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I don't know if I will go see Creation. If it has subtitles, I'll probably skip it. If it has voiceovers, I may watch it if and when it comes to TV. Flipping through the channels I recently saw part of Inherit the Wind for the umpteenth time. Great movie. I highly recommend it.

Markie, can you not understand English? It seems that you won't get a chance to see it anyway - your benighted countrymen don't seem to want it distributed. Mind you, it does sound like it has a lot of deficiencies; getting it translated into your quaint colonial dialect "yo, whatever, girlfriend, talk to the hand"ish is probably not going to help. Sorry.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I caught part of the discussion on Newsnight, and noticed - once again - the absence of a credible Christian spokeperson to put the Biblcal position. (Kind of reminded me of a previous occasion on Newsnight, when it took 3 people to try to answer Ken Ham of AIG in another 'balanced' debate!!!!)

Interesting that the film has been given the title 'Creation'....wonder how much of that thought will come through? I can recommend the CIM documentary 'Voyage that shook the World' as thoughtful look at Darwin's life and work - and the conclusions that flow from it.

"I caught part of the discussion on Newsnight, and noticed - once again - the absence of a credible Christian spokeperson to put the Biblcal position."

Seems a very unpromising effort to make, trying to find a person who can credibly voice the Biblical position. There are enough complaints already about how the license fee money is spent.

But if it is alternative viewpoints you want, then why not let people hear all sides of the story and make up their minds from that? So I assume you would be very much in favour of airing origins views of Hindus, Muslims, Wiccans, Pastafarians, etc?

Is this the "biblical position" that suggests that coat mottling in domestic livestock is caused by the patterning on the barriers of their enclosures at the time of their parents mating? Most sensible Christians are much more respectful of Genesis than the fundamentalists - they realise that it is myth and folklore. That's it. They don't try to make a silk purse out of a sow's lug.

PK
Licence fee. I agree. Far too much evolutionist propaganda and brainwashing by the Beeb. It's almost as if they have an agenda.
The Darwin issue was fundamentally to do with the biblical position and so to go on about airing a multitude of views detracts from the point.
And Helio, up to your old tricks again. Keep repeating the same old unsubstantiated statements and knock the 'fundies'. You are every bit a fundy yourself, albeit, in a different direction.

FP, come back when you have an argument, instead of lame mud slinging, thankyou.

Richard Coles, a Church of England priest, was on the panel but obviously in Pastorphilip's view he was not competent to put 'the biblical position'. The programme was not, in any case, a debate over rival theories (evolution is a 'theory' in the sense that 'gravity' is a theory) but an exploration of aspects of the celebration of Darwin's 200th.

The discussion of the upcoming film Creation particularly interested me. They generally agreed that, as a 'biography', it was a bit of a travesty of the book 'Annie's Box' on which it is based and that the most moving scene was the death of an orangutan.

But everybody *loves* orangutans!

Whether religious America will even go to see the film is also an open question.

After initial opposition/skepicism in the US, there now appears to be a bidding war for the rights to show the film.

Side topic here, folks - Will, maybe you can help. Where did this crazy notion come from, that the Bible was true and had to be inerrant, an infallible guide to this, that & the other? Is it a purely Christian thing? The proof text in (I think) 2 Timothy is itself probably a fake (the "pastoral epistles" are generally agreed not to have been written by Paul), and even then, you'd need to agree with that in the first place before you could agree with it, if you see what I mean.

I have a friend who teaches evolutionary biology in Jerusalem. Even his ultra-orthodox Jewish students have no problems with evolution, or with certain historical discrepancies in the bible. Why do (some) Christians seem to deny the obvious? Who decided that the bible was the word of god?

Providing this gets through the moderation process......

Talking of films, it appears the creationists have been at it again:

Helio: can you post a link again to your blog ? I seem to have lost it.

Who decided that the bible was the word of god?

Answers in Genesis I think ! Well, the word according to Ken Ham anyway !

Helio #12

Your question in post 12 tells me nearly as much about your understanding of Christianity than anything else. Parrhasios said recently you were an evangelical (!) now I know better what he meant.

You ask, "Where did this crazy notion come from, that the Bible was true and had to be inerrant, an infallible guide to this, that & the other? Is it a purely Christian thing? The proof text in (I think) 2 Timothy..."

Golly, I sort of expected you to know the answer to your own question; and 'proof text'?, I mean PROOF TEXT!!, 'PROOF TEXT!' you're an 'evo' all right! Look, I don't *believe* in that approach to Christianity either, infact sometimes I wonder if there's actually any difference between what you and I have rejected of our Christian past! :-)

Anyway, your question. I'll spare you the theological treatise, but here's a pointer. Moses, Prophets, Israel, Jesus, Apostles, Church.

You know what, you're gonna have to stop being informed by Max - Kimberly Lucado and Coconut Cream, and try something a teensy bit more substantial.

G. Vos, K. Bailey, G. or J. Wenham, D.A. Carson.

At least then you might know what you've lost faith in.

:-)

It's gone very quiet...

H
It is not generally agreed that all the Pastorals were not written by Paul. And the issue isn't that simple - ancient letter writing was a group effort, especially when it came to rhetorical letters intended for public rading. So there would have been several individuals involved (minimally Paul and a secretary (who did more than transcrobe what Paul said).
GV

That is to say - differences in vocabulary can be attributed to different writing partners. The other argument against Pauline authorship is that Paul was a charismatic figure, who would have had no interest in setting up Church structures involving elders and deacons. It's difficult to reconcile that argument with Paul's advice to the Corinthians.
In any case, the alternative is usually someone in the Pauline circle - a Titus or Timothy.

GV

Graham, the argument against Saul Paulus writing some of the epistles attributed to him has a LOT more going for it than simple matters of the style of the bombast. Yes, a lot of them were gone over and altered and beefed up or even just *made* up, but that is my point. These are not the "word of god", and such a contention simply does not hold ANY water. The bible is a gaggle of purely human books, written purely by humans, and interpreted purely by humans. No surprisies there at all.

I think I know perfectly well what I criticise, and the arguments for divine influence are spectacularly weak - you could do a lot worse than listen to the most recent on this very topic.

Peter, do you mean to tell me that you can't Google Heliopolitan Nazareth?! :-)

Helio

I see you've posted and I wait with bated breath... what did he say, what did he say.... come on mods, come on!!

All the best for Nazareth, of course. Your trip actually is important.

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Yes, the podcast, reasonable doubts? Yes, doubts are reasonable, we've been there before, but never seem to have got to the depths of doubt.

Funny boys, tho', almost a good as the christian satirists :-) !! Witty banter certainly, a bit like this blog from time to time, but come on, what are you telling me via the poddy thing I don't already know, or, more importantly, what I haven't already doubted? They had a shockin long intro, don't you think, filling time, (like the praise band in church, maybe!) nice cliches too!, but a bit predictable.

mmm hu

Of course the unity of the bible doesn't prove it was God. Duh uh.

First point. Matt Markie and.... Look... come on.

Point 2 - Genesis 1 and 2. geeeeeeeee. Blown away, blown away, my Oklahoma home is blown away.

He said order. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Nooooooooooooooooooo. Pick up your game guys.

Now I'm bored and we're only a fifth way through the recording. It's like purgatory..... no.... it's like premoderation. They're doing this verse by verse, it's like church...... only worse.

And now a little voice inflection..... sorta funny I suppose.

Now he has said different "themes", are we getting somewhere, hush, listen carefully......... has he a point?

Nope!

Major disharmony! He said Major disharmony (and Colonel Mustard, yes it was Colonel Mustard in the desert with a feather quill!) Major disharmony folks, rip up your FWO's!

Point 3.......? nah we're still on Genesis.

Now they notice other duplicate stories. Mmmmmmm I wonder why?

Ideas anyone?

And so to two Goliaths, how long til' we get to the two donkeys?

So who are they trying to create a speed wobble in?

How many chariots! Holy Ben Hur, Batman! For pities sake.

Don't know if I can make it to the end.

I think I need a nice wee cup of tea. Pratts. The tea I mean.

He said themes again..... oh, blimey, now he's said Mat mark Louk, again....

Sorry, I'm off to watch CSI...

Well done, Peter - you are very gradually realising firstly that Josh McDowell is not exactly Mr Brainy. Yet, how many apologists have you heard trotting out the sheer rubbish that the bible is a "unity"? Quite a few - even people like William Lane Craig. But here is the problem - if they are using that as an *argument*, they are being dishonest - that is a trivially provable fact, as the doubtcasters show (yes, it's not new - we've know that the bible is full of errors for centuries). This should really make you question the other things they say too. Yes, maybe you've heard it all before, but a lot of people haven't. They don't realise that the bible is very very error prone.

And Nazareth is going to be *class*! I've now got legs like Alan Wells's uncle, and can pedal like the clappers. Ready to hit the road, if I make the target :-)

Hate to disappoint you H, but I haven't even read Josh McDowell.

The two of us just mean different things, don't we?

Helio

Rhetoric in ancient letter writing goes far, far beyond "the style of bombast".
You are also making a lot of assumption about the meaning of inspiration. I'm not sure that a Muslim would attribute this sort of inspiration to the Koran! I've heard people (and pastors)say silly, incoherent things about inspiration - the sort of thing "doubts" criticises. But I'm going with the Fathers and the Reformers. And Peter Morrow! I just don't believe anything like this.
That's why I don't like using terms like "inerrant". People assume I mean that all the numbers in the OT give an accurate head-count, or that there was no post exilic editorial work on the OT canon (Moses wrote in post-exilic Hebrew apparently!). I just don't believe these things! Neither do conservative seminaries like Westminster!

GV