Sunday 14 May 2023
Trinitarians vs. the Trinity.
After many decades of discussing/debating the trinity doctrine with supposedly qualified expositors,I can't help but notice that I am yet to hear a defense of any particular concept of the trinity that worked on its own terms i.e that wasn't a non sequitur.
Indeed as I keep trying to explain to my interlocutors the trinity doctrine's main counter is the defense mounted by its adherents.
Trinitarians are able get away with the logical fallacies inherent in the most popular defenses of their doctrine due to lazy thinking both on their own part and those who they are able to persuade. First let's take a popular/mainstream concept of the trinity :Trinity, in Christian doctrine, the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead.: So an attempted defense of this notion should ,using premises held in common,reason consistently to the conclusion that the most high God is in fact a council of three eternal persons. Not that any of the non-triune persons in the council is the most high God or is considered God in some unspecified/unspecifiable way or is divine, trinitarians must demonstrate from scripture that the most high God consists of three co eternal persons. They however invariably end up making claims that are either tritheistic or modalistic in their defenses of their dogma.
By way of a few examples:
John ch.1:1NIV"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Note that the text plainly states that the logos was with the God and not with the father thus there is no logical way to get to a Trinitarian conclusion from this premise Bi-Theism is possible with a stretch , but trinitarianism is not even in the frame.
Romans ch.9:5"Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! " Some Trinitarian translators have rather shortsightedly promoted the above rendering of the text thus handing Modalists ammunition ,for which they are likely quite grateful. Of course if Jesus is the most high God then obviously the most high God is not triune,because by common consent Jesus Christ is not triune so either a monarchy of the so called second person of the trinity over his Father or some kind of Sabellianism is in play, but certainly no trinitarianism.
John ch.14:9"Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? " By common consent neither Jesus nor his Father is triune, for trinitarians this would disqualify either from consideration as the most high God who/which(?) is triune, so there really is no logical way to make this verse even appear to support a triune deity whether seeing the Father(who is not the triune God) is to be taken literally ,as that would be an invoking of modalism ,or Jesus is claiming equality with his Father ,who is not the triune God, for that would mean that Jesus is a distinct God like his Father who is a distinct God see John ch.1:1 So once again it's Bi-Theism or sabellianism certainly not trinitarianism.
John ch.5:18NIV"For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling (The)God his own Father, making himself equal with (the)God."
Thus the Jewish religious leaders accused of making himself EQUAL to The mutually agreed upon lone God not of claiming to be the one God. So the only way that our Lord could concur with this accusation is to abandon monotheism and claim the existence of a second and equal deity i.e himself.
So while my main issue is the fact that the interpretive logic underpinning the premises and conclusions of Trinitarian arguments cannot be consistently applied in exegesis as even trinitarians are forced to admit when confronted ,the fact that even given the premises there is no logical way to any necessarily Trinitarian conclusion doubles the problem for trinitarians in my humble opinion.
From the selfish gene to kinship in one easy lesson?
Evolutionists: We Now Have Empirical Evidence For the Evolution of Kin Recognition
In a new Study out of the University of Liverpool evolutionists now say they have found empirical evidence that a genetic complex, involving dozens of protein-coding genes related to altruism, can evolve. Such a finding would be truly ground-breaking given that, at least up until now, the evolution of even a single protein has been found to be scientifically unlikely. It would be astonishing if now evolutionists have overturned a substantial body of work establishing molecular evolution to be effectively impossible. But of course evolutionists have done no such thing. There was no finding of molecular evolution, no new proteins or genes, no empirical evidence, nothing. Just another ridiculous claim made by evolutionists. It’s the same old pattern—evolutionists look at profoundly complicated biological structures, assume they evolved, and then claim they have found evidence of evolution.
Altruistic behavior creates many problems for evolution. One problem is the starting point: kin recognition, evolutionists unsuccessfully tried to explain altruism using the concept of kin selection, and while that creates many scientific problems, you can’t even get to kin selection without kin recognition. How do animal siblings or cousins recognize each other.
The new study out of the University of Liverpool has found a genetic basis for kin recognition. It is a genetic complex of a couple dozen protein-coding genes and the problems with this are several.
First, it means that kin selection hinges on several proteins working together. Evolving a single protein is, from a scientific perspective, so unlikely as to be effectively impossible. But here evolution needs several proteins. Evolve just one protein and you still don’t have kin recognition. You would have to evolve several others, so the problem is even more difficult.
Second, the genetic cluster is species-specific. Apparently there is no common kin recognition mechanism across the vertebrates as evolutionists had assumed. Of course evolutionists had assumed this, for to have different mechanisms, particular to species or groups of species, would make their theory even more absurdly improbable. Kin recognition would have to re-evolve, in various ways, over and over. Well that is exactly what this new finding is suggesting. As usual, biology shows specific, particular, solutions that are unique to one or a few species, rather than falling into the expected common descent pattern.
Once again, common descent fails to serve as a useful guide. And once again evolutionists, in spite of the science, claim more proof for their theory.
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