And yes, the Bible was the lone hold-out (from the time of Aristotle until recent decades) in saying that the Universe had a beginning. I got that detail from a book by Gerald Schroeder who is an Israeli physicist. He does point out that very thing — the Bible says “In the Beginning.” And no one else saw it that way for millennia. The universe and everything in it has just always been around, recycling itself ad infinitum…
But Schroeder — while upholding the biblical assertion here – also is not a YEC person and has some interesting calculations on the meaning of the various “days” in the relevant early chapters of Genesis. So he accepts that the biblical account is a true assertion while doing ? with the days. Thus, if your friend came to faith because the biblical assertion of a beginning for the Universe is a true one, then she did not “make a huge mistake” in becoming a follower of Jesus for that reason.
There is also more to the Bible than just the “In the beginning” and a good portion has historical/archaeological support. The founder of BioLogos, Francis Collins, believes (from what I know) essentially in the truth of the biblical account (as a whole) without adhering to a literal six-days-of-24-hours-per-day creation event.
I am working out the details of “what I think” regarding those “days” myself…so will be intrigued by other answers here…but this is my two cents’ worth
Ok, let’s start by confronting the question of who is smarter face on.
First all intelligence has always varied considerably not only by innate ability but by how much people develop those abilities. So we must start by avoiding the foolishness of the new atheists jumping from statistics to some kind of implication that they are therefore smarter. One of the things we are dealing with here is awareness of reality rather than simply intellectual ability. So lets consider these three categories of innate ability, development of intelligence, and awareness.
Innate ability is a matter of evolution and thus asking whether this has likely increased or decreased we should look at the evolutionary forces…
Intellectual advantage: Do we have reason to think that intelligence contributes more to success in modern times compared to the past? Obviously the answer is yes. The opportunities for those with greater intelligence has greatly increased in modern times.
More reproduction: Do we have reason to think that intelligence favors a higher contribution to the gene pool. Unfortunately no. I think it is a fact that both more intelligent people and more affluent people have less children rather than more.
Natural selection: Do we have reason to think that intelligent people are surviving more than other people? Not really. Modern society protects everyone pretty much the same. And while in the past I can see other qualities being more important for survival, I can also see that intelligent people are often targeted as a threat to those in power more in recent times.
So we don’t have much reason to believe that innate ability will have increased and could well have decreased. Let’s move on to the development of intelligence…
The opportunities for the use and development of our intellectual abilities are far greater than they have ever been.
On the other hand, in the most recent times we rely more and more upon things that do a lot of our thinking for us. But I don’t think this is a big factor compare to the 1st one. So I think the conclusion is that as far as development of intelligence this is far far greater in modern times.
That brings us to the last category of awareness, for this is not just about intellectual ability. As has been mentioned before we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before having revealed much more of the universe in which we reside. Not only is so much more known but the means by which this is disseminated has also greatly increased making it freely available to everyone. So this is another category in which modern times wins hands down.
So in conclusion, while we have little reason to think average innate ability has increased, we have better reason to expect that standard deviation has increased considerably with little to penalize those with lesser innate intelligence. On the other hand, both the development of the intelligence people do have and awareness from access to information about things has greatly increased. We encourage and use more of human potential than ever before, and there can be no doubt that the average person in modern times knows far more about the universe than the average person in the past.
Obviously you didn’t read what I posted in a previous reply to you about this flat earth myth. Historians have been pointing out for a century that no one back then believed the flat earth. And for a century no one has been listening to them. So keep believing your historically false notion.
Intelligence does not equal KNOWLEDGE, so your equivocation there, of them lacking smarts because they believed wrong things, does not negate the fact that the Could have understood a simple statement of evolution. Because of this God COULD have said something more direct about evolution than I think he did, but you can’t claim that God had to accommodate his message because they COULDN"T understand evolution and any other science.
As to believing wrong things, do you think modern humans believe all the right things? Is science over because now we know everything there is to know? I say in 300 years our descendants will think us as stupid as we think the Neolithics.
So Do you want to answer my question about the book of Mormon vs the Bible? Two books lacking observational support, in your view but both offering different theologies. Why do we accept one but not the other? Both believe Jesus rose from the grave, So, without any observational data to differentiate them, how do you go about chosing the theology?
In a sense yea, because they had no concept of evolution at all.
Again, I quote the 600 BC Milesian philosopher Anaximander. He grew up in a goat herding society and he understood the concept of evolution quite well. He lived prior to Babylonian exile.
All beings derive from other older beings by successive transformation
that sounds like a really good summary of evolution in one sentence. You say that God couldn’t have convinced a goat herder of that statement? Is God that impotent as to be unable to convince a goat herder who was capable of understanding the concept but God was incapable of convincing him?
From my perspective, again, I don’t like what I see in accommodationalims. It leads to mental gymnastics to avoid acknowledging what God could have done and what was quite possible.
Because they talk about people’s encounters and relations with this divine being that we call God and they give us inspiration for our faith.
As I have mentioned, during my years of doubts, I read books from most of the main religions. On was on the Baha’u’llah, a messenger of God in the Bahai faith. That book told about his encounters with God, including miracles. How do I determine which sets of encounters with God I should believe?
So you still parrot the old YEC line of “If Genesis 1 ain’t true, then none of the Bible is true!” but you take a twist to it. If that be the case then none of the Bible is true if we are to take a strict rigid literalist understanding only. But if we can see that God spoke to those people in their time and age then it don’t make God lair, He was merely speaking truth to them in a way they could understand it.
I would like to thank you profusely for your disdain in the bolded part. I much appreciate it and probably we all need a little more disdain in our lives.
What I have said, I believe the Bible when it says, “It is impossible for God to lie” Heb 6:18. I gather you don’t believe that. God can tell false things to goat herders. I got it, I understand. I don’t like what I see about what that does to the character of God. Especially when no one has done anything but claim that a Homo sapiens sapiens of Neolithic age was incapable of understanding what a contemporary, Anaximander understood. No one presents evidence in favor of this, such as, saying their brains were different (which they weren’t). People just make this claim as if everyone knows how stupid those folk were. I understand what yall are doing and I don’t like it. If you acknowledge that they COULD have understood Anaximader’s sentence, then one has to ask Why did a God who can’t lie say that to those goat herders?
Joseph Smith Jr. did have a series of visions but over time went crazy and lost track of the mission that He was given. It did 't help that Birmingham Young only further flamed the errors of Smith and went deep down hill. The same thing with the prophet Muhammed of Islam, he did receive a vision and message from an angel but over time he saw that militant action was the only way to convert people sadly and then after his death it went down hill.
I appreciate you answering my Mormon book question. So, they had visions and were crazy so we can dismiss them. Abram had a vision. Paul had visions. Isaiah had visions, Balam thought a donkey talked to him. Jeremiah had visions as did Ezekiel. Peter had visions, John, well, his vision in Revelation is down right like an LSD trip, so, why do you exempt them from being the crazy-vision-led leaders you ascribe to Mohammed and Joseph Smith? Seems to me that what is good for one religion is quite good for another?
I just don’t see a logical basis for your faith.If you reject Smith and Mohammed based on them going crazy, but accept Christianity in spite of the visions that would certainly seem crazy to me, then that seem terribly ad hoc and inconsistent to me. If all we have is faith in whatever we have faith in, that lends no assurance that we have the true faith.
Persisting with this misspelling “Accommodationalist” make me wonder if gbob is coining a new term. In which case we have to go with his definition from the OP that this is the view that God tailored his message to the views of the primitive Hebrews. And I guess we should modify this as referring to the OT only and particularly to Genesis since this obviously doesn’t apply to the NT.
Do I think God tailors his message to communicate most effectively to his immediate audience? Yes. But do I think that means the belief and ideas of that audience is the limit of its meaning and the lens through which the text must be understood? No. I have already said that I think the words of Jesus in the NT should be the lens through which the OT should be understood. And I see no reason why science cannot be the lens through which all of the Bible is understood.
So I don’t know what these so called “Accommodationalists,” if they exist, will say but science can certainly show that some things are correct and something are not correct and will certainly not pay attention to those using arguments from magic to uphold their interpretation of the text in disagreement with the objective evidence.
The theology people get from the Bible is a considerable spectrum So here is what I get from the Bible by way of contrast.
Mankind was created to be the eternal children of God, where there is no end to what God has to give and what we have to receive from Him.
My ancestors left this space-time continuum and thus speaking of their spiritual destiny as something all over in the past is incorrect. But to be sure we have a choice between fighting our self-destructinve habits with the aid of God or letting them devour us.
There is only one God who is infinite and trans-personal not made in our image but more than we are rather than less.
We are saved by the grace of God alone. God asks us to have faith which is made real by works of love for our fellow human beings.
There is little evidence that religion of any kind makes people better behaved.
It is a choice – not only of which of these makes more sense of our experiences but of what kind person we want to be.
People are obviously not going to choose a magical or anti-science theology if they have respect for the findings of science, but I think this has little to do with a choice between Christianity and Mormonism. You have scientific and anti-science people in both religions.
Sigh, Good Lord, is all I can say. I said in my previous post Abiogenesis, NOT Spontaneous generation. Good Lord, what a caricature of me you must have in your mind. Again, here is this disdan for anyone who disagrees with accommodationalism. Do I need to put my resume up here so you will actually treat me as an intelligent person? Please respond to what I actually write, not what you want me to write?
Again the issue is, God said: “Let the Earth bring forth living creatures”. The grammar of this sentence is that the Earth is doing the work of bringing forth life. What happened on earth is that life arose in an as of now not understood set of chemical reactions which led to life. That is not spontaneous generation. Sheesh, I really can’t believe you have stooped so low here.
[Useless, irrelevant Bull patties about spontaneous generation deleted]
I really don’t quite get how you think it was ‘randomly’ chosen even with this revised probability distribution
My point is that there are a large number of possible events each of the things in Genesis could be referring to and you can randomly choose from that subset. [I’ve done it before]
How illogical you are. Just because you did it doesn’t prove I did it. That is simply an illogical view.
and in reality you didn’t do it randomly. Randomly would have a random number generator chose subjects to insert into your genesis tongue in cheek parody. Random would have objects that have nothing to do with any thing found in Genesis.
No. I’m saying that Genesis 1 isn’t making scientific claims. You can of course pick various natural phenomenon and pretend that’s what Genesis 1 was referring to.
So, when Genesis 1 uses the word ‘light’ it really isn’t referring to light–the physical phenomenon. That is what you seem to be saying. So if I claim that light in Genesis 1 is referring to a physical phenomenon, I am wrong and just pretending that the word “light” in Gen 1 refers to the physical phenomenon, because the word ‘light’ doesn’t really refer to ‘light’ as we know it? This is one of the most intellectually pretzel-twisted ideas I have ever run into. I thank you for this entertainment.
When Genesis 1 speaks of the moon, if I say it was referring to the moon, I am just pretending that it refers to the moon? Gee, with this, I think I need to re-evaluate everything in the Bible. When it refers to Jesus, maybe it really isn’t referring to Jesus and we just pretend that it does. This concept is so freeing.
The whole point of accommodation is that God accommodated his message through our limited understanding. Our limited understanding for Genesis = the understanding of creation around 500 BCE.
It seems it is ok to ignore data here. People seem not to pay attention to Anaximander’s statement about evolution and about the multiverse–concepts he shouldn’t have been able to understand given that he lived 100 years prior to 500 BC. He lived in 600 BC.
By reading other ancient documents we find support for the claim that Genesis contains no secret advanced science but rather clarifies the WHO behind creation and what his purposes are for various aspects of the natural world.
Yall seem to think that they must have ALL advanced scientific knowledge or those people couldn’t understand anything. Over and over I have pointed out that they just had to have a simple summary of truth when God spoke on something about Nature. this is the God who is stated in Scripture to be incapable of lying.
Do you think God is incapable of lying? I.e. telling something that is false? If so, how do we know whether he is lying about the plan of salvation?
No doubt misspelling something is proof I have nothing useful to say.
In which case we have to go with his definition from the OP that this is the view that God tailored his message to the views of the primitive Hebrews. And I guess we should modify this as referring to the OT only and particularly to Genesis since this obviously doesn’t apply to the NT.
Wasn’t it nice of me to define it? What is the point of this?
Do I think God tailors his message to communicate most effectively to his immediate audience? Yes. But do I think that means the belief and ideas of that audience is the limit of its meaning and the lens through which the text must be understood? No.
We agree on the bolded part. God should not be limited to our stupidity. God told Daniel things that Daniel didn’t understand, so it isn’t always a requirement of God that the person he inspires has to understand what is said. Thanks for reminding me of Daniel.
So I don’t know what these so called “Accommodationalists,” if they exist,
They are the people who are debating with me, that should be obvious.
It is a choice – not only of which of these makes more sense of our experiences but of what kind person we want to be.
So, Truth is a matter of choice? If I am understanding you correctly then it would make no difference which one we chose.
People are obviously not going to choose a magical or anti-science theology if they have respect for the findings of science, but I think this has little to do with a choice between Christianity and Mormonism. You have scientific and anti-science people in both religions.
I won’t go much further with you on this Mitch but I felt obligated to thank you for your reply on this issue.
So, what you seem to be saying is that anyone who believes in miracles is anti-science. Quite an interesting view if I read you correctly
Ha! You trying to solve life! Not going to happen. Nietzsche tried and ended in a mad house.
Book of Mormon - easy one, proven fraud.
Accommodationalism - what is truth and how do you attain it ?
Deut 29:29 - The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Until we break God out of our box of what we call “religion” and “theology” we will still claim that one sole religion or faith or denomination has sole truth. God transcends above our need for religion or denominations but sadly this has been the opposite and we have been trying to pin God into a box. Jesus when He came down never really intended to start a new religion but a new movement for social change, ethical change and even spiritual change but sadly over time the habits of humans got in the way and thus we got the institutional “church”.
I don’t reject the experience they had and the nuggets of truth that they got, what I reject is what I also reject from a lot of the modern western Christian religion in that we can use it to control God and others. I will agree that the visions of the people in the Bible is hard to believe but we need to see them as people encountering something beyond themselves and trying to make sense of it i.e. God. Anyone can have and experience of or with God, it just depends on what we do with it. I honestly don’t see the experience of the prophets and apostles as no different then the gurus, sages, wise people or prophets of other religions or philosophies. But what makes the Judo-Christian one unique is that they had a personal encounter and revelation with the Christ person, God in the flesh. In the Bible it shows God as a being that wants relationship and desires to talk with His children. A book that has been changing my idea of this concept of God and relationship has been Richard Rohr’s book “The Universal Christ”
I like what you wrote. Difference between me and Nietzsche is he had syphillus, I don’t. Madness comes from that disease. But some have challenged that and say he had cancer, frontotemporal dementia, vascular dementia etc. I have none of these. lol
Atheists would claim the Bible is a proven fraud. This is why observational data, supporting the Bible, is important. If it all comes down to just our opinion, then it is unlikely we could ever know the truth.
Your efforts at communication are extremely lacking so I see little point in your responses to my posts in any case.
I of course said no such thing. It was your use of a word sounding like accommodationist which suggested that you considered science to be opposite that of the Bible and Christianity. You didn’t respond to that post and make any clarification of what you were saying.
But I happen to believe in miracles. I just don’t believe in magic or God contradicting the laws of nature which He Himself created. It is your equating miracles to violations of the laws of nature which I do not believe in. But if you suggesting that I think believing that God has no commitment to the laws of nature He created is anti-science then yes that is true.
The point is making an attempt to understand what you might be saying with this “accommodationalist” thing of yours. It is an effort at communication, which I consider to be of more value than what I see in your responses to my posts.
So it is like how redneck southerners call everyone who disagrees with them communists.
What you believe is a matter of choice, yes. That doesn’t mean that it makes no difference. Quite the contrary. Many choices of what to believe makes a great deal of difference. Slamming science and putting Christianity in opposition to science is likely to have a great number of negative consequences.
Ok, Sealkin, you have now hit on some interesting issues. It is that this view of Accommodationalism leads to universalism eventually. Yes, I probably mis-spelled Accommodationalism but I think God will forgive me for it even if others won’t. lol
My wife is of Lebanese descent and her extended family has muslims, we get along well, but, what they claim about God is diametrically opposed to what Orthodox Christianity claims about God. Both assertions can’t be true at the same time. Their God is not triune, our is. They get kudos from God for striking the necks of unbelievers, we don’t. Again, both can’t be correct views of God’s will. Having spent much time in Buddhist temples in China, their concept of the divine is much different than either Christianity or Islam. They burn incense before a statue of Buddha, something both Christians and Muslims find objectionable.
Daoism uses joss sticks with which to get a fortune and decide what to do in life. They belief God communicates that way. The problem for orthodox Christian views is that if there are other ways to God, then there is no need for Jesus to have died. Indeed Jesus asked God if there was another way to take this cup from him. Within Christian views, this indicates that there was no other way to God–like it or not.
I am reminded of a Rabbi who came to my old church to tell us about Judaism. I asked " what was the biggest reason to be a jew.?" I expected the answer to be “Because I believe it is true”. and I would have deeply respected that answer. The answer I got was, “Because my parents and extended family are Jewish.” that implies there is no metaphysical value to Judaism, a position I disagree with. If someone asks me what is the biggest reason to be a Christian they will get the answer, “Because I believe it is true!”
I don’t reject the experience they had and the nuggets of truth that they got, what I reject is what I also reject from a lot of the modern western Christian religion in that we can use it to control God and others. I will agree that the visions of the people in the Bible is hard to believe but we need to see them as people encountering something beyond themselves and trying to make sense of it i.e. God. Anyone can have and experience of or with God, it just depends on what we do with it. I honestly don’t see the experience of the prophets and apostles as no different then the gurus, sages, wise people or prophets of other religions or philosophies. But what makes the Judo-Christian one unique is that they had a personal encounter and revelation with the Christ person, God in the flesh. In the Bible it shows God as a being that wants relationship and desires to talk with His children. A book that has been changing my idea of this concept of God and relationship has been Richard Rohr’s book “The Universal Christ”
I don’t think Christianity teaches that we can control God. I haven’t read the book you cite so I looked up a review of it and found this sentence quoted from the book:
“Might we embrace the idea of the “Christ Mystery, the indwelling of the Divine Presence in everyone and everything since the beginning of time as we know it”?”
I have loads of problems with God indwelling everyone which would include the BTK killer, Jeffrey Dahlmer and other folk like him. Evil exists, observationally speaking, and to say God is indwelling in them is, to me, equivalent to saying God approves of their activities. At the very least, the indwelling God made no difference in their activities.
Did some more investigation of this term. A misspelling and coining a new term may both be incorrect conclusions. I ran across this post in another forum.
Accommodationalism
From - but not to be confused with:
accommodationist (plural accommodationists)
someone who accommodates an opposition and compromises their own stance in attempt to discredit their opposition.
An accommodationalist (coined term in atheism) is one who implores atheists to moderate their attacks on Christianity (as they see it) and be more accommodating towards it.
So it looks to me like a term modified from “accommodationism” and tailored from previous coining of “accommodationalism” for those who seek some kind of compromise between different viewpoints.
Religion is people trying to grasp for God, Christ came down to show us the love of the Father and die for us and reconcile us back to the Father. People have had encounters or sights of God but not he full revelation of God, we find the full revelation of God in the God-man Jesus Christ.
The same can be said as in how all humans are made in the Image of God, all have a Image to fulfill but not all fulfill it i.e. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etc. We are all children of God and have the Image of God in us, but that doesn’t mean everyone will fulfill that role.
From wikipedia: To scientists, one of the more fascinating findings to emerge from this well is that no transition from granite to basalt was found at the depth of about 7 km (4.3 mi), where the velocity of seismic waves has a discontinuity. Instead the change in the seismic wave velocity is caused by a metamorphic transition in the granite rock. In addition, the rock at that depth had been thoroughly fractured and was saturated with water, which was surprising. This water, unlike surface water, must have come from deep-crust minerals and had been unable to reach the surface because of a layer of impermeable rock.[8]
One thing you can do is point to the second creation story, the one that begins in Genesis 2.4b.
The second creation story differs from the first in the order and method of creation.
The first creation story was creation by decree with the order of plants, animals, man and woman.
The second creation story was creation by God’s hands with the order of man, plants, animals, and woman.
They both can’t be literal history.
So you might ask her how she chose Genesis 1 was a real event and Genesis 2 was not.
Another approach is to point out that Genesis 1 appears to be a figurative telling, just as 2 Samuel 22 is. In 2 Samuel 22 (which is repeated in Psalm 18), there is a figurative telling of David’s rescue from Saul. We know it is figurative, because the historical rescue is recorded elsewhere. God did not really fly down on a cherub with smoke pouring from his nostrils hurling lightning. With creation, we don’t have the actual events recorded.
Image of God is not indwelling of God. The first is a copy of some sort; the second is God actually been inside the person. Big difference as far as I can see.
Look, I read the original book put out on this well years ago. There is nothing like what the guy you are reading says it is. I’m sorry, they don’t understand geology very well no matter what the guy’s degree is. To say a fracture zone represents the remains of your preflood waters below is silly. Water fills every crack and poor from the surface down as far as it goes, because water that soaks into the ground percolates lower into porous rocks and flows slowly down faults and fractures. Finding water down below is no surprise and as I understand it from what I just read on in published articles, the pressure is hydrostatic, which means here is at least one pathway through cracks and porous rock all he way up to the surface. That means water flowing down can be the source of those waters. The salinity is altered by diagentic changes which cause changes in salinity. this is no big deal. But nothing I will say will alter your opinion. I have earth structural reasons for rejecting your waters below as well, but right now, I have to go to dinner with some friends and don’t want to take the time to draw diagrams for you to then ignore.
If misspelling that word lands us in Hell, then Heaven will be a nearly empty place. (I can almost see Jesus hastily looking for an English dictionary now to make sure he gets it right.)
You ask why I would reject the book of Mormon instead of the [Christian] Bible. The easy answer to that is … I haven’t. I haven’t read enough of the book of Mormon to give it much of a hearing, so for me to say I ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ it whole cloth would be dishonest. I doubt any large compiled book manages to get everything wrong. I have read some of it - enough to know that parts of it read like the New Testament - so one hopes it isn’t all wrong!
Nor would it be correct for me to say that I just ‘accept’ the Bible whole cloth. I wrestle with it and try to understand it. I accept it in the same way that Jacob just meekly accepted the visiting angel of the Lord. [Hint - he didn’t - and walked away limping, but with a blessing for his troubles.] I believe the Bible is true not because it [apparently - according to some] made some cool scientific predictions, but because it gives real testimony about real life (99.9% of which has nothing to do with scientific classrooms and formal scientific theories). I don’t have to look for any of its alleged scientific credentials as a pre-condition for my trust because I’ve already experienced both sin and God’s redeeming work in my life enough to give me confidence that my spiritual nourishment is quite well-enough attended to by Christ himself (as described in the pages of my Bible). So I have no hurried need to evaluate or throw shade on all the other sacred writ from other religions or denominations out there. They probably have many good wisdoms and exhortations of their own. But for me - my need is Christ.
