You have shown that there was no literal Adam and Eve. This destroys the main theme of Christianity.
You have shown that women did not come from a rib. This destroys Genesis.
You have shown there was barely even any local flood. This also destroys Genesis.
You have shown that our formation was not guided by God. This destroys the need for God to even be involved!
The World has shown us that miracles don’t occur, no matter how hard one prays. This destroys what Jesus said about asking anything in His name and He will do it.
If it takes so much effort to reconcile the Bible with science, how is the average person supposed to believe? Doesn’t God WANT people to believe? The average person knows enough about the World around them to realize that what is written in the Bible does not match up. What they don’t know however, is how they should be reading it then! And so they lose their faith.
Whether you realize it or not, anyone could easily use this argument to prove that you have actually debunked Christianity.
No, an informed reader who carefully reads the posts here could not easily assume that Biologos has discredited the Bible. One can take the Bible seriously without taking every sentence literally.
@Struggling, sounds like a lot of destroying going on.
But this doesn’t sound anything like what I see on Biologos. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I read here, but I don’t need to.
I have a hard time believing that Genesis is as easily destroyed as you appear to be claiming. So I’m going to assume that I’m not understanding what you are saying. But I would be interested in learning more. I hope you post further.
P.S. What is “barely even any local flood”? Because I read Hebrew, I find no mention of a global flood in Genesis. (Only the ERETZ is flooded.) But I don’t understand the “barely” aspect.
I’m not dismissing the struggling you are experiencing. Indeed, I’ve had struggles of my own. Perhaps if you explain more, there can be resolutions.
Of course, the position I and many others here take is that the Bible does not need to be reconciled with science. That is the YEC position, and that position is due to erroneous interpretation. Once you let go of that, you can appreciate the text for what it says.
St. Augustine had it right almost 2000 years ago when he said that Scriptures were not to be taken literally.
"“Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,… and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.”(De Genesi ad litteram; the Literal Meaning of Genesis, an unfinished work.)
I don’t think we can do better than his reply. God would not have made his message known if, on a hilltop in Judea, he gave some shepherd boy the General Relativity field equations or the Schrodinger equation. He inspired messages that were meaningful to the people at that time. And now he inspires messages that are meaningful in our time.
I am forced to admit that there are some BioLogos folks who who really just want to prove that Evolution can work without God’s help or intervention. They were raised this way … and they really can’t help the reflex to show how amazing nature is … and that evolution can work without divine intention.
But this is not why BioLogos exists… this is not the point that BioLogos was created to demonstrate.
BioLogos fights its authentic battles in that difficult battlefield of HUMAN REASONABLENESS … and the perception of PLAUSIBILITY.
This is the terrain of dozens of rival denominations… even HUNDREDS of denominations. The reason there are so many is because of the VASTNESS of real estate occupied by the Bible … and the interpretation and moderate attempts to reconcile so many presumptions of divinity and metaphysics and the real world.
Indeed. What is written in the Bible does not match up with common experience (or science) when one reads the Bible in the semi-literal way that a certain, locally based, fairly recent, somewhat cultish in its extreme form, Christian sect demands we do. And to buttress their claim that this is right way to read the Bible, they make up lots of false science sounding stuff to support it.
So you are right that that is NOT the way to read the Bible, from the point of common sense or science. What is the right way to read the Bible, you ask? There are many, but most importantly, read the poetic parts as poetry, the metaphorical parts as metaphor, the allegorical parts as allegory, the political historical parts as politics and history, and the parts about God and what He wants from us as theology.
We dont know how Jesus interpreted Scripture, but the part we do know is consistent with the above, since He used poetry, metaphor, allegory, history and theology in His teachings.
I don’t know that this will be helpful, as when I was in the middle of my understanding of scripture’s purpose and infallibility, they way I understood infallibility at that time, was being torn apart was painful. I really felt the whole truth of Christianity, the foundation of my life, was at stake. I felt my foundation was suddenly on sand.
I see the bible differently now, and have a richer and more solid faith as a result. On the other side, I have found that there is an intellectually and spiritually satisfactory way to look at the bible without expecting it to be a science and history book–without demanding it be the kind of book we would write today.
But, beyond that, I see how that my faith was very much wrapped in a faith in the bible, and not in the person of Christ.
The journey was painful and I lost some things that were hard to let go, including my prior understanding of scripture. But I have gained so much more.
And, really, I had no choice. My mind isn’t able to just la la la when I find something that contradicts a prior belief. The cognitive dissonance was just as hard as the eventual letting go.
It was many years ago that as a young science student I found some helpful scientist Christians who showed me I could leave aside a literalist view of scriptue and still honour its content. That I could see in Genesis stories of meaning about what we like as a living species in our intended being as images of the divine love that we actually failed to become. To deny Genesis as actual history is not a negation of scripture, it is being true to its intention.
I acknowlege the culture in which the pre-scientific view of the world gave expression to what we are meant to be and what we have become in our selfish stupidity. Adam and Eve are everyone in the actuallity of their being and the Adam and Eve’s “disobedence” and “fall” is what we always are in the present.
We misuse the “Tree of Knowledge” and cut ourselevs off from the Tree of Life that bears the fruit of our whole future blessedness. Thus we stand in need of One who can save us and get us back on track to our intended being.
You have hit the nail on the head here. Your personal story matches up with the story of American evangelicalism, where historical struggles with “liberal theology” and 19th century science led to belief in some form of inerrancy/infallibility of the Bible as being essentially as important as the gospel, if not actually part of the gospel. The Bible is a collection of ancient books that Christians have always believed to be inspired by God (and I agree), but the book isn’t your Savior. The One who gave it is.
As for the OP and Biologos “discrediting the Bible”:
It seems rather strange to blame Biologos for some people’s impressions. All they have done is to point out what scholars in history, Biblical studies, geology, biology, etc, have known for a long time. I’m not aware of any subject or perspective that posters have covered that is original to Biologos. It may be understandable that lay readers haven’t known about some of these things before, but there aren’t any surprises here for those of us who have worked in or followed the relevant research areas.
I make an exception for the poster’s last points concerning God’s involvement and miracles, since no one has or could show that these things are true or false. They are matters of plain faith, subject to adjustments with individual experience and judgement. You either believe them in some form or you don’t. I can’t recall any Biologos poster who has denied these things.