From: Walter Hicks (wallyshoes@mindspring.com)
Date: Sat Jun 14 2003 - 23:25:47 EDT
My responses follow
George Murphy wrote:
>
> Proceeding in reverse order:
>
> (3) Grant (as I said) for the sake of argument that there are numerical patterns in
> Genesis which prove that God is its author. This emphatically does _not_ prove that the
> text which God has authored is a literal (i.e., historically and scientifically
> accurate) account of how and when creation took place. To imagine that this is so is
> like claiming (to use this example once again) that the story of the Good Samaritan
> "really happened" because Jesus told it as a trie statement of who one's neighbor is.
I would agree that most of the Parables of Jesus were "illustrations" but that does
necessarily mean that Genesis was the same.
>
>
> (2) There is no sharp qualitative difference between the 2 types of science which you
> try to distinguish here. E.g., the types of arguments used to detrmine the distance to
> the galaxy in Andromeda are based on quite routine observations (properties of certain
> types of stars) and well-known laws (inverse square law for light propagation &c). No
> one has any objection when these are used to find that a cluster of stars in our galaxy
> is ~1000 LY away. But when they show that M31 is a couple of million LY away, YECs
> immediately start objecting. There is no difference in the procedures, the underlying
> assumptions, or the beliefs of the astronomers. But the results conflict with the YECs
> preconceptions - preconceptions traceable to the unwarranted assumption noted under (3).
As you know, George, the YECs simply say that our science is able to see what happens now
but cannot extrapolate to the past beyond a few Kilo Years.
Andromeda is not all that far away. Your points are well taken but this argument is futile.
(See next item)
>
>
> (1) I don't disagree about the seriousness of sin. But if you follow your argument
> here to its logical conclusion, you end up unable to have any confidence in any
> knowledge about the world. If our knowledge of the world is that severely distorted by
> sin then maybe the earth is flat. Maybe heat really flows from cold to hot. Who knows?
> But in fact the accurate correlations between our theories and observations can
> give us a great deal of confidence that scientific investigation - _without_ "God's
> revelation" - works quite well. And since (as I noted under (2)) there is no division
> between the type of science that raises no religious objections from YECs and that which
> does, YECs need to take a hard look at their presuppositions. Again, see (1).
John MacArthur quite simply states that "science" is good for understanding what we observe
--- but it is 100% invalid for past extrapolation. His position is that God created the
world (with the history built in) some 10K Years ago (AND THAT "IS ALL SHE WROTE")
I don't buy it, but it is indistinguishable from your position, unless you can propose one
as an alternative.
Besides all that :
Vernon is trying to establish a vilid reason for accepting the Bible as the inspired Word of
God ---- Think.
That is not "numerology" as others have suggested.
If valid, then it is something that we Christians should support ------- if he can
demonstrate it to non believers. The real problem here is that he speaks to believers who do
not need such proof.
So Who Does?
Walt
>
-- =================================== Walt Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>In any consistent theory, there must exist true but not provable statements. (Godel's Theorem)
You can only find the truth with logic If you have already found the truth without it. (G.K. Chesterton) ===================================
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