Questions on Theistic Evolution

[KBCid]

Michael is a researcher for the Jewish Research Center here in Toronto, Ancient Hebrew is his specialty
His uncle is a Hebrew Scholar and Rabbi and they, amongst others , have been excellent in helping me understand many of the issues I had with the OT. The writings of Paul Copand are also excellent.

Nice.
Now have they explained to you the concept of abstract thought as it applied to ancient hebrew people?

[KBCid]

So your view of "God inspired" is that God ( via the HS I assume) inspired Man to write, yes?
And man writes from "God's POV" ?

I would assume that the writers of Gods word did not perform solo. A man can be directed to write God's POV or he can be directed to write what he observes. Either way God directed what he wanted written in 'his' book.

Heb 10:15 Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before,
Heb 10:16 This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them...

Rev 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:
Rev 1:2 Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.

2Pe 1:21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

[dayage]

KBCid is correct.
The author was inspired to write this book not only to remind Israel of their history, but through this history, to teach us about the consequences of sin (1 Chronicles 5:1, 23-26) and about God's faithfulness (1 Chronicles 5:20; 14:8-16). Israel was under Persian control, but the author points out that God is still in control and cares for them (2 Chronicles 36:22-23). There is much more that could be said about why God inspired this book.

[dayage]

Calum,

I don't quite understand - you're saying in places where there were no hominids, animals quickly went extinct, but where hominids existed the rate of extinction was slower? That doesn't exactly support your theory... In fact, it seems to be working in reverse from what your whole point seems to be about. Please clarify?

It makes no sense to slowly and progressively create various hominids (I don't think any of these hominids came close to accomplishing the environmental destruction humans have reeked on the Earth) just to prepare the animal/plant kingdom for spiritual beings. Besides, to 'prepare' animals for spiritual beings means they would need to evolve anyway. The spiritual humans would be very different from the non-spirit hominids.

Where hominids existed, animals were able to adapt their behaviours to fear two legged hunters, who used tools and hunting technique which other predators did not use.

The Americas, Northern Eurasia, Australia and many larger islands lost the vast majority of their larger and all of their largest mammals. These are the areas with no evidence of hominids. Many studies have shown that humans were the, or at least one of the reasons for these extinctions.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 140706.htm
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi ... ne.0008331
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8112885.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17488447

Unlike animals (hominids) humans hunt for many reasons. They hunt for food, clothing, trophies, ritual, etc. Animals in areas that did not contain hominids were ill prepared to deal with two legged hunters. The hunters they knew to fear, had four legs.

Don't waste your time posting a new topic, I have your answers:
1) When God warns Adam not to eat of the tree of Good and Evil, he says 'you will surely die'. However, he did eat of the tree. We know he died, but not physically. This is a spiritual reference.
2) Eve is called 'the mother of all living'. Does this mean she was the mother of elephants, chickens, and mice? No! This is a spiritual reference. She is the mother of all those who have spirit.
3) The Bible says God made man in his image. This is obviously a spiritual reference, as God is not material, and doesn't have eyes, a nose, feet, a mouth, etc, so we can conclude that Adam was made in God's spiritual image and not his physical one. That is to say, he was given spirit.

Actually, none of those answers are what I believe, nor what the Bible teaches. Although, #2 is close enough.

This is the Hebrew (transliteration) of Genesis 2:17:
Beyom (in the day) acholcha (you eat) mimenu (from it) mot (die) tamut (you die)

The back-to-back uses of mut (die) emphasize the certainty of the result. That is why most translations translate the two words as "surely die." The more I have looked at the sentence, the more I believe it was referring to when the outcome would become certain, not when the outcome would take place. "In the day you eat from it your dying shall be certain." Remember, Adam had access to the Tree of Life, so his death was not a certainty. By the way, the context is dealing with physical life and death, not spiritual.

In Genesis 3:4 the Serpent does not argue about the timing, he just denies the result. Also, God brings up the fact that Adam would not die immediately (Genesis 3:17), but that his death would take place (Genesis 3:19). "In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life." "....you will eat bread, until you return to the ground." The day Adam ate the fruit, God made his future death certain, by removing him from the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22-24).

This is very similar to what we see in 1 Kings 2:37, 42:
Beyom (in the day) [you leave Jerusalem] yadoa (know) teda (you know) ki (that) mot (die) tamut (you die). "In the day [you leave Jerusalem] you will know for sure that your dying is certain." Shimei's journey took at least 2 days and probably more like 3 or 4. Gath was at least 30 miles away and a day's journey was about 20-30 miles, plus he had to find his servants. Thus, the meaning was not that he would die on that very day.

In both cases the meaning was something like "once you do this, you can be sure that you will die." The phrase referred to when (the time that) the result would be made certain, not to the timing of the actual result (i.e. when death would take place).

I will post on the "image of God" soon.

[PaulSacramento]

So your view of "God inspired" is that God ( via the HS I assume) inspired Man to write, yes?
And man writes from "God's POV" ?

I would assume that the writers of Gods word did not perform solo. A man can be directed to write God's POV or he can be directed to write what he observes. Either way God directed what he wanted written in 'his' book.

Heb 10:15 Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before,
Heb 10:16 This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them...

Rev 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:
Rev 1:2 Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.

2Pe 1:21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Interesting, thanks for stating your POV.
It always interests me how people view "God Inspired".
Do you believe there are "degrees" of Inspiration?
EX: Is Revelation and Isaiah or Jeremiah as inspired as say Kings and Chronicles?

[KBCid]

Interesting, thanks for stating your POV. It always interests me how people view "God Inspired".
Do you believe there are "degrees" of Inspiration? EX: Is Revelation and Isaiah or Jeremiah as inspired as say Kings and Chronicles?

I cannot assert an opinion as to degrees. It is simply written that the writers were moved to write what they did therefore, they were directed. I don't see any inference for a degree of direction. According to the biblical texts the holy spirit is the "one" responsible for the directing and the human vessels that it worked through simply performed the physical task according to that direction.
Even Christ notes that he isn't the one performing the miracles but is rather the vessel that God via the holy spirit is acting through so I would expect that any inspired writer is under the control of the same spirit.

[KBCid]

I have wondered a quite a bit about the writers of the bible. If you notice we get very sparse info about how inspiration worked. I theorise that inspired writing took place during the weekly sabbath. I have noted that it is a time one should use to commune with God.
Imagine if you will that the writers may not have known when a revelation / inspiration to write would occur. For these writers (who loved and worshipped the very God whom they had the fortune to hear from) they probably waited with the impatience of a child to see what wonderous words might be revealed. I wonder if the event of inspiration was in some way like this;
Act 2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Or would it be more like most old testament interactions where an angel is the interface to God and his Word. I think that it may likely be that the second method is a slight bit more logical so far.
I am open to any considerations on this.

[PaulSacramento]

I have wondered a quite a bit about the writers of the bible. If you notice we get very sparse info about how inspiration worked. I theorise that inspired writing took place during the weekly sabbath. I have noted that it is a time one should use to commune with God.
Imagine if you will that the writers may not have known when a revelation / inspiration to write would occur. For these writers (who loved and worshipped the very God whom they had the fortune to hear from) they probably waited with the impatience of a child to see what wonderous words might be revealed. I wonder if the event of inspiration was in some way like this;
Act 2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Or would it be more like most old testament interactions where an angel is the interface to God and his Word. I think that it may likely be that the second method is a slight bit more logical so far.
I am open to any considerations on this.

I think that it wasn't limited only to the sabbath BUT that most certainly under the sabbath they were more "receptive" to the HS.
I would think that at times it came to them whether they wanted it or not, especially prophecies and prophetic visions.
I think there were degrees of inspiration - a writer inspired to write about what was going on in the historical sense ( Like the Chronicler) was inspired in a "lesser" ( if I can use that word) degree than Isaiah or one of the Prophets that passed on the DIRECT words of God.

[KBCid]

I think there were degrees of inspiration - a writer inspired to write about what was going on in the historical sense ( Like the Chronicler) was inspired in a "lesser" ( if I can use that word) degree than Isaiah or one of the Prophets that passed on the DIRECT words of God.

By what evidence do you deduce inspirational degrees? In my work I need to have some evidence of something even to suggest a possibility and I don't ever remember anything biblical that infers levels of inspiration. But, I do have a mind open to further evidence. So do tell

[PaulSacramento]

I think there were degrees of inspiration - a writer inspired to write about what was going on in the historical sense ( Like the Chronicler) was inspired in a "lesser" ( if I can use that word) degree than Isaiah or one of the Prophets that passed on the DIRECT words of God.

By what evidence do you deduce inspirational degrees? In my work I need to have some evidence of something even to suggest a possibility and I don't ever remember anything biblical that infers levels of inspiration. But, I do have a mind open to further evidence. So do tell

Honestly, its more of a "gut feeling" if you will BUT IMHO, when it is written that "the LORD SAID:" I think that conveys God speaking directly through the writer.
Much like when Paul says " The Lord says" compared to when he says " Not the Lord but I".
I think that divine prophecy like Isiah, Jeremiah and others, is on a different level of "communication" with God compared to when a writer writes down that "420 horse were accounted for.."
What I mean is that when a writer is simply writing down "historic fact" he was not under the HS's "control" ( he could round off numbers and so forth) BUT when a prophecy was being passed on, that was UNDER the DIRECT influence of the HS.

[PaulSacramento]

ANother example woudl be comparing Luke and John.
Luke makes it clear he is passing on the accounts of others in an orderly fashion.
Was he inspired to do so? Yes, but was he under direct influence of the HS? Perhaps but only in the sense that He was able to disconcern what MUSt be in His Gospel.
John on the other hand shows that, at times, He was under the direct infulence of the HS when he makes direct and blod statements about The Word that only someone under the HS could ever make.
BOTH Gospels were written by inspired Men and both are the "words of God" though.

[Mitzy]

Is this true?

The jawed fraud

Between 1908 and 1912, Charles Dawson, an amateur fossil hunter,recovered pieces of an old human skull from a gravel pit in Piltdown,England.Further digging produced a lower jaw apelike in shape, butwith teeth too short for an ape. The skull and lower jaw were assignedto the same individual, who was said to be at least 500,000 years old.In December 1912, the world was told that Darwin's "missing link" hadbeen found. Though its editorial page revealed misgivings, the New YorkTimes ran a story on it headlined "Darwin Theory Proved True."In 1953, however, scientists proved the apelike jawbone very recent.Close inspection also revealed file marks on the teeth--they had beenwhittled down to make them shorter and more human-looking. And thebones had been treated with chemicals to increase their apparent age.In 1982, collagen testing proved conclusively that the jawbone was anorangutan's.Piltdown proved that even a multitude of experts, blinded bypreconceptions, could be deceived. As a result, an entire generation was deceived with them.Java Man was contemporary with modern humans. Today, however, Java Manremains in textbooks as one of evolution's undisputed "facts."Neanderthals were presented this way to the public--apish brutes,naked, hairy, and wielding clubs.However, in 1955, anatomists William J. Strauss of Johns HopkinsUniversity and A.J.E. Cave of St. Batholomew's Hospital Medical College(London) noted:"There is nothing to justify the common assumption that Neanderthal manwas other than a fully erect biped."

[William J. Strauss and A.J.E. Cave,"Pathology and the Posture of Neanderthal Man," Quarterly Review of Biology 32 (December1957)]

By the 1950s, Piltdown Man had been exposed as a fraud; Nebraska Manwas a pig's tooth and Neanderthals had turned out to be Home Sapiens.

[PaulSacramento]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man

It ( Piltdown Man)was a fraud, but not sure why Java Man was mentioned...

[Calum]

Calum,

I don't quite understand - you're saying in places where there were no hominids, animals quickly went extinct, but where hominids existed the rate of extinction was slower? That doesn't exactly support your theory... In fact, it seems to be working in reverse from what your whole point seems to be about. Please clarify?

It makes no sense to slowly and progressively create various hominids (I don't think any of these hominids came close to accomplishing the environmental destruction humans have reeked on the Earth) just to prepare the animal/plant kingdom for spiritual beings. Besides, to 'prepare' animals for spiritual beings means they would need to evolve anyway. The spiritual humans would be very different from the non-spirit hominids.

Where hominids existed, animals were able to adapt their behaviours to fear two legged hunters, who used tools and hunting technique which other predators did not use.

The Americas, Northern Eurasia, Australia and many larger islands lost the vast majority of their larger and all of their largest mammals. These are the areas with no evidence of hominids. Many studies have shown that humans were the, or at least one of the reasons for these extinctions.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 140706.htm
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi ... ne.0008331
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8112885.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17488447

Unlike animals (hominids) humans hunt for many reasons. They hunt for food, clothing, trophies, ritual, etc. Animals in areas that did not contain hominids were ill prepared to deal with two legged hunters. The hunters they knew to fear, had four legs.

That's ridiculous. Hominids were around for several million years, and did not come even close to wreaking the havoc that we were doing. The hominids of florez islands did not do this, and neither did the australopithecines, neanderthals, erectus, or heidelbergensis.
Genesis 1:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,(BR) so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
I interpret this passage to mean that prior to Adam, hominids were just another animal. They did not dominate the planet, but upon being given a spirit Adam could rule over the animals like no other hominid has before.

Don't waste your time posting a new topic, I have your answers:
1) When God warns Adam not to eat of the tree of Good and Evil, he says 'you will surely die'. However, he did eat of the tree. We know he died, but not physically. This is a spiritual reference.
2) Eve is called 'the mother of all living'. Does this mean she was the mother of elephants, chickens, and mice? No! This is a spiritual reference. She is the mother of all those who have spirit.
3) The Bible says God made man in his image. This is obviously a spiritual reference, as God is not material, and doesn't have eyes, a nose, feet, a mouth, etc, so we can conclude that Adam was made in God's spiritual image and not his physical one. That is to say, he was given spirit.

Actually, none of those answers are what I believe, nor what the Bible teaches. Although, #2 is close enough.

This is the Hebrew (transliteration) of Genesis 2:17:
Beyom (in the day) acholcha (you eat) mimenu (from it) mot (die) tamut (you die)

The back-to-back uses of mut (die) emphasize the certainty of the result. That is why most translations translate the two words as "surely die." The more I have looked at the sentence, the more I believe it was referring to when the outcome would become certain, not when the outcome would take place. "In the day you eat from it your dying shall be certain." Remember, Adam had access to the Tree of Life, so his death was not a certainty. By the way, the context is dealing with physical life and death, not spiritual.

In Genesis 3:4 the Serpent does not argue about the timing, he just denies the result. Also, God brings up the fact that Adam would not die immediately (Genesis 3:17), but that his death would take place (Genesis 3:19). "In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life." "....you will eat bread, until you return to the ground." The day Adam ate the fruit, God made his future death certain, by removing him from the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22-24).

This is very similar to what we see in 1 Kings 2:37, 42:
Beyom (in the day) [you leave Jerusalem] yadoa (know) teda (you know) ki (that) mot (die) tamut (you die). "In the day [you leave Jerusalem] you will know for sure that your dying is certain." Shimei's journey took at least 2 days and probably more like 3 or 4. Gath was at least 30 miles away and a day's journey was about 20-30 miles, plus he had to find his servants. Thus, the meaning was not that he would die on that very day.

In both cases the meaning was something like "once you do this, you can be sure that you will die." The phrase referred to when (the time that) the result would be made certain, not to the timing of the actual result (i.e. when death would take place).

I will post on the "image of God" soon.

An interesting point. I'll do more research, but I've never seen this translation before, so I can't be sure. Yet the spiritual interpretation makes more sense to me at the moment.

[Calum]

Neanderthals were presented this way to the public--apish brutes,naked, hairy, and wielding clubs.However, in 1955, anatomists William J. Strauss of Johns HopkinsUniversity and A.J.E. Cave of St. Batholomew's Hospital Medical College(London) noted:"There is nothing to justify the common assumption that Neanderthal manwas other than a fully erect biped."

Actually I agree with him here, since Neanderthals are fully erect biped. Everyone agrees on that now.

By the 1950s, Piltdown Man had been exposed as a fraud;

No worries: Most scientists were highly skeptical, and some even left it out of their evolutionary trees because it didn't make sense in human evolution. Piltdown man was no longer needed - it didn't even make sense.

Nebraska Manwas a pig's tooth

We've got to remember this was in the 1920s. Other scientists were highly skeptical of this idea. And it was not a pig tooth - it was a peccary tooth. These frauds didn't even line up with the evolutionary tree.

and Neanderthals had turned out to be Home Sapiens.

I don't ever remember that. There might be some controversy over what to call it, but this thing was not a Homo sapiens sapiens. Some call it Homo neadnertalensis, others call it Homo sapiens neanderthalensis - in any case, it's another species. Neanderthals aren't a problem, as they're not even considered ancestral to humans. Ancestral groups include Ardipithecus, Australopithecus afaransis, Australopithecus australis, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and I think a few others. Unlike those scanty frauds, these have been confirmed as genuine and are supported by the scientific community as authentic.