Hey EU fam! It’s been awhile since I’ve logged on here. To be completely honest, you’re my only true fellowship on the matter. I wanted to consult you guys again, since my anxiety of eternal punishment continually stems from the fact that many people offer their biblical treatises against CU, and that I feel helpless to defend it, or have confidence in it, whilst reading their articles. I was wondering aout your thoughts about these (from here on out you all can now endear me as notably being the character always asking for help!):
I want to be memorable for doing this frequently, y’know, presenting you all with challenges (well, they are to me at least ), give you guys something to do in your spare time
i think the first one is nothing new, the standard “arguments” using fallacious translations of hyperbolic statements, in addition to a too high view of God’s respect for free will which allows Him to be thwarted, or in other words, to fail.
it’s an argument that sounds good and convincing on the surface, but the topics have been unpacked here quite often and shown to be more complex than the surface readings allow.
he also states God’s willingness to use the evils of this present age as a means to an end, and thinks that amounts to evidence of God not flinching from eternal punishment. i think this is a horribly illogical thought. someone might endure a bad thing for the hope of a good thing…but no one would endure a permanently evil thing from which no good could come. God’s purpose for this present evil age is restorative…if anything, it is evidence that God will stop at NOTHING to save whom He wants to save.
Orthodox trinitarian Christian universalists do not excuse or justify every conceivable ideology. So more power to him for not doing so either.
Most Christian universalists do not consider universalism a dogma (i.e. a doctrine that must be held to be identifiably Christian).
More than a few, though admittedly still a minority.
1.1.) Psalm 9 certainly features very strong language against the wicked and those who would perish the hope of the afflicted forever, for which David expects God to afflict them to the uttermost limit (which might be translated “forever and ever”) without any mention of hope that they will repent and return–although David expects God to hear and save him from his affliction at the gate of death! David is not always very self-consistent about what he expects in regard to mercy and salvation from God.
Be that as it may, if this Psalm was taken as the final end in itself, then it would at least deny the doctrine of the resurrection of the wicked (v.5-6 apparently), which we see strongly affirmed in other testimonies (such as at Daniel 12:2, for example). The story goes on beyond this to some extent, and its language is demonstrably either hyperbolic or wrong about the cities of the enemy being perpetually ruined (since some of those cities were re-established after David’s day, and others are prophesied elsewhere to be re-established after our day, as I assume an informed Biblical student like Wayne will already know); consequently its testimony is limited to strong punishment coming upon those who insist on killing the hope of the afflicted forever, such as David’s hope when he was afflicted in punishment by God (which this Psalm, like several others, complains about–such people who try to kill his hope of salvation should be punished by God the way God has punished David for his sins!)
For one (of several) notable examples of the story going farther than this: in Psalm 34, David expects the wicked whom God expects to cut off the memory of from the earth, to cry to the Lord and be saved after being punished, the goal of the Lord’s punishment being to make their hearts contrite and their spirits crushed so that they may be saved from their sins.
Relatedly, in Psalm 30, David appeals to God for salvation from punishment by two principles: that God’s anger is only temporary, intended to lead sinners to repentance and reconciliation; and that God will not be satisfied with souls in Sheol who cannot properly praise Him for being faithful to them despite their unfaithfulness to Him (for which reason they are sent to Sheol).
1.2.) The informed Biblical student will quickly discover that Job 11:8, aside from being given by Zephar (from whom any Biblical student ought to be a bit wary about accepting Biblical truths, especially since he’s in the middle of arguing that Job is being punished by God for some secret sin), has nothing in the least to do with being an example of where the wicked receive their punishments. Zephar is comparing the limits and depths of God to be longer than the earth, broader than the seas, high as the heaven and deep as Sheol. Even I could find better testimonies to Sheol as punishment of evildoers than that. (Psalm 30, for one example off the top of my head. But I could volunteer Job 26 as more appropriate to Wayne’s purposes, if he prefers.)
1.3.) The informed Biblical student will already know that the famous verse of Psalm 139:8 either testifies to God’s rescue of souls out of Sheol (the omnipresence of God even in Sheol being part of the basis for David’s hope of salvation), or doesn’t apply to the notion of Sheol as punishment for the dead at all. If Wayne knows this, too, he doesn’t make clear why he would choose this example for his purpose.
1.4.) It is disputable whether Sheol means the realm of the punished dead in Proverbs 23:14–the dyad with verse 13 may be a typical Hebrew poetry tactic of going even farther in emphasis of the point; but any purgatorial universalist will agree that God punishes with the rod, not only to keep them from dying (v.13) but also in order to deliver His children from the realm of the punished dead.
2.) A clear distinction is indeed made between the wicked and the righteous in the resurrection prophesied at Daniel 12:2, which no purgatorial universalist denies. What is in dispute is whether the Hebrew term there, describing the abhorrence, should be translated “everlasting” in the sense of never-ending. Biblical Christian universalists point to testimony elsewhere indicating those who are abhorred will be saved from their sins; consequently the term here should be translated “maximum” or something of that sort.
3.1.) Whatever the merits may be of the case for hopeless punishment from Rev 20:13, and/or for the equivalence of the Lake of Fire with the condition of Gehenna (which I agree with), that verse is not an example of the condition being called Gehenna, which any Biblical student would require only a few seconds to be informed about.
3.2.) The story of those thrown into the lake of fire isn’t over at Rev 20:13, and continues on for at least two chapters, showing kings of the earth (the chief human rebels against Christ) entering the New Jerusalem after all following the light of Christ, and those outside the NJ being evangelized by the Spirit and the Bride to wash their robes and drink of the water of life and eat the leaves of the tree of life inside the city. While this interpretation is disputable, there are disputes about it in great Biblical detail.
3.3.) Matthew 11:23 occurs as part of a statement from Jesus indicating Sodom and Gomorrah will fare better in the resurrection than Capernaum–and alluding verbally to a prophecy from Ezekiel 16 that Sodom shall be saved by God in the Day of the Lord to come and be reconciled with slain rebel Israel.
3.4.) Luke 16:23, whatever may be said about the fate of the Rich Man in hades, is not testimony to Gehenna (much less to hades) as the ultimate environment or domain. That the clearly impenitent Lazarus is not saved yet from his sins is no surprise. The gulf mentioned by Abraham will no longer apply after the resurrection, and even before the resurrection the Spirit and the Son (Who has the keys of death and hades, Rev 1:18 as well as implied in several Gospel references), can and does cross that gulf. Topically, this parable follows two startling examples: of an impenitent but clever sinner being praised for his cleverness by Christ (as a ‘how much moreso should you’ example); and the parable of the prodigal son where the language of the narrative moral practically spells out the implications of post-mortem repentance and salvation!–as well as warning against an attitude of resentment for such salvation by those who regard themselves as loyal to the Father! The Pharisees, whom Christ launched the parable of the Rich Man against, regarded lepers like Lazarus to be suffering God’s punishment for sin; the Rich Man does not act to save Lazarus and so goes to the flame.
4.) It would not take much effort for the Biblical reader to be informed that Mark 9 does not end with verse 47, but continues through 49-50, with an explanation by Christ of the purpose of the unquenchable fire, which is to salt everyone in our hearts so that we will be at peace with one another. Other mentions of Gehenna by Christ should be interpreted in light of this purpose, including Matthew 5 where Jesus says some similar things much earlier in His ministry.
4.1.) Matt 5:25-26 is one of three “final cent” sayings in the Gospels. As with Matt 18 (which not incidentally parallels Mark 9, where this saying replaces 9:49-50), the context is absolutely connected to Gehenna threats, but also as with the other sayings (Luke 12:54-59 being the third), the person will be let out from the prison/torment once the person has paid the final cent. And as with the other sayings, the final cent owed is not money, but reconciliation and forgiveness and mercy.
4.2.) In the Luke 12 parallel to Matt 10:28, Jesus goes on to say that they should not fear God, for if God loves the flowers which exist today and tomorrow are thrown into the furnace, how much moreso does God love them (despite them being “of little faith”). That God can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna is true, but even Wayne does not think the body will in fact be destroyed in Gehenna (not being an annihilationist).
4.3.) Matt 18:9 is not only followed by the parable of the 100th sheep (where God finds and saves all those who are lost, leading to great rejoicing), but also by the strict warning to no less than the apostles themselves that if they do not forgive those who sin against them God will throw them to the tormentors until they agree to forgive sins themselves. The whole context speaks against the punishment of God being hopeless, and if anything warns against looking for a hopeless punishment. (The context in Mark also indicates that the apostles should not denigrate those who are working for Christ but not following after themselves, for those who are not against Christ are for Christ.)
4.4.) Matt 23 not only prophecies punishment for the impenitent Pharisees, but also that they (and rebel Jerusalem generally) shall glorify and loyally praise Jehovah upon or after His return to the Temple (v.39).
4.5.) Matthew 25:46 follows two parables warning of punishment coming to lazy and/or uncharitable servants of Christ, including to the one who tries to flatter Christ like a brigand. The terms for “eonian” can mean superficially similar but different things in close topical proximity, as evidenced elsewhere in the scriptures, so the eonian punishment isn’t necessarily “eternal” in the sense of the eonian life. The goats are explicitly baby-goats, and are part of Christ’s flock, thus are literally the least of Christ’s flock; and are being sent to eonian kolasis (where per other testimony they will be naked or with dirty clothing, hungry, thirsty, sick, excluded and imprisoned, as the informed Biblical reader will surely be aware), for not being interested in saving those in the condition the baby-goats will be punished with. To interpret the good sheep and the Good Shepherd as sacrificing the baby-goats (the way a brigand would, who comes to steal, sacrifice and kill the sheep), instead of expecting them to treat the baby-goats the way they treated others who were the least of Christ’s flock, is to interpret the parable the way a baby goat would. This does not seem expedient.
4.6.) Paul in 2 Thess 1:4-9 uses a term for whole-destruction that he definitely applies elsewhere (1 Cor 5:5) to refer to hopeful punishment so that the spirit may be saved in the same Day of the Lord to come which Paul is talking of here; and refers verbally to a prophecy cluster (running from Isaiah 2 through 6) where those who are wholly ruined by the coming of YHWH will eventually repent, seek reconciliation with the righteous (who are called “the survivors” in contrast to those who were punished, cf 2 Thess 2:8), and be cleaned by the fire of the Holy Spirit (primarily Isaiah 4). There is certainly no “abode of separation from the (omnipresent!) Creator” being testified to at 2 Thess or Isaiah 4.
4.7.) That many will enter destruction by the broad gate (and the wide way) rather than into life by the narrow gate, per Matt 7:13-14, is not disputed; which includes at least some who know enough to give Jesus the divine double “Lord Lord” and who are empowered to do miracles and exorcisms by Him (vv.21-23). But Jesus also testifies that many will come to Him from all the corners of the globe, and that it is the man who doesn’t expect this (even specifically the man who wants Christ to confirm that only a few are being saved in Luke 13:22-30) who shall be thrown outside, wailing and gnashing his teeth. The warning at Luke 13 is also very similar to that given to “the sons of the kingdom” at Matt 8, which is itself a key to interpreting Matt 13. Luke also puts the parable of the mustard seed just previously to the Luke 13 warning, which in the other two Synoptics is connected directly to warnings against being unmerciful and expecting hopeless punishment from God!–to which might also be added the beginning of Matt 7, “Do not judge lest you be judged, for by your standard of measurement shall it be measured to you.”
5.1.) When Paul spoke of those who would not escape the coming judgment of God’s wrath at Romans 2:3-5, he did so (as any informed Biblical student would quickly recall or discover by checking) as part of a strong criticism directed against his Christian readers for expecting God to hopelessly punish those evildoers-over-there while being longsuffering over their own sins for purposes of salvation. It is not only those who are selfishly ambitious and who do not obey unrighteousness instead of truth, but also those who think lightly of the riches of God’s kindness and forebearance toward sinners leading them to repentance, who are storing up for themselves wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, in accordance with their own stubborn and unrepentant heart. “Therefore you are without excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that you judge another you condemn yourself, for you who judge practice the same things.”
5.2.) Catalogs of those who practice sins not inheriting the kingdom of God, testify nothing against a doctrine that God shall eventually save all sinners from sins. Of course no one who practices sin will inherit. Duh! This is different from saying some persons will never inherit (and will always practice sin). Neither 1 Cor 6:9-10 nor Gal 5:19-21 have anything to say along that line.
5.3.) If we come to speaking of “clear enough” “implications” of 1 Peter 4, we shall quickly come to the implication that God descends into hades to evangelize those who were punished by imprisonment for their stubbornness, as part of the (famous) command that we be prepared to give reasons for our hope. Indeed there are “heresies” that will “destroy” the false teachesr so that their latter state is worse than their first, but Christ threw the warning of the sin against the Holy Spirit onto teachers who denounced as Satanic the idea that Christ would overthrow Satan to save a man who through lack of appreciation of God’s salvation entered a latter (even demonized) state that was worse than his first! (Matt 12:22-45, with a prologue from Matt 9:32-34 setting up the scene by contextual references.)
Wayne’s record at keeping track of plain meanings in the scriptures and narratives he himself referenced, is noted above.
The natural inclination of humanity is also to deny hope of salvation from sin, and to insist on hopeless punishment. Purgatorial Christian universalists affirm the doctrine of punishment for rebellion (even post-mortem) while not affirming the latter. But even some ultra-universalists, who deny any post-mortem punishment, sometimes acknowledge a doctrine of punishment for those who rebel against God (just not post-mortem).
Merely naturalistic grounds would involve survival of the fittest and the hopeless defeat of enemies as a sacrifice for one’s own well-being; also the imposition of mere power to achieve effects; also that unrighteousness should continue. The idea of ultimate and eternal retribution, in the sense of not in fact bringing enemies back into loyal tribute, thus being unreasonably self-contradictory in concept, fits the influence of a non-rational worship of mere natural processes exactly; which also fits the idea being a historical majority throughout human history across human cultures and religions, including within Christianity.
On the other hand, the idea that God Most High will go to the farthest self-sacrificial extremes to save all rebels against Him from their rebellions against Him, is so alien to natural religious thought that it is by far a minority in human religious history, including among Christians (who of all people ought to be most prepared to believe it). Be that as it may.
It is certainly not the Christian universalist who interprets the Lord’s goodness in such a way that it is at odds with the affirmation of God’s justice!–who is it who is saying that the Lord’s goodness and justice lead to all people being good and just eventually; and who is it who is saying that not only does the Lord’s goodness and justice lead to the opposite result, but that the Lord can only be loving or just toward sinners but not both?!
Justice demands punishment for sin, only because justice demands sinners be just instead of unjust: surely the informed Biblical reader does not need the flood of citations that could be made on that topic! That justice would be satisfied with final injustice instead of with justice is utterly illogical; it also happens, by the way, to be unscriptural. One must not foist his own jaded sense of goodness upon his perception of the Lord, contrary to clear scriptural revelation (if Wayne insists on speaking in such terms).
At any rate, that impenitent sin must be answered with punishment is no argument that the punishment must be hopeless or not have the re-tribution of its object in view; and the objection Wayne was supposed to be answering was that God’s goodness would not allow the unrighteous to be permanently unrighteous (i.e. lost).
No educated universalist appeals to 2 Peter 3:9 alone as evidence of universal salvation, only (just like an Arminian would) as evidence of universal scope of God’s intention to save sinners from sin–important against Calvinist claims of limited intention, but no more than that.
What educated universalists appeal to are 2 Peter 3:9 plus verses 15-18. Arminians quote 3:9 to show the scope of God’s salvation; Calvinists quote 3:15-18 as a warning not to regard the {makrothemia} of the Lord as resulting in less than salvation from sin. Universalists, believing both testimonies, do not then turn around to find ways to twist verse 9 to mean less than full scope of salvation, nor to twist verse 15 to mean less than full assurance of success in salvation! Consequently, “knowing this beforehand, be on guard, lest being led away with the deception of those who do nothing {athesmôn} the ones who do not enact, colloquially ones who mistreat foreigners or guests, as Sodom did, also thus described at 2 Peter 2:7], you should be falling from your own steadfastness.” St. Paul regards those currently outside citizenship in God’s kingdom as guests and travelers, Ephesians 2:11-22.
As for 1 Tim 2:3-4, does Wayne deny that God’s will shall certainly be done here in regard to half of this prayer: all persons (and not only all human persons!) shall come to realize the truth? But then, if this (which Paul connects directly to salvation from sin) shall be certainly accomplished; and if God wills that the other shall also be accomplished; and if (as Paul continues immediately afterward by saying) Christ is a ransom over all (plural)–then it seems like a very broken theology to deny that God will fail to accomplish His will on such an important deed! Is the Truth Himself supposed to stop short of bringing all persons to realize the Truth?! Then neither is Salvation Himself going to stop short of bringing all persons to salvation from sin.
Amazingly, those are the only two verses Wayne bothers to reference in favor of universal salvation, and doesn’t even bother to mention all the arguments used by educated Christian universalists in regard to those two verses!
False; he is arguing against religious pluralism there, not against Christian universalism. Or rather, it makes just as much “no difference” in the same sense that it makes no difference what anyone believes, teaches or practices, they can still be saved from their sins and into loyalty with God!–which Calvinists and Arminians both generally affirm!
Evangelical Universalists take that same evangelism to the same extremes Arminians and Calvinists each do separately: total scope, and total persistence to victory.
Note: the polite thing to do would be to alert Mr. Jackson to the rebuttal, but the site doesn’t have an email contact. I could snail mail him I suppose…?
Don’t worry, since when was Wayne Jackson an authority on anything? This is a guy who thinks it is “certain” that dinosaurs and human beings hung out together - the technical term for which is wilful ignorance.
Stop reading the Christian Courier and you’ll feel a lot better straightaway .
Actually, I regard the evidence for dinosaurs and humans hanging out together to be pretty strong, even from a purely secular perspective: I could easily imagine an agnostic folk anthropologist being convinced by it, without giving up a belief in any biological evolutionary theory either.
But that’s a whole other very very large discussion.
(Most people don’t know how extensive the evidence is, or even that there’s evidence at all, so they aren’t being willfully ignorant about it. Although Wayne would probably say they’re being willfully ignorant about it BECAUSE THE BIBLE SAYS SO SO THERE or words to that effect. )
I note that he only cites one solid near contemporary biblical scholar in his list of universalists - that is William Barclay. There are many, many other orthodox and biblical Christian universalists he could have cited - Jason Prat and Robin Parry for example. The others he cites -
Well John Hick is a religious pluralist rather than a Christian universalist
The UUR again are religious pluralists
Gulley and Mullohand - the evangelical Quakers write from a pastoral perspective rather than a rigorous biblical one
So none are representative of Christian universalism as such.
He ends his post by referring the reader to Richard Beck’s BlogSpot. The implication seems to be - ‘have a look at this and I rest my case; no further comment necessary’ (because Richard is relating theology to experience and other areas of human knowledge I guess )
Jackson begins with the Old Testament. Here we have God warning his beloved people of plague, famine, conquest and exile. Inexplicably, God fails to mention everlasting torture in the fires of hell. How strange… I mean, plague, famine, conquest and exile in this life are literally nothing relative to endless torture in hell. Why would God warn them so clearly of one, but not even mention the other?
It’s like Dad saying to his daughter, “Don’t step on the rug, dear. There’s some broken glass on it that will cut your feet.” Fair warning, Dad. What he doesn’t mention, inexplicably, unforgivably, negligently, is that there’s also a landmine under the rug which will blow off both her legs! Such a man would not be praised. He would be carted off to the lunatic asylum.
Doesn’t God have a duty of care toward his creatures?
The alternatives are clear. Either:
1)God is unworthy of our deepest love and trust, or
If there is any credible evidence that dinosaurs didn’t actually go extinct 65-odd million years before homo sapiens evolved, I’d be very interested to read it.
My point is that creationists like Wayne Jackson are indeed being deliberately, wilfully ignorant by dogmatically insisting on a literal reading of the Bible, and allowing that to dictate their worldview to the denial of any contrary empirical evidence. This sort of rank stupidity isn’t just an abrogation of our God given reason (and hence inherently sinful, if you ask me ). No, it is an active impediment to the gospel. The searching agnostic looks at some of the ludicrous things many Christians believe - eg that a God who the Bible clearly says “is love” is going to burn them and the people they love in hell forever if they don’t believe in him; or that he’s going to do the same to gay people; or any of the numerous absurdities and proven scientific fallacies of young earth creationism - and quite understandably concludes that Christians are half-wits and their faith a load of nonsense - hateful and vindictive nonsense at that.
Jackson’s argument is something along the lines of we know humans have existed since the beginning of creation, because that’s what the Bible says, therefore if dinosaurs existed they must have been contemporaneous with humans. The same is true for every species. Presumably if the Bible told Jackson to go and stick his head in an oven he’d do it. Although funnily enough he does seem to feel himself qualified to condemn bashing the bishop, even though the Bible does not. Go, as they say, figure …
I’d be interested to hear about arguments about human beings and dinosaurs somehow begin contemporaries. I mean the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Triceretops, the Steggasaurus etc… surely there is no evidence based way of saying that these existed at the same time as human beings. So whatever you are suggesting Jason must be different I guess.
I guess your original argument was a wee bit ad hominem Johnny (but what should I expect from a seasoned polemicist ). But now its on the table, please do give us a few pointers Jason . Are the anthropologists talking about Chaos dragons of folklore (and comparing them to Belial and Leviathan)? I’m sure that early human beings did walk with monsters - but actual dinosaurs are different species to my mind at the moment.
All the best
Dick
P.S. The Christian Courier man also says with an air of authority that part from a few figures in the early church throughout the middle ages and the reformation there was unanimity about ECT which only started to break down when a few figures started getting awkward in the eighteenth century. Well one thing I do know – this is just not true
I would very much like to see a trained folk anthropologist collect and collate the data (I sometimes wonder if one of my acquaintances would have gone that route under different circumstances, as she has shown definite interest in the topic since high school–which she is even today successfully capitalizing a bit on now, at long last, although in a very different fashion {affectionate g} ), but that hasn’t happened yet so far as I know.
So at the moment the evidence has to be sifted through people who on one hand have a strong bias against dinosaurs (and I’m using that term loosely) still existing in human history (although plenty of “living fossils” demonstrably exist today, some older by far than dinosaurs), and so do things like hide portions of existent human art when taking photographs of it for the public; or on the other hand have a strong religious bias in favor of dinosaurs existing in human history, so tend to overstate the case or latch onto more dubious examples without being in a position to do rigorous research for verification or falsification.
Be that as it may. If you can mentally neutralize the biases (including his), I cautiously recommend spending whole days working through the “S8int.com”’ website and weblog. He has collected a massive amount of information on out-of-place artifacts, and not just on nominally prehistoric creatures (although that tends to be his specialty).
I warn in advance he will be very very annoying about his religious biases. I just have to cut through that and focus on the actual data, some of which is better than others. (He acknowledges he’s a bit of a pack rat and picks up all kinds of loose data on the off chance something may be there; but he can be critically careful sometimes, too.)
I myself have even turned up a couple of stunning artistic artifacts in unexpected places!–one of which I was able to contribute to his site as an article. (We wanted to do the other, but he couldn’t find a copy of the book I found it in, and my photos of it from the book didn’t work well. My brother owns a Reader’s Digest coffee table book of ancient Biblical art, and smack in the middle of it is a 3rd century mosaic from somewhere in Syria or Palestine showing Jonah being spit up on shore by a very obvious plesiosaur, with little nostril ‘horns’ on top of his head spouting like a whale, the way the Loch Ness Monster has often been described.)
The photos I was able to contribute are screengrabs from the movie The Scarlet and the Black with Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer. It’s set in Rome, in and around the Vatican during WW2, and one of the things the producers worked hard on was to shoot ‘on location’ in the houses and buildings that still survived from that period. Late in the movie, Christopher Plummer’s character is sitting on a couch near a fireplace in the house his Nazi commander character has commandeered, musing over what’s going on, and how he can possibly save his family from the oncoming Allied attack, and having a serious crisis of conscience because now he and his family are being put in the same position as the Jewish families Gregory Peck’s character has been saving (this is all based on a famous real life story, btw) – and what the hell is glaring at him from the side of the fireplace?
A two or three foot high pterodactyl. Very very obviously a pterodactyl, a piece of art worked in brass or gold or something, standing on the brick to the right of the fireplace. It literally looks like Rodan from the Godzilla movies.
It is highly improbable that the set designers decided to create this thing themselves and set it over there, out of focus (the camera never calls attention to it), in a film where the goal was to set the scenes in actual rooms in and around the Vatican. They may have brought it in from nearby in the house to spruce up the set a bit, but one way or another they most likely found it lying around (or standing there next to the fireplace already) and just naturally included it in the shot along with all the other artwork in the movie. They may not have even noticed what it was.
Heh, meandering around the first page of his website to see if he’s added anything to it (he adds to the website occasionally but most of his work now is done on the blog), I noticed a link to Christian Courier.
So I’m pretty sure Wayne Jackson knows about S8int already. (I can say they aren’t the same person, btw.)
That makes some sense in regard to, say, a triceratops skull (which is the standard example used–and there are some scattered ceratopian skull art, btw.) It doesn’t make sense in regard to most artistic representations, because most dinosaur remains aren’t neatly preserved, but are rather jumbled up in a mess so that even modern professionals have trouble sometimes getting the bones sorted to the right animal; and often reconstruct skeletons based on only a few remains.
But we have no record of ancient people (and by ancient I mean from pre-Christian times up to the 19th century 3rd world areas) studying partial-skeleton reconstructions of unusual animals from which morphologically accurate art could be reconstructed.
Ancient fossil finds help explain the art a little, but not nearly enough.
I don’t think cave art is a reliable guide to the sorts of animals extant at the time. I mean, the Egyptians painted jackal-headed gods all over the inside of their pyramids didn’t they?
Might it not also be the case, perhaps, that human beans retain some atavistic trace memories of extinct species within their DNA?
The difference is that we don’t know of any jackel-headed persons that actually existed. (Although if it comes to that, the circumstantial folk-anthro evidence for some kind of advanced bipedal canine is also stronger than I would have ever suspected. )
Whereas on the other hand, we demonstrably know what kind of artistic license various groups and cultures liked to take with identifiable realworld animals. Then again, some of the “license” taken in regard to sauropod-looking animals (for example) turns out to match modern reconstructions of them where we’re recently learning much better how various bones and ligaments and such would have fit together.
After decades of closer scientific analysis and scrutiny, paleontologists now say their original educated guesses about how to reconstruct an apatosaur (i.e. brontosaur) were wrong, and it actually looked more like this:
But that cylinder seal dates from Mesopotamia 3300 years before Christ. And in even more recent years scientists have been suggesting that apatosaurs might have had fleshy trunks or proto-trunks protruding from their heads. Just like in that cylinder.
Such trace memories would have to be coded in human ‘beans’ (so to speak ) for them to be passed along, for which we know no biomechanicals at this time–memories are stored in nerves, using processes not found in gametes–and we’d have to be talking about memories passed down not from previous humans (which might to some degree explain occasional hallucinations of dogmen for example) but from creatures which existed before there were birds.
A living fossil theory makes a lot more sense to me: we know there are living fossils, and quite a lot of them (both plant and animal). Some have large populations, some are on the brink of extinction and could disappear permanently almost any time. If a thriving coelocanth population can be discovered today, 700 million years from its fossil record, so can other animals. The local fishermen knew about it; eventually they caught one of the rare fish and sent it off to be studied.
Yeah, but I’m not sure I want to send him a fax by my business. And I don’t have one at home.
I’ll probably write a letter and just mail it, letting him know it’s up. Or maybe not–he doesn’t seem like someone who would appreciate that his opponents also study the Bible.
(On the other hand I’m willing to promote the idea that dinosaurs exist/ed in human history, so there’s that in my favor. )
), give you guys something to do in your spare time 
I’ll try to take a look, but someone else will probably beat me to it!
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