel — “reasons to disbelieve” rather than “reasons to believe.” ”

Bronwyn Kinsgley

By: andrew lake

andrew lake — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 12:27:13 +0000

Unfortunately, Ewan, you are wrong about science (yet again!) Evolutionists did not start from a position of assumption about evolution. Science progresses through a continual process of testing and retesting. If an idea or concept or theory is proven to be wrong it is rejected and we move on to something that works better. Incidentally, many christians don’t have a problem with science or evolution.
Andrew Lake