Systematic Theology Part 4: Creation | Beach Bible Church

Systematic Theology Part 4: Creation | Beach Bible Church
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[@DaniilTimanovskiy]

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[@skippy675]

Kiddos are waking up from nap. This is interesting conversation. I'll have to get through the last 15 minutes or so another time. As I said in an earlier comment. The biggest difference I see between a faith based world view and a scientific one is that the believer tends to see a clear top down, personally designed, unchallengable structure and code to which a creator made. Top down is admittedly the much easier model to wrap your head around.
I see it as bottom up. I don't know how life began, if there is an objective meaning to life, though we certainly each give our lives as much or as little value as we decide to. Even morality itself. I believe all morality is subjective. That doesn't mean every man (or woman) for themselves. Far from it. Morality is something we have to hash out and come to agreement on collectively as a social species. The key driver is the weighing of the consequences of each action on others, and whether consent is being considered. This is why, even as an athiest, I vehemently oppose abortion. Abortion obviously bypasses the consent of a developing life. It falls into the same category of rape or any other form of murder. Just as predictably, I see no moral issue with same gender relationships so long as they are consensual. There are no victims, no crime, when two adults agree to express love in whatever means they decide. Of course, sleeping around can cause a lot of pain and chaos regardless of genders involved, but committed relationships between two individuals who genuinely love and care for one another cannot be sinful, regardless of God's opinion on such matters. I say this as someone who has not the slightest sexual attraction to a member of the same gender.
Hope I am not spamming too much.

[@bendewet2459]

Who knows what's right and what's wrong :😮😊NOBODY

[@skippy675]

Also, "starting with the text" requires a number of logical and rational steps which are very much subjective. One has to decide which text to start with, that is why The Bible over the Qur'an or the Vedas. Even after choosing the Bible for example, and deciding it is the word of God, one must still decide why or even if following the word of God is something one ought do.
All of these decisions occur outside of the framework of belief. All require rational and logical decisions before one can even entertain the concept of faith.

[@skippy675]

It seems like you do nail it though with the observation that faith is very much a "top down" model, where science is by contrast "bottom up".
Faith takes the view that everything was planned, ordered, dictated and designed from a singular source. Top down. All hierarchies predetermined.
Science though appears to reveal to us that the diversity of life, hierarchies, even morality itself within our species developed from the bottom up in reaction to the conditions which exist.

[@skippy675]

An hour had no meaning until human beings decided to give it meaning. Just as the idea that there are 360 degrees in a circle is a human construct. The idea that there are 24 hours in a day is a human construct as well. Both are arbitrary ways to "divide up" into parts a cyclic and repeating whole. We could just as easily say a day has 10 hours or 50 hours if we simply lengthen or shorten the definition of an hour.
What does have more objective meaning is one rotation of the earth on its axis, or one complete trip around a circle (circumference). Since the sun was only created on day 3 per the Genisis story, days one and two have no relatable meaning to us. There would have been no object (the sun) to give light to earth, thus no day or night. Some say that God was the light before the sun and other stars were formed. OK. But God is supposedly omnipresent, meaning everywhere. How could the light of God only illuminate one side of the earth? How could there be day and night with God himself as the only source of light? There could not.
This immediately undermines any chance of taking the creation story literally. No sun until day three, is nonsensical since both the sun and earth must be present at the same time for a day to make any sense.
I have no idea if the universe simply always existed or was brought into existence by a creator. Neither does anyone else. We each have our beliefs and ideas. I did enjoy the discussion though.

[@skippy675]

The "no intermediary forms" idea is simply a false one. I don't quite get why evolution is so troublesome to believers. Maybe it's due to a lack of understanding. Evolution makes absolutely no attempt to describe or account for the origin of life on earth. That remains a mystery. It simply gives an explanation of how life proliferated and branched out into various species after inception.
In no way does evolution state or even intimate that a chimpanzee turned into a human one day for example. We simply share a common ancestor. Just like it is impossible to pinpoint the exact point on the visible spectrum of light where red stops being red and starts being orange. It is equally impossible to distinguish the exact point where the human species began to branch off from its shared ancestors with other great apes. How any of this is incompatible with a creator God is beyond me.
I think the denier of evolution has a big job ahead of him or her to explain the diversity within the human species. I've heard guys like Ken Ham take a swing at it, and still cringe when I consider the depth of his ignorance.