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Tim Callahan Profile
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Upcoming Debate


I, along with Michael Shermer (publisher of Skeptic Magazine) will be debating Hugh Ross on the subject of Bible prophecy on May 1 at a church in Fullerton (Orange County, Southern California). Ross is a physicist turned minister and is an old earth creationist.

I'm not certain what the format will be. We will be meeting with Ross and his people shortly to set up everything. I'll let everyone know about it in the months leading up to May 1.
2/5/2010, 5:51 pm Link to this post Send Email to Tim Callahan   Send PM to Tim Callahan
 
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Re: Upcoming Debate


As it turns out, I alone will be debating Hugh Ross on the subject of Bible prophecy on May 1. The details are below:

Here are the directions to the venue:
-1. 57 to Imperial (West on Imperial)
-1. South (left) on St. College
-1. West (right) on Rolling Hills
-1. Proceed to corner of Rolling Hills and Brea Blvd.
-1. Meeting Room (NC-200) is on the North Campus of EV Free Fullerton (NE corner of Rolling Hills and Brea Blvd.) . . . Look for the sign/poster that says “RTB Orange County” in front of the building.

Saturday May 1, 2010 10:30 AM to 1:00 PM
First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton, Room NC-200
2904 N. Brea Blvd. Fullerton, CA 92835
North Campus (NE corner of Rolling Hills and Brea Blvd.)

4/11/2010, 9:06 pm Link to this post Send Email to Tim Callahan   Send PM to Tim Callahan
 
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Re: Upcoming Debate


Today is the day of the debate. I a few hours I'll be debating hugh Ross on, mainly, the prophecies in the Book of Daniel. If anyone's lurking, wish me luck.
5/1/2010, 10:34 am Link to this post Send Email to Tim Callahan   Send PM to Tim Callahan
 
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Re: Upcoming Debate


Well, I don't know if I'm talking to myself or if someone's listening. However, since some time has elapsed since my debate with Hugh Ross, I thought I would mention some of the points that came up in the debate.

The debate wasn't strictly about Bible prophecy, since Ross wanted to discuss what he called the predictive power of Genesis 1, i.e. that Gen. 1 stated the order of appearance of various life forms etc. well before science did. Some of this involved fudging the text, in that he rationalized the comparatively late creation of the sun and moon by equating it with the appearance of the sun and moon as the originally opaque atmosphere became first translucent, then transparent. I pointed out that this involved eisigesis, reading one's views into the text, rather than exegesis, correctly reading out of the biblical text that which is in it.

I also pointed out that Gen. 1 has land plants appearing before sea animals, which is backward. He countered that there was recent strong evidence of land plants as far back as the late Precambrian. When I looked up an article in Nature he subsequently cited, I found that it was based on measurements of ratios of different isotopes of carbon (carbon 12 and carbon 13) in Precambrian limestone. When I asked Donald Prothero, author of Evolution: What the Fossils Say, about the article (even the abstract of which I found a bit hard to follow), he said that all it referred to were cryptogamic crusts of algae in coastal areas, hardly a populating of the land with plants. This didn't begin until the Ordovician and didn't get into full swing until the Silurian.

In my next post I'll deal with the more prophecy oriented part of the debate.

5/19/2010, 11:07 am Link to this post Send Email to Tim Callahan   Send PM to Tim Callahan
 
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Re: Upcoming Debate


As to the Book of Daniel, I pointed out that the history in Daniel is off, indicating it is pseudepigraphic. This is particularly true of Belshazzar being succeeded by "Darius the Mede." In fact, he was succeeded by Cyrus the Great of Persia, There never was a Darius the Mede. Hugh Ross countered that Darius the Mede was just another name for Cyrus. Since Darius, or, more accurately, Dariawush, means "the royal one," that argument isn't as absurd as it might initially sound. However, Dan. 6:28 states:

So this Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

There would seem to be no way this verse can make sense unless Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian are two different people.

Ross took me back somewhat when he asserted that expert opinion has determined that the Aramaic used in Daniel is from the sixth century BCE, rather than the second. I looked this up after the debate and found that many scholars do take this position. However, John J. Collins in his 1993 book on Daniel asserts that the Aramaic of Dan. 2 - 6 dates from the third century, while the Aramaic of Dan. 7 dates from the time of Antiochus Epiphanes.

Kenneth A. Kitchen, in a 1965 article, asserted that there is no way to date the Aramaic of Daniel. It could as easily be sixth century or second century. Kitchen's opinion on this subject is extremely important, since he is extremely conservative in his views, opposing the Documentary Theory and upholding the Mosaic authorship of the Torah.

So, it would appear that this seemingly strong argument of Ross' ultimately comes to nothing, and we must look elsewhere for that date of Daniel's composition than the style and grammar of its Aramaic.
5/19/2010, 6:39 pm Link to this post Send Email to Tim Callahan   Send PM to Tim Callahan
 


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