Re: Seely's Views 2

Glenn wrote,

     I meant Genesis 1-11 not all of Genesis. I mis-wrote. But that
> >> doesn't absolve the Bible of the fact that this divinely inspired book,
>> which claims to proclaim to the world that Jehovah is the creator, doesn't
>> know the simplest thing about what happened at the creation according to your
>> view. That means either
>>
>> 1. God is unable to inspire truth in a human writer and Genesis 12-50 is
>> merely history of the Herodotus kind
>> or
>> 2. God wasn't there at creation
>> or
>> 3. God does not desire to tell us the truth.
>>
>> Which is it Paul?
>>
>
PHS: God does not desire to _reveal_ to us information which we can find out
for ourselves and which he assigned to humankind the task of finding out. .

> >> GRM: The restriction of accomodation to history/science is remarkably
>> ad hoc. It prevents the kind of collapse into theological solipcism I have
>> described. There is no coherency to that restriction.
>>
>
PHS: It is not ad hoc at all. It is an obvious fact that humankind can figure
out history/science without a revelation; so God leaves it to us to make the
discoveries. On the other hand, reason and scientific investigation do not
tell us much about God; so we need revelation. Thus there is an objective basis
for the restriction. Not to mention Gen 1:26-28 which tells us God delegated
subduing the earth to humankind.

> >> GRM: The case of the PNG tribesman isn't the same as the creation. And
>> what you are saying is that God plays for the short term. He is not a
>> longterm thinker. God uses falsehoods to convey his story (amazingly limited
>> only to history and science, but never to theology itself) not giving a
>> thought to the fact that he should have foreseen that people would find out how
>> false that story was. He also didn't think about the consequences of that
>> action in which people would decide that he isn't real because he didn't tell
>> them the truth. That kind of thinking from the creator and ruler of the
>> universe isn't comforting. I wouldn't keep a manager around who thought like
>> that. One of the things I have learned as a manager for the past 15 years is
>> that supervision is called that because we are supposed to have vision that
>> sees further down the road than others.We are at least able to do it somewhat.
>> But God, with his omniscience seemed unable to see a mere 4000 years down
>> the road to the problems his strategy would cause us. Simply a pitiful
>> planning process. Surely God can do better than that.Can't he?
>>
> PHS: The case of the PNG tribesman is the same in principle: an unclean
> animal that was not acceptable to God in sacrifice was substituted for a spotless
> Lamb that was acceptable. They are direct opposites. How much greater a
> "lie" can be told?
>
> Secondly, the case of the PNG tribesman also answers your question about
> God's supposed short term poor planning. It is just a matter of time until the
> tribe finds out that "pig" does not fit the facts; and the same is true of the
> science/history of Gen 1-11 for us. When they do find out, someone may be
> upset, but on the whole I believe they are going to understand that it was just
> a temporary measure called for by the limited understanding of the people of
> that time and the demands of their culture, and that it was a more effective
> way of communicating the spiritual truth than by keeping the translation in
> strict accord with the actual facts.

> Paul
 
Received on Wed Aug 25 20:58:48 2004