Remember when God forgives...

I have been listening to my old record of Amick Byram's Encounter. There are a good number of Christ centered songs here.

I was particularly touched again in listening to One Voice.

Taken from John 1:29

²⁹The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold,^A)">(A) the Lamb of God, who^B)">(B) takes away the sin^C)">(C) of the world!

Carries away the sin of the world... carries away the sin of the world... carries away the sin of the world.

This came to mind as I listened and enjoyed this song: that it is so important to remember that when God forgives it is not an empty forgiveness that he draws from himself, but that there was an actual concrete payment for the sins of which God is forgiving us; Christ bore those sins we are being forgiven for. We like to look away from this and detach it from the Atonement. Even if some one preaches forgiveness but neglects to make us to look at the Cross, that person is not preaching the Word. Other monotheistic religions have a notion of God being merciful too!

To separate the forgiveness of God from the Atonement leaves us with no assurance and leaves us with a God whom we know is a consuming fire. It leaves us a God whom we do not know, we will be left wondering if he may or may not forgive us. This is what happens with those who emphasize the conversion or "born again experience". I fell for this myself. It happens when the Christian is not made to look again and again to the Cross but is indirectly told by impression that they clinched it when they said the "sinner's prayer" and walked down the aisle. My friend, this is not liberation but enslavement again to the tyranny of religion.

But the Biblical story is not that way. It does not present God drawing forgiveness barely from his shear merciful character. His forgiveness is concrete because there was an actual payment made, by Christ, for our sins to God. There was an actual transaction that was made, not by you, but by the Son to the Father.

For God loved us this way -- by sending his Son to die for us, pay for our sins so that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

Scientific bias

Laypeople should not think that scientists are unemotional unbiased people. They have biases and as bigoted as some of us. Scientists are into the politics of ideas. They are into band wagon and what is the "flavor of the month theories". They are swayed by popular ideas just like any of us. In fact most of them follow the crowd, or the mainstream, it is good for their career.

Some laypeople think that scientists are active passionate seekers of the TRUTH. You have to laugh because right now, some of them do not have a definition of TRUTH. Most do not even adopt such category in their mental machinery.

What do I mean by politics of ideas? I mean, scientists throw their weight on a particular theory not because they have investigated the merits of such a theory but because it is popular, i.e. since lots of people are into this stuff, so they reason, then it must be good and worth their time. This happens so much so that if you present an idea that is even vaguely challenging the popular view, they look at you as a moron, someone not to be taken seriously. They did this to Godel and Einstein.

I come from a traditional mathematical background, I was taught to look for elegance. Even in my programming practice I strive for it. What do we mean by elegance? We mean it is the simplest solution to a problem. However, most scientists are not convinced that the simplest solution is usually the answer to a complex problem. Simplicity is beauty.

Let us remember scientists have presuppositions and biases, they are human beings just like the rest of us; the smartest ones recognize their biases and have learned to be skeptical of themselves.

Marriage and Birth Control

I have been listening to Issues Etc debate on this found here.

Please remember, my topic is not birth control outside marriage, I am considering here, the domain - birth control within marriage!

I am a bit skeptical on the arguments mentioned by the pastor for the contra position, but the one on the pro position could have brought forth his arguments much better from Scripture. The contra has some red herring arguments and straw man arguments which should have been fairly answered by the one on the pro side.

A few points:
-It has been claimed that in ages past, orthodox Christian leaders have always been contra to birth control. Therefore, we should be contra too.

ME: We have no article of faith on this, but the contra position holds this as dogma, a type of Law.

-It has been claimed that God's purpose for sex in marriage is for pleasure AND childbearing.

ME: This statement is an interpretation of the biblical data, notice I highlighted the AND, meaning both, i.e you must not separate. Actually most Christians who lived in the ancient world considered only the latter, sex is ONLY for childbearing, nothing else.

But what if the Biblical data says that sex in marriage may lead to childbearing? In other words, it is not an AND, but an IMPLY. It all hangs around on God's intention for sex, how is it to be used? I think that is the question.

Meaning, God intended sex for married people, it may have the consequence of childbearing. It may preclude of course that the spouses would like to copulate because they do want to have a child. It may also mean they want to do what the birds and the bees do because they just want to without in mind to childbearing. But the contra position says birth control in marriage is wrong because it violates God's intention for sex. Do I have Biblical evidence against this position? I think so, that is why I am skeptical for the traditional contra position.

Consider 1 Cor 7:

³^B)">(B)">B) The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. ⁴For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. ⁵^C)">(C) Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again,^D)">(D) so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

⁶Now as a concession,^E)">(E) not a command, I say this.^a]">[a] ⁷^F)">(F) I wish that all were^G)">(G) as I myself am. But^H)">(H) each has his own gift from God,^I)">(I) one of one kind and one of another.

⁸To the unmarried and the widows I say that^J)">(J) it is good for them to remain single^K)">(K) as I am. ⁹But if they cannot exercise self-control,^L)">(L) they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

Paul seems to have a practical understanding of things. In fact he says if you cannot contain yourself, then you should marry, it pertains to sexual passion.

Sex is intended by God to be exercised in the realm of marriage, and the above passage bears that they are to go and engage in what is lawfully theirs. It does not mean that they have to get together for the purpose of having children. In fact it does not suggest that at all. It is silent.

If it is true that sex and childbearing should go together then what do you say to a person who decides to be single without any relationship, they are just happy being single with no relationship? They must be violating the command to multiply, correct? He must be practicing birth control is it not?

Any thoughts on this?

Righteousness

I got none.

Even now after being baptized and coming to faith in Christ, I still have none, none of my own.

Besides I do not want to have one that is from me.

I have righteousness, for sure, but this righteousness is for the sake of Christ, the righteousness of God. Jesus gives his own righteousness to us. Like saying, here have it, I got it for you, I achieved it for you, have mine, use it, it is yours. I bled and died and rose again so you could have what I won.

.

None of me, none in me, all of him,  all from him, all for his... sake.

Final answer to the question...

I wish to thank the dear friends who interacted with me when I asked the question: Did Jesus die for the sin of unbelief?

So to this question, I should answer "YES" and he died for all people including their unbelief.

Now, some have said - Jesus indeed died for the sin of unbelief of the elect, but not the unbelief of the non-elect.

So to my answer "YES", some will reply against it, "well, if he did die for the sin of unbelief of all people, then all should be saved, but why are there people in hell"?.

So the follow up question goes like this, "If Jesus died for unbelief then why are all not saved"?

This line of questioning has similarities to the question - "Why doesn't the month of February have the 30th when in fact April does"?

The question, "If Jesus died for unbelief then why are all not saved", presupposes that simply because Jesus died for all people, then all ought to be saved, but they are not, so Jesus must have died only for those that are.

I have revised my answer to "YES" because of the principle of imputation. Indeed our sins have been imputed to Christ, our unrighteousness has been imputed to him, all of it, but his righteousness only gets imputed to us through the Means of Grace, at the point of faith.

So to the question -"If Jesus died for unbelief then why are all not saved", we say that this misses the nature of imputation.

My answer is based on the imputation of Christ's righteousness, people who are not saved have rejected the gift, and so the imputation of righteousness never happened to them.

What a pastor says about our bush fires.

“In my dream I saw fire everywhere with flames burning very high and uncontrollably. With this I woke up from my dream with the interpretation as the following words came to me in a flash from the Spirit of God.

That His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb."

Read it here...Catch the Fire Ministries.

So did God chose to punish these people (by burning them) because some other people in our state (like our state government) approve abortion?

Genesis 18:25
That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

Thanks for the input but let me clarify...Did the Lord die for...

Thanks to all who have taken the time to help me answer the question, did Jesus die for the sin of unbelief?

I appreciate your time.

However, I am not so sure if the post below have been read with clarity and understanding.

There are a few things to note. I have defined. what I meant by "unbelief" and I equated it with the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. That is why I answered "no".

This needs to be tackled first. Am I making the equation spurious? Should I equate unbelief with the blaspheming of the Holy Spirit or I should not? Is this a proper equation, are they equivalent or are they not?

Then, secondly while you are there, then you may like to answer the question...
did Jesus die for the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Did Jesus die for the sin of unbelief?

NOTE: This is now obsoleted by the above.
What is the proper answer to this question?

Let me define what "unbelief" means here. The word pertains to the rejection of the Gospel. This is not having doubts but it is an active putting down of the Gospel. So another way of putting it is like this: Did Jesus die for the sin of rejecting the Gospel?

My answer to this question is to say "No". I answer this way because of what I am seing the Bible say - for example the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is the unpardonable sin, it is rejecting that Jesus is the Messiah and Messiahship pertains to the forgiveness of sins - see Mt 12:31 and Mk 16:16.

I notice that those who come from a Calvinistic background, and those following John Owen's idea of Limited Atonement answers this in the affirmative. So they say "Yes" Jesus died for the sin of rejecting the Gospel because there is no sin that Jesus did not die for; because to say "No" (which the way I would answer the question) means that there is some sin that Jesus left off undone and that would be blasphemous. Jesus died for the sins of the elect (not the sins of the whole world, so they say) and all the sins of the elect have been paid for including - unbelief in the Gospel.

I do not want to go off topic, but I think it really depends on where the blasphemy is being re-directed, i.e. which one is blasphemous? To say Jesus died only for some people in the world or Jesus did not die for the sin of unbelief? I guess this is where we are different from our Reformed brothers/sisters.

The purpose why I posted this essay is so I can be helped in clarifying my own thoughts.

I have answered "No" to this question, but I am not so clear yet if I have adequately accounted for the biblical data. So I like some feedback and proper position of a.) the question and b.) the answer. I hope I could hear some of your thoughts on this.

Here is my additional take on the matter why I answered "No".

1. Firstly from the idea of the Means of Grace - Word and Sacrament. This is what God uses to create the condition of faith that receives God's gift of forgiveness. What I mean is that the unbelief in the Gospel is the rejection of the actual giving of the forgiveness of sins as transmitted to us (i.e. delivered to us by God) by God packaged to us by the Word and stated again to us in visible form by God through the elements of water, bread, wine, i.e. the Sacraments. So Jesus died for all of us as people. He also died for us as sinners. This is an accomplished fact. But the delivery of that thing that Jesus accomplished at the Cross is still on going. That is why Paul urges us to be reconciled to God - 2 Cor 5:20. What Jesus did happened in the past, what the H.S. is doing today is to deliver the benefit of that through Word and Sacrament in our here and now, so sinning against the H.S. is rejecting the reconciliation that God is giving to us today. It is rejecting the work of Christ. This is tied to Justification By Faith Alone (JBFA) or Justification Through Faith Alone. Jesus said in Mk 16:16 that those who do not believe (the Gospel) will be condemned. The point I make is that God is still justifying people today, the basis of that justification is the past, but that justification happens in our life time.
2. To say "Yes" has several implications: It means that the elect's sin of unbelief in the Gospel has been paid for, hence, even if they abandoned faith, they have been paid for - so this means they are saved and may be saved without faith. This is not JBFA. It really makes faith irrelevant. Further, it makes the Means of Grace of no concern and hence, there is no necessity for it. This is why I think the Lutherans fathers have always claimed that in the end, Calvinism's Limited Atonement effectively denies the Means of Grace. The belief in the Means of Grace - Word/Sacrament encourages faith, a teaching that effectively for example, makes the Sacraments of no consequence, effectively also does not boast faith. Now, one can argue the elect will never abandon faith (what about Heb 6:4)? At any rate, I ask of this position, how does one know he is elect? They answer - through their (perceived) inward change/ or a changed life (I wonder why this is acceptable and that of the Mormon's burning in the bossom's is not). I have not heard from that school answer any other way but for the subjective experience, which for me is not reliable. Lastly I notice with this answer, they also collapse the categories of reconciliation with justification which I am not prone to do.

I like to hear some opinions here either pro or contra my position. Thanks for helping me.

NOTE: This is now obsoleted. Click here.

Just another service org?

I mean, is the Church just another one of those service organizations?

Of course, there is an aspect of service which the Church is to do, we are called to good works, called to serve our neighbor, but could this orientation taking over the real rational for the establishment of Christ's Church?

Seeing the Church through the model of being a service organization is easy to do, you can look at it as another corporation providing a certain service to the market. Perhaps one service is to advice people how to live happy, healthy, wealthy prosperous lives, where the pastor is CEO and the elders are line Vice-Presidents.

There is some morphing happening here. When the Church morphs to just another service organization there is a sure side effect on the nature of Christianity, its uniqueness goes out the door too. The band wagon is on the roll though, imagine if you are a pastor and you have no message but the Gospel? When you see all those around you in ministry are converting to the service model and they are experiencing results (for a time, you can bet they will get good raves), won't you feel pressured to convert too? How will you hack that?

I have no doubt the Church will be there till Jesus comes, Jesus promised this. But I think the Church that Jesus returns to will be the peculiar, small, obscure, ubiquitous people probably not as influential, not wealthy but struggling and ignored by the world.

It will go a long way

The more I interact with my Pentecostal friends, the more I am convinced in my evaluation that they have a blurred if not muddled view of what "justification" means.

A few months ago, I was talking to a young man who has been active in his church since he was a teenager. Even today, he is quite a hard working member of his Pentecostal church (Filipino). So I asked him if he understood what "justification" meant. "Oh, you mean being born again"? I said, "No, not exactly".

My thinking as to why "justification" is not understood, and why their knowledge of it is practically nil, is because there is this hurrying up the Christian to "do the Christian life", and that becomes the entire preoccupation. My suspicion is that it will go a long way in ushering true Gospel renewal amongst Pentecostals if they dig in and find out what Scripture says about "justification". Here the Lutherans can help. Because, right now, the Pentecostals are the source of many many weird and voodoo stuff happening in Evangelical Christianity.

On second thought, sometimes I also wonder if my fellow church goer sitting besides me during Divine Service is clear on this too. I have some doubts, I am not so sure either.

Defining away the problem

I am around intelligent and smart people. I do not mean that sarcastically, but in truth, and in much respect and recognition of their great minds.

When I talk to them about creation, they can easily accept that the universe has always been there. It is just the way it is. Even if we follow Hawking's theory that the Big Bang started from a black hole, you need not explain why it happened except it simply did. You need not find an explanation for it.

Now the philosophically intuitive principle is that since there is a being, then there must be a necessary being. Since there is something then that something could not have sprouted from nothing without Somebody doing something i.e. creation posits a Creator.

To this the unbeliever rebutts using the above answer: you need not find an explanation for creation because it has always been that way. It is a fact not contingent on other facts, so they say.

But that is really begging the question and so I do not find it convincing why smart and educated people accept that the universe is just brute reality. Firstly they are trying to assume what needs to be proven. They may posit this as a possibility - that the universe is just one brute reality, but they need to do more, they need to prove that it is indeed a brute fact. So where is the proof of that except their conjecture?

Do not get me wrong, there are phenomenons where our frame of questioning might be irrelevant to the phenomenon being examined, there does exist such cases. But most of the time this is discovered after the fact. In other words, we realize the frame of questioning is irrelevant only after we have established and understood the phenomenon. I do not think this is the case with creation.

To say that the universe has always been there is to define away or deny the need for an explanation. This is not answering the question but rather the ushering of it away, a type of hand waving. It is ducking at the issue, a type of moving the goal post.

In reality the proof by necessary being is a very compelling anti-atheist polemic, it begs an explanation which they rebutt by simply denying the obvious - like putting hands in their ears, looking the other way and saying - "lalalalala, I am not listening".

What a day

I was back for Australia Day. The flight back from Portugal was un-eventful except for some confusion on where I should pick up my luggage but I will never forget the hospitality of Porto, Portugal. My, what a friendly and humble people, always willing to help strangers and not afraid to try their English on you. People smile back when you smile at them, in the train station, in the malls and everywhere.

So I came home for Australia Day parade. At this parade, I am amazed to hear so many people speaking foreign languages. The world is coming down to Australia, and that is good. They should come down, it can accommodate 50 more million people... no kidding, a study shows this. We will be richer for it.


It was really an amazing day yesterday. We caught Premier Brumby coming out of his lunch where we happened to be having a picnic. We called to greet him and he walked over to shake our hands.

Looks like we are really everywhere

My posting will be thin. I am in this conference.

Finally after so many rejections, there are those who understand what my professor and I are doing. They said that when Godel gave his theorem, they did not understand it either. Well I am far from Godel, my problem is something else.

At any rate my biggest blunder was when I entered a doctorate program. I did not realize how much it would pull me away from the time meant to be spent for loved ones. I am now tired and weary, the thesis is nealy there, but not quite. I need prayers not to throw the towel, or the 5-6 years go down the drain with nothing but memories of what I have done, not done. Could I ask for your prayers?

Anyway, if there was any un-expectations I had coming to this conference, I was not expceting to find a Filipino in Porto, Portugal. Never. It was unlikely, in Spain maybe but not Portugal. I was wrong. At breakfast today, I heard someone else in the restaurant blurting Filipino sentences. I came over to the man and I met Mike. Mike is from IBM, Philippines and he has been assigned here to help install a software system. He is not alone but a team of Filipinos are with him. They have been hired to get this system up and going.

I feel somewhat elated and semi-proud about this. I guess I am like this because all you hear coming from the home land are how things are going down to the dogs. I am happy that there are some who on the human level still try to do good and a job well.

1 John 5:6 - Means of Grace

I have never read commentaries on 1 John 5:6-8 but as I said, I have been reading it again and I came to the above passage.

The wording is peculiar, and I tried to impose the means of grace in this reading: Here is how I take it...The Spirit of Truth is the Word, water - stands for Baptism, and blood for the Lord's Supper. It seems it makes sense to me. Now so I picked up a reading from a commentator, who referred this to the Atonement of Jesus.

Whereas it is noble idea, I prefer the means of grace reading of this and I find I am not alone. Harold Lindsell's comments referred to this as the ordinances so named.

But being what I am - I connect this to the means of grace - Word, Baptism, Supper.

I believe this concept of means of grace have been around when the Epistles were being written that is why you cannot do raw exegesis, at the end, your hermeneutic has to kick in on the means of grace. Why? Because the disciples had this notion earlier in our history already. Read the NT with that hypothesis and it does not do damage to anything in its internal consistency.

Take a look.

Dawkins on a little bit of luck... luck? hahahaha!

Listen to Dawkins deny chance but allow for a little bit of luck on how a simple system becomes complex. I started laughing when he said this; I could not believe the icon of atheists and evolutionists failed to realize what he said. What is luck but a favorable chance outcome! He just committed sophistry, and this is what is built in into the theory of evolution, it has a built in sophistry in its argument, that is why the more I listen the more I become skeptical. Dawkins has a PhD and yet, his grasp for philosophy evidenced by making such a statement is high school level.

The (Neo)Darwinists cannot have it both ways. If they admit chance, then there is no merit for their theory to be called science; because science's job is to penetrate randomness and even eliminate its influence i.e. predict. On the otherhand if they deny chance, then the thing behaves in a certain law or principle, it becomes predictable. This is where it also crumbles because if there are laws of nature, who put them there or why are they there. To say that it is just there is no argument, it disqualifies itself in telling us the origin of life or man, so it has to stop making those statements. Any which way it turns, it just gets into a mess.

Some nice admissions

HT: BeggarsAllReformation, James Swan.

I have often stated in the last couple of years that dialoguing with RC Apologists in somewhat superfluous. Why? Because the only one really qualified to speak for Rome is the Magisterium itself. Unless the Magisterium speaks no RC Apologists really is worth listening. It is nice to know that a prominent internet RC Apologist recognizes this fact. This is what he says:

While I can appreciate the desire to set good standards in apologetics, most of what we do on this board is colloquial apolgetics and quite frankly NONE of us is qualified to set any standards in defense of the faith. Only the Magisterium can do that and so far, the hierarchy has viewed the diversity of Catholic lay apologists (with some notable exceptions) with general favor.
....
Nobody can claim to speak DEFINITIVELY for Catholic orthodoxy except the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. We apologists in the trenches may have our disagreements but we are all working for the same end. We need to respect that and not go attacking each other needlessly. Sometimes one needs to speak out, but this should be done only for grave necessity.

So caveat lector to the Evangelical thinking of going back to Mother Church due to the convincing arguments made by an RC Apologist to her. She needs to understand that she may not be getting kosher presentation of RC doctrine.

Past Elder has a nice history view of Church History here.

For His sake

I have been reviewing 1 John. My discussion with Jeff, prompted me to re-read this epistle for the umpteenth time. I got to 1 John 2:12 and my eyes just kept coming back to this verse...

1 John 2:12 says

12I am writing to you, little children, because(T) your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake (ESV)

12I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake.(KJV)

[12]I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his sake (RSV)

I kinda like RSV on this one, though the ESV and KJV are absolutely wonderful translations of this passage too. Literally the end reads "your sins are forgiven through/by means of his name".

I tell you why RSV strucked me. I had been in many years in Charismania and using and praying in "Jesus' name" is used a lot in that movement. This phrase "in Jesus' name" is vaguely understood and in some sectors it is even thought that it is the literal name "Jesus" that gets God's attention/favor. The name itself works like like a mantra or a formula.

Coming back to the Gospel, the Cross, 1 John 2:12 strikes me now with the Gospel behind it. It is for Christ's sake that we are forgiven because He paid for those sins at the Cross. In this instance the RSV got this home to me because I was conditioned by the literal use of "Jesus". The reason why God favors us with forgiveness is because Jesus did not just stand there, this Jesus went to the Cross, took my sins and yours on his body on the tree and there received the wages of that sin, separation from God, so that God does not have to separate us from Himself ever again.

Dr. Steven Hein said something like this in Issues Etc; he said, God abandoned This One-Christ, so that God might not abandon you.

Randomness and Monkeys

Taking out the mystery surrounding what appears to be a random event, if you ask me, is what a scientific theory should be doing. A scientific theory that simply recognizes that there is a random element here or there does not qualify as a scientific theory. You have not added any new information if your theory simply recognizes it. Just imagine the task of building a bridge. You can observe that some bridges collapse at least some contribute to accidents. Imagine if building a bridge is a matter of guess work, a matter of "que sera, sera", a matter of randomness. If so there is no possibility of technological progress.

Want some example of how randomness is explained away by hand waving? Here is a quote from http://www.toarchive.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html.

Chance certainly plays a large part in evolution, but this argument completely ignores the fundamental role of natural selection, and selection is the very opposite of chance. Chance, in the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material that natural selection has to work with. From there, natural selection sorts out certain variations. Those variations which give greater reproductive success to their possessors (and chance ensures that such beneficial mutations will be inevitable) are retained, and less successful variations are weeded out...

My reply: If this is not random chance, then you should be able to predict where a mutation should go in a large scale ecause after all that is what Evolution is saying, a specie turning into another pecie and not just mutating microbiologically. For example, you should be able to predict that a fish should form some feathers. Have you ever looked at how things re done in a horse race? There is a lot more science in the horse race than this, for pundits are able to predict which horse should get in, most of the time.

It continues...

Some people still argue that it is wildly improbable for a given self-replicating molecule to form at a given point (although they usually don't state the "givens," but leave them implicit in their calculations). This is true, but there were oceans of molecules working on the problem, and no one knows how many possible self-replicating molecules could have served as the first one. A calculation of the odds of abiogenesis is worthless unless it recognizes the immense range of starting materials that the first replicator might have formed from, the probably innumerable different forms that the first replicator might have taken, and the fact that much of the construction of the replicating molecule would have been non-random to start with.

My reply: Notice how the explanation pertains only to micro level not macro level. To say that "probably innumerable different forms" does not add any information to a theory. This is like using a magic wand to explain the objection away. In a horse race, you can also say there are millions of possibilities. Yet pundits are able to cut through that cloud, they can give a reasonable prediction.

What I see amongst evolutionists (not of course in the stated web site) as I go around the internet, is this intellectual imperialism ever so present and as bigotted as the rest of us. Most of the time, their argument is based on bullying using ad hominem attacks - i.e. you must be a moron if you are even mildly skeptical of it. One of which dismissed the opinions of physicists, chemists, engineers and mathematicians as if knowledge is confined to a sector of society and no scholar or scientist is qualified to comment if he/she does not come from that field, i.e biology. Can you see the intellectual arrogance of these pseudo-intellectual colonizers?

OK I will agree, some people do come from monkeys. Yes, because judging by the way these evolutionists argue and how they attack the sanity and credibility of people who disagree, surely they have evolved from orang-utangs.

Love saves, so I was told

It seems that my impression of what friends in Mother Church believe in is still accurate.

In an interaction in one of the blogs I said this:

To us when a person is being legalistic it means the person is insisting the performance of the Law to the letter.

What the RC gentleman defender of faith said:

Which “Law” are you talking about? Natural law? Mosaic law? The Law of Love that Christ gave us at Jn 13:34? The first two do not save, but the last one does. Christ cries out to us, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and NOT DO WHAT I TELL YOU?” (Lk. 6:46).

I don't know for him but I know for me, The Law of Love is exactly the one that damns me. So for him, there is a Law that God could give that saves, a new Law, the other old ones are none doable, non-salvific, the new one is.

Also there is one thing that Jesus has left for you to do and so be saved - love. You need to use the love that Jesus gave to you so you thereby save yourself. Am I putting this crudely?

Do I have disagreement about love? Not really, except that if it is a Law, then I am failing it and would fail it even if I were suceeding in it today.

So there are two understandings and questions that are far apart. How does the Bible relate love with salvation, that is the subject at hand. Is love the cause of salvation? Or is love the result of salvation? Clearly our friend(the RC gentleman) is of the first, while we(Classic Protestants) are of the second.

A mathematician speaks about Darwinism

Here is what Dr. David Berlinski, a mathematician, who is not even a Christian, says about Darwinism.

Knowing what the scientific method entails, it is really hard to believe evolutionary theory is a science. It is science only by dictum but not in practice. Here Berlinski argues against from an engineering standpoint.

Evolution plays so much on this thing called "randomness", meaning - accidental. Perhaps this is the best time now for me to assert that randomness in science does not really exists but it is a mathematical construct, a bit bucket to direct our none-knowlege of information we do not yet possess. Philosophically and mathematically there is no such thing as randomness.

Let me explain, take the process of tossing a coin in the air, probability says that it will land 50% heads or 50% tails. Now that is true if we do not have more information than the possibilities of outcome. However, if I know that the landing of heads or tails is influenced by other factors, like wind direction, weight of the coin, material composition, if I know the starting angle my thumb lifts it and the height it goes and the material it lands (it could bounce), I will be able to predict what comes up and not rely on 50-50 chance. The reason why we go by probabilities is only because we do not know these factors, but if we do, we will not calculate what face will land based on it, we will use these information to build a formula and that is what we will use.

Evolution says that information is random but randomness when you go down to the core is none-existent.

As a person trained in mathematics, I have to have more faith to believe that evolution theory is science.