At 08:17 AM 08/02/02 -0500, george murphy wrote:
>Allen Roy wrote:
>
> > From: John W Burgeson <burgytwo@juno.com>
> > > >It is read as it makes sense without the need to try to
> > > >reinterpret the Bible to fit the assumptions of mythological
> > >>Naturalism."
> > > That's a new term -- "mythological naturalism."
> >
> > Not a new term. It is simply stating that Naturalism is mythology. It's
> > assumptions have no factual basis. The unprovable assumptions are:
> > 1. matter/energy/motion originated (and continually operates) according to
> > natural laws by which they interact that is inherent within them.
> > 2. Nature is all there is and has ever been or ever will be.
>
> 1. This is not what serious scholars mean by "mythology". You
> seem to
>be assuming that when scholars of religion, literature &c use the word "myth"
>that it has the pejorative sense of "fairy tale."
> 2. & the fundamental assumptions of a theory (or in this case
>meta-theory) never have a "factual basis" in the sense that they can be proven
>in terms of other things whose truth is agreed upon. If they could be, they
>wouldn't be fundamental assumptions.
> 3. Your 2 "unprovable assumptions" go far beyond what the 99.9% of
>working scientists who are methodological naturalists actually assume.
Agreed, and I wished that people (in general) would understand that men
living even 600 years ago, but even more so those living 3000 years ago did
not think in the same categories as scientists in the 21st century do.
Also, that the word "truth" has undergone a great evolution. It is derived
from the same stem as "troth" and thus indicates more faithfulness as what
is now scientific "truth." Biblical "truth" in Genesis could not be
scientifically written down as nobody would understand and listen. So to
read it that way is reading into the Bible words which were never intended.
"Yom" can be translated as "day", yes, but also as "period". Even the word
"day" has undergone some change in meaning when it is used by scientists.
Jan de K.
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