>Genesis reports that "The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground."
> This is a wonderful metaphor. Over the millennia, "dust" has probably been
> a more universally understood concept than "slime of the sea" would have
>been. Besides, in another 50 years the scientific view may be that life
>began in the crevice of a rock. Do we expect God to change His metaphor with
>every new finding of science? Being formed from the dust conveys the
> profound idea that should not be lost, as Van Inwagen suggests: Human
>beings are part of this world and are formed from its elements. The specifics
>of how it was done is left open for later generations to discover.
No I do not expect God to have to change his metaphor. And the way you
interpret the dust is actually the way I interpret it. What I was doing was
bringing up a defence against the widely used argument that we can not
interpret Genesis in any fashion which is scientific because the Hebrews were
too ______ (fill in the blank) to understand modern science.
I think that argument is a 20th century snobism and while George certainly
never raised that argument, I was trying to avoid having to answer it in a
later post.
By interpreting the dust as 'matter' or even 'earth' one can most assuredly
read an evolutionary interpretation in to the Genesis account.
glenn
>
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm