Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Differring from Mr. Taunton on Ukrano-Russian Relations (he could be giving a pov he didn't share) and on Progress and St. Thomas · New blog on the kid: A Video by "Capturing Christianity" on Rhett McLaughlin, My Comments, Last One First, Then Timestamp by Timestamp
The REAL Reason Rhett Left Christianity (and How to Avoid it)
Capturing Christianity | 22 April 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9xVN-5qLCs
On your last words, if we have such a need to trust God (we do), why not trust His word, available as Bible and Church tradition, which are clearly against Evolution anyway?
4:04 what we observe in science ... millions and billions of years aren't part of that ...
5:56 Excellent point.
Accepting Evolutionary origins for Adam is destructive to the faith if you think about it.
6:13 It's actually impossible for a non-human (even if it were the same physical organism), and I don't mean elf, I mean beast, to have the same experience as a human, because a beast lacks reason.
The unfairness is rather on Adam (in that case) having to grow up essentially as a feral child.
Some get around this by pretending Adam only became human when God changed him as an adult, but this is not too much better, it would actually imply loss on the part of Adam before God cursed him for sin. As would all other scenarios where Adam has a non-human origin.
The idea that the non-human could be essentially sufficiently developed to have a very humanlike experience and be able to successfully raise a human is destructive of the core idea of why man is special. God's image is not just some theological extra, it's a visible and audible part of our experience, for instance every time we say "that was wrong" we both show moral awareness (could be erroneous on that particular instance, but it is still moral awareness) and speech.
7:11 A female progenitor who has no rational soul is not capable of being a human mother or the mother of an actual man.
The rational soul is not a theological extra, it's not like the state of grace which can be absent in a man and he can still function as a man. The state of grace is invisible. It can be hinted at but never directly documented in behaviour. The rational soul however very much is documented in behaviour.
It's absence would mean an impossibility of raising a human child humanly.
The problem would be on "Adam's childhood."
Non-extant event, but speaking within the hypothesis.
8:10 Will be debunked by the scientists themselves within our lifetime?
Was debunked by a number of scientists back in the day of Hilaire Belloc, rather.
The "Scientific Community" has however a huge capacity for group think.
Some will label this observation as a conspiracy theory. "What? When we make so many measures to make sure each of us isn't trapped in group think but is actually asking questions, do you mean that we deliberately avoid applying this when it comes to this issue, just because we hate the Bible?"
While quite a few actually do hate the Bible (watch Forrest Valkai or Creation Myths!), it's just sufficient that those security measures were never really adequate for the most basic questions, and so they end up non-deliberately not doing the proper questioning of other scientists insofar as the thing they say is simply Evolutionist, and not something which an alternative view of Evolution could overthrow. It's a question of culture with a huge lack of cultural self-awareness.
9:11 C. S. Lewis at least in the Nineteen-Forties believed in Evolution.
In Miracles, he says we know Evolution through reason, not if Evolution were true it would be through reason we knew it. But, C. S. Lewis had his flaws, and his chapter on the Fall of Man in The Problem of Pain he subscribes to a collective fall. In other words, the actual decision to sin was a group decision. The problem with this is, and CSL would have in other contexts been aware of it, groups don't have minds or wills taken together, so, the fall on this view would be a non-free act.
In other words, "God" would either have predestined the fall as in Supralapsarian Calvinism, or allowed it by negligence as in Open Theism.
It's horrible theology either way. CSL is in many ways great, but should be read with caution.
10:06 "he still deconstructed"
Perhaps because Rhett is more logically consistent than Francis Collins?
Or, on that issue, even CSL?
15:24 You are not reading a correct translation.
Inscrutable is more like it.
‘ā·qōḇ = Strong will actually support you, "deceitful, crooked" and when you hear these together, it sounds like "crooked" in the moral sense, but Brown-Driver-Briggs will give a range:
I. עָקֹב adjective
1 insidious, deceitful, Jeremiah 17:9 עָקֹב הַלֵּב מִכֹּל.
2 foot-tracked (denominative from I. עָקֵב) Hosea 6:8 גִּלְעָד קִרְיַת מֹּעֲלֵי אָוֶן עֲֹקֻבָּה מִדָּם.
II. עָקֹב adjective steep, hilly (see √; compare difficult mountain path, Qor 90:11 hill); — Isaiah 40:4 והיה הֶעָקֹב לְמִישׁוֺר let the steep ground (Chronicles) become a plain ("" הָֽרְכָסִים). compare Ecclus 6:20.
I would argue, they are the same adjective. It means sth that is easy to stumble on. Like what a sunken reef is for ships. I don't know why Hosea 6:8 says "foot-tracked" since the interlinear has "defiled" ...
The LXX has βαθεῖα ἡ καρδία παρά πάντα (the heart is deep beyond all things) and Vulgate Pravum est cor omnium, et inscrutabile : quis cognoscet illud? ...
Actually, it seems you have some support in a purely moral reading of "pravum" but Gaffiot says "crooked, misshapen" if we summarise the meanings. In other words, the human heart is handicapped, like the hands and feet of someone born after the mother took Thalidomide.
For "desperately sick" the translation is better than KJV ... 605. anash, to be weak, sick, frail, incurable.
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