Hi John, I think the problem is that people haven’t worked hard enough to solve these problems. If there is a way for the events to be true, shouldn’t we take a look at it? No, I am not a young-earth creationist, I am an geophysicist who fully accepts the age of the earth and that we arose at least in part though evolution. My problem with changing what seems to be written as history (Gen 2-11) into mythology or allegory is that we cease trying to solve the problems. I also have an ethical problem with changing what the Bible clearly says. My friend Klax says the whole thing is mythology. At least he is logically consistent which is to be preferred to the position where one gets to pick uncomfortable parts of the Bible and say they are allegory/mythology, but then proclaim other parts as historically true(the resurrection). So, here is why I dislike altering the Bible to make it what we want it to be. In my mind, either make it true or make it mythological–all of it, but don’t inconsistently pick and chose due to the need of the moment.
Over in the thread " Did Noah’s Flood Kill All Humans except his family?" I have presented a scenario whereby the events of early Genesis could be true, so far as observational data can confirm. Unfortunately people prefer not to have a true Eden and a true flood. Yet we are still assured that this book full of mythology is God’s word.
I am often asked why historical events in Scripture is important. I am always amazed by this question because we supposedly worship a living, real God. Why don’t I just change what appears to be historical statements into mythology and then we don’t have to have to worry about these unlikely events. From my point of view, if I have to change accounts like the Fall and the flood to mythical, it seems that I am changing what the Bible seems to say. Changing data is bad and I’m going to tell a couple of stories from my career which illustrate why one shouldn’t change data–ever.
Back in the mid 80s, I found myself unemployed because of my young-earth beliefs at the time. A vice president of the company I had worked for from 1974 until 1986 had found out that I was a YEC and she wanted me gone, no matter that I had gotten the top performance review 3 times in those years. I was a YEC and had to go.
Four months later I found a job as a consultant for a small oil company, which turned out to be a very strange place to work. There was a guy who sold oil deals to this company and I was asked to review one of them. The general manager(GM) and my boss flew me down to Louisiana to meet with this guy. I will call him Buster(not his real name) cause we used his real name as a euphemism for dry hole. We called them Buster dusters The prospect had major problems, which I noted. Indeed, we debated quite strongly about the issue. What was weird was the louder I squawked about the prospect being a dry hole in the making, the larger the percentage the GM wanted. It turned out to be a dry hole.
A bit later this same guy came to us showing a seismic line with a Texaco well with a small bit of production and a good reservoir possibility up dip of that well. What he showed is shown in diagramatic form below. The tan water bearing sand was penetrated by the Texaco well, which barely intersected the presumed gas reservoir (orange). Our proposed well would be up dip from that Texaco well, and such wells, up dip to pay have a high chance of success.
The General Manager asked me 3 times in the meeting if we could get up dip to that Texaco well. I thought that was odd. My boss, who reported to the GM, didn’t trust Buster, and my boss, a friend, had me take a hard look at the data, so I went to my office and stared at the line. There was no doubt that this was a good prospect.
Well, we drilled the well and guess what? We didn’t hit the sand updip of the Texaco well, we hit it down dip, lower than the Texaco well. I was shocked. I pulled that a xerox I had kept out of my file and stared at it wondering how I could have been so wrong. In a phone call with the guy who sold us that prospect I told him in no uncertain terms to bring that seismic we saw when he came to sell us the well.
When he showed up, he had an entirely different seismic line. It is shown below. There was clearly a major fault just to the right of the Texaco well, and it was clear that we would hit the sand DEEPER than the Texaco well. Deeper is bad. I told the GM that this isn’t the original seismic. The GM told me that the original seismic was ‘field processing’. I told him there was no such thing. He repeated that it was field processing and I got the idea that I best throw in the towel. I did.
What the guy who sold us this deal and the GM didn’t know, was that I had xeroxed part of that original line and had it in my file. I called my boss, who was also a good friend of mine, into my office and showed him the original next to what this crook has brought us. He told me that he knew that this was a scam but couldn’t do anything about it.
I started looking at the original line very closely and realized that someone had carefully cut out the original data and pasted it into the annotation for the real line. It was quite a good job, but tiny gaps that shouldn’t exist on a seismic film, were to be seen all around that original line. I hadn’t noticed them originally because they were so small.
We had been defrauded by fake seismic. Two days later, the president of the company and the GM’s boss asked me in the elevator on the way up to work what I thought of that well. I told him flat out that we had been defrauded by fraudulent seismic. He proclaimed that we would get to the bottom of that. And nothing happened. This place was weird. I left at the first opportunity. It took years for me to figure out what had been going on at that place.
Now I suspect that everyone will agree that perverting scientific data is a real no-no. It is unethical and fraudulent. I have seen people remove dry holes from maps so that they could get their prospect drilled. Such changes are making the world more 'accommodating to their views of the world, or of their needs. So why is changing what the Bible says any better?
When God made a covenant with Abram, The scripture says: When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. Gen 15:17
Do we believe that is what happened? We all know such things are not normal. Pots and torches don’t move on their own. Do we change this from meaning an actual pot and torch moved on their own to mean that it is a piece of mythological fluff from the Neolithic? It is just a small change and so easy to make. But is it different than what Buster did? No!
If we make the Bible say what we want it to say, turning places like Gen 15:17 into something we don’t really have to believe, are we not doing to the Bible what Buster did to the seismic? He changed seismic to suit his needs; we change Scripture’s obvious meaning to meet ours. Some say Eden didn’t exist. Others say the Flood was not as described but was really a puny riverine flood which matches nothing the Bible says about the flood… Still others say the Exodus didn’t happen. etc. Isn’t that just a theological version of cutting and pasting seismic data as described above? Isn’t that making up our own private reality (the Bible really didn’t mean to teach of a talking snake)? Doing this is no more ethical, in my opinion, than changing seismic data to make the earth appear more to Buster’s liking.
I await the clear non-contradictory answers explaining how doing this to God’s word is different than doing it to seismic data. sarcastic mode on- In the former, it is just the afterlife that might be affected, but the latter risks something more important, our money! Isn’t that right?-sarcastic mode off