I agree with much of what you write here. I always get a little suspicious
when we say that the Bible is not meant to be a science book. This becomes a
cop out for not determining the truth or falsity of Biblical history. I would
like to point out that Christians seem to go out of their way to make the
Bible unhistorical. Those whose hermeneutics allow for allegorical
interpretations make the Bible unhistorical by admission. Those like ICR make
the bible unhistorical because what they say the Bible says never happened. If
the Bible speaks on science and historical matters, in general, it must be
true or the Bible is not inspired by God IMO. The only experimentum crucis we
can perform is the verification of its history. If it is true only because we
believe it to be metaphysically true, but not historically true, we have
totally divorced the Scripture from historical reality (other than some
private reality created by our own minds).
As a geoscientist, I find lots wrong between science and Genesis 1 if Genesis
1 is interpreted in the traditional framework. If the earth is old and the
rock layers are the result of long periods of deposition, then the appearance
of the various animals should match the order in Genesis 1. But whales and
porpoises are not found with the fish in the geologic column yet the Bible
indicates that all the animals of the sea were created on day 5. Birds are
not found in the geologic column as early as the fish. Fish are found in
rocks 500+ million years old. The absolutely earliest evidence (not widely
accepted) for birds is 240 million years ago.
Land plants were created prior to the sun. Hugh Ross' interpretation that the
sun became visible after the land were formed, would required the sun to
remain hidden from view from earth for 4.1 billion years or most of the
history of the planet. There is much evidence of direct sunlight prior to 400
million years ago in the form of certain carbonate deposits which are formed
by photosynthesis. Lower light levels would deposit less carbonate than we
observe.
How do you resolve these difficulties?
John Tant wrote:
>The problem is, then, deciding what is "specific, obvious cause" and what
>is not. That which is obvious to me, might not be so obvious to you. A
>case in point would be the age of the universe. Most geologists would
>probably affirm that the data on this is pretty "obvious." However, for
>the layman, it may not be nearly so obvious to him. Certainly, it is
>somewhat less obvious for both of them than clapping trees and singing
>hills. Okay, so where's the line? Is it somewhere between the two? Is
>it to one side or the other of them both?
One of the problems Christians have is that the apologetical area is so large
no one can get their jaws around it. We must trust those who have studied an
area, but Christians don't. I had dinner with a guy who believes in an old
universe but a young solar system. He felt this solved all the age problems.
The universe and stars could be old but God created the solar system very
recently.
I pointed out a strong evidence for an old solar system. There are no
short-lived isotopes in the solar system. This implies that they all had time
to decay away. The isotopic evidence is consistent with a 4.5 billion year
old solar system.
His response was: "I am not an astronomer."
I was polite but thought, "This does not relieve us of the responsibility to
deal with data fatal to our views." It was a cop out of the highest magnitude
and not a very honest response. It implied that if we are not a specialist,
we can ignore what they find. That is hiding our heads in the sand rather than
dealing with the data.
So to conclude, a hermeneutic should also include honesty when hearing about
data from other areas of science. The experts have studied those areas, we
haven't and we should tread lightly when contradicting the consensus of the
experts.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm