Saturday, August 29, 2015

Why Do Some Christians Accept Theistic Evolution?


by Cowboy Bob Sorensen

They Say Compromise Is Good 









What About Theistic Evolution?



Your Choice Has Tremendous Importance


Friday, August 14, 2015

Lack of Evidence, Lack of Faith

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen

A documentary movie called Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus by Timothy Mahoney has been causing quite a stir in Christian and secular circles. It has received praise from many Christian organizations, as well as creation science ministries such as Answers In Genesis and Creation Ministries International. You can buy it, or rent it online from places like Amazon. This is not a review, as I have not seen the movie or read the book — yet. My purpose here is a mite different.

I was listening to Derek Gilbert's interview of Mr. Mahoney on "A View from the Bunker". From about the 2 minutes 40 seconds mark through 11 minutes, he gave background on what motivated him to do investigations and make the film. He went to a dig site in Egypt for Goshen, and it was the area of Rameses (but I don't know which Rameses he meant). He asked an archaeologist if anything had been found about the Israelites having been there, and  the answer was that nothing was found so far.

Timothy Mahoney, maker of "Patterns of Evidence" was prompted to research by a crisis of faith based on lack of evidence. He was taken in by fallacious reasoning. The Christian faith is based on God's Word, and evidence needs to be properly evaluated and subordinate to Scripture.

This cause Tim a crisis of faith. What if it was all false? Exodus is essential to Judaism and Christianity. After all, the consensus of many scholars is that the Israelites were never in Egypt. Mahoney then did some research and learned that there have been questions raised about the chronologies and record keeping of ancient Egypt. He decided (my wording here) to follow where the evidence leads. Correctly noting that people interpret evidence according to their presuppositions, he wondered what would happen if researchers were able to leave those behind.

Unfortunately, Mr. Mahoney appears to have been basing his faith on evidence only. He must have known that skeptical archaeologists have often used an argument from ignorance to "refute" the Bible; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, you know. "We cannot find archaeological evidence or written records of the Israelite exodus from Egypt about 3,500 years ago. Therefore, it did not happen." Two of the many examples of where scoffers were proved spectacularly wrong include the claim that the Hittites never existed, and that Belshazzar never existed (or if he did, he was certainly no king). They also appeal to the majority, and they appeal to authority by citing consensus, but a consensus is not a guarantee of something being factual; consensus has been wrong, and will be wrong again. It's disappointing that scholars resort to such shoddy reasoning as the argument from ignorance and of relying on consensus, but what's worse is that people believe "scientists" and "scholars" because of who they are.

The good news here is that archaeologists are beginning to come around and reexamine the Egyptian record keeping. Serious flaws have been found, and when given the proper perspective, suddenly the Bible is proven right — again.

Evidence changes, but the Word of God stands forever (Isaiah 40:8)! I disremember when this was, but some "deep time" Christian was saying that the Big Bang was proof that God exists, especially since the Big Bang had been proved by gravitational waves and BICEP2. Except that the Big Bang is loaded with serious flaws and bad reasoning, and the BICEP2 thing was retracted shortly after that jasper made his assertion. Where is his faith now, since his "proof" was faulty?

Please note that I am in no wise criticizing Timothy Mahoney. It's tough to think that your saddle has been uncinched and you're going to fall off your horse. For him, the scoffing got mighty loud in his mind, and he saw repercussions throughout Scripture and he wanted to do something about it. I reckon from what people are saying about Patterns of Evidence that he did an outstanding job.

Genesis is foundational to the gospel message, and the source of all major Christian doctrines. Proponents of amoeba-to-archaeologist evolution use the fallacies listed above, and more, to cling to their faith in evolution to suppress the truth (Rom. 1:18-19). Exodus is also extremely important, but is not quite so viciously attacked as Genesis. If secular scientists could be like some of these archaeologists and see that the evidence does not support evolution, there would be even more people abandoning evolutionism and embracing biblical creation.

The Christian faith is to be based on faith in the Word of God (Psalm 138:2, 2 Peter 1:19). No, I don't support fideism, reason and evidence support the Christian faith and are not contrary to it. What I am advocating is that evidence is used properly. When we elevate science, evidence, and other things to a magisterial position, they become the supreme authority and the Word of God is subordinate. It's supposed to be the other way around.

Saturday, August 1, 2015

The Label "Christian" is No Guarantee of Content

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen

Christian bookstores and distributors are not doing their jobs as a charity, it's a business. I get that. They sell things that will make a profit and pay the bills, just like anyone else. For that matter, many Christian publishers are owned by secular outfits that are trying to make money from the "religious" market. Just because something has a label doesn't mean the label is true. There are "Christian" groups that are in no wise Christian, many false teachers, and even cults pretending to be creationists, such as this one.

It's a tough call for what you run in a shop or online company. Companies can be big, and you know how big companies are, they're in a hurry to get more bang for their buck out of their employees. What books, CDs, videos and such are going to sell? Sell things with sound doctrine? Not hardly! Sheeple want to hear something that makes them feel good, or is new and different (2 Tim. 4:3), instead of continuing in the faith and in sound doctrine (Col. 1:23, 1 John 2:19).

I'm not going to teach eschatology here, but I do believe that we're in the last days. One sign of that is that people are becoming more wicked in general, as prophesied (e.g., Luke 17:26-27, 2 Peter 3:3-7). Worse, there is apostasy among Christians. (Note the struggle to proclaim the authority of Scripture, beginning in Genesis 1, as there are many compromisers in that area.) We should not be surprised when people want to forsake strong doctrine for teachings that make them feel good, and that they want to turn a profit even though they are promoting false doctrines.

Writing posts and articles for Piltdown Superman, plus correspondence, interviews, reading, podcasts, videos, all that gets a mite wearisome. So, I occasionally indulge in some Western stories. I was doing a search for Christian Westerns. I'm not a big fan of Christian fiction because it's written to sell (some fiction is so downright bad, I wonder if they really expected people to buy it), and much of it is trite. Still, I looked anyhow. Found lots of romance Westerns, and I'd rather eat rattlesnake than read those. You can substitute chicken in the recipe, but I'm starting to wander on the wrong trail here.

Anyway. I found myself on a site called "Family Christian". They're selling a book in a series called "The Gunsmith" called Silver War. My brain hollered, "Whoa!" I sent an e-mail to them the same day (July 25, 2015), asking why they are selling "adult" material and copied a description from the Gunsmith Wiki. Them books ain't neither family nor Christian! 

Well, I got a reply from customer service that same day. She said that she would have IT remove the book, and said something about "As you could see this doesn’t show details or any information on the item..." First, the cover plainly says, "Adult Western". Second, that's no excuse for such sloppy checking before putting items in their store. As of today, August 1, 2015, it's still there. Was I lied to? Incompetence? Something else? I don't rightly know. EDIT: I see on November 17, 2018, that it was finally removed.

Christians need to be on guard at all times against not only false teachings, but where they spend their money. If it comes from a Christian distributor or publisher, there's no guarantee that you'll be getting valid Christian material.