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Of Jesus's parables which were recorded, the majority of them have interpretations.
All of the interpretations have to do with Heaven and how to get there.
They typically start with “The kingdom of heaven is like” which would tend to indicate they are about heaven.
Jesus never gave two interpretations of the same parable.
This is incorrect. In fact, Jesus did. Read Matthew 25:14-30 and then read Luke 19:12-27. In the Matthew parable Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of Heaven (vs.14) and is using the talents to illustrate spiritual responsibility. The Luke parable is almost identical (except for using pounds) but is referring to a longterm expectation of the kingdom (verse 1) AND spiritual responsibility (verse 26) AND the punishment for those who reject Christ as their King (verse 27). So, not only do you have two meanings in these two money parables, you have at least three meanings.
Now that we have progressed to the parables which do not have interpretations, I follow trends in the parables which I do know the interpretations for to determine if the solution is likely correct.
1. All the parables are about the “Kingdom of God”
2. The principal characters in the parables are God, people who are going to heaven, people who are not going to heaven, and angles.
3. The principal storyline has to do with a person who makes it, or does not make it to heaven, and their actions or motives along the journey.
I'm glad that you are biblical scholar, but do you know that there are no agreements among scholars as to the meanings of the parables? The advice you are giving will not give you a consistent interpretation, and either we should say that God has no intention of making himself clear, or that God favors Christian effort into finding meaning in life as well as the Word of God. Hmm... It's not a Jeopardy question. The latter is clearly the scriptural perspective and can be seen as such by how the Christians provided multiple meanings to the Hebrew bible scriptures about Christ, eschatology, Satan, etc which the Jews largely reject even to this day (for similar reasons that you reject multiple parable interpretation).
With the previous trends as guidance it is illogical to assume that the parable of the yeast is about bread or evolution. However I have no proof because instructions were not given for interpretations.
The scriptures are clear that earth created life in an earthly manner (Gen 1:11-12; 1:24). It is also clear that humans are animals as spoken of in the bible:
"I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other. Yea, they have all one breath, so that man hath no preeminence above a beast, for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." (Eccl. 3:18-20) [21st Century King James Version]
It is interesting that the parables were designed to be misinterpreter by those who would wish to do so. Luke 8:10 By interpreting the parable to be about a personally preferred topic, the true intent of the parable which instruction about entering heaven is lost.
Of course, that scripture says nothing about misinterpreting parables, it speaks only of the meaning of Jesus' words from being understood. In addition, if you want to limit the parables to only about entering heaven, then there are parables that you cannot understand. For example, Luke 7:31-32:
"To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other:
" 'We played the flute for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not cry.' For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." ' But wisdom is proved right by all her children."
This parable is about how John the Baptist was stringent and they rejected him and Jesus was a crowd mingler and they rejected him too.
The Bible is my guide, I am not the Bibles guide. I do not try to change the Bibile, I try to let the Bible change me.
How can you possibly take that position when you restrict the meaning of the scriptures to the point to where you put yourself as the authoriative biblical scholar on the correct meaning of the parables. I take no such position. What I learn I'm willing to share, but I feel embarrassed that it took me so long to see the obvious.
1. Although the Earth is not a closed system a thought experiment could be preformed in which life was in a closed system without changing life as it is. In this case life would tend toward disorder. Now we must ask if allowing the system to be open would this reverse this trend. I would say no, because allowing the system to be open as it is does not introduce order to the system.
Order is introduced by natural selection, sexual selection, group selection, etc. Actually, there are already evolutionary algorithms that are created on computers that 'evolve' engineering solutions to problems over 'generations' and those algorithms clearly demonstrate that order can be obtained via natural selection processes (see, for example, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/genalg/genalg.html). However, you don't have to learn biology or computers to know this. All you had to do was read Genesis 1 and you could have learned that God commanded the earth to create life.
2. There is no example of a species with 16 gene pairs turning into a species with 14 gene pairs which would indicate a crossover from one species to another. You have to assume it happened.
Variation inside a species is predicted in Gen 3 as a curse.
I'm not a genetic scientist, so let me refer you to the scientists who volunteer their time to address these concerns (maybe Makula will assist you...):
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#genetic_change
"Many organisms have been observed to acquire various new functions which they did not have previously (Endler 1986). Bacteria have acquired resistance to viruses (Luria and Delbruck 1943) and to antibiotics (Lederberg and Lederberg 1952). Bacteria have also evolved the ability to synthesize new amino acids and DNA bases (Futuyma 1998, p. 274). Unicellular organisms have evolved the ability to use nylon and pentachlorophenol (which are both unnatural manmade chemicals) as their sole carbon sources (Okada et al. 1983; Orser and Lange 1994). The acquisition of this latter ability entailed the evolution of an entirely novel multienzyme metabolic pathway (Lee et al. 1998). Bacteria have evolved to grow at previously unviable temperatures (Bennett et al. 1992). In E. coli, we have seen the evolution (by artificial selection) of an entirely novel metabolic system including the ability to metabolize a new carbon source, the regulation of this ability by new regulatory genes, and the evolution of the ability to transport this new carbon source across the cell membrane (Hall 1982)."
3. Pollination between bisexual beings would be much more efficient at causing mutations.
By creating male and female God has slowed the degeneration of our species due to genetic defects (Slowed the curse).
I think Makula did a fine job answering you on this point.
4. I am sorry but there are big holes in the fossil record, for all species not just man, if you want to make a case for consistent evolution. Saying that it is the fault of a creationist is a bit of a stretch.
Do you have some examples that you have in mind? Any transistional fossils are one two many for the anti-biblical creationists.
5. What I mean by orderly is if evolution did take place I would expect the “first forms” by your theory of life to have fewer pairs of chromosomes with less instructions and as you climbed the tree you would see a pattern of enlargement and more chromosome pairs. This does not happen.
Let's see if Makula responds to this, if he doesn't then I'll look into it.
I am sorry that you have been offended by some individuals in your past. It is my hope that you will be able to overcome any bias this has caused you.
Shame, shame Duane. You don't care for the truth since you just assumed that whatever time I spent in researching was fruitless. I'm very disappointed in you. I wish the truth meant more to you.
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