On Creationism

With Christmas so near, I thought it would be interesting to review the evidence for the virgin birth. Paul The earliest writing we have is Paul, who says nothing of a virgin birth, but then again says nothing of Jesus' life at all, so we cannot really draw any conclusions there. Mark I think it is more significant that the virgin birth is missing from Mark, who, afterall, wrote a lot about Jesus' life. Mark is supposedly the account of Peter told through Mark. Peter was not there at the birth, so one might excuse Mark on this basis, but Peter was also not there at Jesus' baptism, and that is present in Mark. The reason, as argued here , is that Mark believed Jesus was adopted the Son of God at the baptism. To Mark, Jesus' birth was of no great significance, and when Mark was writing it is likely that the story of a virgin birth had yet to appear in the Christian community. None of the early texts mention a virgin birth because no one had heard of ...

Modern Christianity asserts an eternal Jesus, existing through all time as part of the trinity, however, groups of very early Christians believed Jesus was adopted by God, originally around the time of his crucifixion/resurrection or ascension, and later at his baptism. The Gospel of Mark indicates that its author subscribed to the latter view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoptionism The Adoption Account From the first chapter: Mark 1:9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son;[d] with you I am well pleased.” This is a description of the adoption. God is choosing Jesus, and then the dove descends to confirm or bestow Jesus' special status. Bear in mind that Mark explicitly states that the beginning of the goo...

The Problem of Evil is evidence against Christianity because it highlights a major inconsistency in the belief system. Christianity posits a morality system in which rape is wrong, and in which it is wrong to stand by and allow evil Christianity posits an all-powerful, perfectly good God who stands by and allows rape These two claims are contradictory.

No, not that information cannot be explained by evolution, but that, it points out to intelligent design. And no, intelligent design advocates had explained excellently on what is the issue: http://creation.com/laws-of-information-1 , http://creation.com/information-science-and-biology . I said I would address the points in the linked articles in another thread, so here it is. I am going to concentrate on the second article; I think the argument is pretty much the same, and both are by the same auther, Dr Werner Gitt is described as a "Creationist Information Scientist" by Creation.com, though his background seems to be in engineering. This is a take down of his article "Information, science and biology", which can be found here: http://creation.com/information-science-and-biology Here we will set out in a new direction, by seeking a definition of information with which it is possible to formulate laws of nature. Information is the basis of...

Modern Biblical scholarship generally holds that mark was written first, despite the church tradition. The majority of NT scholars hold to Markan priority (either the two-source hypothesis of Holtzmann or the four-source hypothesis of Streeter). https://bible.org/article/synoptic-problem Still, as we enter a new century, some form of the Two Source hypothesis continues to be preferred by an overwhelming majority of critically trained New Testament scholars as the theory that is best able to resolve the synoptic problem. http://virtualreligion.net/forum/complete.html It is the near-universal position of scholarship that the Gospel of Matthew is dependent upon the Gospel of Mark. This position is accepted whether one subscribes to the dominant Two-Source Hypothesis or instead prefers the Farrer-Goulder hypothesis. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/matthew.html Argument from Grammar I am no expert in Koine greek, so will just quote a couple of web sites. Stein lists ...

When do you achieve personhood? Many Christians (but certainly not all) say a fertilised human egg is a person, and use this to argue against abortion. Putting this in perspective, up to 75% of fertilised eggs - or "people" as these Christians call them - never make it to term; many never even get embedded in the womb. I am not talking about abortion, but nature taking its course. That means that for the 130 million people born each year, there are nearly 400 million "people" who die before they are even born . And if Christianity is right, this is a system God has engineered. God is causing 75 "people" to die before they were even born every minute ! Of course, Christians argue God slaughtering million, billions even is perfectly moral - they have to to excuse the genocides like the Flood. I disagree. What the Bible actually say Let us see what the Biblical situation really is. Exodus 21:22 “When men strive together and hit a pregnant ...

This is looking at a paper I came across recently, and seems topic as it is kind of Easter or thereabouts. The paper can be found here: http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1096&context=neil_foster We have almost exactly the same material to make a decision about the events of the first Easter. Of course that happened a long time ago, probably in 33 AD, nearly 2000 years ago. But we have a plethora of reports and evidence of the same sort- works written by eyewitnesses, works written by people who interviewed eyewitnesses, things we can dig up from the same era. And what this article suggests is that that evidence can be assessed and weighed up, and supported as reliable, by the legal principles used in courts every day to make key decisions about people’s lives. Big claims. Do we really have "works written by eyewitnesses"? I think not. Do we have evidence anyone "interviewed eyewitnesses"? Not that I am aware of. Has a...

A collection of links to interesting articl;es on the origin of life and other things, updated as and when I come across them. Start of the Universe https://www.edge.org/conversation/alan_guth-the-inflationary-universe   Building blocks of life In their paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry, the team describes how they were able to map reactions that produced two and three-carbon sugars, amino acids, ribonucleotides and glycerol—the material necessary for metabolism and for creating the building blocks of proteins and ribonucleic acid molecules and also for allowing for the creation of lipids that form cell membranes. In their paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry , the team describes how they were able to map reactions that produced two and three-carbon sugars, amino acids, ribonucleotides and glycerol—the material necessary for metabolism and for creating the building blocks of proteins and ribonucleic acid molecules and also for allowing for ...

When you look at all the great things mankind has done, it can be hard to believe we are closely related to chimpanzees. Is this a fair comparison? Thousands of years ago, mankind did not have any technology; people then had no wheel, no fire, let alone aeroplanes and the internet. But everyone still agrees they were still human. If we are comparing chimps to humans, a more reasonable comparison is with primitive man, not modern man. Clearly there are differences (language and abstract thought seem the most important to me), but modern science is doing a lot to understand exactly how we are different, and how those differences evolves. Here is a fascinating paper on just that: http://today.duke.edu/2015/02/bigbrain The human HARE5 and the chimpanzee HARE5 sequences differ by only 16 letters in their genetic code. Yet, in mouse embryos the researchers found that the human enhancer was active earlier in development and more active in general than the chimpanzee enhancer. ....

This is just a link to a very well-written article at Biologos about the origins of creationism in Seventh Day Adventism, and a supposed prophet called Ellen White. http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/Giberson-scholarly-essay-1.pdf

As I look at the account in the gospels, I see a process of embellishment. It is not a simple progression, I suspect the authors of Luke and Matthew were working separately, so embellished in different directions. Here are some examples, in no particular order. The Resurrection Mark's account is clearly the least elaborate. In the later gospels, we can see bits that look to have been added to counter specific objections: Jesus was merely a ghost: Luke 24:39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41 And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish,[b] 43 and he took it and ate before them. The disciples stole the body: Matthew 27:64 Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disci...