All this talk about "Whipping Glenn" is making me nervous. Of course I have
held the esteemed job of Whipping Boy before at a couple of the companies I
have worked for, but I can't say I recommend that position very highly. :-)
Jim wrote:
>>We can start at the point we always seem to start at, Glenn, namely,
misrepresenting my position. Why does this keep happening? May I gently
suggest that the thought forms you have set up for yourself are keeping you
from what we used to call an "open mind"? <<
I apologize if I have misrepresented your position. But I have really had
trouble understanding where you are coming from. In the past you have stated
that observational data has nothing to do with theology, you are obviously
against evolution and have chided me for my VCR style of view. I really
can't see how on the issue of historicity I have mischaracterized your
position but if I have, I apologize. I would suggest making a bullet slide
of what you believe so us slow-wits can figure it out. Everytime I think I
have understood what you say, it turns out I didn't understand you at all.
You wrote:
>>I say this because, as I have point out before, your "either/or" (a very
non-Hebraic thought form, by the way) limits you when approaching
Scripture.<<
Jim if you haven't noticed we live in a very binary world. Either O.J.
killed Nicole or he didn't. This is the way all historical sciences must
approach their topic. My job as a geophysicist is to geologic reconstruct
the history of various places in order to find propitious locales for
hydrocarbon emplacement. To do this, I must look at the sand distribution,
the thickness and thinness of various layers, when the faulting occurred and
when the faulting stopped. In a historical science one must deduce what
actually happened from an infinite range of possiblities. The truth is that
only ONE sequence of events occurred in a given geographic area. Not two
sequences. The sequence IS determinable. If the rock are thinner at a
certain place, I KNOW that that place used to be the top of a hill. If the
rocks are thicker at another place, I KNOW that there was a valley in the
past. I can tell when the faulting stopped by noticing what is the youngest
rock the fault actually cuts. The history of any given piece of real estate
is determinable by examining the evidence and it is unambiguous (assuming you
have collected enough data)
In light of this, the history of the world is also limited to a few options
given the data we have collected over the past 100 years. We know that
Komiites (a type of high temperature volcanic rock) were much more common in
precambrian strata than they have been in any subsequent epoch. This means
that the temperatures of emplacement were higher in the past than they are
today. We know that the complex patterns of sediment distribution on two
continents now separated by wide oceans fit together like a glove. (for
instance there is a diamond bearing deposit called the Roraima formation in
South America with diamonds at the base of the formation and the diamonds get
larger as you go east. A similar rock type with similar but larger diamonds
is found in West Africa and the diamonds continue to get larger to the west
into the Sudan).
My point in all this is that IF we are to claim that God created the universe
and the universe is more than merely the production of a chance quantum
fluctuation, our view point MUST be able to accomodate information like
this. It must be able to accomodate the FACT that only two modern families
of chordates are found as fossils in the Paleozoic! All other paleozoic
chordates are unknown in the modern world. These are real hard data
observations. If somehow our apologetic is to ignore such facts then I would
suggest we have a worthless apologetic.
Like it or not, the questions modern people are asking about the Bible are
not what categories should we place various pieces of literature into, but
"What is the evidence that the universe was created by the God of the Bible?"
And "Is the Bible true or not."
You wrote:
>>Most of the pain was in trying to get you to see that
poetic does NOT mean non-historical! Yet you still write things like this:
<<Jim Bell would fit into 2. What I can't figure out about this combination
is why any of the evolution stuff matters to that position since Scripture is
not historical.>>
I think you're trapped this mode because, for you, historical HAS TO mean
only one thing: journalistic, VCR style reportage. Well, it doesn't. It's as
simple as that. Or do you think Paul Revere never existed simply because
Longfellow wrote a poem about him? <<
I agree that poetic does not mean non-historic. And I agree that Paul Revere
lived. I made that point very clearly last June but ou chose to ignore my
two wonderful poems. Here is part of that post.
********
Date: 95-06-23 23:45:11 EDT
From: evolution@Calvin.EDU
To: evolution@Calvin.EDU
From: GRMorton@aol.com
Resent-from: evolution@Calvin.EDU
To: evolution@Calvin.EDU
CC: GRMorton@aol.com
Jim Bell wrote:
>"This is a contradiction. If Gen. 1 is clearly poetic form, it is "clearly
marked" as such. That is the point, and it appears you agree.
Let's move from that point onward. How does a poem convey truth? Is it ONLY
through information? Of course not. Just as the parables are not so limited.
You say, <<Homer conveyed some true information in a poem>>
True, but he he was not LIMITED to that, was he? His description of Achilles'
shield was not factual, but it conveyed a message about heroism. And everyone
classifies The Iliad as epic, not journalism. Why hold it to a journalistic
standard?<
Wait a minute, you are missing something. A poem is a literary form and is
independent of the truth or falsity of the message.
AN ODE TO A GLASS: OPUS !
Copyright 1995 G.R. Morton
A Glass is so smooth and clear
If you want it will hold your beer
But please hold it steady
or you must be ready
to pick up the pieces from there.
AN ODE TO A GLASS: OPUS 2
Copyright 1995 G. R. Morton
A Glass will look fine in your ear
On your nose you will have no fear
In fibers so finely spun
make a dress just for fun
which worn will cover your rear.
Don't worry I won't quit my day job. But consider the two poems. The first
conveys total truth. A glass is clear, holds beer etc. The second conveys
only partial truth. A glass will not look fine in my ear. Nor will my fear
disappear if I put one on my nose. But using the reasoning you used above,
the second poem can be said to convey a message about the fashionable uses of
a glass. This is how a poem conveys truth. It is in the events described.
The difference between the Bible and Homer is that the Bible claims to
be the work of God; Homer claims no such authority. It is that claim which
makes the truth of the Bible more important than the truth of Homer.
****end of old post excerpt*****
You decided to ask me about the authority rather than respond to the
substance of the issue which is that poetry can convey truthful information
or it can convey whimsical information. So just because a piece of
literature is a poem does not exclude it from conveying factual information.
This is one of my complaints about the removal of Genesis 1 but especially
2-11 from historical verifiability.
You wrote:
>>So that's the real reason we can't get together on this. Your categories,
as evidenced by the diagram, are limited. Your diagram is unacceptable.<<
So nothing is preventing you from drawing your own diagram or placing
yourself within mine. It certainly could not hurt and actually might make
your position more accessible to the masses.
glenn