Thanks for all this CC. I suppose Christians(the vast minority who care about this that is) have to be some sort of "Creationist". The "Creationism" I go for is this. God in the beginning got the ball running. He created everything, through seemingly natural ways. I think He wanted scientists to figure it all out, I guess where they'll come unstuck is at the beginning of our universe. Even then He may of made that natural, who knows? We will eventually. I was unaware that Huge had a nickname, I'm pretty certain it's his cock. You can't miss it when he's wearing certain trousers.
Thousands, if not millions of students and readers alike turned away from God as a direct result of evolution.
Not sure about the design element but: John 1 In the beginning was the Word(Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.2 He was with God in the beginning.3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
Yah, Ross probably belongs to the "Elohim is many or at least two" school of thought, wherein Christ existed before being incarnated as a human being (in the New Testament). Leaving the question (since Ross isn't a Young Earth creationist) of what the "God Family" was doing during all those billions of years when life on Earth was restricted to microorganisms. And even when multicellular life was finally introduced, it would still be hundreds of millions of years until humans entered the picture. One explanation might be that the passage of time in the supernatural is linear, whereas time in the natural world is akin to the Jeremy Bearimy timeline (video below explains it). Which would actually be the opposite of the situation in The Good Place, where Jeremy Bearimy time instead applied to the realm of immortal beings, rather than the passage of time on Earth,. video link --> Jeremy Bearimy: How time works in the afterlife
Not sure what you are on about here. It is standard Christian theology that Christ, the second person of the Trinity, existed before the incarnation. Et ex patre natum, ante omnia saecula appears in the Nicene creed, recited in church services across Christendom every Sunday for centuries.
It's still a matter of how could the very issue or question arise if it stemmed from the POV of the mainstream? Accordingly, Ross apparently partakes in that school of thought (however variously labeled) and does not belong to the category of groups below... Nontrinitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontrinitarianism INTRO: Nontrinitarianism is a form of Christianity that rejects the mainstream Christian theology of the Trinity—the belief that God is three distinct hypostases or persons who are coeternal, coequal, and indivisibly united in one being, or essence (from the Ancient Greek ousia). Certain religious groups that emerged during the Protestant Reformation have historically been known as antitrinitarian. In terms of number of adherents, nontrinitarian denominations comprise a small minority of modern Christians. After the denominations in the Oneness Pentecostal movement, the largest nontrinitarian Christian denominations are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, La Luz del Mundo, and Iglesia ni Cristo. There are a number of other smaller groups, including Christadelphians, Church of the Blessed Hope, Christian Scientists, Dawn Bible Students, Living Church of God, Assemblies of Yahweh, Members Church of God International, Unitarian Christians, Unitarian Universalist Christians, The Way International, the Philadelphia Church of God, The Church of God International, the United Church of God, Church of God General Conference, Restored Church of God, Christian Disciples Church, and Church of God of the Faith of Abraham. _
Isn’t that just a roundabout way of saying Ross is a regular Christian? As to why regular Christianity has this belief, one could delve into the theology of the Trinity, I suppose, but that would seem to have little to do with what makes the views of Ross distinctive.
"Regular christian" is an umbrella term subsuming multiple attributes. IOW, it doesn't clarify or zero in specifically on why Christ would have been around before the New Testament era to design or create dinosaurs (in the context of such beliefs and puzzled inquiries). _
OK, so the issue you want to explore is the theology of "Et ex Patre natum, ante omnia saecula", is it? Perhaps a good start might be this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-existence_of_Christ. A lot of it comes from St. John's gospel, evidently, as already alluded to by davewhite. As for designing or creating dinosaurs, I don't really know what OECs tend to believe. However I suspect as they deny evolution, apart perhaps from what they call "micro-evolution", they must indeed think that God created a sequence of creatures at different times. To be honest, the bit I think ought to be most troublesome for Old Earth creationists is the Genesis notion that the Original Sin of Adam brought death into the world. If one takes that literally, the globe should have been stuffed with vast numbers of hitherto immortal organisms!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Well if learning the truth about the history of life on earth caused someone to lose their faith in the supernatural so be it, I guess.
No, I don't need more redundancy about something I knew about to begin with -- where I merely affirmed davewhite04's response and elucidated slightly. With regard to God supposedly being especially preoccupied with humans, what actually sprang off from that first part of Reply #25 was: "Leaving the question (since Ross isn't a Young Earth creationist) of what the 'God Family' was doing during all those billions of years when life on Earth was restricted to microorganisms. And even when multicellular life was finally introduced, it would still be hundreds of millions of years until humans entered the picture." Although the "Jeremy Bearimy" explanation was presented as a facetious possibility (and reversed from the original), there are Christian apologists who do seem to contend that God apprehends Earthly events via a different clock. Derived from Bible passages like below. That's what I was playing off of, and perhaps the "God Family" not being bored after all during those billions of years (due to absence of humans to heap wrath and blessings upon), if the intervals passed by more quickly -- or irregularly like Jeremy Bearimy time -- for divine beings. 2 Peter 3:8: “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day”. _
What I meant was that without Jesus nothing would of existed, with Jesus everything existed. ID hasn't really got anything to do with it, it's more of a philosophy than science. For example, ID invokes the supernatural, which is not science so ID is by all accounts unscientific, yet in America they wanted it taught in schools as science. And scientists still argue that ID is science.
I’m not sure I’ve come across the idea that God is especially preoccupied with humanity. Isn’t there something about not one sparrow falling to the ground…..? But who knows what OECs may think. (The C S Lewis view, I think, would be that God may have also had other sentient beings to care for, in other parts of the cosmos.)
No they don’t. Or only a very few with a particular religious axe to grind that warps their judgement.
