Eddie
Youâre absolutely right in your adducement of the evidence for the Hebrew inclusion of the planets with the stars, but also (one must add) with the sun and moon, for the original definition of âplanetâ was a body that moved around the sky, of which there were seven - Sun, Moon (both named in Scripture), Mercury, Venus (the morning/evening star, named in Scripture), Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
Thatâs why it is considered likely by many scholars that the sacred nature of the number 7 in both Babylon and Israel has an astronomical association.
These planets were all known in the ANE at both its Mesopotamian and Egyptian poles (and hence in Israel which originated in both), and formed the whole basis of astrology, into which many Israelites lapsed and against which the prophets spoke and, it is widely agreed, the Genesis 1 creation account also contains polemic elements, naming them as created lights rather than as individuals. For it was principally those seven that were specifically named as gods in the ANE, and therefore had the power to influence events.
All that answers that question - but of course the whole framing of the question distracts from, and is irrelevant to, the metaphysical issue I raised, which is that without a metaphysics of essences, one can only rationally see planets, or stars, or suns, or moons, or any other category whatsoever, as an arbitrary human classification of essentially fortuitous and meaningless conglomerations of particles or energy.
The point I made, which was of course ignored in favour of snark, is that if there are no universal âessencesâ in Godâs âmindâ, then even to say he created stars, or planets, or living-things-through-evolution, is empty talk, the mere imposition of a human pattern on a universe that doesnât work that way, and on a God who doesnât think that way. Except that talking about âGodâ involves regarding him as an essential nature too, since heâs not made of atoms.
Now, essential natures went out in science when Aristotelian metaphysics was jettisoned in the 17th century, because his metaphysics began with the deep question of what âthingsâ are, and particularly âkinds of thingâ. The replacement metaphysics said, in effect, âThings are just arbitrary collections of very small identical things, so they have no particular status. Stupid question.â Or to paraphrase, âYour time is past.â
That works well in science, but not in human discourse, nor in considering God as a personal Creator. We think there are real things called people, easily distinguishable from things called cats, or tables. And that planets are not stars or gas clouds. So to get by in the world even scientists tend to fudge their metaphysics (by talking as if there are forms like species, or human beings, or planets, even though theyâre âreallyâ just bunches of atoms), or else we submit vast areas of reality to the new metaphysics against common experience, and deny that there is such a thing as human (or cat) nature, that there is an indivisible essential nature called âGodâ, and so on.
At least as commonly, one denies that there is even a real thing called metaphysics and lives in an incoherent thought world, with confusing and baleful effects on science, religion and the interface between them.
But why do you need to hear it from me, when every fundamentalist Bible-thumper shouts that kind of thing from the TV screen each Sunday?
But he gets a lot of the history for genetics and molecular biology the past 60 or so years right. Itâs something that really isnât taught in graduate scientific programs. That is why things like the âENCODEâ controversy over the proportion of junk DNA in humans got started. Some of the authors didnât have a solid background in making the claims they presented.