From the Blog:
The series begins with Luke Douglas’s story, which is worth reading because it is so typical of those we hear: a) he grew up with a particular view of science tightly wedded to his faith; b) he discovered that view of science to be demonstrably wrong; c) so he abandoned his faith, not thinking there are any other options for reconciling science with serious faith.
I want to say, that Luke’s story is my story, only I didn’t end up leaving the faith. The power of YEC is that it offers a ‘way’ to believe that the Bible is historically true (given their interpretation of the Scripture and time scale). The problem with it is that it is totally observationally wrong. Thus when a person who held YEC finds out that the apologetical arguments are not true, it immediately casts doubt on the historicity of the Scripture. I strongly disagree with the idea that there are lots of other ways to reconcile Biblical historicity with science. There are lots of ways claim that the scripture isn’t historically worth a bucket of warm spit but it is still true in metaphysical terms. I never found that option appealing. I had already fooled myself into believing YEC for years, why did I want to knowingly believe that which was historically false? Having argued myself blue in the face over the years for the need for a historically based interpretation of the creation and the flood, I see no reason to believe the Scripture if there is no historicity. My solutions can be found at:Gen.1 and Flood
Having recently run into some interesting data that might make the Exodus historically true (archaeology had been looking for it at the wrong time, when the data seems to indicate it occurred 350 years or so earlier), the same issues of why believe a religion whose origins are historically false have cropped up in this area of the Bible as well.
Rohl, who is one of the truly out of the box thinkers I have run into, cited Thompson:
“It may perhaps appear strange that so much of the Bible deals with the origin traditions of a people that never existed as such.” Thomas Thompson, The Bible as History,( London, 1999), p. 34 cited by David Rohl, Exodus, Myth or History, (ThinkingMan’s Media 2013, p. 4.
Rohl is an agnostic, but finds it very strange that people would believe a religion based on such false foundations. I absolutely agree with Rohl. We don’t treat any other area of intellectual life in this fashion, where what is known to be false is still said to be true and to be believed. The following quotes from Rohl illustrate the point only for another religion other than Christianity. But Christianity has the very same problem today–people say it is untrue historically but still to be believed.
“Though I continue to regard myself as an ‘agnostic’-that is, a person still undecided in matters of faith-I am convinced that the stories in the Bible are based on real events and real personalities. What this book sets out to do is explain why, over the past fifty years, scholars have become so skeptical about both biblical history and biblical archaeology. It is not that their observations of the archaeological evidence are wrong, nor that their interpretations of that evidence are flawed. In spite of the protests of evangelical Christian scholars, the evidence is now quite clear that no Sojourn of Israelites took place in Egypt during the New Kingdom where historians have placed it. Neither was there an Exodus of those Israelites from Egypt towards the end of the 19th Dynasty. Indeed, there never was a Conquest of the Promised Land at the end of the Late Bronze Age to mark the birth of the Israelite nation. None of this happened according to the archaeological evidence, so in this the skeptics are right. But what they either didn’t realize, or are simply not prepared to accept is that the Exodus did not happen at that time but rather much earlier, in what archaeologists call the Middle Bronze Age.” David Rohl, Exodus(ThinkingMan’s Media 2013), p. Iii
“Finkelstein:…”Whether the stories happened exactly in that way is not important. … It is more important to understand the meaning of Exodus-the moral of Exodus- for our civilization, for humanity, for mankind. This, in my opinion, is more important.”
“So the Tel Aviv University professor and doyen of Israeli archaeology seems quite capable of separating his professional work from his personal family life without much difficulty, even though the two seem to be at odds with each other.
“This stance begs some very obvious questions. Why do the Jewish people celebrate (and have celebrated, for the past three thousand years) an event which never happened? How do Israelis reconcile the fact that their national identity and religion are based on a fantasy? Professor James Hoffmeier put it very nicely in his interview for the Exodus movie.
Hoffmeier: Who would invent a story about their ancestors being slaves? I can see people saying our ancestors were princes, our ancestors were great merchants, our ancestors were something wonderful, and glorious and noble…but we were slaves? Why?” David Rohl, “Exodus-Myth or History?” ThinkingMan’s Media, 2013, p. 4
For background, Rabbi David Wolpe argued that it didn’t matter if the OT was true or not. He was criticized for saying it.
“For Wolpe, ‘the Torah is not a book we turn to for historical accuracy, but rather for truth’. In other words, it appears that the narrative of Hebrew scripture is historically untrue but nevertheless spiritually true! Wolpe himself gives no insight into how many of his Jewish academic colleagues handle this new reality.
Wolpe:…timidity keeps many rabbis from expressing what they have long understood to be true. As a scholar who took me to task in print told me privately over lunch, ‘Of course what you say is true, but we should not say it publicly’. In other words, tell the truth, but not when too many people will be listening.”
“Well a great many people are now listening and they don’t like what they hear. And I hope you would agree with me that (to paraphrase Wolpe’s own words) those who hold that people should never attempt to explore such questions have a very strange understanding as to why God gave us brains. How can a faith or religion be founded on a fundamental flaw like this? How can believers accept the Torah or Old Testament as an ‘extended metaphor’ (a term-coined by rabbi Bradley Shavitt Artson, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles), ‘produced for theological reasons’ (according to Bill Dever)?” David Rohl, “Exodus-Myth or History?” ThinkingMan’s Media, 2013, p. 12-13
That this agnostic has more faith in our scriptures than many Jews and Christians today, should be a source of shame to us. No doubt I will be told to stop misrepresenting things again, but it isn’t just me who find it weird that people are dedicated to believing the theological truth of a Bible that they firmly believe says nothing about history. Most atheists I met during my 12 year soul searching about the epistemological basis of Christianity, agree. And so did my friend Wil Provine, a rather well known atheist in his day.
Edited to add: I find myself in rare agreement with Mitch when he wrote: But no, I quite disagree with this idea of God being existence or being itself. Frankly I think that is the same as no God at all and no significant difference from pantheism.
