Christian Perspectives on Peak Oil

BigTex

It is ironic to me how much time Christians spend telling other Christians that they aren't doing it right.

Protestants tell the Catholics.

Evangelicals tell the non-evangelicals.

Charismatics tell the evangelicals.

Church of Christ tells everyone.
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vision-master

Ludi

BigTex

Ludi

This one is relevant:

"Book 3, Chapter 4: The truth is to be found nowhere else but in the Catholic Church, the sole depository of apostolical doctrine. Heresies are of recent formation, and cannot trace their origin up to the apostles."
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"...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow..." - jboogy

POAlex

BigTex

Gandalf_the_White · Heavy Crude Joined: Nov 21, 2007 Posts: 469

Ludi

Other folks might enjoy freedom of religion too, of course, not just Christians.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
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"...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow..." - jboogy

Gandalf_the_White · Heavy Crude Joined: Nov 21, 2007 Posts: 469

http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_050808ENV_salt_water_fuel_KS.e001d971.html

I need to look into this a little deeper, but as I watched this I suddenly realized it is possible for the oceans to burn. Imagine our planet coming into the path a pulsar and experiencing a giant radio burst. The oceans could catch fire.

My criticism of what he appears to be doing are these

1) he appears to be trying to impress us by using radio waves to separate hydrogen and oxygen in water.

2) he is probably using purified water and table salt, not the more complex mixture we find in seawater.

3) it is likely that the process is less efficient than other methods

My praise

1) I love when people think outside the box in science. That's why God gave us brains. Washington Carver, the peanut.

2) though it is not catalysis, I like to think of it as catalizing the removal of hydrogen by introducing an amount of salt. I will look into it some more and see what the EROEI is for somepossible life cycles.

As a novelty that comes coincidentally at the right time, it might make alot of people think, 'Why worry about oil Pete. Dint you heer bout that fella that bruns water!' 'I know Frank the world is always coming to an end if you listen to dem doomers.'

Probably not a major motive, but for some peope things like this do have that effect.
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I return to you now at the turning of the tide.

AlwaysThere · Heavy Crude Joined: May 05, 2008 Posts: 139

Gandalf_the_White · Heavy Crude Joined: Nov 21, 2007 Posts: 469

I recieved an e-mail alert from the ACLU stating they had been able to destroy an NSL that had been levelled against the wayback machine, (its that Internet archive site.) Wll that reminded me that I have some ol stuff on the wayback machine, one of them is this old study about Biblical Faith. I do not think all of the fonts will come through but it should be readable.

Biblical Faith

Introduction

Just about anyone that you talk to in Christian circles today will admit that we are living in a post-Christian culture. Now our culture is not un-Christian as if we have never heard the gospel but rather it is un-Christian in the sense that one or more generations in the recent past have heard the gospel and rejected it.

Over the course of our history there have been ebbs and flows in the religious fervor of the United States. Of all of the great rejections of Christian morality no movement or time looms as large as the 1960's. The generation commonly called the baby boomer generation saw the opening battle of an all out assault on Christian values. Let's just look at what has happened in the last 40 years.

Prayer was taken out of public school

Abortion was legalized

Homosexuality has gone from being a sin to being a lifestyle

These benchmarks, as troubling as they are from a Biblical standpoint, are only like tips of a much larger iceberg of anti-Bible sentiment. Notice I say anti-Bible and not anti-Christian. Why? Because the word Christian does not mean today what it used to mean, or what the Bible says it means. In the book of Acts 11:25, 26 we read,

Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.

This event occurred some seventeen years after Jesus was raised from the dead. The word 'Christians' here means 'little Christ' or 'Christ-like'. It was a name that was applied to the believers in Antioch because they all acted like Jesus. They had strong godly character and paid close attention to the teachings of Scripture just as Jesus had taught the Apostles and the Apostles had taught them. Today we cannot be sure that a person who claims to be Christian really cares at all what the Bible has to say. So we need to make a difference between what appears to be 'Christian' in our society and that which is truly 'Christ-like'.

Just at it is very rare in the general American public to find someone who truly holds a biblical morality it is becoming increasingly rare in the church to find Christians who understand even the basics of Biblical Christianity. A case in point is the notion of faith. Few words are used more often by ministers and non-ministers alike than the word 'faith'. However most people when asked will not be able to give a clear definition of faith. So let me ask you. If a person reading the Bible comes to a passage that contains the word 'faith' but they really don't know what faith is, how can they understand the meaning of that passage? You see for many the word 'faith' is like an undefined term, we use it without any thought in our speech but in our understanding it is like a blank space. We read in Hebrews 11:6, 'Without faith it is impossible to please God', but in our understanding we see the statement, 'Without _____ it is impossible to please God'. We read in the Gospels, 'If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed', and our understanding sees, 'If you have ____ like a grain of mustard seed'. One of the great advantages of training in mathematical logic is knowing the importance of having clear definitions for the terms we would like to use to discuss or investigate some topic or another. In fact if we cannot clearly define something then it is useless to our understanding and any claims we make based on that definition are immediately suspect.

Starting from the Start

So lets start from the start and build our understanding of the biblical term 'faith'. Firstly we need a definition. There are two easy ways to find a definition for the word 'faith'. First we can look in the Webster's Dictionary ( a respected source by most standards).

Faith (noun)

1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : LOYALTY b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions
2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust
3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs
synonym see BELIEF

Faith (verb)

archaic : BELIEVE, TRUST

This is a good solid definition of how the word 'faith' is usually used in the English language, it has four points.

faith as in 'to keep faith with someone, possibly God', 'to be faithful' to 'follow through' on our commitments and promises

to believe and trust in God as in 'faith in God'

to believe in something for which there is no proof as in a 'leap of faith'.

to believe in the traditional teachings of a religion as in 'What faith are you?'

The synonyms for faith are universally acknowledged to be trust and believe.

There is a subtle and really wonderful connection between the idea of 'faith' as a noun (nouns are usually objects of some type) and 'faith' as a verb. 'Faith' as a verb is really synonymous with the verb 'trust'. 'Faith' as a noun in the sense of #2 above is what a person possesses who is actively trusting in God. Similarly 'faith' as a noun in the sense of #2 above is what a person possesses who believes God when He speaks. Right a way we see that faith 'grows' as we learn to trust God more. It is a simple analogy. Think of a person you have just met, having faith in them in this sense is to trust that what they say is true. The more you trust them the more you are willing to believe what they say even if what they say seems less than probable. When we talk about trusting God, our trust in Him (as He reveals Himself to us through Bible study, prayer and experience) can become so great that we will believe God when He tells us that the impossible is possible (#3). Faith in a Biblical sense is really trusting that God will do what He says. The question of what exactly He is saying in the Bible brings us to #4 above. With this site we are trying to be faithful to the teachings of the Lord and His Apostles, not changing, adding or taking away from what they have taught. And of course #1 above is our part, we must be committed to the Lord and the truths of the Bible, we must keep good 'faith' towards God and obey His word. We must be faithful men and women, people who can be trusted. These basic ideas are repeated over and over again in the Bible, especially in the New Testament.

Taking it to the Greek

Now if we take this a little further and look at the Greek word that is translated 'faith' in the New Testament we find the word pistis.

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pistis

pis'-tis

From G3982; persuasion, that is, credence; moral conviction (of religious
truth, or the truthfulness of God or a religious teacher), especially reliance upon Christ for salvation; abstractly constancy in such profession; by extension the system of religious (Gospel) truth itself:?assurance, belief, believe, faith, fidelity.

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peitho?ont>

pi'-tho

A primary verb; to convince (by argument, true or false); by analogy to pacify or conciliate (by other fair means); reflexively or passively to assent (to evidence or authority), to rely (by inward certainty):?agree, assure, believe, have confidence, be (wax) content, make friend, obey, persuade, trust, yield.

When we look at pistis and its root word peitho, we see the same four aspects to faith as Webster's Dictionary gave us. This is excellent, but it is generally not the case that the Greek words used in the Bible translate easily and precisely into English. The interesting insight we gain from looking at the Greek word pistis comes when we realize that 99% of the 200 or so times that the word 'faith' appears in the New Testament it has been translated from the word pistis. Five times it is translated from it's derivative oligopistis (lack of faith, of little faith). You see we do have our definition for 'faith' it was right there in the English dictionary. It has these four aspects remember?

faith as in 'to keep faith with someone, possibly God', 'to be faithful' to 'follow through' on our commitments and promises

to believe and trust in God as in 'faith in God'

to believe in something for which there is no proof as in a 'leap of faith'.

to believe in the traditional teachings of a religion as in 'What faith are you?'

To Believe

Ok so here is a little more interesting insight, the word translated as 'believe' in the New Testament? It comes from the word pistis also.

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pisteuo?ont>

pist-yoo'-o

From G4102; to have faith (in, upon, or with respect to, a person or thing),
that is, credit; by implication to entrust (especially one?s spiritual well being to
Christ):?believe (-r), commit (to trust), put in trust with.

Notice the synonymous meanings: to entrust, put trust in. You see there is no mystery, we have unveiled the mystery of what 'faith' is. To believe in Jesus means to entrust your well being to Him. You see here is where we can make a distinction. Many who profess to be Christians would say that they 'believe' that Jesus was raised from the dead. But the word 'believe' in the Bible means not just that we accept or acknowledge the facts but that we follow through and begin making decisions based upon our firm belief in the promises of God written in the Bible.

Trust

What about the word 'trust'? Now this one is a little more complicated since there are three Greek words translated 'trust' in the New Testament. Two of them are directly related to pistis, they are the words pisteuo and pietho already listed above. These two make up about one third of the appearances of the word 'trust'. The most common Greek word translated as trust is the word elpizo. This is a trust that has pleasurable expectations. Wow!

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elpizo?ont>

el-pid'-zo

From G1680; to expect or confide:?(have, thing) hope (-d) (for), trust.

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elpis

el-pece'

From h밹 elpo?ont> which is a primary word (to anticipate, usually with
pleasure); expectation (abstract or concrete) or confidence:?faith, hope.

Now we can really understand the often quoted but rarely understood passage from Hebrews chapter 11.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

Take some time here to really understand. Remember what faith is, it is trusting that God will do what He said, that He is faithful. The word in the Greek here for 'faith' is... you guessed it pistis. We know what that one means. But look the Greek word for 'hoped' is elpizo. An amplified translation of this verse might read like this.

Trusting in God's faithfulness gives us assurance that what we expect from God will come to pass and that we can believe Him even if we do not see immediately the things He speaks of.

There is no mystery here brothers. The reason this passage is so often twisted is that the translation into English allows it. There is room in the way we think about the words 'substance' and 'evidence' and 'unseen' to imply that the 'faith' and 'hope' being spoken of are somehow different then the plain definition we have found from the English and Greek Dictionaries. There is no secret special spiritual substance called 'faith', it is simply trust in God, a trust that acts like God intends to keep and will keep His promises.

God is faithful and what He has promised in the Bible is as good as done.

Conclusion

In closing take a look at this. Most of you are familiar with the verse from 1Corinthians that says,

And now abideth faith (pistis), hope (pietho), charity (agape), these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

1Corinthians 13:13

A good amplified translation would be,

Keep trusting in the faithfulness of God, keep expecting Him to do what He has said and keep loving everyone without partiality. Of these three the greatest is impartial love towards all.

In the next article in this series we will see why this agape love is of such central importance to knowing God.
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I return to you now at the turning of the tide.

BigTex