At 03:01 PM 8/22/98 -0600, John W Burgeson wrote:
>Glenn: You wrote:
>
>>>So, this would imply that God had no control over the writer and what
>he
>wrote. .>>
>
>Sorry, Glenn. I don't see such an implication at all.
Let me try again. If God has no imput to the content of what is supposedly
inspired, then God didn't inspire the content. Someone else did, maybe a
human. And if it is humans who are really inspiring the Scripture, then I
see little difference between what David Koresh inspired and what is
written in Scripture. It is the need for Divine inspiration and then some
input to content, that makes the Bible special. If it is just a really neat
but humanly written book, well, as I have stated elsewhere, so is the Lord
of the Rings.
>
>>>Does God not have the foreknowledge to know that the Creation/evolution
>area would become a big problem for 19th century people and those born
>after?>>
>
>I suspect His foreknowledge also included an understanding of just how
>trivial the subject is, in the eternal scheme of things!
At the very least, with the ancients, the claim that their God actually was
the creator was a very important fact. And I think theologically God's
actual creation of the universe is very important. After all, if God didn't
create the universe, and the universe simply happened, God has no
relationship to the universe other than as a bystander or a created being.
He is an interloper who is apparently claiming credit for creating that
which He didn't create.
>The folks in 500 BC were pretty primitive in their thought processes. No
>differences in IQ, as far as we know, but probably 1/100 as much stimulus
>towards what we in 20th century America think of as "science." The
>Genesis story, one which had as its theme "God did it," was written in
>story/parable form. I doubt if there was one person in 1000 who ever even
>asked the question "is that a literal story?"
Sorry, Burgy, but I find this to be a bit of 20th century egotism. David
was an 11th century BC poet and he was quite sophisticated in his
conception of God and man. Plato was born in the 5th century BC and I find
him anything but 'primitive'. I think we are projecting ignorance and
primitiveness onto them because we need to. They were TECHNOLOGICALLY
primitive, not CONCEPTUALLY primitive.
>
>A key question in all this, Glenn, is this: What did the story mean to
>the folks that heard it (mostly verbally, BTW) in 500 BC? They were the
>"first hearers." Did they "get it right," or did they go off into
>questions of philosophy, origins, the meaning of historical statements,
>and the like? All the evidence I've seen says they did not.
All I have ever seen suggests that they believe the stories were real
events. The 'origins' questions didn't come about until mankind learned of
contradictory evidence from geology and biology.
>Having so pontificated, let me also add that were I God, I would want to
>do things more your way. But, last time I looked, I wasn't.
Of course neither am I. But the questions I am raising and the arguments I
am advancing are those I have heard during a lifetime of working with
geoscientists in the oil business. I wish God had done it differently and
even more than that, I wish Christians had done it differently over the
past 200 years.
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm