Question to a bible scholar

Hey Dan Adam, couldn’t help but notice your name changed from Dan O'Neil.

I don’t want to overtax your time, but I have specific questions concerning your viewpoints on ‘evolution’ and ‘change.’ From this premise I have broken my questions into 6 parts so you can select which one(s) you may want to answer.

Part 1:
Why do Christians disagree with evolution? I asked in an earlier letter: How is Christianity inconsistent with evolution?

Evolution says that ‘plants and animals change as they reproduce, in response to the changing environment.’ Evolution doesn’t say why God decides to make things change … it just makes a simple observation gleaned from the geological record that ‘things change,’ which is an accurate representation of God’s universe isn’t it?

If God decides to wave his hand and make animals change, where in the Bible does it say it is not his province to do whatever he wants?

                          Part 2
Where does the Bible mention ‘intelligent design?’ Or is this a precept of man to broker the Bible current with scientific discoveries God has revealed to man?

                          Part 3
In your discussion of intelligent design, you use the example of cell complexity to prove that ID is valid, saying that cells are too complex for anything less than God’s invisible hand behind it all. OK I agree God’s hand is behind it, but bacterium has become resistant to antibiotics.

Bacteria cells have changed their interaction with the universe by changing how molecules work inside their cells … and God revealed this tiny change to man.

Where in the Bible does God relinquish his authority to reveal the universe to us or to wrought change onto bacteria or any other cell or system in the universe?


Part 4
Isn’t change an imperative of God’s universe?

Tell me what is the same today as it was yesterday? What speck of dust settles in the same place each day and will do so forever?
Is it not true that even a rock in the dirt has a history of change coursing back to the beginning of time?

Observe yourself, don’t you change and reformulate your ideas almost constantly based on input from God’s universe? You have changed your name in response to something. Is it not God that has put the imperative in you to read, study, think, reflect and then write about the change he has allowed you? You have changed inside haven’t you?

Change is apparent everywhere. You are different from your parentage and their parents before … of course there are overlapping similarities, but the offspring is always different, with each given a whole new opportunity inside the universe.

Change seems mandatory in God’s universe. No tree, no snowflake, no fingerprint, no blade of grass is ever repeated exactly as before … no new generation of life is exactly like its predecessor… and this uniqueness exists across the entire universe where no star or planet or galaxy or speck of dust is an exact replica of any other … and no interaction can ever be exactly duplicated again, and no orbit of a planet remains unchanged and no orbit goes without affecting all other orbits … and each event in the universe acts as a new generation, transposing itself over the top of every other event in a never-ending confluence of change. Is this not self evident?

Where in the Bible does it say that change can not happen in God’s universe, or that change is not constant and continual?
                       
Part 5
The most far-reaching question follows:

Does the Bible say that God has spoken to man only once, and that only one document has unfailing caught his every word, and that God said he would not reveal the world further to mankind?

Is it not in the Bible that God intends to continue revealing the world to us?

Does the Bible allow that God may inform man further, yes or no?

If yes, then it means God’s word allows him to inform or change anything. As he informs us further, he has allowed us to see the geological record, which shows his unseen plan includes changing plants and animals over time … so if God can inform us further, then the Bible and evolution are consistent with each other.

                        Part 6

I hesitate to include this question, since your scholarly pursuit is the Bible.

The Bible like the Koran was set down by men who learned to write and preserve their work. The intent of both books is to capture God’s word, and interestingly both were created only after the technology existed to capture their words.

Am I guessing correctly that God was unable to speak effectively to people before printing technology existed?

The Koran was issued by God thru Mohammad, who claims God spoke directly to him, and anybody doubting this, or doubting God’s word should be put to death. Although it seems a bit hairy, the Koran has its true believers, and of course they will go to heaven … contingent on if they devote their worldly lives to the proper chants and rituals.

The Bible likewise demands the repeating of chants and rituals, plus contingent behaviors in order to make it to heaven.

But many eastern religions have chants and rituals too, and the Vikings had beliefs; to honor Thor you had to chant and ritualize into blood and debauchery or whatever.

So what about the millions of people not under the umbrella of the Koran and the Bible? What about the preceding generations of Europeans or Asians or the American Indians or the tribes from Brazil, how could they get to heaven if they lived prior to printing technology?

Is everybody condemned to hell outside Christianity and Islam? Hell must be mighty full by now, not that I care a whistle.

I know you have written extensively about the first man, and you do it in a singular fashion as if to exclude Mohammad and a whole lot of other people. My question is, are you proposing that the total sum of Christianity is about eugenic purity? And that all others will fall below the line and into the eternal flames of hell and damnation?

 Gene Haynes