[_ Old Earth _] 11,000 Clergymen Accept Evolution Theory

[John]

When I say "far left of the scientific scale", . . . .I'm refering to such things as "one certain creature, living in the oceans, devoloping the ability to breath air, making it's way onto dry land, developing a leg structure, eventually returning to the oceans, where it (again) evolved fins again, . . . and those were the ancestors of today's dolphins. I have really seen this type of thing promoted before and I find it to be extremely ridiculous.

I agree with adaptation, but everything has limits. I believe God used Evolution (Micro ONLY) and that in itself is wonderful, but the Bible clearly says he made all in 6 days, no macro evolution was needed.

 

[jwu]

And who determined these criteria? God or fallible men? "Most likely inspired"? You imply yourself that there is room for error.

It doesn't matter who determined these criteria. If you want to continue in that line of argument we'll be able to find many more examples outside of the Bible. My point is that there were disagreements about some of the books to include and exclude, some. But that is the whole point of setting criteria and then debating about what best fits those criteria.

It very much does matter that the criteria were set up by fallible men and used for decisions made by fallible men - it includes room for error, and that's the point.

Or that God gave them the general ideas and they wrote it down with their own words.

To say that "All Scripture is God-breathed", is to say literally "every passage of Scripture is divinely inspired." The inspiration proceeds from God for every passage of Scripture. It means nothing more beyond that.

With this you contradict your previous statement:

"It means that what was written was what God wanted written."

who's to say that the same "errors in judgement" or "misunderstandings of God" weren't just continually passed down from generation to generation, . . . the passing of error?

On what basis does one approach the biblical text, or any text for that matter, with such assumptions? To my knowledge, that is not how any text of antiquity is approached.

Do i understand you correctly that you're saying that e.g. copying errors are ignored in old texts and interpreted to be part of the original version?

Examples from the Bible:

Ahaziah's age when he began to reign:
22 in 2 Kings 8:26
42 in 2 Chron 22:2

Jehoiachin's age when he began to reign:

KI2 24:8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother's name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.

CH2 36:9 Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD.

Both of these cases have "copying error" written all over them.