Re: Observe the trend

On 14/03/2025 12:33 am, Martin Harran wrote:

On Thu, 13 Mar 2025 15:18:54 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> wrote:
 

On 12/03/2025 11:57 pm, Martin Harran wrote:

On Wed, 12 Mar 2025 07:04:31 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> wrote:
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On 12/03/2025 12:51 am, Martin Harran wrote:

On Tue, 11 Mar 2025 23:25:24 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> wrote:
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On 11/03/2025 4:54 am, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

On 2025-03-10 11:13:56 +0000, MarkE said:
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On 10/03/2025 6:27 pm, Martin Harran wrote:

On Mon, 10 Mar 2025 15:14:27 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> wrote:
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On 9/03/2025 8:59 pm, Martin Harran wrote:

On Sun, 9 Mar 2025 17:48:41 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> wrote:
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[...]
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You're finally getting it! To creatures like us, special creation
by God
looks like magic, yes. God conceives in his mind and speaks into
existence.

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""Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the
heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and
orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about
the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years
and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so
forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and
experience.
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"Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a
Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking
nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such
an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a
Christian and laugh it to scorn."
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St Augustine
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Augustine is referring to the _what_, not the _how_, right?

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He is referring to exactly what you are doing.
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Once again we disagree.

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You may like to imagine you are disagreeing with Martin, but it's quite
clear to me that you are disagreeing with St Auustine, probably because
you haven't bothered to try to understand his point.
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My understanding is Augustine is warning that if Christians claim the
Bible teaches something demonstrably false about the natural world, it
brings Christianity into disrepute and invites ridicule from educated
non-believers.
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If my understanding is correct, then it's not applicable here, since I'm
making no claims of or reference to the Bible.

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Are you seriously claiming that speaking things into life is not a
reference to the Bible?
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My bad, I'd lost track of the context, I thought it was in relation to NS.
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"speaking things into life" is a reference to the book of Genesis,

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So you are doing exactly what St. Augustine warned about.

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No, I'm not.

 You are rejecting scientific explanation and quoting from the Bible as
an alternative explanation. How is that not what St. Augustine warned
about?
 

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so
I'll modify my response to say that this far from "demonstrably false".
It is orthodox Christian teaching,

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Name one mainstream denomination that teaches that 'speaking into
life' should be taken literally and evolution dismissed.

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As I've said before, members of various denominations subscribe to a
range of interpretations of the biblical account, ALL of which involve
God creating, i.e. "speaking into existence":

 Do any of the mainstream denominations take "speaking into existence"
literally as you do?
 

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1. TE (front-loaded) God speaks into initial conditions
2. TE (Martin Harran) God speaks ???
3. TE (guided) God speaks into being gradually
4. Progressive Creation God speaks into being progressively
5. OEC/YEC/ID God speaks into being directly/other
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"And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds
fly above the earth across the vault of the sky." So God created the
great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water
teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every
winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good."
(Genesis 1:20-21)

 So you are a Bible literalist. I'm glad we got that much clarified.

How did you get "Bible literalist" from my list of mostly non-literal interpretations of Genesis 1?

 

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and something I and many scientists
who are Christians believe.
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The timescale God used (days or millions of years) and the way (deism,
TE, PC, OEC, ID, YEC, other) are of course widely debated.

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