At 02:28 PM 3/12/00 -0500, George Murphy wrote:
>glenn morton wrote:
>> You are the one who thinks I am wrong to consider Genesis 3 as accurate
>> history. But if it isn't accurate history how on earth can you say that
>> Genesis 3 relates anything of value at all? mere presupposition?
>
> First let's note that _your_ claim to understand Genesis 3 as _history_ is
>spurious. Your reconstructions of what may have happened millions of
years ago with the
>first humans are indeed ingenious but they are simply claims that it
"could have"
>happened that way.
ABsolutely. That is what every scenario about the flood is. The
mesopotamian flood concept is also a 'could have been' theory. So is the
recent advocacy of the Black Sea as the site of Noah's flood a 'could have
been' theory. The difference is that there is no way those last two can
match the data in the Bible. If either of the last two are correct then the
Bible is wrong. The mesopotamian flood can't last a year and there are no
mountians to be covered in Ryan and Pitman's Black Sea scenario.
Even your views of Genesis 3 are a 'could have been' theory. It is you who
say they are not accurate accounts. That is most certainly a
possibility--they may be partially inaccurate, or totally inaccurate. But
you can't escape the fact that you also are offering a 'could have been'
view of Genesis 3. Genesis 3 could have been inaccurate. So I don't see the
point of the above criticism. Everyone is stuck in that mode, me you and
the president of the seminary. It is also a possibility that Genesis is
accurate--another 'could have been'.
>For all your useful compilations of data, we have no historical or
>paleontological or other data so finely focussed on the first human beings
that enables
>us to say with any certainty that they were named Adam & Eve or that they
ate from a
>forbidden tree or anything like that. Thus your claims to "accurate
history" are
>vacuous. It's "coulda been", "not impossible" history.
The place we have one written record of Adam and Eve is from the Bible.
Now if that account inspires no confidence that it is accurate, then why on
earth are we bothering with it? It becomes merely another false tale by
another primitive society. Lets assume for the moment that you are correct.
We can't really be sure that there is an Adam and Eve from this account.
Why should we have confidence then that God created the earth? Maybe God
is a creation of the universe, or that God is a creation man? Afterall, if
the account, which tells us of Adam and Eve is not to be trusted to even
get the names correct, what else is wrong in that account? I would suggest
that if Adam and Eve aren't real there is a very real possibility that God
didn't have a thing to do with the account and we might have to consider
that God really didn't create the universe--another inaccuracy in the account.
> More importantly, Gen.3 is a _theological_ text which says that human
beings are
>sinners. Its accuracy is to be judged by theological criteria.
How do you know that it is accurate theologically when it can't even relate
material facts that you can document as correct? Islamic peoples beleive
that our theology is wrong and they think they are correct. How do we
decide the case? If the Bible has nothing but 'theological' correctness,
then I would submit that it is not a very certain foundation. In fact,it is
entirely subjective.
>If you deny that you're
>a sinner, I can't prove it to you by a study of ancient history. In the
same way, if
>you refuse to believe that your sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, no
amount of
>information about the historical Jesus will prove it to you.
I don't know if you can prove our sinful status by studying ancient
history. ONe of the fears many evangelicals have of evolution is the worry
that it removes morality from the world. I don't think it does because in
one sense our human choice is always one of behaving like an animal or
behaving like Christ. The difference between us and the chimps is that God
told us to behave differently. He hasn't told the chimps to behave
differently. Only if the accounts in the Bible are true, can sin really be
imputed to mankind. We certainly don't impute sin to a chimp.
But if you want to look at all the foul things mankind has done to his
fellow men, there is not much we do to each other that apes don't do to
their fellow apes.
Consider these 'sins':
Prostitution- "At Gombe, male chimpanzees who have meat will sometimes
offer bits to swollen females, in exchange for which they receive matings.
These sexual manipulations show both the male's ability to exert control
over female reproductive behavior and possibly females' abilities to obtain
meat without needing to kill it themselves."
"Female chimpanzees are much less involved in hunts despite relishing
meat. At Gombe, fewer than 10 percent of all kills have been made by
females over the past twenty years." Craig B. Stanford, The Hunting Apes,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 70
Cain/Abel murder, mass murder and warfare-
"For example, at the Gombe Stream Reserve, a baby male chimp became
unusually attached to his mother. He refused to be weaned away when the
mother had another baby when he was about five years old, and watchers
noticed that the new baby mysteriously disappeared after three months. The
elder offspring eventually regained the full attention of his mother but he
never developed properly, and when his mother died of old age a short time
later, the now almost adult chimp pined for a few weeks before taking ill
and dying.
"Even more distressing for the human observers of this wild troop, one
female chimp--described as an unusually cold mother-- took to killing the
babies of others in the group. Over a period of some years she and here
grown daughter seized and ate about ten newborn chimps, each time later
kissing and grooming the distressed mothers as if the murders were nothing
personal. There was no obvious reason for this strange behavior. Perhaps
the female's unfortunate childhood-- her mother had been injured and unable
to look after her normally-- was enough to lead to the attacks. Whatever
the explanation, the point is that chimps have come to depend on such
complicated behaviors to gain a breeding advantage that the dangers of
things going haywire start to outweigh the benefits. Just one murderous
mother in a troop is enough to wipe out the group in a generation.
"Mother fixations, child murders, and cannibalism are not the only way
chimp societies can go wrong. The Gombe Stream scientists also saw warfare
between two troops of chimps. When a new group moved into the area, its
males systematically picked off individuals from the original group, a gang
of three to six males beating and bashing a member of the other group for
up to twenty minutes. In four years, ten of the old group disappeared,
believed to have died from the repeated attacks. This sort of behavior
underlines just how closely chimps are related to humans. Intelligence is
a two-edged sword: It allows the flowering of a social order that raises
the breeding success of a species but complexity also leads to the danger
of breakdowns and things going very wrong." ~ John McCrone, The Ape That
Spoke, (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991), p. 152-153
Of this last incident, Johanson and Shreeve point out that the victors took
the females as spoils of war. (Donald Johanson and James Shreeve, Lucy's
Child, (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1989), p. 277) Sounds kinda
like humans do.
Bearing false witness-- "Take Paul, for instance, a young juvenile chacma
baboon observed in Ethiopia by Richard Bryne and Andrew Whiten of the
University of St. Andrews in Scotland. One day they noticed Paul watching
an adult female named Mel dig in the ground for a large grass root. He
looked around. There were no other baboons nearby, though the troop was
within earshot. Suddenly and with no visible provocation, Paul let out a
yell. In an instant his mother appeared, and in a flurry chased the
astonished Mel out of sight. Meanwhile, Paul walked over and ate the grass
root she left behind." ~ Donald Johanson and James Shreeve, Lucy's Child,
(New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1989), p. 274
Wife beating--"Within the community, males are dominant to females and at
times behave quite brutally in their subordination of them." Craig B.
Stanford, The Hunting Apes, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999),
p. 59.
Now, I am not saying that we are to behave like this because the apes do.
God made man and told him how to behave. It is our choice to behave like
men are supposed to or like animals. But without the assumption that God
set the behavioral standard in the Garden and through the revelation of the
Law, one can't prove that mankind is sinful. Without the Law, there is no
sin! Chimps have no law, that is why they don't sin.
>
> ............................
>
>> > By the same simple logic, Psalm 23 is false. No, don't do all your
>> dodging &
>> >weaving about poetry. Don't try the "it's a different kind of thing from
>> Gen.3" gambit.
>> >Ps.23 is a part of the Bible that says things which are false. I'm not a
>> sheep & I
>> >don't eat grass. It's simple logic.
>>
>> Genesis 3 is not in a book of poetry. Psalms 23 is. Is Abraham poetry? Is
>> Joseph poetry? How does one know when to believe it is nonpoetry? When we
>> feel like it? And when it comes right down to it, I won't worship poetry.
>
> Nice dodging & weaving. The fact remains that by your criteria this part of
>the Bible is "inaccurate".
I am glad you appreciate my ability. But over the years I have been
entirely consistent on the issue that the Psalms are poetry. I don't see
the same sort of things in Genesis 3.
> ................
>
>> No I don't hand them a roll of tape. But then if God can't communicate to
>> us any real truth and He knows no history then why bother with Him.? That
>> is where your theology leads me. To me I would feel self-deceived. I was
>> deceived and self-deceived once as a YEC. I simply won't go there again.
>
> You never got away from it. You've just stretched out the time scale.
Maybe I am still self-deceptive. And I will tell you that sometimes I do
wonder about that. But what of you? You believe something that you
acknowledge isn't accurate in any real sense and thus is only accurate in
the subjective realm of theology. At least my views do have, as you admit,
the ability to actually have happened. Yours don't, because that is your
starting point. Genesis 1-3 didn't happen as reported in the Bible in your
view. As far as I can see, that leaves you in the position of being the
judge of how it happened or the judge of what it means. This makes for a
remarkably plastic and malleable theology.
> ..............................
>
> The way in which this whole discussion has gotten away from the initial
>subject is an illustration of precisely the point I made to start with.
That point
>was that discussions on this list, & most Evangelical ones of science &
religion, seldom
>make any connection with Christ. Here we started out talking supposedly
about the
>relationship between atonement & Genesis 3 but the subject has been
reduced entirely to
>the historical accuracy of Genesis 3, whether the first humans were really
named Adam &
>Eve &c.
But that is precisely the connection between Genesis 3 and Christ--it is
SIN. So I disagree that we have entirely left the initial subject. Even
what I wrote above about the chimps still has to do with sin--and it was
sin that Christ came to atone for.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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