I don’t engage in science discussion, I go with the text. One of my favorite moves in my university days was to haul out my Hebrew Old Testament and read out loud from it – sometimes just the prayer I learned from my first Hebrew professor for before even opening the volume was enough to make a foot in the door. After reading (though I was more reciting with the text in front of me; we had to memorize the first Genesis Creation story), I asked if they understood any of it, and of course the answer was always “No”, so I moved on to my next question, whether they knew what kind of literature the original writer was using. The hope was that they would grasp that what it looked like in English was not the same as what it was meant to be in Hebrew, which could crack the door open a bit.
I generally only engage in talking about science when there are others involved who might otherwise get influenced by the YEC types.
Or about worldviews, if you think they’re up to it – most of the time when I asked about worldviews I got blank looks from YECers.
I suspect that was a major reason that the course on worldviews at the local Christian Study Center was always at a time of day when just about any student would have the time free and not only didn’t cost anything but came with sandwiches and munchies. I took that course three times, the second time to grapple more with the text and the third time because another text got added, and there were always some who really struggled with the idea that there were other ways of looking at the world – and when a YECer got it, they usually reached a point where they were willing to admit that perhaps the worldview they’d been taught wasn’t suitable for reading Genesis.
I recall some times telling accounts of YEC university students who totally lost their faith – to shake people up – and then of some who didn’t . . . but did abandon the YEC position.
More than once I would haul out my Novum Testamentum Graece (which I was more likely to remember to carry with my than my wallet) and point out all the variant readings at the bottoms of the pages, because recognizing that those aren’t there accidentally, that they were there because God allowed them, opened the door to reconsidering the strict “inerrancy” issue, my point being that God allowed all those variants partly to shake us up a bit and so to pint out that He just might have let the scriptures be written in ways that don’t fit our ideas of truth . . . to shake us up a bit.
That pretty much explains why I was far better at helping YEC believers through the crisis once their indoctrination had been shattered than at disputing with them – something I tended to do, as I said, only when there were others involved who needed to be kept away from that shallow, fragile faith.
I recall bugging a few just by sitting and reading from my Hebrew Old Testament: almost without exception eventually they would ask why I didn’t just use a translation, and if I thought it might bring a crack in their worldview I would say because what the accounts look like in Hebrew is not at all what they look like in English.
They do not have a shallow faith. Their faith is stronger than mine because it denies proofs. That is what faith is. (You can read Paul’s definition if you want)
The whole point here is that all I hear is that we cannot criticise the mighty Evolution. Not at all. Because we (I) are not qualified.
So we must lie down and deny what the Bible says about God and His sovereignty.
This has nothing to do with the mechanics of Genesis 1. And by that I mean the way Genesis 1 describes creation. (7 days etc) It has nothing to do with YEC or any other box you would like to shut me away in.
This is about the principles and philosophy of Evolution. Evolution works without God. And you cannot just claim it is God’s working. (Because you cannot see His workings anyway)
You do not replace YEC, you just demand that we accept Evolution.
And clearly you cannot see how evolution is in conflict with the bible other than from the YEC.
standpoint.
This is not about denying science. Neither is it a criticism of scientific method. It is just plain incompatibility with the theology of scripture. Denying any part of evolution is not denying all of it, or all of science. (Heaven forbid!)
It is not enough just to claim that "God uses Evolution. "
I am sorry that you (et al) cannot see this.
Perhaps we need to ask “How do you talk to a Christian about evolution?”
You haven’t been arguing theistic evolution. You have been arguing for creationism with separately created kinds.
You have also claimed that the observed nested hierarchy is a product of evolution. Well, that nested hierarchy extends way beyond the limits you are putting on evolution. Therefore, you still need to explain why we see a nested hierarchy between separately created kinds.
You haven’t shown any type of attempt at explaining why your alleged separately created kinds fall into a nested hierarchy. Instead, you try to pretend as if the nested hierarchy doesn’t exist, something that has been known to exist since the 1700’s and was discovered and promoted by a creationist.
I have considered it. I see no reason why this would produce the patterns we see. You haven’t been able to come up with a reason why it would produce the patterns we see. This is why your claims aren’t taken seriously by the scientific community, because they don’t explain what we see.
Where are your challenges of the nested hierarchy? Where have you shown any evidence that this observation doesn’t exist?
The nested hierarchy IS the data. The interpretation is that this is the very pattern we would expect from evolution and common ancestry. You have done nothing to make us doubt this data, nor have you shown that evolution and common ancestry would not produce a nested hierarchy. You also have given no rational reason why separate creation would produce this pattern. No creationist has.
It’s been known to exist since the 1700’s. You have offered nothing to make us doubt this 250 year old observation. All you do is figuratively stomp your feet and refuse to accept that it exists.
Added in edit:
Didn’t you learn about Linnaean taxonomy at any point in your biology classes? Weren’t you shown how each group of taxonomy nests within a larger group?
@RichardG , I’m tagging you, because this relates to your most recent post in this thread as well.
[Highlighting mine. – KJD]
Fragile faith is not necessarily shallow. Perhaps you didn’t mean to imply that it is, but that’s my first (second and subsequent as well) readings of your reply. I’ll come back to this problem eventually.
First to return to YEC. Why is it, as we know it now, even a thing? And what is the thing it is?
Why:
Biblical literalism – we (yeah, sure, I’ll include myself in the camp) literalists can’t fit what we think the Bible says about the nature of humanity and our relationship to God together with what the biological sciences have been making more and more clear for over a century, and bio sci tells us things that are antithetical to what we have understood about humans through our reading of the Bible.
Key theology based in that literalism – Theology of salvation as I know it is tied to a literal understanding of A&E, etc. (I am NOT arguing for or against that theological understanding, but to point to it as absolutely foundational for large segments of Christian theology.) Before a scientific understanding of human origins and cosmology were well-researched and established, this was a reasonable and reasoned approach. Largely, it was THE approach.
What?
A scaffold – At first it seemed an explanation of origins that “works” with theology based in biblical literalism; it was used to strengthen the faith of the faithful in the pews, while attempting to weaken (in the eyes of the faithful) the strength of scientific evidence for a rational understanding of cosmology and human origins.
An apologetic – Now it has moved from an attempt to maintain and strengthen (literalistic) biblical faith to a method of providing a rational foundation for biblical faith in order to promote the faith.
No one that I know of has expressed the What so clearly as adamjedgar, whom I quoted here:
Finally, returning to the concept of the fragility of faith; there are serious reasons that endless attempts at rationalizing Christian faith are being made today and there is an entire industry, not just an interest or an area of thinking, but a literal industry based in (rational) Christian apologetics.
Our time and place in human history no longer provides the assumed undergirdment for faith of any kind. Foundational cultural assumptions of God/god/gods, the supernatural, relationships between them and us do not exist anymore. It’s a product of our own intellectual inquiry. Our intellectual culture, now devoid of such undergirdment, requires justification for belief on new – rational – terms. And Christians are scrambling to keep on that hamster wheel, which takes many shapes and forms, including but certainly not limited to YEC, ID, “Debate Team Tactics” etc, etc.
But faith is not a matter of the kind of rational inquiry. Faith, like the Edmund Fitzgerald, is a full iron freighter, not to tossed and fro, but supported at each end by the crests of waves in a terrible storm. What used to provide support in the form of universal cultural assumptions is gone. This is a kind of fragility that has been imposed on an ancient faith from the outside, and which has left believers scrambling to deal with. The ship can be well made and strong, as the Fitz was, yet fragile in a differently hostile environment.
The point regarding fragility is not about strong or weak faith. It is about grasping our faith on sustainable terms in a milieu in which rational thought is valued ultimately, certainly above whatever genuine explanations we can give for our faith.
Richard, two serious errors are strangely distorting this entire conversation.
One error is that virtually all of the criticism you are getting is a criticism of what the reader thinks you believe because of how he or she interprets what you wrote. And then you eventually come out and say that that isn’t what you believe.
The other error is that you do not seem to understand at all where most of the rest of us are coming from. I, for one, believe that it is quite possible that all living species have descended from the same initial one-celled living thing. I also accept that it is even possible (though I am highly skeptical on this possibility) that God created the entire universe 6000 years ago, with every single sub-atomic particle in exactly the same place as it would have been if the universe was created in the Big Bang billions of years ago.
My belief has been influenced by my understanding of the mathematics of infinity, and by the advances, through modern science, in knowledge about the universe that (I believe) God created. Just a few key points: I believe that God is infinite; that God knew what He was doing when creating this universe; that God as Creator (obviously) exists outside of this universe that He created. What we now know is that space and time (at least the space and time that we experience in this universe) are dimensions of this created universe. Thus God exists outside of the space and time of this universe. Also, the universe is enormous, over 500 million light years to the furthest object we have been able to identify. And apparently (from the way things in this universe look like, how they are moving, as best we can tell, where they started) something approaching 14 billion years old. And the laws of physics keep the scope of what we can influence in our lifetime to a very small fraction of the entire universe - our own planet, and maybe the moon and a few nearby planets. Certainly we cannot influence anything hundreds of light years away, cannot even communicate with other intelligent beings that far away in a meaningful manner.
Back to the point of God being outside of time: Dale calls God omnitemporal. I do say, with near certainty, that a God who knew what He was doing, who created a universe for us to live in, and exists outside of the space and time of that universe, can observe that universe from His own perspective, not just from the perspective that we have from within that universe. I also believe that the God who created the laws of physics by which His universe operates is not constrained by those laws, can choose to do things outside of those laws, but very rarely needs to do so, because He put it together correctly in the “beginning” - that is, the beginning of time in this universe. And a very obvious point: God created everything that comes into being, whether it comes right out of the cosmological and evolutionary processes He set in motion, or whether He tweaks the outcomes as the universe plods along. We cannot tell the difference, and it doesn’t change a single molecule in our world, so it doesn’t matter at all whether God interrupts the flow of evolution to cause specific DNA changes, or whether God just lets the “random” modifications do their thing, as He knew they would before He created the universe.
A side note: We cannot measure exactly the location and state of motion of any single electron, by any means. The act of observing the electron will disturb its state. But I believe that God can know the precise state of everything in this universe, not by observing, but because He knows where He put things when He created them.
The other big deal in my belief is that God is infinite. What does this mean, really? Suppose that every human who ever existed had his or her finite brain completely filled with knowledge about God, and there was not a single bit of overlapping knowledge between any two humans. The total human knowledge would still be such a small fraction of the total infinite knowledge about God that the total human knowledge would be mathematically indistinguishable from 0 % of the total knowledge! Does this mean that our knowledge is not important? No, No, a thousand times NO!! The knowledge we do have about God is absolutely important in that, for each one of us, our knowledge is a critical foundation for our own personal relationship with God. The point is that each of us has different knowledge, at least in some detail, about God; each of us has a personal relationship with God. However, in the world that God created for us, we can communicate with others, we can share our knowledge about God with others, we can learn from others. But it is a human error to presume that, “My knowledge of God is the only true knowledge of God; anything different from my knowledge is false!” This human error seems to me to be the root cause of all religious wars, and it is based on a false, limited, human interpretation of who God is. God is infinite, unlimited! God can and does reveal Himself (or maybe even, in some cases, Herself) to different people, whom we Christians claim God loves, people for whom we say Jesus died, however God chooses to reveal Himself. I do not get to say what God does, or does not do. Neither does any other human.
What, exactly, do you mean by this? I see very “localized” principles and philosophy of evolution, things that put limits on what can be expected to happen in certain timeframes. But you seem to be presuming something much more, something that I certainly do not believe, and essentially all of the writers who have criticized you in this thread apparently do not believe, that evolution works without God. You state that I cannot know that evolution is God’s working. I state, unequivocally, that you cannot know it is not God’s working. I have at least as strong a belief in God’s involvement with the world as you do, but also have a perspective that God knew what He was doing, so could very well have started something in motion that He didn’t have to interfere with again, and yet I claim that this is God’s choice in creating the world where we are now existing. And I think I was rather clear in claiming that I don’t know how God does everything. But I do see God’s working in my life; do you see it in yours, or are you unable to see any of His workings?
What part of evolution, exactly what part, are you denying? When you just say, “Evolution,” how am I as a new participant in the BioLogos forum supposed to know exactly where you are on the total spectrum of beliefs about evolution? If you can specify exactly what you deny, then please do so, because that will greatly focus the discussion. I can only speak for myself, but when you just use the single word “Evolution” and say “Evolution is wrong” you are not helping me to understand anything.
I hope by now, Richard, you understand that what you think I must believe becaused I believe that evolution has occurred is not even close to what I believe, and that you will stop accusing me (and a lot of other people) of believing something that I (we) do not believe. And maybe, just maybe, if you are willing to open your mind to other possibilities, you will learn something.
I am thinking of rewriting Gensis, it goes along this sort of line
In the beginning God…
Shouted and from it all matter came forth.
It coagulated and combined without His aid.
God found a sun and identified the third planet as being suited for the life He wanted.
God formed the amiotic fluod and left it to develop
After several million years God realised that life had not developed as He wished… The creatures were not intelligent and far too violent. So He sent a meteor to wipe them out
Maybe second time lucky?
God waited again. Eventually a race emerged that fitted what he had originally planned.
God identified one man in the whole earth to relate to and conned him into thinking he was special and would be the father of all nations. It wasn’t true of course.
Shall I go on?
There is more to Scripture than Genesis 1. I may not know all of Evolutionary theory but I do know scripture.
So, in your version, God worked hard one day, was tired out and slept til morning and worked some more he did this for 6 days then decided he was done and tired totally out so rested from then on.
Actually what’s going on there is that in the ancient near eastern cosmology/theology darkness and light had their own eternal existence apart from the gods; they were just there, and that mostly was clear at the start of their Creation stories, so the Genesis writer starts off with them but wrests them into their proper place as things God made.
Not well-functioning, either, even if the view is taken that the serpent was just a tool for the “Shining One” i.e. Lucifer.
Score! The church Fathers for the most part held that those original two were only provisionally immortal, and would have had to advance somewhat in order to actually become immortal – which was the big penalty, as most of them saw it, in being no longer fit for the Garden; that cut them off from the Tree of Life, as opposed to tumbling them into some radically different state.
I actually did a study on that in my university days, and it turns out that scripture never actually says there’s anything wrong with nakedness per se; it describes people as having negative views of nakedness – think the drunken Noah incident – and bad reactions to nakedness, but never actually says it’s bad. The impression is given that the problem isn’t that nakedness is bad, it;s that to a great extent we’re just not up to handling it right.
There’s the real change in terms of death: instead of death being a natural way for animals to get food, now death gets inflicted artificially to remind humans of how bad sin is. The change isn’t from no death to death, it’s from functional death to essentially pointless death – after all, a death for a sacrifice isn’t really useful in any substantial sense.
I don’t really care whether evolution is true or not, although the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor. The real issue is that the text is ancient literature and is not anything resembling our understanding of history and weren’t meant to be – heck, the writers didn’t have a worldview where our understanding of history would even fit. So the real question is what kind(s) of literature the first Creation account is (its two at once) and what the meaning is (which is three things at once) – and then the fact that the YEC approach essentially throws out what the original points were!
But it only comes into conflict because of the YEC error!
In my version God did virtually nothing. And if evolution is true, so is my version.
I am quite happy for the world to be self sufficient, now. God finished His creation. There is no need to decide whehter He is still at rest or not. That is not the point. The point is that He created The Heavens and the Earth and all that is in them, rather than a few basic parts and let rip. Biblically humanity is not the product of chance or the pinacle of a random development. Humanity is created by God in His image. Now, I do not care how you interpret “His Image” the only pertinent fact is that it has shape, and form and function that is not random but intended…
No matter how much of Evolution is correct, the progression from single cell to human cannot be (without specific guidance from God) If there is no God then evolution is free to let rip.
So whether I can argue specifics or not, from a Christian viewpoint, evolution, as it stands, cannot be true. Finito.
Or Scripture is iretrievably false.
Richard
Edit. You realise that version incorporates modern science? It is not my beliefs.(But it might be the beliefs of some here)
Actually the Bible is consistent once it is recognized that the prophets tried to pound into the people’s heads that there’s a progression going on, that the instructions given at one point weren’t meant to tie everything into static position around that instruction but the instruction was supposed to teach that the people were to grow from old things towards new things, and later that it was what went on in the heart that counted, not observing outward forms.
So Jesus stood at the end of a long line of moving things onward, aiming at the heart and not at mere adherence to the letter of the instruction.
And in so doing he stood in a long rabbinic tradition which recognized that if the Torah was taken as Law it could not be obeyed – it wasn’t a majority tradition but it was there. I vaguely recall a lament to the effect “If we could have kept Your Law…”, not “if we had kept Your Law” which would imply it was possible but they failed, but “if we could have kept Your Law”, indicating a conviction that the Law could not be kept (as I recall this was in first century B.C. in a discussion of the Exile and the return).
Or as I’ve put it ever since church summer camp long ago, we don’t believe in the Resurrection because the Bible tells us so, we believe the Bible because of the Resurrection. That’s wehn I started singing my own words to a common children’s song:
Jesus loves me, this I know, For the Gospel tells me so!
That can be illustrated by the fact that a master’s thesis in theology can be written on the phrase “laying on of hands” as used by Paul and run to seventy pages not including end notes and appendices, or a doctoral thesis can be written on the meaning and use of the word καί (kai) in just the first half of the Gospel of John and run to ninety pages not including notes or appendices, or on the contrast between the Hebrew “waw” and Greek “kai” and its implications for the synoptic Gospels . . . .
It was a totally different subject matter, but this from a sociology professor still applies: the hard part is asking good questions! Come to think of it, my grad school advisor said the same thing to all of his advisees assembled at the start of fall term, with respect to forming a thesis question.
Then there’s the rare skill of getting the other person to ask the question! I achieved that occasionally just by reading my Hebrew Old Testament in plain sight, but I think the other times I managed to prompt the other person into asking a question were sheer bumbling luck.
According to my sociology professor (sociology & statistics course) a good question is one that first of all is formulated without caring what the answer will be and secondly doesn’t limit the range of possible responses.
I love this. The first part is easier if one spends time cultivating an attitude of curiosity. The second part is much harder, especially if you are trying to be specific with your question.
That is total nonsense, Richard. Do we lie down and deny what the Bible says about God and his sovereignty with respect to the weather? His sovereign providence with respect to evolution is exactly the same. Just because you cannot conceive how evolution actually works with respect to anatomical changes, “macro-evolution”, does not mean God stepped aside or that evolution “as taught” denies God any more that meteorology denies God. All you do is keep insisting that “Richard understands evolution” and no one else does. It does not matter a twit how long you’ve been doing it.
Please, Please, Please, tell me what part of the evolution, as it stands, cannot be true!!! Once again, you are making a very broad statement, and refusing to spell out the details of what you believe is true, and what you believe is false! Yet just a few posts back you did state that not all of evolution is false, not all is true.
Then there is the third kind of evolutionary teaching: That which might be true, or might be false, and it really doesn’t make any difference with respect to theology, or with respect to any aspect of our living at this time and place. What aspects of evolution fit this category?
I have no quarrel with anything written in scripture; I do believe that scripture was written by inspiration of God.
I do not believe that human interpretations of what scripture meant when it was originally written are all perfectly true.
I also do not believe that any human alive today has a perfect understanding of what scripture means, what specific message God intends, for that scripture to say to His people today.
I do know that what I believe is a proper interpretation of what scripture means, of what message is intended for me, as a PhD physicist, and many years of work as a systems engineer, with some level of knowledge about what modern science has found out about the universe that I believe God created, that, for me, good Christian theology and good science are not in conflict.
Richard, as you reply to this, please also note that I am not a biologist, so am not intimately familiar with all of the biological research related to evolution. I really do want to know what you think is so wrong about Evolution, something that almost seems (from the way you write about it) like you know it’s so obviously wrong that you don’t even have to spell out what you think is wrong.