4 Things Americans Can Learn About Faith and Evolution From Great Britain and Canada

Programming languages are derived from math, not human languages. Although you can represent some features of human languages in math-like ways, human languages cannot be reduced to simply rules of logic, syntax, and meaning units. How we understand one another is much more complex than that. Obviously there are always multiple ways to interpret any human utterance because so much of what we say is interpreted with reference to our immediate context. God chose to reveal himself in human language; stories, histories, poems, prophesies, and laws. Nothing resembling the straightforward logical notation of computer programming.

I am a linguist. I have studied NT Greek. Have you tried to read Paul or Hebrews in Greek before? “Concise” is not the word I would pick to describe most of the sentences. All languages have single words which do not overlap semantically with single words in another language. The indigenous language I study has a verb that means “placed inside something in a horizontal position.” The fact that we have to use seven words to translate one word doesn’t make that language more concise than English. The word for my friend is “one who walks beside me” So in that case, English is more concise. A lack of one to one semantic correspondence is totally expected when translating.

The age of the earth is calculated by measuring things.

Yom means day. The normal kind. So what? The point of Genesis 1 is not to date the earth.

I am someone who accepts evolution as an explanation for the diversity of life on earth. I believe God is the creator and sustainer of all life. I have a pretty steady diet of reading the Bible. And studying the Bible. And talking about the best way to translate difficult passages in the Bible. It’s fine that you don’t find the evidence for evolution convincing. (It doesn’t really sound to me like you’ve looked at it very closely, but that is beside the point.) But your argument basically boils down to: “I read the Bible and think X. Therefore everyone who reads the Bible will think X also. People who think Y don’t read the Bible.” That’s not very compelling.

Maybe the passage in question doesn’t mean what you think it means?

Not exactly how natural selection works. Nothing about evolutionary theory would predict humans evolving a second set of arms or eyes in the backs of their heads over 10,000 years because that would be useful to them. Kind of proves the point that you haven’t spent much time actually understanding what you don’t accept. If you want actual evidence of the predictive power of the evolutionary model, you can look at this list: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: "Evidences"?

If you are happy with your worldview and interpretation of Genesis, more power to you. We don’t have any need to convert you to our way of thinking when it comes to accepting scientific consensus. But it’s not cool to assume other Christians are spiritually deficient because they have a different perspective in this area.

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