Sunday, February 18, 2007

Sunday Sermon 18/2/2007

The sermon for Sunday February 18 is now available for download from the New Life Web-site.

Our guest preacher is Peter Sparrow from Creation Ministries who talks about the vital importance of accepting the Genesis account of creation as the basis for all christian faith.

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5 comments:

  1. I downloaded and listened to Mr Sparrow's sermon. I'm afraid I had some serious misgivings about his presentation.His initial assertion that the gospelis more than Jesus' death and resurrection and the sacrifice that he made for us is the first problem.His insistence that Genesis must be historical in its entirety and the creation myth is a factual account is another.His "evidence" for a Young Earth was problematic. He followed fairly well worn paths worked by YECS (Young Earth CreationistS) disciples. Re-presenting supposed "evidence" that another YECser has touted being my biggest issue.The statement that dinosaurs walked with men and this was provable by;1) Biblical evidence (which wasn't convincing)and 2) Blood in dinosaur bones (see this url http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur/osteocalcin.html for further clarification) was spurious.Particularly problematic was his claim that if Evolution is true then Christianity is false. This statement is a false dichotomy and one which I found at best, silly and at worst, offensive.I remain a Christian, and have no choice but to accept an old earth as real and evolution as the pathway by which life forms on this planet have achieved their current forms. The evidence is conculsive and obstinate denial based on warping evidence does nothing at all to glorify Christ.

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  2. "I remain a Christian, and have no choice but to accept an old earth as real and evolution as the pathway by which life forms on this planet have achieved their current forms. The evidence is conculsive and obstinate denial based on warping evidence does nothing at all to glorify Christ."I remain sceptical about the scientific basis of evolution because it remains an essentially religious issue. The same evidence can be interpreted differently depending on your presuppositions.Science proceeds on the assumption that God has to be left out of the equation. But you can't... eventually you have to go right back to what was at the back of the Big Bang.Most dating techniques "evolve" from circular reasoning starting from an evolutionist presupposition. Techniques that reinforce the theory are accepted which those that differ from the theory are ignored.It's like the self-selection that takes place in climate change papers. Those that agree with the "warming" hypothesis are published those that disagree are less likely to be published or even submitted.Science these days is no longer (if it ever was) a quest for truth so much as a quest for government funding based on a herd mentality.

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  3. Huh?Dating techniques derive from a raft of sciences.Astronomers find the whole evolution/ young earth arguement bewildering cos they deal in huge time spans. Nothing else explains the phenomenal distances light has to travel.Dating tedchniques like radio carbon dating are only a part of a spectrum of techniques. Some are simple like counting varve layers (there are two a year from a glacier), some are complex. But all that aside, my hugest problem with the entire YECS movement is the non-scientific approach that even the scientists in the movement use.no peer review, very little testing (if any) of claims and blatant repitition of disproven claims.I prefer the cut and thrust and sheer cynicism of scientific circles. Sure, there are scientific fundos, but they also get exposed and cast aside.Science exposes its own frauds.I like that and can trust it.

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  4. "I prefer the cut and thrust and sheer cynicism of scientific circles. Sure, there are scientific fundos, but they also get exposed and cast aside.Science exposes its own frauds.I like that and can trust it."Gee Owen a rare show of naivete!Science works well when it just gets on with it. Unfortunately we now have an unholy alliance between media, science and government and the also the government-funded NGOs who all find it in their best interests to scare the pants off the common man (the common woman is far too sensible to fall for it!)The media- say no more... bad news sells newspapers, really scary news can sell the whole company!Politics- keep us in a state of fear so they can better control us.Science- really scary news bolsters the need for more "research" = more government funding.Even the promoters of the global warming hysteria are starting to confess they might have overdone it just a tad and unleashed a monster they never expected.I used to believe in science too, but then I read "State of Fear" by Michael Crighton which really started me thinking about the limitations of the scientific paradigm. Now I see more scientists arguing about a concensus on global warming than I see calling for the truth and that's a worry. Science in a post-modern culture doesn't even work, if all we are concerned about is finding concensus... let's take a vote on quantum physics shall we?That might seem a long way from evolution. But the issues are the same. The IPCC has admitted to fudging graphs and data to emphasise (that is, exaggerate) the rate of change in the current warming period. So they are extrapolating from the present and ignoring the past. A lot of scientific methodology about the extreme past also extrapolates from the present to millions of years, but ignores the discontinuities which don't fit the theory.What I find interesting about the evolutionary mind-set is this. If it's all about survival of the fittest and things evolve to fit changing situations, why do the same scientists get so upset about polar bears or koalas or whatever? If they can't cope with the changing climate/ loss of habitat/ whatever it is that people are destroying the world with that is the current flavour of the month, then why should we care? Oh well there goes another species that didn't make the grade. But they don't think that way-- there is a fundamental flaw in the world-view that even the most ardent of evolutionists can't live with, in fact they don't even see. We, people, have evolved to be the most successful species on the planet, so let's have all the spoils of victory! But we have a switch around that says that we've now become a curse on the planet.. so where is that philosophy coming from-- it's not scientific evolutionism.

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  5. Not naivete. If I am going to start listening to a group I will pick the group that hgas enough internal strife and power playing and systems to utilise that stuff to get on with the motley of ascertaining the meaning of the evidence.This is where the Creationists are appalling.They recycle disproven nonsense even after they have made retractions. Certain AiG gurus have allowed reprint after reprint of stuff that they have publicly withdrawn. Hardly credible science, or credible theology.But the thing that first alerted me to their stuff was when I first started to study cults, esp. the JW's. The Creationist literature uses very similar language structures and arguements as the JW's. Once I noticed that I started to wonder how safe the content really was, and I started to check it out.Then I discovered that many theologians, and not just the liberal ones, denied the historicity of Genesis. And that wasn't a new. post Darwin thing either.For a while I was indifferent, but more recently the whole thing has been rearing its head a lot more, and I have met people who were actually astonished that a Christian could not believe in YECs stuff. The pervading belief that "true Christianity" is in the Answers In Genesis kind of thing gets my goat.I deny their presupposition about the historical account in Genesis, their denial model of science (they present little in the way of how stuff is- it's mostly about attacking Evolution), their model of what is a true Christian and I absolutely deny their right to the science curriculum.

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