Blake wrote:
>I did not mean to be at all insulting (although the
>Ugaboogah example could be interpreted as insulting by
>others),
I have talked about Ugaboogah several times on this list and never had a
complaint about it being insulting either publically or privately until your
complaint. It illustrates several things, one of which, George correctly
got--If a god with different characteristics than Jehovah was actually the
creator, then it wasn't Jehovah who did the creating. That conclusion
doesn't seem to be particularly insulting to me. If you felt insulted, I
apologize but you will have to explain why cause I don't understand.
as in science and in literature, one tests
>the veracity of a statement by trying to push it to
>its extreme limits.
So, then take the question of Genesis 1:1 (which is what I limited most of
my comments to before). Let's push it to the extreme. If the universe
isn't created, then it is a product of natural, non-divine forces the origin
of which we do not understand. How would we test whether or not God created
the universe by doing as you say, pushing it to its extreme limits. One way
to be sure that God created would be for that God to inspire a simplified,
but true story of how it happened. Given evolution, God could have inspired
a statement, "out of the slime came life". That isn't a 'scientific
explanation'. It is a layman's story of how life came to be given evolution.
Instead, what we see is a story about plants before the sun, stars made
after the earth and several other anochronistic events. That may be a
beautiful poem, but it doesn't contain any more truth than the Arhtur
Buller's poem,
There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way,
And returned home the previous night.
On the other hand there are poems which contain actual truth:
Doin' its Own Thing
by Edward H. Green
The first law of Newton I sing
My voice has a relevant ring:
"An object left free
Of hassles will be
Engrossed in just doing its thing."
http://www.aps.org/apsnews/11855.html
What never seems to register with those of your belief is that a poem can
contain not only historical truth (Homer) but also scientific truth as
above. Poems are merely a means of conveying information (in the colloquial
sense of that word), be it true knowledge or false knowledge.
The thing I fail to understand about your side of the fence is why God, with
all that power to raise a dead man, make a fellow walk on water, change
water to wine, can't even have the ability to give the poor Hebrews a true
poem about their origins! And that it doesn't seem to bother anyone is even
more amazing to me.
This is the logic which makes me view Genesis in the way I do. I think that
either we have an impotent God, a God who doesn't care what people say he
did (and thus allowed them to make up the story of creation which lacks any
truth value), or we have the wrong God. But what I see is that no matter
what God had said, people would say it is a great story which is true. If
God had said the world arose from 2 salamancers mating we would defend it as
theologically true! We give God no way to be wrong no matter what he had
said.
At the extreme limits, I don't
>think the necessity of "truth" claims that you try to
>make hold up. You seem to agree by trying to
>differentiate cases. We disagree as to how far and to
>what extent something can be read as a truth claim.
How far back in Genesis do you believe is actual history? Let's start there.
Tell me why that chapter has history and the previous one doesn't.
I
>think demonstrably false truth claims tend to be more
>like 2+2 = 7 and the atomic weight of chlorine = 28.
Or George Washington fought for King George. Not all demosntrably false
statements have to be scientifically false. They can be historically false
and demonstrably so.
>They have to be contained within a defined system that
>requires precision.
"England revolted against George Washington and earned their freedom from
American tyranny," is a demonstrably false statement which in no way is in a
system requiring precision. I simply can't believe you are advocating the
above view!
One last example from history, do
>you really believe that the mice gnawed through the
>Assyrian bowstrings when they marched against Egypt?
>Herodotus records that Sennacherib marched against
>Egypt. During a certain night, field mice supposedly
>invaded the Assyrian camp and gnawed the quivers, bow
>strings and leather shield handles, thus disarming the
>military force. As a consequence, many of the soldiers
>were killed and others fled (ii.141). If this is
>false -- that the Assyrian military defeat was due to
>field mice, does that mean the battle did not happen
>or that the Assyrians did not lose? Of course it
>doesn't.
I have read Herodotus, know of this story and think it is really
interesting. Having seen films of rat swarms in Australia, where they
covered the ground--literally-- I could believe such an event. What do you
find objectionable to such a story's history?
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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