Some old threads

Russ Maatman (rmaatman@dordt.edu)
Wed, 20 Mar 1996 12:11:15 -0600 (CST)

To the reflector group:

Since last December, I've been lurking. Better still, semi-lurking,
i.e.,
I've had to leave some messages unread! Reasons: back surgery and a
vacation in Florida. This calls for a mixture of pity and non-pity.

Anyway, in December I was involved in a few threads that perhaps I
should respond to: De novo Adam, Animal ancestry of Adam's body,
Creatio ex nihilo, as well as related matters in a few other threads.

At this late date (four months is very long in Internet, i.e., real,
time) I shall respond to only a few statements others have made.

1. Concerning the question of biblical inerrancy that arose in connection
with Hebrews 11:11 (Sarah's supposed seminal emission): I was disappointed
to see that even those who disagreed with Denis's claim did say that
yes, the Bible does contain errors. In my view, human beings do not
and
cannot possess the means to detect errors in the Bible. We can often,
although not necessarily always, show that a claimed error is not in
fact
an error. But more importantly, we ought to understand that interpreting
any part of the biblical text demands that we take into account the
universe of discourse. This does *not* mean we assume the writers
incorporated wrong scientific ideas of their day. Rather it means that
when I say, "I feel *in my bones* that...." you do not assume I believe
my brain is lodged in my bones and that what I really had a few months
ago
was not back surgery, but brain surgery. Well, Dick Bube and I argued
this matter in a very long (and unusually structured) debate in the
*Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation* in June, 1972. (Dick,
the editor, took a poll and I "lost" by about the same large margin
that McGovern lost to Nixon in the same year. And I had no respect
for
McGovern!)

2. Concerning Glenn's suggestion about the "dust" from which Adam was
made: Glenn has suggested that much of our genetic code is what it
is
because the dust of Genesis 2 was the corpse of an animal; he states
that the amount of decay--death of the animal or complete decay of
the
same material--is not important. I suppose we are getting fairly close.
But I still do not want to rule out the other possibility, viz., that
God created us so that we fit into this creation, and that the bizarre
possibilities Glenn mentioned--leaves on our bodies to provide us food
via photosynthesis, etc.--would not fit. In another thread, I suggested
that if it is true that part of the Y chromosome can be shown to
descend from father to son and that all human males descended from
the same father (a claim made in *Nature* last November), then God
would have provided Jesus with that *apparent* link to male ancestors.
If he did this once, he could have done it another time--when he
created Adam.--By the way, I am not willing to concede that what is
presently called junk DNA is in fact useless. (This is the old Darwinian
error of claiming that what we cannot understand--Darwin provided
quite a few examples--proves the absence of divine design. Ironically,
evolutionists have accused anti-evolutionists of invoking a God-of-
the-gaps when present-day science does not explain a phenomenon.)

Russ

-- 

e-mail: rmaatman@dordt.edu Home address:Russell Maatman 401 Fifth Ave. SE Dordt College Sioux Center, Iowa 51250Sioux Center, Iowa 51250 Home phone: (712) 722-0421