That’s kind of like what some Muslims do with the Quaran and it’s “scientific miracles”-
One can go through the text and match it up however they can to modern science and then proclaim "only a God(Allah in this case) could have such foreknowledge and accuracy.’
People also do this with the Hindu Rig Vedas where this author defends the science of the Vedas against charges by Muslim apologists that try to point out scientific errors:
One can go through the text and match it up however they can to modern science and then proclaim "only a God(Allah in this case) could have such foreknowledge and accuracy.’
People also do this with the Hindu Rig Vedas where this author defends the science of the Vedas against charges by Muslim apologists that try to point out scientific errors:
I have no problems with other religions trying to support their religion. I respect that a lot more than saying it is all unverifiable mush but we should believe it anyway. Their solutions should be judged just like anyone else’s idea. Does it fit the facts both of their scriptures and of Nature.
Of your comment, I didn’t say,nor do I really require for something to be ‘only God could know that’ All I want is a solution to the question "Given God’s foreknowledge, that he would eventually have to communicate to us, why didn’t he say simple but true statements of modern science. The reason this is important is that if God is Creator, then God knows what the real story is. The Bible says it is impossible for God to lie. So why, according to accommodationalism did he lie about what happened? People say they believe the Bible, but clearly they can’t believe those verses that say God doesn’t lie or they too would be demanding that God tell the truth–one possible conclusion is that the God of the Bible isn’t the God who created the universe–that is the atheist option.
Everytime I say that, someone says ‘they couldn’t possibly know what we know’ or ‘they would have to know what we know’, which is utterly silly. Just a simple but true statement about Nature, that stands up to the test of time.
Yall talk a lot about meeting people where they are. god doesn’t seem to care to meet us where our society is. But accommodationalism meets no one in this age ‘where they are’ Our society has become less and less religious over the past century. Part of this is because they don’t believe the Bible is true. According to Gallup 1/4 of Americans believe the Bible is just fables and that is double what it was in 1976. But if you only consider college graduates, who are our business leaders and technocrats, it is 36% of them think the Bible is an ancient book of fables. That is where people are.https://news.gallup.com/poll/210704/record-few-americans-believe-bible-literal-word-god.aspx
Where a large group of people today are, is this: ‘The Bible is false’ and you meet them saying “the Bible is false but worthy to be believed”. That doesn’t seem to me to be a great evangelism tool. It’s like the politician who a voter charges with lying to them, and the politician says, “Yes, I lie daily to one and all, but vote for me anyway.” That doesn’t seem like a vote getting slogan. Maybe the politician should say, “Vote for me because I lie better than the other guy!” and we should say, “Believe the Bible because our fables are better than the fables of the other religions” Dontcha just think that will catch on and cause the 3rd Great Awakening? If you this is a logical way to approach where people are today, all I can do is shake my head in amazement, and maybe cry for the future of our religion.
I don’t think everything about religion is able to be logically explained. I believe much of it is faith based on something that won’t ever be probable by any known reason. Religion and science can go hand and hand, but they absolutely also split many times and are not always reconcilable.
Plenty of verses mention the potter and his clay and placing those who will seek him in positions so they will seek and find him meaning some he already knows won’t ever truly seek him by his all knowing power and so they may not ever be placed in a position that will give them that route.
I don’t think gbob is failing to communicate. Accommodation in theology and in the context of this thread is the belief that God adapts his message to the understanding of his audience and communicates in a way that makes his message accessible to them. Gbob takes issue with people who see God accommodating ancient scientific understanding in Genesis.
Isn’t it the same argument in the end though?
If God was being literal and not accommodating the worldview of ancient people in order to best explain a story to them pointing towards Jesus then that means as a byproduct that if we as modern people with a much more accurate and in-depth scientific worldview makes scripture fit this paradigm then we are accommodating it. One can’t do it without implying the other is as well. Or so that’s how it seems to me.
Of course, much of it is faith based. One can never remove faith on the philosophical parts of religion, or on things like the resurrection. That requires faith. But I and most people here don’t like the YEC views. Why don’t we like the YEC views (I like lots of YECs but not their views)? Because they say false things about nature. But then the accommodationalists turn around and think it is fine and dandy for God to say false things about nature. I find that bizarre, inconsistent, incoherent and any other word one wants. We don’t seem to apply the same standard to God as we do to the YECs.
Thank you Christy. I was beginning to wonder if I was speaking mandarin rather than English. 
Maybe we should turn it around. Why does God want to look stupid to us and not accommodate his message to us? By viewing things in early Genesis as nonsense today, God has failed to communicate his reality to us, but the claim is that He was trying to communicate that reality to them. Does God not like us?
Do you think fables are false? That attitude seems to be rather strange. When I read Aesop’s Fables I don’t call them false because animals don’t talk in real life.
Of course, God loves us and wants us to be in a restored relationship with him. That is why I accept scientific findings as likely true, and compatible with Biblical teaching. Certainly that affects the way in which we interpret scripture, and while we may differ on some points, I appreciate your approach. I fall into the accommodationalist camp, but that works for me, without compromising the gospel.
To me, it does not make God “look stupid” for him to present things to ancient humanity in a way that they could understand. It was not stupid to communicate with stories than can be appreciated 3000 years later. Even in secular circles, the ideas communicated to us from older cultures are in the form of stories, not textbooks, for the most part.
When the god of the universe, who is said to be Vulcan and incapable of lying, is saying something about Nature, a thing he is supposed to have created, and what He says is a false fable, then I have problems.
Of course animals don’t talk in real life. No one says they do, It was a God caused miracle. If God is incapable of doing miracles, then He is incapable of resurrecting a man dead for 3 days and that story becomes a fable as well. Is this really that hard to understand?
Fair enough Phil. Do you see my complaint about us not liking what the YECs are saying because they are saying false things about nature and then we turn around and say it is ok for God not to say true things about nature? I really disagree with the “in a way that they could understand” They could understand whatever God said about Nature. If God had said 'out of the mud came life" Even a Goat herder would understand that. Why people think he couldn’t, I don’t know.
I know I am not going to change many minds here. And for you, I think you put almost all emphasis on the New Testament, but I do think it would be nice if we cleaned up our thought processes a bit and understand the weaknesses of our respective positions.
According to Judeo-Christian tradition, it is humans who wrote the Bible. God didn’t dictate the Bible, but inspired it. I also fail to see how a fable is false for simply being a fable.
Do you think Aesop’s Fables are literal historical events where the talking animals were a miracle from God? If so, I think you are approaching those stories in a very strange manner.
Jesus also spoke in parables. Whether there ever was a Good Samaritan who did all of those things in the parable is beside the point. What matters is the morals and theology contained in the parable. Don’t you agree?
Fair enough, and something to think about. I suppose the way I rationalize it is to regard the Bible as not trying to teach us about nature in those verses, but rather using the current concepts of the day to teach us about God. I think the problem I see with the YEC approach is that they are reading into the scripture something that is not there and that is contrary to what I see as observed reality. Ultimately, if we cannot accurately observe reality, the question becomes how can we then accurately read and interpret scripture? Your approach seems to me to be saying that Biblical statements are indeed addressing observations about reality, and are compatible with scientific observations, but we have been interpreting them wrongly. There is certainly some overlap in the YEC view, your view, and the traditional EC view but each one weighs interpretation and observation differently.
It was difficult to understand because he was throwing the term so liberally at everyone who disagreed with him about anything. How could it have had anything to do with me when I not only never said anything like that but never even heard of the term before (and not finding it dictionaries or other standard references either). Naturally I was making some effort to investigate what term was referring to or even if there was such a word.
Just because its a fable or parable or myth don’t meant its false and void of a message that tells of a truth.
What about the idea that humans wrote Genesis … using their best understanding of God’s inspiration available to the scribes at that time?
Which is not incompatible with the idea that God wrote Genesis using human beings as his writing instruments. I find it likely that this obsession with details is more of a human failing and God is more of a big picture kind of person/character/deity.
The crust is granite, beneath that is layer of water, and beneath that is the mantle made of basalt.
When the crust failed, it ripped roughly along the path of the mid oceanic ridge, 42,000 miles. Water escaped with enough velocity to launch boulders into space. The water eroded the bottom side of the granite crust as well as pummeling the granite that was collapsing into the jets of water on either side of the rupture. That is the source of sand and clay. This continued until the rupture became quite wide. Then beginning in the mid-Atlantic, the mantle sprang upward forming the mid oceanic ridge because of the great amount of mass that was removed. The earth is a vacuum, so the Pacific had to collapse downward, forming oceanic trenches around the Pacific. The continents slid down hill away from the Atlantic toward the Pacific riding on supercritical water until they ran out of lubricating water or hit resistance. In the Atlantic you should find no granite because it was removed by the high velocity high energy water. In the Pacific and Indian oceans granite is starting to be found because there parts of the granite crust were sucked downward toward the rising Atlantic. Because of the movement in the mantle, especially in the Pacific, large amounts of basalt spilled onto the Pacific floor covering the Pacific continent. So the Atlantic is the top of the mantle, the Pacific is basalt that melted and spilled onto the Pacific floor.
Interestingly, looking at ocean sediment depth maps, the deeper sediment areas are adjacent to the continents. From my point of view the deepest sediments are in places that would have been covered by continents (crust) when the sediments were being deposited. There seems to be strong relationship between the continents and the deepest ocean sediments. I think those sediments came from two places: some from surface runoff, and but more from underneath the continents as they came to a stop at the end of continental drift and were swept out with remaining subsurface water as the continents came to a stop. In the Pacific, there would have been sedimentary layers on the continent that was sucked down, then covered by basalt from the mantle. That does not answer your question as to why there is not more sediments on the ocean floor. Here is what was going on while sediments were being deposited. You have basins surrounding the rupture where the granite crust is being removed. For a while (40 days) water is shooting out of this rupture into the air carrying sediments and debris, then for several months more, water continues to escape from under the granite crust, but is no longer being launched into the air. The water between the new continents where the water is escaping into would be turbulent. There would have been organized regular waves on the continents. Sediments on the continents would have been laid down before the deepest sediments on the ocean floor were deposited.
Continental drift was only the continents doing the moving. They slid with lubricating supercritical water underneath them over the stationary mantle. Moving away from the Atlantic, toward the Pacific.
Animals lived on the surface of the earth. The earth’s surface between today’s continents would have been removed. Animals, vegetation, as well as sediments would have been sorted by liquefaction on the surface of the continents. There would have been waves in the water covering the continents as well as waves in the granite continents allowing for the liquefaction. If it took 150 days to lay down the sediments, they would accumulate at 1.4 feet per hour. With waves in the crust and in the water, the upper portions of the continents would spend some time in a regular cycle above water. That would allow time for animals or birds to leave footprints, dig burrows before more sediments are laid down during the next wave cycle to bury them and protect them.
I think you know where to find more info on this theory if you wish to take the time. It is clearly outside the current paradigm of plate tectonics, which Dr Brown and Christian Smoot have poked plenty of holes in.
I have enjoyed reading your writings posted on oldearth.org. You sir are a good man who brings up many thought provoking topics.
As it pertains to the topic of accommodationalists, this discussion is off topic, but yet it is not. The question is: Is the Bible scientifically accurate as originally written? If the Bible is scientifically accurate then I believe something close to this theory/idea is close to the truth.
Well lhat is what the atheists think and in the case that this is human ideas, then I would see no need to follow what it says I should do. I would agree with you that if Genesis 1 is a fable written by a Neolithic, that we shouldn’t pay any attention to it. that concept ripples through the OT. Why should I be bound by the Ten Cmmandments if that was just Moses’ idea?
If it is inspired by God, in whatever form inspiration takes, then that changes the game. If I speak nonsense (and some here think I am) then people shouldn’t pay attention to me. But if God speaks nonsense, shouldn’t the same rule apply?
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.