Divine associations with evolution

Faith & Science Conversation
21

This is one of those issues that is hard to define, and hard to nail down any kind of specifics. Without God as a physical presence, or without any supporting document or text; you really can’t answer that question “Yes” or “no”.

All of our suppositions and presuppositions; are based on what we can exegetically glean from any text.

It’s is a question that involves a ton of biblical scholarship to even come up with a possibility.

So, when the Creationists speak with absolute certainty, it begs one to ask how you can firmly come up with their answers to questions.

1 Like
22

Not really. Trying to impose Scripture onto any reality, be it science or depravity, is doomed to failure. Scripture was not meant for such things.

Richard

23

On the contrary repetition is the persistent pattern of the Biblical text – saying the same thing in different words.

Obviously I disagree. I don’t see any functional difference. It is exactly like the relationship between dream and the dreamer.

24

Not in Paul – in the OT, yes, but Paul rarely uses Hebraisms, and there’s no parallelism here to suggest one.

Not even remotely. “Sustains” is not even close to “imagines”.

1 Like
25
  1. you last statement “like it or lump it” is binary…that debuncts you question “why cant there be middle ground between science and Genesis meet”
    This is where i will insert Revelation 3

14"And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God 's creation.

15"‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! 16So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. 17For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. 18I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.

Being lukewarm is, i think, trying use human morality to explain why God…

Kind Saul used that same method and was condemned by the Prophet Samuel for it (google “King Saul, to obey is better than to sacrifice”)

26

Yes in Paul. Paul FREQUENTLY uses parallelism. This is natural since that is the literary tradition which He long studied.

I quite agree there is no basis for understanding the text or the word “sustain” to mean the relationship between dream and dreamer, where the dream has no independent existence but only exists because the will of the dreamer continually makes it so. The the word “sustain” means “strengthen or support physically or mentally” (from Oxford languages) just as we do when we take care of a plant, a flock of sheep, or a child.

God is a true creator, making things which have their own existence apart from Himself and not a sham creator who simply hold the appearance of an existence like an illusion which vanishes the moment He turns His attention elsewhere.

27

Fallacious reasoning – you’re taking one possible rendition of a word from one language and importing other meanings from the rendition word.

You’ve got this fixation on dreams that has nothing to do with the text. The word συνέστηκεν has been translated as “has existence (in)” (TDNT includes this), which would match with your dream concept, in which case the text would be stating the position you reject, but that’s an outlier; the vast majority of scholars (past and present) go with “hold together” (one famous preacher suggested that the strong force in nuclear physics is God’s direct hand) since the instance in Colossians is intransitive.
This idea is not new; it can be found in second-temple Jewish literature, derived from Exodus 3:14 – “I AM” being taken as indicating that only YHWH-Elohim exists in and from himself.
Making a choice between dream vs. independent existence is a false dichotomy, one that is baffling coming from someone who works in science where intermediate examples abound. Just because something relies on something else for existence doesn’t make that something a dream.

This is excessive anthropomorphizing, as though God could be distracted or has to concentrate on something to the exclusion of most or all other things. A better (but still insufficient) analogy would be human autonomic functions; we don’t have to consciously think about them for them to happen. To go with one second-temple Jewish source, “I AM that I AM” can be taken as “I AM the ‘am-ing’ One”, i.e. the One Who makes things be as a natural activity, so that once having caused something to be the only way it would stop is for YHWH to change in character, to no longer be “the am-ing One”, or to make a deliberate decision to stop causing certain things to be (similar to how we can hold our breath but never accidentally do so). This fits with a theme derived from some of the church Fathers that – as one of my grad school professors liked to say – Creation is present tense. Thus holding together, or sustaining, or maintaining in existence, all of Creation becomes a matter of God’s character, something farther from dreaming than a stone is from a battleship when both are placed on the surface of the sea.

1 Like
28

I think that is what you are doing same as what you are always acusing the creationists of doing – bringing it into and intruding on the scientific understanding. I don’t think they had any such specific notion. The Biblical description is all about God imposing and order and purpose on chaos – not about metaphysics let alone physics. What we learn from science should add to our understanding and not be put in opposition to the understanding of the ancients as you do. What we learn from science is that things are held together by space-time mathematical constructs not supernatural demons.

That equates God to a mathematical equation – total pantheism.

I just said it had nothing to do with the text and the point is that we should not read such a thing into the text. What I am doing is classic apophatic theology – zeroing in on the truth with clarifications of what it is not.

Ah someone else with a list of things God cannot do! No thank you! This enslavement of God to human theology is rejected.

God can!

But the point is that God doesn’t have to hold it together because He is an authentic creator rather than a sham. He can make things which last forever… on their own… without any help from Him. And He has no reason not to… no matter how much the religionists want it to be otherwise in order to exaggerate their own importance. But God certainly did create for a relationship so He is involved in correcting the path of events to align with His goals. That is how He “holds” and “sustains” things.

Rejected.

Exodus 3:14 is not about any such thing – no such theological rhetoric. God is simply answering the question of Moses about naming the deity who sends His message. I think the point is that He is not one of many. His is the God which exists and other gods simply do not exist.

29

The Hymn of the Firstborn in Colossians is heavy with philosophy that verges on metaphysics.

I don’t put anything “in opposition to the understanding of the ancients” – that’s what you’re doing by trying to override the text with not just science but with your metaphysical false dichotomy between dreams and independent existence. I refuse to bring science into it because science has nothing to do with it.

Who said anything about demons?

What we learn from science is how things appear to us – it cannot be used to set aside or alter the meaning of the text.

Forcing the scripture to fit your own metaphysic is not apophatic theology.

Your enslavement of God to human limitations is rejected. Where is your textual basis for God getting distracted?

That’s your metaphysics. Where is it in the text?

Do you even know what a “name” was back then? It was an expression of the nature or essence of the item.

The entire OT runs on the premise that other gods exist.

You’re trying to force the text to fit your own ideas instead of asking what the words meant in context. That is not a valid approach.

1 Like
30

People certainly read all sorts of things into the Bible.

Only if the Bible has nothing to do with reality.

If it sounds like a duck…

What we learn from science is how it shows itself to everything, people and measuring devices alike. That is reality rather than the fantasy stories people like to tell themselves.

Apophatic theology means saying what it is not. That is all I have done. I insist that Hebrews 1:3 and Colossians 1:17 is not saying that God is sham creator making things that cannot exist by themselves like the things in the dream of a dreamer.

Those are your words and your idea not mine. Show me where in the text it says God cannot do the things you say.

Where does it say God is creator? Seriously?

This sounds like something you made up or got out of a fantasy novel like “The Wizard of Earthsea.” No I do not believe your claim that a name was any such thing. Frankly it is totally absurd.

Nonsense. The OT is not a polytheistic text. It is a affirmation of monotheism to a world full of polytheism. It only acknowledges that people believe in different gods and then argues that none of these are believing in something which is real. Paul explains this often in His epistles. But does it say this in the OT? Certainly. Isaiah 44:6 “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god."

Telling people what is a valid approach to reading the Bible are you? LOL Such nonsense! Everyone fits the text into their own ideas of what is real or they treat it as fiction. That is even how perception works let alone the way we attach meaning to the words of a text we read.

31

There’s no “reading in” involved – much of the hymn is exposition of the philosophical meaning of “firstborn”, and the terms used are from the same philosophical strand.

No – science has nothing to do with it because none of the writers had a clue about science.

If it sounds like a demon, you need new ears.

That’s not apophatic theology, it’s forcing your own metaphysic on the text. Apophatic theology relies on the text, it doesn’t try to change it.

You’re the one who is restricting God, and you’re doing it by excessive anthropomorphization. I didn’t say anything about what God can’t do, I just rejected tlur limiting Him to human failings.

Don’t act like a sixth-grader – I asked where your metaphysics are in the text.

It’s common to the entire ANE – which is where Le Guin got the idea.

Exodus assumes other gods are real; otherwise, many passages, such as 15:11, make no sense:

Who is like you, O Yahweh, among the gods?

Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and beyond also presume the gods of the nations are real.

I’m not convinced that “besides” is proper, since the Hebrew word involved indicates that something is being distinguished, set apart, or excluded from a group or some circumstances. This means that “beside” is the proper rendition of the Hebrew as it requires that Yahweh is a member of a class, namely the set of elohim (heavenly beings). The rendition “besides” relies on the LXX more than on the Hebrew.
Right up into the time of the prophets the OT hovers somewhere above henotheism but not up to monotheism; henotheism includes many gods but devotion is to just one, while to the OT writers there is devotion to the supreme God while acknowledging the gods of the nations as real, just inferior because YHWH-Elohim created them.

I’m telling how to read literature – in its original context. If you force the text to fit your own ideas then you aren’t reading the text, you’re in effect editing/altering it.

1 Like
32

LOL LOL LOL

Who is like you, O Hitler, among Voldemort, Sauron, and Darth Vader.

So if someone says this it means Voldemort, Sauron and Darth Vader are real people?

LOL I mean, REALLY!

Irrelevant. Reality is what connects them. So which of these are not speaking about reality? Science or the Bible?

Or you do… One who can give children their own existence and life but holds back so that they only exist at His whim with heart plugs he can yank out whenever he likes sounds like a demon to me. The obsession with power comes from the human theologians not from God.

I will leave out the endless repetition on the topics of apophatic theology, real creation, and the things you say God cannot do.

And I am telling you I have no reason to accept your assumptions about who wrote the text. And I have no reason to accept your denial that you are not forcing the text to fit your own ideas.

You only edit the text when you insist that other people cannot read the text differently than you. That is when you replace the text with your own interpretation of it.