oddXian: Challenge the Consensus

  I’m sitting in a lounge in the airport on my way to LA for business. I had about an hour and a half ride to get here and, as I have a tendency to do, was thinking about ways to get people to think about how their fundamental perspectives color the way they think about everything else. One of the things that made me think of this particular topic was a couple of news articles that indicates a significant drop in the certainty of God’s existence among the general populace. I believe that this is due in part to the vast amount of media available that presumes the universe is solely governed by natural law. The prevailing idea is that the universe and all the contents within it, including you and me, basically evolved from one state to another by a gradual process over vast amounts of time. You may not even think about it anymore. In fact, you may even hold diametrically opposing positions, such as a general acceptance of this autonomous evolutionary viewpoint while holding to some i...

Old Earth/Universe Christian adherents are guilty, intentionally or not, of attempting to reconcile the Bible with material naturalism instead of taking Scripture as the prime authority. Young Earth/Universe adherents subjugate man’s wisdom and knowledge to God’s Word. (I confess to being deliberately provocative.) The naturalistic presupposition is uniformitarianism (I.e., natural laws are equally applicable across all places and times) and it is flawed on a cosmological scale. All naturalistic “empirical evidence” is based on it. It is an article of faith.  I have no problem accepting the laws of physics as a general operating rule but I presuppose the laws have not always been uniform in the past, nor will they necessarily be for all times and places. A simple google search can confirm my presupposition. As an example, the naturalistic proposition that “energy is *always* conserved” is neither rational nor scientific as it applies cosmologically.  Naturalists have faith tha...

The naturalistic presupposition is uniformitarianism (I.e., natural laws are equally applicable across all places and times) and it is flawed on a cosmological scale. All naturalistic “empirical evidence” is based on it. It is an article of faith.  I have no problem accepting the laws of physics as a general operating rule but I presuppose the laws have not always been uniform in the past, nor will they necessarily be for all times and places. A simple google search can confirm my presupposition. As an example, the naturalistic proposition that “energy is *always* conserved” is neither rational nor scientific as it applies cosmologically.  Naturalists have faith that science will somehow develop a naturalistic explanation given enough time and information and they grasp onto every fuzzy theoretical construct (e.g., dark matter and energy, multiverses, string theory, etc.) that supports it - “naturalism of the gaps”. Here is a great article that illustrates this approach: https...

We undeniably live in a cause and effect universe governed by natural laws This begs the question “what was the first cause”? This necessarily implies a non-natural (I.e., supernatural) prime cause, otherwise it’s “turtles all the way down” - that is - infinite regress The natural universe is intelligible and logical It is more reasonable to assume an intelligent supernatural prime cause than a random natural one In other words: Supernatural singularity (the Creation event, i.e., the Big Bang) + fine tuning + intelligibility = God

There is a general popular consensus that the universe is billions of years old. This “deep time” consensus serves as a key foundation for the framework of evolution as a theoretical mechanism for cosmology (how we understand the development of the universe at a grand scale), geology (how we understand natural forces that shape our and other planets), the incremental path of human development, all the way to down to the greater context of micro-adaptation in organisms. Deep time is a relatively new concept. The general consensus throughout human history, particularly from a Biblical perspective, is that the earth and universe are, in general, young. There has been a ton of work to reconcile the idea of deep time versus the implicit young age of Creation from a plain reading of the text. It is easy to find information that both supports and denies the concept of deep time. You owe yourself a good examination of its origins and impacts on scientific, philosophical, and even theological t...

One piece of physical evidence that strongly supports a young earth is the discovery of dinosaur soft tissue. Instead of leading the discovering scientists to the most logical conclusion, they threw out Occam’s Razor and developed an unfalsifiable “theory” to account for it to fit their presuppositions

First off, I’d like to say that I am no professional theologian, clergy, or doctrinal expert. My goal is to help people who are seeking to have an accessible resource for a better understanding of how the Bible, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit all play a part in the role of what I call a Biblical Christian.  My approach is somewhat systematic, although I would not call it a systematic theology or anything along that lines. It is more a collection of things that I have learned and studied over the years that have helped to set the framework of how I view the world and God. This is written with an assumption that the reader has some familiarity with Scripture and Biblical principles. My goal is to point directly to Scriptural sources that are contextually reinforcing to my argument, without cherry picking it. As DA Carson’s dad says, “Text without context is a pretext for a proof text.” This practice is how people get the idea you can prove basically any position out of Scripture. I ...