Larry Martin wrote:
>What "hot buttons" have I
>pushed that made me come across as a sneering "liberal scholar who make the
>scipture say what it plainly doesn't say" (in the words of St. Phil)?
>What specifically is your complaint?<
Who is St. Phil? I didn't think you came "across as a sneering liberal
scholar..." I do not think the approach you are taking is a good one (for the
reasons below) and I hope I was merely attacking the idea not you. If you
feel I wasn't, then I apologize and hope you will forgive me.
My specific complaint is that as we all struggle with these issues, we apply a
standard of truth to science that we seem unwilling to apply to the Scripture.
When it comes to science and history we believe what we do because there is
physical evidence which forces us to the conclusions we draw. In the case of
historical sounding events in Scripture, we are quick to allegorize them in
order to save them from falsification OR as is the case with the YECs we are
willing to disregard every piece of observational data in order to have a
particular historical view of the scripture. Neither of these approaches
seems satisfactory to me.
That is why I asked about Genesis 6-9. As a person in the geosciences, this
is the area with which I have the greatest problems. A flood SHOULD leave
evidence of itself. But I never saw any view which could explain those
events. The global flood does not explain footprints on layer after layer and
does not explain why the orbital periodicities of the earth are preserved in
the thicknesses of finely laminated sediments. The local flood views I had
heard simply do not match the Genesis account and logic. How can Noah float
for a year down a river valley and end up on a mountain. Local floods never
last a year. Also no one could point to a set of sediments and say "There,
those are the sediments of the flood." If I applied the rules I do in my job,
then I would be forced to conclude NOT that the scriptural account is true but
pictorial, but rather that this story is absolutely false. Period.
Surely there has to be a better approach than either of those above. That is
my complaint. On the YEC side I must disbelieve everything I see and on the
other side, I must disbelieve any concrete TESTABLE historical data in various
parts of the Scripture in order to retain their veracity. This is a Hobson's
choice. Or maybe more to the point, that classic Viet Nam tactic, "In order to
save the village we had to destroy it."
Larry wrote:
>I'm not willing to comment yet on Geneis 6-9; I don't know that I would or
>would not prefer "picture" there. It's taken me a dozen years just to gain
>a semi-coherent understanding of Genesis 1-3! Genesis 6-9 is not a
>_creation_ picture, as you well know. (Try Ps. 104) Remember, I am trying
>to find a metaphor which conveys my confidence in the truth of scripture
>without overstating (lying) to my culture and telling it "this is a science
>text." Misidentifying the genre of Genesis 1 has serious apologetic
>consequences.
Everybody keeps assuming that Genesis must be a science text in order to
convey true historical information. This simply isn't true. As I mentioned
in a reply to George Parks (which I hope went out. GNN is upgrading our mail
service so they cut us off from the outside world) you don't have to have a
scientific account to convey information. If evolution is true, and I believe
it is, then the Bible could convey true information by merely a statement that
"Out of the slime, God created life" or "A fish gave birth to all the other
animals." This criticism that the Bible MUST have been a book of science in
order convey true information is simply not the case. By the way, I think
Genesis does indeed indicate this when it says that "God said, "Let the land
produce living creatures..." This is certainly NOT the animal reproducing
after their kind that the YECs often cite.
You wrote:
>So read some more. Use your God-given, scientifically trained, BS-detector
>to sniff out when someone brings evidence rather than speculation to the
>table. Just because some call themselves scientists, doesn't mean we
>accept everything they say. Why should theologians be any different?
When I do some of that, (which is what I think part of this discussion is)
people get riled up. To me it is BS to hold to either of the choices I see
offered. For instance, I can probably get people riled by pointing out a
problem in Kline's article in Perspectives, p. 6. Kline writes:
"The lower register relates to the upper as replica to archetype."
How on earth am I to verify, confirm or even support such a statement? How do
I know what the upper register (heaven) looks like? I might agree that
Kline's interpretation CAN fit with the data of Genesis, but how am I to know
that this IS the way it is supposed to be? Let's face it. The only things we
can verify are physical. So if we use the non-physical (as is 1/2 of this two
register cosmology) how am I to test it?
You wrote:
>Here we differ. I think that God intended to communicate to the original
>readers. Insofar as I can discern what they would have understood, I hold
>myself to have heard from God. That's why I would bother learning Hebrew
>and history.
Lots of ancient cultures clearly understood the concept of evolution.
Aristotle _On the Generation of Animals_ Book II [731:32] Great Books, 9, p.
272 states:
"For since it is impossible that such a class of things as animals should be
of an eternal nature, therefore that which comes into being is eternal in the
only way possible. Now it is impossible for it to be eternal as an individual
(though of course the real essence of things is in the individual) were it
such it would be eternal--but it is possible for it as a species"
The fact that Aristotle could (apparently) deny the change of species, implies
strongly that he understood the concept of morphological change. So why were
the Hebrews unable to comprehend this?
You wrote:
>I would suggest someone believe in X-rays, since the models we have are
>good _pictures_ of reality. N-rays have obviously been shown to be lacking
>for evidence. You seem to be holding that using "picture" is inadequate to
>express the truth of Genesis 1.
You are correct. You are using the word picture here as a physicist uses it.
A theory. What I believe is that I haven't heard any pictures of Genesis
which give me enough confirmation points from physical reality to make me feel
any better about them than I do about N-rays.
glenn