On Fri, 20 Dec 1996, David Lee Nidever wrote:
> My name is David Nidever and I just joined this internet
> discussion. I'm very pleased by the level of discussion. I'm personally
> very interested in evolution and science in general.
Welcome.
> My other problem with them is that they are pushing a certain
> twist on science. They start with the belief that the Bible is true, and
> everything builds on it from there.
I think this is the right way to do it. First, a person works always
within a quasi-religious framework, most within a naturalist framework
,but some withhin a biblical framework. In physics this doesn't make a
real difference but in biology,geology and all historical sciences it
does.
Second, as you should know from Romans 1 everybody is able to recognize
God from his works and thus responsible before God. With the Bible it's
the same: everybody should accept the Bible as the word of God and then do
his research from this point. That's the same principle that's used in
science throughout, do his research from what we know.
> What they end up getting is some
> obscure theories of science which don't have much factual basis.
When writing the above I thought iperhaps missed your point. It's
certainly not scientifically sufficient to take the Bible and add some
speculations on origins consistent with the Bible. I think this has been
done sometimes.
> Also they use the christian masses to propogate their ideas by
> telling them have truths. They keep on bashing secular scientists and
> theories with very arguments, but the average christian can't tell. It's
> really sad for me to see so many christians taking it all in.
this.
> Oliver Beck in his last letter wrote about the interpretation of
> the Bible. He talked about the "clear" interpretation. He said that
> many objections to interpretations are because of our sinfulness, that
> we don't want to accept what God is saying. He also said that if we
> understand a passage we shouldn't say "there might be another
> interpretation" and not accept what we've come to understand.
> One thing that is certain is that biblical interpretation or any
> interpretation is hard. Language is often seen as being very plain and
> simple, but it really isn't. Meanings change and especially with ancient
> languages it is hard to figure out what certain sayings meant. Of course
> our knowledge of what life was like back then is very important in this
> issue.
> I remember a few times when my mother was telling me how a
> certain passage really affected her and my dad would cut in and say
> "that's not what the passage was saying". This is an example of how
> different people's understanding of the Bible can be. Does Oliver's
> principle still apply? How can it if different people get different
> understandings of the same passage? Does the passage have a specific
> meaning or is something different from everyone? It's not understanding
> that we must have, but scholarly understanding.
What's the difference ? I think every Christian can understand the Bible
by himself. That does not mean there are no difficult passages, but you
must understand it unless nobody could be sure of the work of God and his
will.
Perhaps you mean the making of a connection between the
phenomemnological Biblical narratives and the scientific language which
need not be clear.
A baby can think it
> understands when it probably really doesn't. We have to look at many
> different things to come to a scholarly understanding of a passage and
> that's very hard. There is much disagreement on passage, but on the
> major issues there is much agreement.
That's right. But I think creation is a major issue , because everything
depends on it.
> I definitely don't understand how Oliver can say that the
> paradigm of evolution does not work in the interpretation of the Bible. We
> must see that the Bible is not the only truth. There is scientific
> truth, historic truth and other truths can are just as true as biblical
> truth and we must use these to try and understand the Bible better.
The Biblical truth implies the historical truth of the narratives.
It may be scientifically and historically interesting to read the Bible
with what we know from other fields of knowledge, but it's not for
interpreting the Bible for its main purpose: telling man who God is and
what he wants us to do and what he has done.
If we want to go beyond the Bible we certainly must employ knowledge from
other fields like history or the natural sciences and that's one reason why
we are doing scientific research.
> That's a major problem that I see with ICR. They only see biblical truth
> as being true, or above other kinds of truth.
It is above because it's God's word not man's.
> In the past many theologians have had their own ideas about
> nature and they were accepted. The theory of evolution isn't any
> different. It is our understanding of nature in the biological realm and
> should add to our understanding of the Bible. What is so wrong or
> uncomprehensibly bad about God using evolution for his own purposes, if
> He made it? I don't see any big problem with the theory of evolution and
> many other scientific theories in how they relate to the Bible.
There are big problems.
The Bible says death entered the world by the sin of man. But selection
can only take place when there is death. Thus evolution denies that death
is a consequence of sin , instead being a necessary part of God's
creation.
The Bible says God can be recognized through his works in creation and all
men are thus responsible to believe in him. But if God works only as
evolution demands like natural occurring processes where can he be
recognized from?
And there are many smaller inconsistencies between Biblical doctrine and
evolution.
> About what the Bible says aboutscience. I think it's very hard
> to interpret what the Bible has to say about nature and science. Is it
> literal or symbolic? I think we first of all have to see that the Bible
> was not meant to be a science book and therefore we shouldn't expect it
> to talk about science very much or in any depth. But I think if the
> Bible does say anything about natural history and science it needs to be
> true on some sense of the word if the the Bible is true. It's hard for
> us to interpret what exactly the author was saying by certain words,
> especially in Genesis 1. I don't think there is any conflict between
> Genesis 1 and science.
It's not only Genesis 1, there are Genesis 2+3 and other chapters of the
Bible.
I think that if you get a really good
> understanding of the landscape back then, and the language, and the way
> people lived you won't find problems with what was said in Genesis and
> natural history. That's been my perception of it so far. Some good
> books about this subject are: "Creation and Time" by Hugh Ross; "The
> Biblical Flood" by Davis A. Young; and "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties"
> by Gleason Archer.
>
> Oliver also said that he put evolution in a different category of
> science than say physics, and that is the study of the history of
> nature. That's kind of true, but not really. ICR also uses this
> agrument against evolution. It's not very good. In science there are
> theories that are achronic, not constrained to any particular time. This
> is true in physics, geology and evolution. The theory of evolution is a
> theory about how life changes over time and it's applies just as much for
> today and the future as it has in the past. Now, it's true that the
> fossil record is very important for the theory of evolution, but it is
> only one part of the study of biology and evolution. There is
> comparative anatomy, genetic studies, bacterial studies, population
> studies and more. The most striking evidence for me is the fact that we
> have seen microevolution in bacteria. It's right there, present, in
> front of us. How can we say that evolution is a theory of the past when
> it is being used today to look and life and do experiments.
You can do experiments where you can observe change in animals, plants,
bacteria and so on. According to my knowledge no creationist denies this.
But what you can observe are only very small changes and there is no
neceesary connection to the origin of living beings. It's only the theory
of evolution that says there is one, but this is only an assumption. The
big changes necessary for common descent from one cell have never been
observed.
That there must be some change in the living world can be demonstrated
from the Bible: The Bible says Goliath was man but he wasmuch greater than
any person living in the this century. And the Blacks with their dark hair
are also mentioned as humans, differing in colour.
Also, when
> people look at the fossil record it's not just looking at the past, but
> we also apply what we know about things in general, from studies
> conducted in the present, to the past, so we can get a better
> understanding of what was going. We can look at present animals and how
> we can know things about them from their bones. We then use this to
> intepret fossils. So we are using many universal laws and theories about
> nature to study fossils. So evolution is not just about studying the
> past, but about a universal theory that applies to all times.
In the study of the supposed evolution there are many fields where there
is exact science, but evolution itself is not about this things but how
was the origin of all living beings. I'll give an example: in archeology
you use radiocarbon dating which has its foundation in nuclear physics but
archeology isn't a science of nature but of history. the difference is:
natural science looks for laws and theories how things behave, historical
sciences are interested in what happened in the past.
> Oliver also said that the dating methods weren't being
> addressed. Well, I think that even if the dating methods were left out
> and we went back to the time when these methods hadn't been discovered
> yet we would find big problems for flood geology. This is because
> geologists understand rocks and how geology works. This isn't just about
> the dating, it's about the rocks and processes. Flood geology just isn't
> a viable theory of how geology works, and you'll discover that when you
> look at rocks.
Isn't it true that most layers have formed in a much shorter time as from
an interpolation of the geologic timescale sholud be expected.
> By the way, there are many, many, many different dating methods
> that are used by anthropologists, geologists and astronomers. Many of
> them methods are very different but come up with the same dates. This
> kind of corroboration from different sources shows that these dates are
> probably very good, and 10,000 years for the age of the earth and
> universe doesn't fit in there anywhere. As a physicist you should know
> quite a bit about nuclear decay and things like that. I haven't done
> much study of it myself, but I would like to in the future. I recommend
> we all do a little research in the particulars of these dating methods if
> we want to discuss it further.
With the last sentence I agree fully, but this needs time.
> How do you quote from other people's letters? I don't mean to
> misquote anyone and with the <<< it seems a lot easier.
>
I reply with 'pine' and delete everything I do not want.
> Oliver, are you in Stuttgart, Germany? I used to live in Germany
> for thirteen years. Wie geht's?
>
Ja ,ich bin hier in Stuttgart , an der Universitaet. Wo hast Du die
dreizehn Jahre gewohnt ? Mir geht's gesundheitlich gerade nicht so gut,
mein Kreislauf ist etwas schwach. Freut mich hier einmal auch Deutsch zu
lesen.
I hope you did understand the German but if somebody has been here
for thirteen years he should understand it.
Best wishes
Oliver Beck
student of physics