>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of Darryl Maddox
>Sent: Saturday, December 09, 2000 12:05 PM
>A similar question has haunted me since I was in my early teens
>but no one I
>asked ever seemed to want to talk about it. Since this is a group composed
>of people who are concerned with both religion and science someone in this
>group has some thoughts they would care to share. The question is: If we
>discovere intelligent life in or from outer space, and if they have no
>concept of God and then of course have never heard of, and perhaps can not
>even conceive of a being such as Jesus, what effect might that have on our
>own belief systems? While George's question about our obligation to
>proclaim the gospel to them is an interesting one it seems to me
>it skips an
>essential point - How do we determine if they have a "soul" which needs
>saving? If they have no soul, such as some peole argue for animals on this
>planet, are they then either doomed do a temporary physical
>existance, or if
>they have souls are all who could not accept Christ because they had never
>heard of him until they ran into us doomed to condemnation?
One doesn't have to look to the stars to run into this problem. The approach
that Reasons to Believe has taken to fossil man clearly runs into this
problem. They believe that there were people who looked like us, had the
same bone structure, the same developmental patterns, yet they weren't us.
They were merely bipedal mammals without souls. Anatomically modern humans
appeared on earth around 120,000 years ago. RTB says that spiritual humans
appeared around 60,000 years ago or less. They do this because for some
unexplained reason RTB thinks that if Adam is 60,001 years old, then the
Bible is false but if he is 60,000 years or younger, then the Bible is true.
(Why do I place such precise numbers on this? Because they use the 60,000
year as a limit. I would love to ask Hugh Ross if Adam was 60,001 years old
would it be ok for the Bible? If he said yes, then I would ask, how about
60,002 years ago? and so on. At some point he would have to say, no, the
bible is false. Thus in his view there must be some age for Adam which is ok
and one year older must bring devastation to the Bible.)
glenn
see http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>
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