It sounds like a figure of speech to you because when your brain calculates the literal meaning, you know it isn’t right, so you look for a figurative meaning that is relevant. But if, for example, you really thought that children grew from male seeds in the fertile ground of their mother’s womb, than describing sperm as seed and wombs as barren would not just be figures of speech, they would be your literal understanding of how reproduction worked. Archaeologists have found drawings of how the world was conceptualized in the ANE and it matches the descriptions that sound like figures of speech to us.
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I’d venture to say that even pre-historic humans appreciated the difference between plant seeds and semen and yet could use the same word to refer to each.
I think the weirdest thing is that technically none of those apply to a true YEC advocate (yet still characterize the approach). I honestly also don’t think they apply to the YEC leaders either, but we have Morton’s demon to thank for that:
When I was a YEC, I had a demon that did similar things for me that Maxwell’s demon did for thermodynamics. Morton’s demon was a demon who sat at the gate of my sensory input apparatus and if and when he saw supportive evidence coming in, he opened the gate. But if he saw contradictory data coming in, he closed the gate. In this way, the demon allowed me to believe that I was right and to avoid any nasty contradictory data…The demon only lets his victim see what the demon wants him to see and thus the victim, whose sensory input is horribly askew, feels that he is totally honest about the data.
This data is a little bit old, but I do wonder if we YEC to blame for this:
28% of the general population is evangelical protestant, but only 4% of scientists were as per Pew Research in 2009.
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Regarding that, the idea that future generations were present in the loins of the past perhaps much like the idea of preformationalism Preformationism - Wikipedia may well have been present conceptionally by the author of Hebrews in chapter 7 verse 9:
9 One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth, paid the tenth through Abraham, 10 because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor.
“But the author suggests that since Levi was a descendant of Abraham he could be said to be already in Abraham’s loins. He senses that this method is somewhat strange, hence his introductory formula: One might even say (hōs epos eipein), an expression found nowhere else in the New Testament.”
“Hebrews” by Donald Guthrie
Knowing the difference and thinking they functionally work the same way is also possible. It is possible to know that windows in your house and windows in the sky are different, but believe they function the same way. I know it is hard to imagine things from another worldview.
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Out of curiosity, is the concept of the firmament/raqia being the earth’s crust one you have seen before?
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Hi,
This is a very well-known idea.
Check out my course materials on this:
See pages 82-83 the handouts.
To hear the lecture on this, see Hermeneutics 13B & 13C:
https://sites.ualberta.ca/~dlamoure/350audioslides.html
Blessings,
Denis
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Thank you for sharing, I will listen.
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And then to imagine God’s worldview 
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Your ability to access at least something of “God’s” worldview probably depends on your willingness to listen to others - especially those who have different perspectives than you.
And even then, to label anything as “God’s worldview” is to declare to the world, “I’ve now shut my ears to anything else anybody may say, because I’m done learning now.” It becomes an “all-mouth, no ears” approach to life.
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And I do realize that I shouldn’t have made that sound like everything must be forever open-ended. I think there are times it may well be appropriate - even critically necessary - to consider a “case closed” about something; often because the testimony of lives has so compellingly weighed in already - such as the evil of slavery. But that has been a “too-hard-won” battle in the last few centuries where the only reason the right view has begun to prevail is because we finally started listening to the voices that had so long been silenced.
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Yes, and among Christians, because they actually started to listen and apply the ethic of Jesus to the case, and not only a flat interpretation of “the bible”.?
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Actually, I was thinking something more along the lines of the overarching promise of the New Covenant. Listening to other people also counts, even when they are disingenuous about God. Mars Hill Audio has a great production called Best Selling Spirituality which I listened to nearly 20 years ago. Have you ever listened to Neal Donald Walsch?
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I don’t think I have. Tell me about him.
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What about Betty J. Eadie?
Well - sure. You can keep adding to the list of people you (might be?) recommending. What I wouldn’t mind hearing is your reason for fascination with these (now two), or what their respective missions are that I /we might take an interest in here. I know … I could google them. But of my limited time budget for these things, I like to spend more of it here on the forum interacting with people like you!
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I wouldn’t know where to begin to describe them and would do well to go back and listen to Myer’s report again. They and James Redfield were featured, and are respectively authors of Conversations with God, Embraced by the Light, and The Celestine Prophecy.
There’s definitely something to this I think. Thanks for that data. You can even see it anecdotally in many of the guests Biologos has on the pod. A lot of mainline or “not particularly religious but a little”. Which is fine. I just think it’s interesting. A lot them don’t relate to being banged over the head with YEC. Distrust and even disdain for teachers, public schools, colleges, science. Add in anti-vax, conspiracy and far right partisan politics and you have a lot of young people about to face a lot problems. Potentially even walking away from the faith. Or the other extreme of being fully indoctrinated.