>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of Jim Eisele
>Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2002 11:23 AM
>Another conviction just hit me. What you believe about Genesis One can
>easily provoke either a faith crisis or a Genesis One crisis. If
>anyone has
>any questions at this point, I'm not asleep yet.
>
You are correct Jim. But for many of us this is not a surprise. But a crisis
of faith is only partly due to what one beleives about Genesis. It is also
dependent upon what the scientific data actually shows. If the fossils were
scattered willy-nilly through the entire geologic column a believe in a
literal flood would not cause the crisis. The data would match the belief.
The crisis comes when the data or epistemology conflicts with one's belief
about Scripture.
My personal crisis began in 1983 when I went on a carbonate field trip to
south Texas and looked at the sedimentation of limestone rocks. The data
challenged my YEC beliefs. I saw tiny burrows throughout the limestone made
by clionid sponges who were eating the limestone by taking tiny 6 micron
radius bites. One can see this same thing going on in limestones being
deposited today.
This data made it difficult to remain a YEC. I had a moral choice before
me--ignore the data (be dishonest) and remain a YEC advocate or change my
views. That was the point at which I began to change but it was a full ten
years before I gave up and accepted evolution. It was the data which forced
the change not the belief and it was the mismatch of data and belief which
forced the crisis.
I mentioned epistemology above. I personally still struggle because I can't
reconcile a non-historical Scripture with its divine inspiration. I hear
what people say, that the resurrection is the sine qua non of Christianity
and it is. Often with this goes a pooh-poohing of the OT miracles like the
floating ax head, the talking snake etc as these are not so important to the
Christian faith. I agree with that. But when it comes to the NT miracles
should we pooh-pooh them as well? Is the feeding of the 5000 false? is the
story of Ananias and Sapphira false? Did Peter not heal lots of people? Did
Peter have a 'Get-out-of-jail-card' rather than a miracle? Did Jesus really
walk on the water? Did he raise Lazarus from the dead? These miracles too
are not crucial to Christianity so why should they be accepted when the same
logic forces or allows for rejection of OT miracles? And if one is logically
consistent and pooh-pooh's them, then that leaves only one miracle which we
are then supposed to believe as rock solid fact--the resurrection.
Is it rational to believe that all the miracles of the Bible are false save
the resurrection? I wouldn't think so. And that is where the non-concordist
pathway would lead me, I fear.
So I won't have another go round on this with George or anyone else, I
simply WILL NOT respond to any replies.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
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