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Science and Truth versus the Creationist

Grant HastingsOctober 16, 20165 Comments on Science and Truth versus the Creationist

creation_science_580

Let me be clear, I do not see this as a battle between science and religion, I see it as a battle between truth and a patent misconception of what the bible is saying.

There are many students of the bible who read Genesis Chapter 1 to be an account of the creation of the earth and take one of the following approaches to science 1) Genesis matches perfectly with science 2) Our knowledge of the ancient past is still evolving and although it does not match science now, it will soon 3) Science is wrong and any theories promulgated by the scientific community that does not match up with the bible is inspired by the devil. (more…)

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Jonah – My Kindred Spirit

Grant HastingsOctober 09, 2016

jonah-beach-whale-168772-print

Jonah is, to me, a kindred spirit. If Jonah and I went to high school together, we would have been friends. The book of Jonah is an origins story, a record of the events that turned Jonah from a young man focused on himself to a servant of God focused on others. We tend to compare him critically to the likes of Moses or Elijah, but we forget that the stories that make these men great came later in their lives after they had their own Jonah events. The story of Jonah is the story before he became a man, before he became a prophet of God. (more…)

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Works and Grace: Buying Our Way into Heaven

Grant HastingsSeptember 25, 20168 Comments on Works and Grace: Buying Our Way into Heaven

buying-into-heaven

Salvation is free according to Paul. Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast”. That may be true, but just because something is free it does not absolve us of any responsibilities. One of my daughters took piano lessons and she did not have to pay a single penny. No amount of practicing on her part would compensate me for the money I handed over to her teacher. It was a free gift. What she did with the gift, however, was entirely up to her. The degree to which these free piano lessons blessed her life was dependent upon how much she worked. (more…)

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Ages of Old Testament People

Grant HastingsSeptember 18, 201615 Comments on Ages of Old Testament People

ot-birthday-cake

In the early chapters of the Book of Genesis we have people living for a very long time. Adam lived 930 years (Genesis 5:5), Seth for 912 years (Genesis 5:8), Methuselah lived 969 years (Genesis 5:27) and Noah lived 950 years (Genesis 9:29). I’m not even 50 yet and I am getting aches and pains, I cannot image living 20 times longer. The problem is no matter how you work the science, humans just do not live that long and they never have. I have heard all kinds of arguments for these remarkably long lives. The atmosphere was different soon after the earth was created so people were healthier, there was more oxygen in the atmosphere, or the closer you were to Adam the more pure your DNA and hence you lived longer. These are all stabs in the dark to support a very literal and concrete interpretation of the scriptures. The concern these so-called literalists have, it seems, is if the numbers are figurative then the story is fiction and therefore the bible is all made up, but this is not true. Figurative does not equal fiction. (more…)

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The Parables of Jesus

Grant HastingsSeptember 11, 20162 Comments on The Parables of Jesus
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The Prodigal Son

In the New Testament we find numerous parables that have become part of our popular culture over the centuries. Jesus taught almost exclusively in parables (Mark 4:34) in order to veil the meaning from the uninspired (Mark 4:12). A parable is a short story through which Jesus taught gospel principle. A parable is referred to as a didactic story because it is intended to teach a moral concept. Many of the parables are hyperbole which means they are an extreme exaggeration to prove a point. I suspect that the original audience would have found great humor in the message, a humor that has been lost over the centuries. The greatest teachers use humor and if Jesus is to be considered the master teacher, we should assume he used humor a fair bit. The Jesuit Priest James Martin explains in a special article to CNN that “one difficulty with finding humor in the New Testament is that what was seen as funny to those living in Jesus’ time may not seem funny to us.” And “Too many Gospel stories have become stale, like overly repeated jokes.” (more…)

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Job – A Peculiar Lesson

Grant HastingsSeptember 04, 2016

Gonzalo_Carrasco_-_Job_on_the_Dunghill_-_Google_Art_Project

I have argued that we should not look at Old Testament stories as either true or fiction. Ancient writers did not look at their environment with the scientifically literate perspective we enjoy. They focused on function. We do this to a degree in our modern language. The term ‘dozen’ does not always mean 12; it is often a function that represents a fairly large group – not so large that you need crowd control, and not so small that they could fit into a smart car. At least not comfortably. Likewise the expression ‘I have told you a thousand times’ – well, you have not told me anywhere close to a thousand times, but the amount ‘1,000’ is used as a function to express the idea that you have told me something more times than any reasonable person should expect to be told. (more…)

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What is Genesis 1 Talking About? Part Two

Grant HastingsAugust 28, 20164 Comments on What is Genesis 1 Talking About? Part Two

Genesis 1

Last week I proposed that Genesis 1 is telling a literal story using figurative language, and that this story is expressing the formation of the cosmic temple and not about the formation of the universe and the emergence of life on earth. It is not talking about the material origin of the earth, but the functional origins. How Gods creations bless our lives. Consider how the different days relate to each other: (more…)

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What is Genesis 1 Talking About?

Grant HastingsAugust 21, 201610 Comments on What is Genesis 1 Talking About?

In 1995, the majestic spiral galaxy NGC 4414 was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of the HST Key Project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale. An international team of astronomers, led by Dr. Wendy Freedman of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, observed this galaxy on 13 different occasions over the course of two months. Images were obtained with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) through three different color filters. Based on their discovery and careful brightness measurements of variable stars in NGC 4414, the Key Project astronomers were able to make an accurate determination of the distance to the galaxy. The resulting distance to NGC 4414, 19.1 megaparsecs or about 60 million light-years, along with similarly determined distances to other nearby galaxies, contributes to astronomers' overall knowledge of the rate of expansion of the universe. In 1999, the Hubble Heritage Team revisited NGC 4414 and completed its portrait by observing the other half with the same filters as were used in 1995. The end result is a stunning full-color look at the entire dusty spiral galaxy. The new Hubble picture shows that the central regions of this galaxy, as is typical of most spirals, contain primarily older, yellow and red stars. The outer spiral arms are considerably bluer due to ongoing formation of young, blue stars, the brightest of which can be seen individually at the high resolution provided by the Hubble camera. The arms are also very rich in clouds of interstellar dust, seen as dark patches and streaks silhouetted against the starlight.

When reading Genesis 1, the Creation story, interpretations of the story can generally be classified into three groups:

  • Those who dogmatically cling to the story as literal gospel truth despite the science;
  • Those who reject the story as a fable or patently false because of the science;
  • Those who experience a crisis of faith when they find the word of God is in conflict with known history and become suspect of both.

(more…)

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The Genetic 1%

Grant HastingsAugust 14, 20162 Comments on The Genetic 12

smiling-ape

There is, I have been told, a 1% difference in DNA between humans and Apes. Apes are, arguably, the most intelligent animals on the planet next to humans. I say arguably because hamsters are freaking brilliant Houdinis.  Apes have been studied for their ability to use simple tools and can be taught to communicate through basic sign language. Their limitation is that they cannot see beyond themselves. They are not able to ask questions about the world around them because, as far as they are concerned, everything they observe is exactly what everybody else observes.  Humans, up until the age of about 4, have the same limitation. It does not occur to them that someone else has a different perspective. (more…)

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