Is there any part of the WWII plane story that actually includes facts and analysis?
All,
I see a recurring fallacy in argument in this thread.
Becuase we are talking science, there seems to be much argument using the Scriptures, especially Genesis and John to refer to scientifc explanations.
If we go back to one of the basic tenants of what BioLogos is founded upon: The Bible was written TO ancient Israelites FOR mankind in general.
According to John Walton (bowing in respect 
) we cannot use the words of Genesis, or John to explain words like “making” and so forth with any kind of scientific rigor. The words were not used in that fashion and cannot be applied in that manner!
To me, much of this topic has missed the point in that the Scriptures does not contradict Science in the areas of Science, nor can Science contradict Scripture **as a moral and theological document. To do so is to cross categories that should not be crossed without confusion.
There still is a place to argue the topic, but it is deeper than what I am seeing here (not that I know what the deeper is, but that I feel I am missing something.
For what it’s worth…now back to our regularly scheduled debate…
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Yes there is. I Quantum Physics there is “Entangled Particles” In effect, two particles (electron or other sub-atomic quark, pion, gluon ect) are somehow entangled (they don’t know exactly how yet). One travels a long distance. A force acting on one of the particle causes the other particle to respond the same way. This is instantaneous in every sense of the word. No time passes (except possibly a single Planck Unit of time).
The actual particle does not travel faster than light, but the effect does. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance” though he did not agree with Quantum Physics as it stood at the time This gave rise to his saying “God does not play dice”
The result is indistinguishable from seeing an electron shed a photon of light at a long distance where no immediate force can be seen to cause the photon.
(Roger Penrose, Tubulin, and Qbit computation)
Roger Penrose used this in his premise of the brain protein tubulin which is packed with columns of electrons that seem to be paired, possibly entangled with each other, sparking what we term “cognition”. Only now is Quantum Physics being applied to this.
Okay scientists, knock me over If I’ve misstated this. This is a layman speaking (perhaps a well-read laymen) so details are certainly lacking.
There’s a reason that I classified this topic under “Theology/Philosophy.”
There are still some questions that I have, a couple of which are of prime importance to this discussion:
-
How do you think Evolution happened (and how does it fit into Genesis)?
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How do you think sin entered the world (apart from the literal interpretation of Genesis 3)?
Yes, Jonathan, I understand that. I am pointing out the difficulty in connecting the two using two separate and not equal concept forms.
Let me take the first one which connects to the second.
Evolution does not directly connect to Genesis, excepting my opinion that only Genesis 1:1-2 is talking about the actual material creation. Al else after is an ancient Mid-eastern Cosmic Temple explanation for the creation. Whatever cosmological explanation of creation must take place in Physics and Biological sciences.
The structure of why and how it functions is the purview of the Creation account. Neither YEC, OEC, MN?MT, or Evolution can state Why it happened the way it did. The can only explain how. East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet (Rudyard Kipling).
However, having said that, the evolutionary model requires populations that change and grow into new forms. I don’t see this happening without some kind of Intelligent design (at the very least and which is woefully lacking). this is where scripture comes in to explain WHY evolution works the way it does. It requires a creating intelligence, loving crafting deity that only Christianity can provide. Adam and Eve as an archetype fulfills much in this role. They are the generic “man & woman” embodied in the work of evolution, as described in poetic form in Genesis.
However Christianity also requires an actual Adam & Eve to “create” the first “mortally aware” couple to fulfill the purpose of the Biblical creation as described. Otherwise there could be no sin or redemption.
Take a look at my post here: https://discourse.biologos.org/t/our-odd-view-of-the-tree-of-knowledge/35612/22?u=rlbailey where I try to describe my view of the sin and the fall (though I do not talk about sin directly. I assume it is sim by the act of eating. I am talking about the result of that sin and mortality.
Genesis 3 is required for the morality and mortality of humankind as created. The final act of creation in Genesis 2-3 was to create this awareness.
Let me know what you think!
\Jonathan, have your read John Walton’s “The Lost World of Genesis One”? If you haven;t you won;t get much of the conversations around here. It and “The Language of God” are “basic” to our arguments.
The Language of God
The Lost World of Genesis One
Light is made up of electromagnetic waves meaning it is made up of both electric fields and magnetic fields oscillating throughout space. To change the speed of light means you need to change how both of the fields are able to travel through space. There is a limit to how the fields can propogate which is why the speed of light actually is dependent on how fast each of these fields can travel through space.
Mathematically this looks like:
the relation between c and the vacuum permittivity ε0 and vacuum permeability μ0 established by Maxwell’s theory: c^2 = 1/(ε0μ0).
If anything actually travels faster than the speed of light, then another interesting effect is that it also must start going backwards in time which violates a whole bunch of other laws.
The idea of entangled particles is quite interesting (like this 8 photon entanglement paper Observation of eight-photon entanglement | Nature Photonics) but the entire problem is that ‘one travels a long distance.’ To even get two particles entangled they must share a common origin. Naturally occurring entanglement would be subatomic particles decaying into smaller constituents (Particle decay - Wikipedia). The idea is that if you measure the property of one entangled particle, you automatically know properties of the other. You cannot transmit any information this way because if you actually interact with the particle you detangle the two states. If you somehow could transport a photon a very long way keeping it from ever interacting with any other particle (which is impossible), you also would have to wait for your photon to travel to its new location, which again would be limited by the speed of light.
In other words, since entangled particles must share a common origin, to separate, one must travel away which is still limited to be at the speed of light.
@J.E.S
Whoops!! I got the citations switched. John 14:6 quotes Jesus as saying that he is the only way to the Father. John 6:44 quotes him as saying that no one becomes Jesus’ disciple unless the Father calls him, which has almost the opposite meaning. This topic, “Do evolutionary theory and Scripture contradict each other?” presumes that passages in Scripture never contradict each other, and so there is no problem picking the definitive one in making a comparison. Would that this was always so!
Al Leo
If I may offer my 2 cents on this most important point:
If you are part of the Eastern Orthodox tradition (with the known exception so far of the Russian Orthodox community), they see Eve/Adam’s sin as the first sin by a mortal human, but the first couple’s sin is not anyone else’s sin.
So, based on how you define your terms,
- “Sin first appeared” the day Adam & Eve ate of the fruit;" and/or
- “The possibility to sin appeared with very creation of Adam & Eve”.
Even after the first sin, Adam’s ability to live forever was not curtailed by Sin.
God himself says that Adam remained in the Garden, he would be immortal by eating from the Tree of Life.
Ironically, the first thing to actually die after the creation of Adam & Eve was a fur-bearing animal:
The First Death
Genesis 3:21 - “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.”
Gen 3:22 - “. . . the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever…”
[[ The New International Version puts verse 22 into more conventional syntax: Genesis 3:22 - "And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” ]]
Genesis 3:23-24. “Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”
Hi Jonathan,
By “the first half of my post,” I take it you mean this:
My first response is that I’m glad you’re being honest about what you do and do not know. What really annoys me is the kind of YEC who thinks that they know more about science than “secular scientists” because they haven’t been “brainwashed” by a science degree, and then go on to trot out a whole lot of hearsay, urban legends and other painfully bad arguments against evolution that just prove that they haven’t a clue what they’re talking about, and then question your faith and even your professional integrity if you aren’t acknowledging that Noah had dinosaurs on the Ark. But you’re clearly not in that category.
The second thing I have to say is that you don’t need to be an expert in cosmology to understand where we’re coming from. All you need is a very basic understanding of the core principles of how science actually works — in particular, that it’s built on a foundation of measurement and mathematics. (My A level physics teacher when I was at school actually described the subject as “the art of measurement.”) With that in mind, the yardstick that I use — and no doubt many other people on these forums — when assessing YEC claims is, “how well does it handle measurement and mathematics, and how well does it respect uncertainties and error bars?”
For example, the Answers in Genesis article that you cited doesn’t include any equations whatsoever. It doesn’t even include any back-of-the-envelope calculations to show that the claims it’s making are even plausible — only a couple of vague statements that “creation scientists are actively researching the problem.” But then it starts comparing the distant starlight problem to the horizon problem. The distant starlight problem, obviously, concerns distances of six thousand light years or more. The horizon problem only comes into play when you talk about billions of light years. That’s a difference in size of a factor of a million. It’s like comparing a grain of sand to a mountain. The claim that the two are even remotely the same is just patently absurd.
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I don’t believe God “wrote” the Bible. I don’t believe he dictated his words into the author’s ears and they simply recorded “the Word of God.” I think the author’s were inspired by God’s spirit to record their human stories and feelings and prophesies, all of which had an important meaning in their original context in their own right. They are essentially human products, albeit ones that God inspired and has adopted as his revelation and continues to use by the power of his Spirit in new contexts and with new audiences. But as human products, they show the limitations of the humans who recorded them. The “science” recorded in Scripture by ancient authors reflects their knowledge and worldviews.
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Preach on Sister!
I think we need to add that Christ stated He came to fulfil the law and the prophets, they spoke of Him, and He gave authority to His apostles, so that what they spoke, He would validate and support. The Church understood this when the Bible was completed.
So I would disagree with you that they are essentially human products, but I would agree, if you meant, the bible is written in human language(s) and translated, so that we need to be aware of the limitations in human communications - these limitations do not hinder the Spirit, while our weaknesses hinder our understanding.
I mean they are created by humans to communicate God’s message to other humans. If God saw fit to become human himself, I don’t think calling the Scriptures a human product is an insult to Scriptures. If God can make himself human, surely he can make his message human too.
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The message is from God and given to us by those that God called to this task - I cannot accept your assertion “… they are created by humans…” This has nothing to do with insults, but an awful lot to do with authority of scripture.
So you don’t agree with @Christy on this point?
So, @GJDS, why don’t Ezra and Nehemiah agree on names, numbers and events?
What’s the point of all that authority if it becomes squandered by the limitations and imperfections of human handling?
@gbrooks9 You’re being obtuse! Or are you abstruse as sometimes you seem a little off-kilter! 
I’ll answer this one, as it is something I think about often.
On Ezra and Nehemiah, are you expecting modern levels of epistemology in a 400 BC or so census tally and genealogies when they are collected from different sources, and different people?
That isn’t where the Authority evident! The authority is in the actions of Nehemiah and Ezra as they acted out on the prophecies saying that it was time to go back to Israel. If it wasn’t time, they would not have been able to go!
I contend that the percentage of inspiration of the original text follows the Pareto ratio of approximately 20% inspiration, and 80% human language, culture, writer’s backstory, ect: The context in which the inspiration is couched.
However the Authority from that collaboration is the inverse, with 80% of the authority coming from the message, and 20% from the writer’s 80% context.(You can juggle the ratios, Pareto’s don’t need to be 80/20).
Even more, the Authority is multiplies by the connections of the overall message spread across so many writers over so many years, all providing a cohesive whole far beyond any single author’s capability.
The translations is always a problem. Remember the old Persian saying “The Translator is a Liar!” However, it appears that Elohim’s Spirit does tend to “shepherd” his word with bad translations being dropped, and newer ones coming along when needed. And in the modern age, with our abilities and research into languages and philology, we have much better translations (NASB for example) than ever a KJV of any version. Though those were “adequate” for the time.
Elohim chose to use people. Otherwise, just carve it on a big rock and drop it in front of the palace (or wherever!)
Elohim’s word was a verbal story narrative, until Moses, Chroniclers, Poets, Priests, and Prophets wrote the written narrative. The Elohim provided the Living Narrative in Yeshua! Lastly, Holy Spirit speaks the living narrative in our hearts.
I don’t worry too much about the limitations and imperfections in the narrative. The Authority is still there even if some people can’t see it, refuse to see it, or misuse it. Nothing new there since Moses!
Respectfully (with a poke or two!)
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Also (where the differing names are concerned), couldn’t one book be recording the Babylonian names of the people in question, and the others record their Hebrew names (for instance, Shadrach, Meshak and Abednego [as they are typically called] are the Babylonian names of these Hebrew men (whose Hebrew names are also recorded in scripture)? Furthermore, a few erroneous names and numbers are insignificant when compared to an entire (major) book of the Bible that is said to be in error of a very deceptive kind…I mean, why would people build life-sized arks about it if it is obviously an allegory???
That pretty much puts it the way I had been thinking about it.
@Christy, this confuses me a bit…are you insinuating that God’s message is not human? What does it mean if God’s message (I assume you mean the Bible) is (or isn’t) human? What does “human” mean???
Yes… I suppose … on a case by case basis, maybe this would check out … but does that mean counts and actions are also different when written in another language? Why would the head counts differ? And all the other numbers ?
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