Congratulations for trying to do apologetics right. As I was taught (
Creationist and Fundamentalist Apologetics, Creation/Evolution Journal, Vol.4, No.4, Fall 1984, pp 19—31), properly applied apologetics is an attempt to harmonize doctrine with the real world:
quote:
The Apologetical Task
Francis A. Schaeffer, surely one of the most prolific and influential writers on, the contemporary fundamentalist scene, explains the nature and purpose of apologetics:
quote:
"There are two purposes of Christian apologetics. The first is defense. The second is to communicate Christianity in a way that any given generation can understand. . . . It is unreasonable to expect people of the next generation in any age to continue [to believe] in the historic Christian position, unless they are helped to see where arguments . . . brought against Christianity . . . by their generation are fallacious." (The God Who Is There, p. 139)
In other words, the apologist for the faith must seek to soothe the doubts plaguing the faithful and to remove the roadblocks in the path of unbelievers who might otherwise come to faith. The apologist tries to defend the faith by showing that it is reasonable; one need not kiss one's mind goodbye in order to convert.
Unfortunately, what we commonly see as "apologetics" is the creationist approach of denying the contradictory evidence. Denying that that evidence does not exist is not the way to harmonization. Rather, the evidence must be recognized and properly addressed. I see you trying to do that.
At the same time, ... .
Does the science have to be harmonized to your own particular fallible human interpretations of Scripture? Or does your own particular fallible human interpretation of Scripture need to be harmonized to the real world?
Is your own fallible human misunderstanding of Scripture the Touchstone? Or could
you possibly be wrong such that your own misunderstanding has to be harmonized with reality?
BTW, if you want to know how to do all those things in your messages, it's through dBCodes, though this forum also accepts HTML -- if you
Peek on this message, you will see that I used the HTML HR tag to create that dividing line that only went across 80% of the window and was centered. In the lower right-hand corner of each post is a
Peek button. If you click on it, a new page will open up displaying the message with all the embedded codes revealed. You see something you'd like to do yourself, just click on the
Peek button and it shall be revealed unto you.
There's also on this forum a kind of tutorial/reference page of dBCodes, but I copied it to a text file long ago so I've forgotten how to find it again. Still, there are some codes like qs for a boxed quote or quote for what I did, that you will end up using all the time.
And as you're trying to do your fancy formatting, you can use the
Preview button below to see whether it even worked. It's a good idea to use the preview button until you are satisfied with your message before you hit the
Submit Reply button. Of course, you can always go back to edit your own messages, but that can start to get messy; also, you should always state the reason for the edit as a common courtesy --
ABE means "Added By Edit", not Scotland's standard choice of the world soccer championship winner, "Anybody But England!" (one or two World Championships ago, "ABE" was a very popular t-shirt in Scotland.
Touchstone.
Here is the Wikipedia article on it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchstone_(assaying_tool)
Basically, it's a stone that if you rub a soft metal against it it will leave a mark. And the color of that mark will tell you how pure that soft metal is.
Of course, the soft metal in question is gold, so this was an assaying method going back into antiquity.
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