Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed on Showtime

ExpelledIn case you missed it at the theater, Evolution News reminds us you can catch Ben Stein’s “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” on Showtime (if you have it) several times over the next week or so, plus from On Demand:
On Showtime 2
12/16/09 at 11:15 AM

On Showtime Showcase
12/17/09 at 6:15 PM

On Showtime
12/19/09 at 5:15 PM

On Showtime
12/19/09 at 4:30 AM

On Showtime Showcase
12/21/09 at 10:00 PM

On Demand
Available from 12/11/09 to 01/07/10

You can read reviews of Expelled from Dr. Theo and me when we saw the film.

If you dare watch it with an open mind, you just might be stunned.

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Note: Reader comments are reviewed before publishing, and only salient comments that add to the topic will be published. Profanity is absolutely not allowed and will be summarily deleted. Spam, copied statements and other material not comprised of the reader’s own opinion will also be deleted.

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  • Brian Rutledge
    Bob If you get a chance, Youtube Beatles 3000. I think I understand what you mean and what happens when scientists make assumptions on insufficient evidence. Enjoy
  • That's a good one. Thanks. Watched it a while ago with my brother-in-law who is a musical genius (literally) and he enjoyed it, too. Tells an important truth with good humor.
  • Brian Rutledge
    Bob We could discuss whether geocentism is Biblical or not all day, but I bet the writers of the Bible felt all truth came from God and they believed 'that the earth didn't move' was true, so therefore it came from God since all truth did, However, since I wasn't there to ask them, we will never know if the Biblical authors got their belief of geocentrism from God or from just ignorant astronomy of the day.

    Your point on thunder and lightning is taken, but a creation science teacher who is asked WHY thunder and lightning occur must give two answers. One is the conditions of God's natural laws are just right so it happens and also the cause of these conditions being right is SOMETIMES because He is wrathful.You would have to tell the students that not always lightning happens when he's mad, but sometimes it does to cover the 'why question' honestly and completely. Right ?The test question would look like this

    Why does lightning and thunder occur ?

    A) God's natural laws dictate it
    B) God is angry
    C) Both
    D) Neither
    E) A only
    F) B only

    This example is why people like me worry about ID and Creation Science being taught



    .
  • We've covered before that when dealing with science in general (rather from a theological perspective), the most common answer to the question is most appropriate and acceptable (e.g. 99 times out of a hundred OR MORE, the simple, scientific answer regarding the mechanics of the phenomenon).

    Creation scientists are just as interested in figuring out the mechanics of the universe as are atheistic ones.

    Anything else I failed to address, Dr. Theo did brilliantly.
  • Brian Rutledge
    I agree that creation scientists are just as interested in figuring out the mechanics of the universe as are secular scientists. I was refering to how creation science is taught, which is really only in home school courses. I reviewed one science course recently, along with the tests and was stunned at how many answers required a student answer that ....say.... God was responsible for such and such natural law.Even the math portion made reference to Gods wisdom is creating mathematics. That's why I am opposed to creation science or ID being taught in the public arena, if they insist this be taught.
  • julien
    Dear Brian,

    What I feel very frustrating about science based on religious belief is that it is so subjective.

    For example, let's they you belive in the bible, then you think the earth is about 6000 years old, and that god made it in 6 days.
    Now if you were born in asia and buddhist, you would not even mind about the origin of earth (since it has been left unanswered by the buddha). Were you an hindou you would believe in multiple gods, and that the earth was created from a piece of egg shell...
    Each and every religion claims to be the only true one, so how to know which one is actually true?

    Contray to subjective visions of the world given by religions, science is based on facts, and logic. Which can be shared and discussed all around the world in order to obtain a consensus. No matter where I am born, how I was educated and so on...Science will still hold the same truth, it is universal. So that's why it has more value to explain the world than religion, and make more sense in my eyes.
  • Oh, if only science were based on facts and logic. It is anything but...at least in the modern usage of the term "science." True science is indeed based on facts and logic, but the vast majority of what passes itself off as "science" today is nothing but conjecture and religious faith.

    No one alive today was present when fossils were deposited, nor are there any written eyewitness testimonies to those events. Yet evolutionists claim with granite certainty that such-and-such organism was deposited such-and-such million years ago and such-and-such organism evolved into such-and-such organism.

    Yet there is not a shred of reliable proof of any of these claims. It takes religious faith to believe such things.

    Ironically, evolution and materialist theory is the epitome if illogic. These theories utterly depend on events which defy science: material coming into existence from nothing (a violation of observed scientific laws), matter spontaneously organizing into higher states of complex order (a violation of observed scientific laws), life springing from lifeless material (a violation of observed scientific laws), information that is coherent and meaningful springing spontaneously into existence on its own (a violation of observed scientific laws), organisms gaining new and useful genetic information that is successfully passed on from one generation to the next creating a new organism (a violation of observed scientific laws) and so on.

    And I'm sorry, but "It could have" and "Maybe" and "might have" and "may be possible" don't count as scientific fact.

    Materialism and evolution are illogical and impossible according to their own key claims, yet many continue to believe in them. Creation science is at the very least logical and consistent within its own framework.

    It takes far more faith to believe in an illogical and impossible theory that is short on concrete facts to back it up than it does to believe in a logical and possible theory that is short on concrete facts to back it up.
  • Brian rutledge
    Well I agree with Julian in that science is a universal language. Any prior controversies in science have always been sorted out by science and not religious beliefs. The past proves that.

    Bob, no one today was alive either when the books of the Bible were written, but you accept them as truth. Being there=truth is an old tired argument and not valid.

    You continually say that evolution and materialism depend on events that defy science itself and always use the example that science claims 'that material comes into existence out of nothing'. no it doesn't. your talking about cosmologic evolution and the big Bang and what was present beofre the Big Bang. Science never says there was nothing. It says that time and space and the laws of physics as we know them now didn't exist, but science claims we don't know yet what was present pre big Bang.That creationist also is tired and untruthful.

    Now while science claims we don't know what was present, we do know that quantum physics shows that subatomic particles can appear from nothing randomly and chaotically. These particles do come from nothing. We also know other starnge things like one of these particles can occupy two places in the universe at the samr time depending on where and how they are observed.We don't know the laws of nature prior to the BB, but no where will you find a reputable scientist stand up and say we came from nothing. And quantum physics shows it is possible and does happen
  • We have an unbroken chain of witness to the writing of the books of the Bible and tremendous evidence of their authenticity and accuracy even over thousands of years (ex: we have fragments and full texts going back 2,000 years or more that can be compared to more modern copies and they match)

    With the theories and wild, illogical guesswork of evolution we have...yes, a big nothing.

    I see that you're again dodging and being disingenuous about the Big Bang; don't feel too bad--virtually all evolutionists and materialists do it when they're caught with their pants down about the huge holes in their theory.

    The universe had to come from somewhere, and if there was no creator of it, then where did it come from? The usual explanation is that the universe exploded into being at the Big Bang, usually with the source of that aid to be a singularity or some such object. But where did the singularity come from? Apparently nothing.

    And if it did come from something, what was it? Was it created? (Shudder) Such a thought could not possibly be tolerated in the "open minded" materialist/naturalist community. So did this universe slip through from another universe? If so, congratulations, but you've only moved your question of ultimate origin back one step, avoiding the inevitable for a moment more. Who created that universe?

    And on what do you base this theory of one universe spawning the existence of a "child" universe? What scientific evidence of such an epic event do you have...beyond pure conjecture? None. Not a shred. Such a thing would be fantastically beyond any known laws of nature in this universe...and if you're saying that different laws might exist outside of our universe...why could not such an environment allow for the existence of God? (Double shudder)

    You see, while your self-imposed laws of science (as you believe them to be) don't allow for something that can't be tested or quantified (as long as it's name is "God"), you have to go looking outside your own self-imposed boundaries because there isn't sufficient evidence within your self-imposed boundaries to explain key aspects of the universe as we know it. Meanwhile, the creation science framework does allow for the existence of objects and forces beyond the laws of science, and is completely logical within its own framework.

    I see that you also continue to fail to grasp the difference between conjecture and fact--and contradict yourself as you do. First, you say that materialists don't say something can come from nothing (a contradiction of scientific law), then you say we know subatomic particles appear from nothing. Well which is it? Perhaps it is impossible to say which it is, since what you say we know is itself only theory and assumption.

    I honestly have a hard time dealing with how phenomenally hard it is for materialists and naturalists to get a handle on the difference between a theory and solid scientific fact. I can only attribute it to the spiritual blindness (i.e. an inability to recognize something which is caused by an external spiritual influence) described in the Bible. Perhaps this is one of the best proofs yet of the existence of the spiritual realm.
  • Brian Rutledge
    What I am trying to point out is that it is YOU who is saying that prior to the singularity there had to be nothing. It is you who says that science is also claiming that. You are wrong. Science just says we don't know what was there prior to the BB yet. May never know.What science is saying is that the laws of physics were different but we don't know what they were. Science admits it just doesn't know. Science says it may yet find out like it found out about subatomic particles that no one could conceive of 100 years ago. Who knew. But what science DOES know is that it can never prove or disprove a deity. Things of that nature are out of its purvue and science is just being honest when it says the supernatural is out of our purvue. It would be like asking a teacher or person to show how there might be a God using the simple subject of mathematical addition.

    Now while science strongly states it doesn't have a clue what was there prior to the BB, science also says we happened to have discovered something unusual in quantum physics. Quantum reveals that something can come from nothing. It may not even be related to the origins of the universe. It is just something that has been observed.

    It is you who keeps saying that science makes all these assumptions and the making of all these assumptions means nothing. I would think you would object even more to science making the assumption that there could be a creator when it can never know. I would think you would object to science making an assumption like that more than anyother assumption it makes.Wouldn't that be the grandest of all assumptions by science " Science says while although we will never have the means and it falls completely out of our field and our purvue and we can never prove or disprove it, nonetheless, we are going to assume there is a creator "

    Would be like me, handicapped by the loss of both hands, coming up to you and saying ' Bob I will never be able to perform your heart transplant, but I am going to do it anyway' It is a good and noble thing to know your limits and science knows its absolute limit when coming to deities.
  • I don't believe there was nothing prior to the Big Bang/singularity because I believe God was the author and cause of what we vaguely understand as the Big Bang.

    It's interesting how "science" claims to have all the answers (we've talked about this before, speaking authoritatively and without the slightest bit of doubt in text books, seminars, etc. that such-and-such happened x million or billion years ago), until its back is against the wall to actually come up with the impossible answers. I must strongly refute your claim that "science admits it just doesn't know." Science itself truly does, in a sense admit that, but the chief representatives of science most assuredly do NOT admit they don't know.

    And it (science, i.e. those who claim to represent science) always runs that illogical double standard that I talk about ad nauseam.

    For instance, you say science knows it can never prove or disprove a deity...yet it acts and speaks with absolute conviction that there is no deity (Dawkins is, of course, the ultimate epitome of this arrogance).

    If "science" truly came at the question of origins as you claim, then it would have no problem taking the evidence where it leads.

    Under existing conditions, we cannot prove God exists; we also cannot prove the universe popped into existence from nothing, or subatomic particles, or universe-vending machines, or whatever non-divine source one might imagine. Therefore, if, as I believe you have strongly implied if not outright claimed, it isn't worth pursuing investigation of the theoretical work of a deity in the universe because we can not know, then it also makes no sense to pursue investigation of a random set of events beginning with the universe popping into existence from whatever and a long chain of blind chance resulting in the highly ordered universe we see that is governed by coherent laws and other information. In other words, it's a waste of time trying to investigate either course.

    But we both know that is not an acceptable answer. Human beings are curious, and rightly so. We want to know and understand things. This understanding also helps us make our lives better because through knowledge, we can better control, manipulate and master our environment.

    It then makes sense (if science could or would truly examine all evidence objectively and take it where it most logically leads).

    That being the case, materialist/naturalist theory doesn't even get off the ground. There is no science (beyond theory, and theory is a fancy word for "guess") that proves to us matter and energy can come into existence from nothing. There had to be a beginning to the universe (which is composed of matter and energy), so it either came into existence from nothing, spontaneously (a violation of science), or it came about through some other power or cause that is beyond the laws of nature. (And let's not even get into all the other hinge pins of materialism and naturalism which require events which aren't possible according to the laws of nature)

    Ironically (and more than a little hypocritically) materialists insist it is perfectly fine, logical and consistent to theorize about sources for the universe that are beyond our understanding and beyond the laws of nature...so long as they don't involve a deity. It's perfectly fine to play with ideas about things that don't fit into science as we know it...as long as we don't start playing with ideas about a deity; after all, if a deity created this universe and everything in it, it's logical that he is entitled to set the standard for right and wrong...and if he's entitled to do that, I might be in trouble if I'm on the wrong side of his standard...and that's just too scary (or humbling) to think about. So let's define "science" so that we can think about all sorts of non-intelligent sources of the universe (no matter how outside the laws of science they may be), but ABSOLUTELY NO THINKING ABOUT DEITIES WHATSOEVER.

    There was a time when I had no clue that this inconsistency, this dichotomy existed in the world of materialism and naturalism, so I have some understanding of the wall you're up against right now. I can't claim that I'm capable of doing the best job of describing it in such a way that it makes it easy to recognize, but my hope is that sooner or later the light is going to come on for you (as it did for me, and eventually for Antony Flew). You're going to be as amazed as I was when that moment comes for you.
  • Brian Rutledge
    dcm Well you are partly right about the Galileo issue, but the Church accepted the Ptolemaic model because it AGREED with what the Bible said about the earth being immovable. Of course the Church was going to support the Biblical cosmology that Ptolemy also espoused as a secular idea.

    Your right about Newton being a creationist, but you missed the point. Religion then furiously rejected that a man would suggest that movement was anything more than God being directly involved in it. To even suggest a natural law was the intermediary between God and and movement was blasphemous. My point is to reval the way religion often objects to new science.

    Do a little research on Kurt Wise's quote and you'll see I am correct.

    Creation science advocates that science should include the idea that God 'did it'. True science also asks 'why' do things happen. That is why creation science must also answer the 'why' question when it comes to thunder. To be honest creation science, they must say that the Bible says thunder and lightning occur when God is mad. Here comes the scientific WHY question ? Because they occur when he is showing his wrath. That is what the Bible says, so for creation science to be true to itself , it must address the 'why' question and teach that Gods wrath is the cause of thunder and lightning.No wonder so many scientists dont want creation science taught in claas and it isn't a lack of ignorance either.
  • dcm
    "the Church accepted the Ptolemaic model because it AGREED with what the Bible said about the earth being immovable." Maybe they thought it did, but if so they were misunderstanding it. A better translation of what has been rendered "is immovable" would be "cannot be swayed from its path."

    "Religion then furiously rejected that a man would suggest that movement was anything more than God being directly involved in it." No doubt that kind of thinking has existed at times, but by and large that's not what the legacy of Christianity is. Rather, Christianity was the very thing which allowed modern science as we know it to develop. As Ronald Stark, a secular historian, points out in "For the Glory of God," Christians believed that God's creation was where his divine nature was put on display for man's benefit and instruction. Of the top 52 "scientific stars" from about 1540-1680 -- the era usually called the "scientific revolution" -- Stark found that 50 were Christians (the majority of them clearly devout). This is not coincidence. The beliefs of the rest of the world provided no such motivation for learning.

    Your stereotypical characterization of how science must be viewed through a Biblical lens reflects neither historical nor current reality. Anyone can set up a straw man and knock it down like you have done. What you cannot do, and what hundreds of brilliant scientists have not managed to do, is provide solid answers to how the things evolutionism claims must have happened actually could have. Those answers are not there because those things did not happen.
  • Well said, DCM. Dr. Rutledge has used the same technique in other discussions, presuming to state the arguments of his opponent and then attacking those arguments. He has made reference many times to the argument that "God did it" as a way that Christians avoid scientific questions. I have been a scientist and a Christian for almost 30 years and I have never, ever heard a Christian say those words or anything close to it.

    Paul wrote to the Romans saying:
    "...because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.

    For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen [scientifically observable], being understood through what has been made [CREATION], so that they are without excuse.
    [God wants us to explore and understand His creation because in it we learn of His attributes, power and divine nature. This is the first of three ways God has given man to know Him.]

    For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations [origin of life, evolution, infinite universes, etc.], and their foolish heart was darkened.

    Professing to be wise, they became fools,"

    The Christians that I know and associate with are eager to learn of God's Creation and would not stand in the way of scientific discovery that seeks truth. We do, however, reject the pseudoscience that is called Darwinism or evolutionism precisely because it seeks to shoe-horn all of science into their secular worldview whether it fits or not, coming up with fantastical tales based on assumptions and phony science. Then we have the folks that I have called the "Darwinist mafia" (Dawkins, Eugenia Scott, PZ Myers, etc.), whose M.O. is to deride and ridicule and make unsubstantiated accusations about anyone questioning the minutest detail of doctrinal evolution. This is meant to intimidate and silence not Christians like me, but secular scientists that might happen to see a crack in the theory and be so foolish as to discuss it publicly.
  • Brian Rutledge
    dr theo I don't just 'presume' to state the arguments of those I disagree with. It is 'my true personal understanding' of what they are trying to say, which has indeed been often wrong.I have been corrected many times by you and others, because I 'misunderstood' their stance.How can I understand what their stance is if I don't express what I truly feel their stance is.

    Also when I say 'God did it', doesn't mean I think you or others like you think He just poofed something into existence. I know full well you feel God acts in nature through his 'natural' or physical laws which are brilliantly complexed.

    Dawkins and his ilk are a type of Mafia in a way and they do use the 'God did it' in a very mocking way.I detest that. I know, as do you, that Newtons work was stunning, but he did believe that 'God did it'-Yes, Newton felt God did it through a stunning system of physical laws. That is what Creation science is all about-explaining the intricacies of your Gods work. I don't sit in Dawkins camp
  • I'll acept your clarification, Brian, and apologize if I have painted with too broad a brush. I admit that I get a little testy when some evolutionists try to make me out to be an uneducated fool that has never considered a postition other than what is recorded in Genesis.

    I believe that God gave us intelligence so that we could come to know something of His nature. Science is one of the ways we can explore and understand Creation and I have complete confidence that the more we learn the closer we get to truth. I have little patience, however, with agenda-driven "science" that will only accept that which validates their pre-conceived notions, all the while ridiculing any alternative beliefs, regardless the evidence.
  • Brian Rutledge
    dr theo I disagree with much of your 'evidence' as you do my ' evidence ', but I will try never to ridicule your beliefs because I believe them to be well founded and sincere. I think the nature and sensitivity of the subject matter can easily make one feel the other is being strident and lets face it, we are only human and emotions sometimes go into overdrive.

    Like I have said, the stridency( sp?) of Dawkins et al is not needed nor is it necessary from the opposing side. I firmly believe that both sides should do there best to put out their information and, as in the past, science will inch along,the direction of which can't be predicted since new information comes in every day. It's really odd because if we look back through history, this ' battle ' is as old as the ages.
  • Brian Rutledge
    DCM I say we do have the evidence for evolution and you say we don't Time will tell, I guess.Also I am deeply grateful to all the early Christian naturalists( God Naturalists-Nature acting through Him) who were curious enough to promote and advance science to help it get where it is today.We evolutionists stand on their shoulders.
  • brian rutledge
    The 'ignorance' argument is interesting, but either side calling the other ignorant, has no bearing what-so-ever on who is correct. To me, it is simply a childhood, playground tactic that advances neither side and in fact diminishes them. Christians railed against Galileo for stating the then held belief that the earth was at the center of the universe, was wrong and railed at Newton who suggested movement of objects was caused by the natural laws of gravity rather than simply by God's direct hand. I believe the railing against evolution falls in the same camp.

    I think that Kurt Wise Ph.D.( creation geologist and one of the main scientific advisors to the Creation Museum ) summed up the creationist view best when he stated that even if all the evidence in the universe revealed that evolution is true, he would still reject it since the literal interpretation of the Bible doesn't allow it.

    The Bible mentions in Samuel, Job and Psalm that thunder and lightning are sent by God to show his wrath, which was indeed what the bronze age writers of the Bible and Christians believed. Would hope Dr. Wise and creationists in general would not suggest that particular Biblical science be accepted today as the reason for thunder and lighting..
  • "Ignorance" means a lack of knowledge or awareness and it has great bearing on who is correct. If one is acting or holding an opinion out of ignorance (lack of knowledge), odds are whatever actions or opinions they display are wrong because they are not based in knowledge.

    It wasn't just Christians who derided Galileo for opposing geocentrism, but secular people as well. In fact, it was the church's embrace of a theory (geocentrism) which came from a secular source which put them on the wrong side of the facts; geocentrism is not a Biblical doctrine.

    Unfortunately many in the church have made the same mistake yet again, embracing a secular theory (evolution) which is not only contradictory to logic and the best available evidence, but is also contradictory to their own Christian doctrine. And they do so from ignorance (lack of knowledge) of the implications of evolution theory, the implications of Bible doctrine concerning creation and the state of humanity, and the illogic of evolution theory's key tenets. Most of them believe they won't be accepted as "smart" if they stand in defiance of what the dominant peer group says is "smart," i.e. that evolution is a fact. I used to be one of these people...until I opened my eyes to both the insurmountable logical and scientific problems of evolution and the irreconcilability of evolution theory and the foundational doctrines of the Bible.

    Finally, your reference to lightning from God is overly general and not supported by the text of the Bible. The Bible does not say all lightning is the direct and specific product of God and/or his wrath. It says that God created the scientific phenomenon of lightning (he did, as he created all scientific phenomena in the universe) and that in certain instances he has used that phenomenon to carry out his will on earth; at other times, the scientific phenomenon of lightning functions spontaneously as the result of laws of science God created but that have no specific divine purpose. The fact that God created the phenomenon of lightning, nor the fact that he sometimes appropriates it to a specific divine purpose, diminishes, detracts from or changes the fact that lightning in general is a scientific phenomenon that humans can study.

    Examples:

    Out of the brightness of his presence bolts of lightning blazed forth. - 2 Samuel 2:13

    He shot arrows and scattered the enemies , bolts of lightning and routed them. - 2 Samuel 22:15

    See how he scatters his lightning about him, bathing the depths of the sea. - Job 36:30

    He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth. - Job 37:3

    He gave over their cattle to the hail, their livestock to bolts of lightning. - Psalm 78:48

    As always, context is key.
  • dcm
    Speaking of not knowing things (ignorance, if you will), you're clearly unaware that the church in Galileo's time had a problem with him not because he went against anything in the Bible, but because he went against the Ptolemaic cosmology they had accepted, which was in conflict with both the Bible *and* what we now know scientificially. (As for Newton, he was a creationist.)

    I'm not quite with Dr. Wise if his original quote really says what your paraphrase makes it say (and I suspect it actually doesn't). But it doesn't matter because the evidence in the universe reveals that the Creator is true (at least to those who aren't determined to view it as if he wasn't).

    And given that God is responsible for creation, he can certainly be credited with the natural processes that create thunder and lightning; that fits with the Bible passages just fine (poetic or otherwise) as well as being in perfect harmony with the science that studies those processes.

    I have to say I'm getting increasingly curious as to WHY you accept evolutionism, because I haven't seen you name a real reason why anyone should. If it has to do with a supposed consensus of "real" scientists, then the joke's on you because (1) that consensus doesn't exist, and (2) it wouldn't prove anything if it did because scientists are human & susceptible to bias, pressure, etc. (And many simply assume someone *else's* area has proven all this evolution stuff.) You should never underestimate the power of a false belief to be accepted if enough people take enough offense at the opposing truth.
  • harvey50
    There is absolutly no true Christian that believes in evolution.A Christian is someone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and that they have to be born again to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
    You dont just get up one morning and say iam a Christian.You cant put it on and take it off when it suits you ,If everyone in this country that claims to be Christian really was we wouldnt have Socialist in the White House and Congress.One thing is for sure,we will all kneel before God on Judgement day and have to explaine ourselves while on this earth.We will be required to explaine everything we done, even the vote we cast so we must be very careful about who we allow to hold office for us in the future.
  • dcm
    One of the great ironies of the whole evolutionism/creationism debate is that Christians who acknowledge the truth of creation science are falsely accused of "ignorance," when in real life the truly scientifically uninformed Christians are the ones who think evolutionism has been proven true & therefore must be reconciled with the Bible somehow.
  • There are some Christians who have been led to believe that the Bible and evolution can be reconciled. For instance, that God created everything initially, but used evolution as a mechanism to create biological diversity.

    These Christians still believe fully in the existence of God, along with the divinity of Christ and Christ's redemptive work on the cross. They would believe completely in they key doctrines of the Christian faith and in all the things a person must believe in order to become born again; the only difference being in the area of origins itself. What they typically believe is that either there was a huge gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 in which another earth rose and fell, and that the fossils, etc all come from the destruction of that world...or that each day of creation week was a vastly long period of time and not a single 24-hour day...or some variation thereof.

    I know Christians like that exist because I used to be one of them. It was through ignorance both of the weaknesses and inconsistencies in evolution, and ignorance of what the Bible teaches about creation and about the sin-cursed condition of the earth that I managed to hold these two inconsistent views.

    Once I moved beyond ignorance to learn about these things, I realized how flawed the theory of evolution was, and that the claims of evolution and the claims of the Bible are irreconcilable.

    So it was only through ignorance that I believed in both Christianity and evolution, but there are plenty of genuine Christians who have been misled through ignorance into believing they are compatible.
  • Brian Rutledge
    One thing I never understood about about Genesis was when God said ' let us make man in our own image ' What is the literalist explanation of who 'us' and 'our' are referring to ?
  • That's a very interesting question. I'm pleased that you noticed it.

    It's actually a look at a doctrine which was not fully realized or fleshed out until the New Testament: the Trinity. Unfortunately, the Trinity is also one of the hardest to grasp doctrines in all the Bible.

    You probably know enough about Christianity to understand that we see three members of what we call the "Godhead": the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. These three members--God the Father who we usually refer to when we say "God"), God the Son (who we know primarily from his incarnation in the human form of Jesus 2,000 years ago), and the Holy Spirit--make up the entity we Christians know as "God" or "the Godhead."

    Bible doctrine is both clear and seemingly contradictory on this doctrine, and as I said it is not seen in its clearest form until the New Testament. The Bible makes it clear that God is one--one in purpose, unity and agreement; the three members work together in complete complimentary harmony. Yet they are three distinct persons. That is the part which is nearly impossible for us to grasp as finite beings in a world of clearly-defined personages and boundaries.

    But we see there in Genesis (as you also noticed referring to "us" and "our") not only God the Father working in the creative work but also the Holy Spirit, as the Bible says at the initial "formless" state of the earth that God's Spirit hovered or moved over this "formless form."

    And the New Testament tells us, primarily at the beginning of the Gospel of John, how Jesus--in his pre-incarnate form--was present also at creation, referring to the Son in John 1 symbolically as "The Word."

    One could fill volumes (as has already been done) talking about the Trinity, but hopefully that gives you just a taste of an explanation of why the language "us" and "our" is used there in Genesis 1.
  • Brian Rutledge
    Bob I think I have a grasp of the Trinity after reading quite a bit about it. What I didn't know was that the Gospel of John spoke of pre-incarnate Jesus being present in the beginning. I get it- God, the Spirit and pre-incarnate Jesus make up the We and Us mentioned in Genesis. Makes sense now and appreciate the theology lesson.
  • Brian Rutledge
    Gosh. I was really disappointed when I read dr theo's comments on this film when he referred to those who accepted evolution
    as 'Darwinist mafia'. That would include millions of Christian religious people and even the Pope himself as 'Darwinist Mafia', since they accept evolution. I would hope for for less derogatory comments from an educated man.
  • At the risk of speaking for Dr. Theo, when he said "Darwinist mafia," I think he meant not those who believed in evolution out of ignorance (I was one of those about 10 years ago), but those who have the education and intellectual capacity to know better but deliberately ignore the inconsistencies and weaknesses.

    And even more than that, those who doggedly refuse to allow the weaknesses and problems of evolution to be examined in an objective setting--which is primarily what "Expelled" is about: the scientific and academic tyrants who deny creation and ID an open forum, and summarily expel anyone in their vicinity who dares question evolution orthodoxy. If I had to guess, I'd say it was these academic thugs (the ones identified in the film) that he was talking about.
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