glenn morton wrote:
> At 10:13 AM 1/12/00 -0500, George Andrews wrote:
> >The Bible simply doesn't attempt to describe "how the universe came into
> >being."
>
> My response to this is where have you been over the past 40 centuries in
> which both Jewish and Christians scholars actually thought the Bible was
> telling them what actually happened and how the universe came into being?
> This is eisegetism at its best.
>
Mostly unborn; and could you define eisegetism for me (Thanks for the
compliment?). But to the point: I do not consider "rocks fall toward earth" as a
scientific description of gravity; likewise, I do not consider "God created earth
wind and fire" as a description of HOW creation came into being.
>
> Therefore, there is no problem worthy of your objection and your
> >automobile analogy is superfluous. There is no need for God to tell us what
> >actually happened; only that it was he who did it.
>
> But that isn't what the Bible tells us. If the Bible simply said, "God
> created the heavens and the earth, and then went into Genesis 12:1, there
> would be no creation/evolution issue at all. Sometimes I think your
> approach is the biggest cop out around. It ignores 30-40 centuries of
> judeochristian heritage and acts as if the modern interpretation is the
> only way anyone should have ever understood the Bible. That is silly.
There shouldn't be a creation/evolution issue even with the full creation account
as we have it. with the notable exception for the need for watering the ground,
Genesis doesn't proscribe or describe anything at all about the creative process:
just that there was a process and that the major categories of things a human can
observe with the naked eye (from the reference frame of the surface of the Earth)
are products of God.
Can you define what you mean by "modern interpretation"? Modern science, by
definition was not known to the previous scholars of the last 30-40 centuries.
they of course did have contemporary scientific ideas which has always been my
point! Moses, was an Egyptian prince, no doubt smart, who was educated in
Babylonian cosmology as is evidenced by his use of Enuma elish and whom God chose
to instruct otherwise.
> Moreover, God indeed can't
> >tell us what actually happened if we can't understand what actually
> happened;
> >information transfer requires - and is therefore constrained by the receiver.
>
> Why is it so hard for people to understand that God could tell a simplified
> but true story. No one expects an electron by electron account.
>
A thousand amens! He did just that! He told a simplified but true story about his
creation in the context of the listener without evolution, relativity... But the
truth is theological; not subject to quantification.
>
> >God told Moses and his contemporaries what they "actually" could understand;
>
> Bull! those people were everybit as smart as you or I. This is merely 21st
> century arogance that acts like we are the supreme intelligences of the
> universe. Evolution was thought of by peoples contemporary or nearly
> contemporary with the ancient Hebrews. Are you saying the Hebrews were too
> stupid to understand the concept of evolution? Of course they wweren't.
> This is merely a cop out.
Elephants and crocodiles! many of those people were no doubt smarter than you or
I. Intelligence is not the issue; knowledge is.
The knowledge of ancients was not as extensive as ours; this is not arrogance.
Moses, because of his time in history, had no knowledge of or prerequisites for
quantum field theory; this is very different than "Moses was too dumb to
understand" which I never stated or implied. I think you know that. Even more
recent "ancients" like Newton and Einstein, were less informed about modern
physics as most of today's graduate students. But they were geniuses; most of us
graduate students are not.
>
> But that doesn't address the real issue I am raising which is, why can't
> God tell the truth? You feel that God tells the truth in Genesis 1 when the
> ancients wrote it, but I doubt seriously you would feel the same if a YEC
> came into the class and read Genesis 1 and said that was how God created
> the world. We can't have one standard for God(a lower one) and another for
> us(a higher one). --end of what I wrote George A. continues
>
> Why do you insist that truth must be quantifiable? Language inherently is
> not so. The truths and untruths (e.g., solid spheres) of Genesis can be
> deciphered intelligently without resort to naivety of interpretation.
>
> No where did I quantify truth! What on earth are you talking about. I was
> talking about standards of behavior.
Great! Then we can at last scrutinize the account of Genesis without attempting to
make it conform to evolutionary - or any other modern scientific theory.
Sincerely
George A.
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