From: bivalve (bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com)
Date: Fri Jan 24 2003 - 19:13:25 EST
>So what I’d like is feedback on two topics: 1) Some evaluation (seat-of-pants OK) of old-Earth Christians who still hold to biblical inerrancy. Are there large numbers of these people? Insight on why they are so attached to the Book as a repository of facts would be helpful. <
No idea on the percentages, but there are a fair number, e.g. me. One issue is the suggestion that the accuracy of Scripture reflects on God's reliability. This argument depends on assumptions about the nature of inspiration. Another issue is the authority of Scripture. Do we regard it as authoritative, or do we regard our own judgement as a higher authority, or some other source of information? Inerrancy must also be carefully defined. The Bible includes lies, when quoting liars. It frequently uses figurative or phenomenological language, which is inaccurate if interpreted as scientific detail.
>2) How much of a problem does the haphazard nature of organic evolution pose to old-Earth Christians? And if it’s no problem, why not? <
Old-earth Christians include people who allow a strictly limited role for biological evolution. Many of these view randomness in evolution as problematic, as do many young-earthers; conversely, atheists often claim randomness in evolution as supportive. However, this confounds multiple senses of random. Random can be used in a mathematical or colloquial sense to mean something that is probabalistic (such as casting lots or the occurence of mutations), mathematically chaotic (such as the weather or some evolutionary patterns) or humanly unpredictable (such as the course of history or of evolution). Note that the first example of each of these is identified in the Bible as under God's control, and is thus no problem for Christianity.
It can also be used in a philosophical sense to mean unplanned or purposeless. This sense depends on the point of view. Biblically, everything is part of God's plan and thus is not ultimately random. For example, a randomly fired Aramean arrow killed Ahab. Likewise, evolution is a description of biological patterns and thus has no goal or purpose of its own, but it is a part of God's purpose.
Not only are His thoughts far above our thoughts, but He confounds the wisdom of the wise and raises up the humble. Thus, it is unlikely that His goals in history or evolution will be self-evident, except in hindsight. If His idea of creating a nation is to take an elderly infertile couple, should we expect His work in creation to accord with our ideas?
Dr. David Campbell
Old Seashells
University of Alabama
Biodiversity & Systematics
Dept. Biological Sciences
Box 870345
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0345 USA
bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com
That is Uncle Joe, taken in the masonic regalia of a Grand Exalted Periwinkle of the Mystic Order of Whelks-P.G. Wodehouse, Romance at Droitgate Spa
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From: "Don Winterstein" <dfwinterstein@msn.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 21:34:14 -0800
>I’m a new subscriber, so I’ll briefly introduce myself before getting to my two topics.
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> I recently retired from a satisfying career in geophysical research (seismology) and am now following pursuits related to my first love, who is God. I say God, not theology, because my endeavors are more spiritual than intellectual. My primary goal in life is to do what I can to see that God’s will is done on earth. I was born a conservative Lutheran and still have ties to the Lutheran church, but my beliefs have changed.
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>I’ve more or less just started exploring Christian topics on the Web, and I’ve been surprised. One of the unexpected findings is that many Christians who accept an old Earth still hold to biblical inerrancy. While I value the Bible highly and accept that God inspired it, I personally tossed out inerrancy even before I took up science. God gave us the Bible to draw us to himself, not to give us a big collection of “true facts.” I’d always thought that most of those who are sufficiently plugged in to the real world to accept that the Earth is old would also have acceded to biblical fallibility.
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>As you know, the Bible is a collection of writings from many authors over many centuries. The writings were composed and canonized by fallible human beings. The writings are anything but uniform; some evince a higher level of divine inspiration than others. They have in common that they witness to God’s activities on behalf of humans, and in this way they deliver the message that God can and does act on behalf of you and me. But I can’t think of a single reason why I should consider all of them completely error-free.
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>The word of God is infallible, but the word of God is not the same as Scripture. Only rarely can “word of God” as used in the New Testament be made to refer to Scripture. I think of the word of God as the power of God that comes to his people in their time of need. Sometimes Scripture can be the word of God, as a part of it was for me at the time of my conversion. Scripture becomes the word of God for Christians when they find help and meaning in it. But the writings themselves are not infallible; and in fact I suspect God’s people today would be better off ignoring some of them, including the first ten or so chapters of Genesis.
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>Those 16th century reformers may be largely responsible for elevating Scripture to its current status. They realized that the influence of tradition had gotten way out of hand in the Catholic church, so their cry was sola scriptura. The reality, though, is that Christianity is dead if revelation is not continuing. We have the promised Holy Spirit, and revelation is one of the Spirit’s jobs. This means that the word of God in the New Testament sense is continuing among us, even though we don’t have the inclination or the guts to canonize any of it. Just as well, perhaps; under present circumstances there’s no way a majority of Christian leaders would agree to canonize any particular writing.
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>Everything I’ve read so far in the way of attempts to force the Bible to fit an evolutionary, old-Earth scenario has been either contorted or obviously deficient. The thrust in every case has been to try to convince us that the words, especially those of the first chapters of Genesis, mean something quite different from what a straightforward reading would suggest. But what’s so terrible about assuming that the authors of Genesis were simply doing the best they could to straightforwardly fit what they “knew” about the world into a framework consistent with what they knew about God? The Bible: Inspired but limited.
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>In view of all the things we now know from science, there’s no valid reason to believe that God dictated those first chapters of Genesis like boss to secretary, is there? God living and active among us enables us to adapt. We have the Person, who is far more than the Book.
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>Still, those first chapters of Genesis set the stage for all succeeding messages pertaining to God’s plan of salvation. I suppose this is why people go to such great lengths to try to preserve inerrancy. If sin and death did not come with Adam’s fall in the Garden, what does salvation mean?
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>The main reason biblical fallibility is not a concern for me is that God has fitted my thinking into a new paradigm, one that has done far more than merely persuade me that God is bigger than the Book. From the pedestal of my paradigm I have no problem detouring around the first chapters of Genesis and fearlessly accepting the important discoveries of science as they stand while at the same time acknowledging a close personal relationship with God. Those first chapters of Genesis were fine for an earlier time, and they remain beautiful and inspirational, but now they fall short if taken as hard information about the world.
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>As for those important scientific discoveries, another thing that surprises me about my Internet investigations is that old-Earth Christians seem to have little difficulty swallowing the details of organic evolution. For a long time as a scientist I’d felt that the thing that best gave atheists the courage of their convictions, and the thing that generated science’s greatest challenge to faith in God, was the evolutionary sequence of living organisms. I mean, if God was behind all this, and if God is both almighty and intelligent, why do plants and animals seem to emerge haphazardly? While certain fine details of the world may suggest Intelligent Design, the absence of logical sequence in emerging life forms seems to suggest Stupid Disorder, or randomness. Life forms emerge, life forms go extinct, again and again. Let’s call it, for ease of memory, “Why the hundred million years of dinosaur dominance?” syndrome. Doesn’t this bother anyone?
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>>From the pedestal of my new paradigm, it doesn’t bother me; but without my paradigm it would, and I don’t understand why it doesn’t seem to be a bigger issue for others.
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>So what I’d like is feedback on two topics: 1) Some evaluation (seat-of-pants OK) of old-Earth Christians who still hold to biblical inerrancy. Are there large numbers of these people? Insight on why they are so attached to the Book as a repository of facts would be helpful. 2) How much of a problem does the haphazard nature of organic evolution pose to old-Earth Christians? And if it’s no problem, why not? I know it’s not a problem for some—namely, those who are eager to trash traditional theology and Scripture at the least drop of a scientific hat. I don’t have a lot of respect for such people and have difficulty at times regarding them as Christian. But what about those Christians who still feel a need to retain basic teachings?
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>Confession: I have an ulterior motive. Ultimately I’m trying to promote my personal website, which goes into detail on some of these issues. In fact, it contains a spiritually oriented book I wrote on these and several other topics that presents my extended creed as a believing scientist (—rather, as of now, believing ex-scientist). I don’t want to divulge the URL right away, because the new paradigm I talk about emerges from a personal revelation of God that some people will likely regard as the most outrageous claim of religious experience in the entire history of Christianity. But new paradigms as a rule initially seem outrageous and hard to swallow. I feel constrained to make my revelation public, but I’d like first to see what, if any, response these comments generate. Such response may influence how I present my material.
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>Don Winterstein
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>PS – Incidentally, the new paradigm implies things relevant to the ethical status of homosexuality, although I have never explicitly addressed that topic and would prefer not to. But let’s please keep our minds open.
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>For a listing of the papers I published in geophysics, visit http://www.seg.org, select “Publications,” then “Digital Cumulative Index,” then search on “Winterstein.”
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