Thanks @MarkD, I will take that on board, and it totally makes sense - a better “BioLogist” I will be having come to this realisation (and it’s always more fun to actually talk and converse with people rather than tome). Also, I think you said a really nice comment some time ago on this thread that I didn’t properly thank you for (except by pressing the heart button) so thank you for that earlier encouragement.
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Thanks for your thoughts - and yes - I read your whole post this time! Your efforts toward staying beneath the “tome-ic” threshold are appreciated. I’m just responding to your thoughts on pain below.
Pain is a “funny” and relative thing (though certainly the word “funny” is never ever what comes to mind when we ourselves are in its grip.) Perhaps I should rather note the importance of pain to our well-being in this world. But first, this is what I mean by “funny” (by which I don’t mean humorous, but rather, illusive of our definitions). There are many different types and degrees of pain (hence your application of numerical scales to it). But I think that pain defies analysis in that simple regard. For one thing, there are many different kinds of pain that will defy comparison or any easy dismissal by the sufferer that it fails to be just as real as some other kind of pain. Those who suffer from depression or loneliness or freshly broken relationship … are they feeling pain? Maybe not in the physical sense, but any of us who have suffered from such things know that while in the throes of that kind of suffering, would scoff at the notion that physical pain would be worse. Or while we may think of burning pain as being magnitudes worse than a “simple” headache or toothache, that comparison is lost on the person presently in the grips of those latter “mundane” pains. In the end we see there really is no such thing as “mundane” pain.
While not all pain has easily identifiable benefits, we are now aware of so many benefits to most kinds of pain that we can easily see how no healthy, functioning physical life could remain so apart from a functioning pain system. So as a whole package, it is really quite a built-in gift to the animals of creation. And while that is and has been scientifically demonstrable courtesy of work by people like Dr. Paul Brand, I suspect it could also be shown that the less physical pains I’ve already mentioned may also, in their own rights be warning signs to us that society would end up missing were they to be drugged away entirely.
My point is that the Bible implies to us a different reality than what science does. The two are not concordist and therefore, I’m struggling with how the Bible can be trusted or relied upon as an account of how we actually came to be. Connected to this, my point is that one would think that if God is communicating to people and has knowledge of how things came to be in a way we’d later understand, that somewhere in the huge catalogue that is the Bible, he would make reference to this but apparently that’s too much to wish for. “Sorry I set my expectations of God to high” is kind of what I feel like when people answer in line with suggesting God could only speak within culture. It’s very limiting of God, and also inconsistent when you consider God spoke about Jesus in a forward thinking way through the Bible (breathy voice “but Jesus was the true message and that’s why - the true message was never to talk about science“ …
)
Sorry to get all Cynical Steven (bad, I know) but I can hear some of the responses people will have to this already “The Bible tells us other things” “Are you so sure the Bible doesn’t talk about reality - maybe it’s just your perception of reality that isn’t being addressed and you’re not happy about that” etc etc. But my point stands and I stand by it. I genuinely think it is a major issue - God could have easily but didn’t reveal how things actually are and you kind of have to ask why. Please keep reading as I go more into this below.
With respect - cause I’m loving reading people’s thoughts and perspectives and have been learning lots - but none of perspectives here yet have really satisfied me. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for … and I don’t think I will cause I think what I’m looking for, sadly might not actually be there.
What I’m progressively finding more and more though is a metaphor mirror (metaphorically referring to all humankind coming up with various religious ideas and the Bible seeming to be one primary expression of that among others). I don’t want it to be this way but it seriously seems it is. I am more than happy to take alternative explanations but nothing is convincing me. Sorry to be so stubborn, doubting Thomas and recalcitrant Cameron (even worse, by far).
Related to the comments made about Occam’s Razor is another, perhaps more philosophical concept that gets at the same idea - titled
“The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness”.
You probably know of this idea already.
I think your comments @mitchellmckain about geo vs helio centricism get at this - such that there is more of a universe centrism lends to consider. Nonetheless, geo centrism in concrete terms was not true whereas helio centrism is at least much closer to the way things actually are - with epicycles accounting for the gravitational pull of planets themselves and of other galaxies being added, to probably get as close to concrete reality as possible for us humans. In the concept of God and truth … I want to get as close as possible to what is actually concretely true and I’m done with the misplaced concepts we use. Done.
My imperfect efforts through this entire thread have been to seperate concepts of concrete reality from what whatever concrete reality is itself. Metaphysically - I don’t know what that is but I’m trying to find out.
Would genuinely love to hear people’s thoughts on all this.
The video The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness - skip in 4mins
(the specific concept I refer to starts from 4.00-4.30 minutes into this video)
On the contrary, for people who live on the Earth, geocentrism is closer to the way things really are (because that is what we actually see the planets doing in the sky), and heliocentrism is simply more convenient for calculations. Asking how things “really are” doesn’t work very well in physics. For example, are particles the way light really is, or are waves the way light really is? Neither. Both are convenient for different calculations, that is all.
I don’t think there is any objective truth when it comes to such matters. Only science is a matter of objective observation, where what we want and believe doesn’t matter. But science is not life and when it comes to life, it is all about subjective participation, where what we want and believe is crucial. Thus we have to choose what to believe about many things, just as we must choose how to live and what kind of person we want to be. And no amount of objective observation is going to answer such questions.
It is of great benefit to set aside our presumptions at some point in our life, especially those pressed upon us by others, and start over from scratch. There is great value in both skepticism and faith, and sometimes starting over is the best way to find a better balance between the two.
God is not something you can look at under a microscope. And most would say that He is far too big and too great to see in totality. The result is, what you see of God and how He interacts with you will very much depend very much on who you are, for He is not a law of nature who cares nothing about what you want and believe.
I am not sure what that has to do with Occam’s Razor or how that gets at any similar idea. To me this sounds like Platonic realism of which I am a vigorous vocal opponent. On the other hand, this can be carried way too far. It is a well known fact, discovered by psychologists, that our perception of reality cannot be separated from our beliefs. In other words, we live in a subjective reality. And while science gives us some excellent reasons to believe there is an objective reality out there, that is nevertheless the abstraction – something we can only construct by reasoning from commonalities in our experiences. Furthermore, there is no evidence whatsoever that reality is exclusively objective, and excellent pragmatic reasons for accepting that there are irreducible subjective aspects to reality itself.
So the most that we can do is add the caveat that our constructs and models are not to be confused with an objective reality… all the while, accepting that we cannot perceive or make any observation about reality without them. Such are the inescapable limitations of human thought.
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I think I can see what you’re getting at. I would say in reply though… there are people living on the earth now for whom geocentricism is rejected because they know facts that were not previously known. Knowledge in this sense develops and grows and we let go of old ways of understanding as new ones develop. Yes, we can only ever know what we can understand and analyse from our point of view at a certain time (which is what I think you were saying) but to argue geocentric views are still valid is I’d say, a bit beyond the pale.
The matter of light particles vs light waves is a good one, I agree. Again, I can see the perspective of holding different points of view at once … but I think there are serious limitations in this being applied to the argument of geocentric and helio centric views being equally factual. The sun and planets don’t revolve around the earth as their centre - the sun is the centre point, with some gravitational variations. In this sense, we can know some things are right and others wrong while also being aware of points of view. Facts are facts and truth is truth even despite relativism, at least by significant shades of degree - some things are objectively more true than others and not everything subjective.
I agree. Feels like I’m in that process now, it’s interesting, disorientating - but ultimately good, I guess. Ignorance can be bliss though and knowledge a burden … probably still a burden I’d rather bear than naivety, which is an interesting conceptual area.
Connected to this, at the moment I’m reading about the connection between human evolution and how religion developed, from a more anthropological point of view. It is very interesting.
I was trying to point out the connection between how there can be many ideas about what is actually real that differ from what is actually real - my connection with Occam’s Razor was perhaps not articulated that well but the implication was that the principles of Occam’s Razor can be employed to help us get closer to actual reality and away from erroneous perceived reality.
I note your comments about even the subjective nature of perceived objective reality on this … that’s a rabbit hole I’ll just look at from the outside for now rather than go down lol (that’s a deep rabbit hole that one).
Thanks for your thoughts
Another way to look at it is that geocentrism is rejected because they know less. They just have this image taught to them in school and really have no idea about how the planets actually move in the sky. All in all it is more a demonstration of how subjective the reality we live in really is – it is not the way things really are which makes our reality but much more simply the way we believe them to be – and we don’t even open our eyes and look at what is really out there.
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Good point, Mitchell. But you take that knowledge learned and then go out to gaze at the stars a few minutes every night for the course of a year, you can see the movements of the visible planets in their orbits relative to the earth, confirming the truth of your lessons. I am fortunate to live where I can see the stars and do just that.
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@Christopher_Michael, ‘the Bible’, i.e. the earliest documents of the Church, imply only one take away reality, for God so loved the world…
@Klax I don’t disagree, particularly regarding the New Testament. At the moment I’m in a season needing deeper examination - the broad brushes of generalisation have been set aside and the finer brushes to work with the details are out.
I’ve recently started listening to a book titled ‘the believing brain’ which is a so far interesting examination of the mental mechanics behind human belief. We’ll see where all this takes me …
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Thanks Mervin. I appreciate the complex layers that make up what pain is and how pain might be relativised in different ways. It indeed is not necessarily a cut n dry area. I personally might simplify the equation by separating physical pain from emotional pain, placing them on two unique spectrums (given how hard it would be to compare them). That said, with a lot of considered work something of a framework of how to compare physical and emotional pain could be done (there’s a card game called ‘Stuff Happens’ that actually tries to do this).
I’d love for someone to tackle those range of questions and implications I raised earlier in that post that mentioned poor Larry the Diprodon… at the same time I’ve been thinking I
need to chunk down any further posts even more so (as can appreciate it’s still a lot to put in one’s pipe to work through). I still have so many unanswered issues and I feel - like fresh concrete that has been poured but not yet set - time is running out before my conclusions to all the issues I raise on this thread are going to “set”. I fear I’m going to become very hardened to the idea of God but there is another part of me that is desperate to avoid that
A very vivid and apt metaphor there! For what it’s worth - I’m 53 years old, and this ‘old’ concrete is still proving to be quite pliable. So I suggest you should cut yourself some slack that you don’t have some “maximum age” by which you need to have everything figured out. Lord help us all if that was the case!
Here is another metaphor I’ve found useful: I want to be like a healthy and living tree - that is not dry, brittle wood (sort of like your ‘set concrete’). Living trees can bend and flex with the wind and so are stronger to resist being blown over. It’s the dry, unyielding wood that will blow over in the storm. (Think of narrow fundamentalistic-style attitudes that cannot entertain the idea that they may be wrong about anything religious.) The living tree can handle, and even accommodate the various winds of current culture without losing its rootedness in the important things (Christ). Trust me - as much as you may want to feel finally settled in all matters, I strongly suggest that you embrace the concrete that never [entirely] becomes hard-set while your days of life continue.
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What details Christopher_Michael? You know who is in them. No wood for trees.
Well, playing on the analogy from @Mervin_Bitikofer it sounds like I need wood for trees rather than more cement … but I am indeed lost in the woods right now you might say. And my beliefs are crumbling around me.
A lot of people have said a lot of good things here … but nothing has quite ‘stuck’ or resonated enough with me to truly convince me. I’m certainly not convinced by the arguments that suggest God had more important things to tell us than the actual truth (about evolution). I’m in this weird place where I feel God - or perhaps more sonour concept of God - needs to be held to account for the fact he did not tell us how we came to be - he knew it but didn’t tell us.
Indeed, we are to believe the Bible is the way and yet God doesn’t use it - anywhere (!) - to tell us our actual origins and expects us to be okay with that?? That’s a little twisted to me. We then have to figure out something so crucial like that by ourselves?? Why?
How is stumbling upon that knowledge meant to make us feel - is it meant to give us the warm fuzzies or something? It gives me the cold chills.
Put that same set of facts in another situation of day to day life somewhere and we’ll scoff and scorn. It’s something like an adoptive parent who could never quite bring themselves to tell their child the truth … which they later find out. I’d expect more of God but apparently … I hate speaking like this but I love the importance of truth, of honesty and being real - real with one self - more.
Please - if you have Netflix (I cancelled it after that mocking Jesus show from Brazil recently), go watch “I Am Mother”. Realising evolution for me is like the main character finding that jawbone. A great eye opening moment of great disturbance.
And people trying to defend evolution - for me, that’s like trying to defend a war criminal. Sure, they might have built up a nation into something special but, sure as night follows day, they did seem dark and evil things to get there. Its odd for me how people seem to have this kind of holy reverence for evolution - I really think the war criminal comparison works here - war criminals might do awesome things … but we can’t just ignore all the awful stuff they did now, can we?
I can’t ignore all the dead bones in the ground … were all those diseased deaths just a test, to bring out the best, do we just forget the rest? Are we just to ignore the mess? I just can’t get past it, I confess.
And then there’s the stench to me - the badly moulded and rotten vegetables at the bottom of the fridge crisper - of having to believe in a God who would choose to use the cold, heartless method of evolution and yet then present himself in the Bible as being concerned about the poor being cold at night? Really?? We’re meant to reconcile that? No. No that is not okay for us to just accept when countless billions of creatures under his good graces froze to death for millions of years. It. Does. Not. Make. Sense.
I hate working the rubix cube of how to reconcile evolution and Yahweh anymore - I’ll throw the darn thing away. That said, I’ll probably throw the cube away in a few weeks (it’ll get stuck in my concrete) then at some point I’ll come back, hack it up, and try and twist it around again with some mental gymnastics … and then I’ll throw it away again. I’ll go all Anakin and turn like Michael Shermer who used to be Christian turned. The Michael Shermer who has interviewed Francis Collins the founder, I understand, of BioLogos and explains this interview and his respectful but still skeptical conclusions about it in his book ‘The Believing Brain’.
I really need substance of argument now - correct me - take these ideas on, take them captive to Christ and beat them back. With appreciative honesty here - I really hope to not hear things about me - I want to hear things about the points I raise. Play the ball not the man on this, if you can (of course you’re definitely welcome to point something you see out - but I’m just saying I feel I need more than that. We Christians are highly skilled at crab walking away from tough issues).
Sigh.
I don’t want to turn. But I can feel it brewing.
A lot of what you say resonates with me, though I have come to peace with it most of the time. I agree with your statement
In that, I think you are looking at the philosophical naturalism aspect where some have taken a physical description of reality, and used it to create or prop up their inner religion, made of it an idol. In truth, evolution is just a theory, but that does not mean it is not a true theory, and we have to somehow integrate those things that are true with our worldview.
That said, I disagree that evolution is cold and heartless. It just is. Parts of it are beautiful, the adaptations to better live within the constraints of the environment are amazing, whither it be a longer beak, or better camouflage, or better mothering instincts. Death comes to all of course, with or without evolution. Evolution just helps life persist in its face.
Ecclesiastes speaks to me in light of these issues. Ultimately perhaps we have no good answers but know that God is good
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God obviously has no choice whatsoever Christopher_Michael.
[What do you want to be true? Predicated on the only excuse you have is Jesus?]
The music not so much the video.
You may like Greg Boyd’s “Benefit of the Doubt.” He talks about how his house of cards of essential beliefs kept falling, but through it all he learned more about himself, God and His world.
I have a lot to ask God eventually–not just about creation, evolution, etc–but why the problem of unnecessary suffering; why doesn’t He make it clear what he wants us to believe (so many live without understanding the gospel); why injustice.
Either He doesn’t exist–or He will really be just with us in the end. It may even be better than we realize.
He won’t blame us for questioning, or doubting, or even not believing. He “knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”
It reminds me of “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold, and even of Tennyson’s"Oh, Yet We Trust That Somehow Good."
I agree with @Mervin_Bitikofer, though–one of the biggest lessons I had to learn was that there was no urgency in coming to a conclusion. It’s the opposite we get from fundamentalism, but in learning it, we learn more about God’s character.
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If He IS, He’s good. Transcendence is good. Better than this on a good day, every day. For every cloven worm.
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I was unnecessarily barbed to you Christy and was rightly picked up on it. My unreserved apologies.
I should have been more explicit in standing by Christopher, not against you.
I’ve been devastated in the past couple of years by the impact of rationality (not rationalism) and feel Christopher’s pain. I’m lucky in that I don’t blame God for it at all, as part of the rationality is that we are entirely fecklessly innocently ‘responsible’ for our ignorant musings about Him. He draws us ineffably by His Spirit, an invisible sun; we yearn, he yearns back. He certainly isn’t otherwise even indirectly responsible for our ancient rationalizations or grammatico-historical hermeneutics to this day. The yearning and suffering in faithful ignorance has and always will be the case. As Jesus experienced in terrible solidarity with us.
We need to get equally honest about this. We’re all in this together, in the gutter, looking at the stars.