Alas, Chris, it seems that whenever I disagree with you or Walton about A, you assume that I must think B and deal with me on that basis…when what I actually think is C. Thus our communications with each other never seem to fully connect. Even in this last post you have misunderstood my position on almost every point. I don’t think it would be helpful at this point for me to try to respond point by point. Let me just say that I appreciate your trying to help me with Walton. I have not given up on him completely, but I’ll labor on a bit longer without bothering you about it anymore. Thanks for your efforts.
What biblical reasons are there to accept the scientific view of the earth as billions of years old?
If we are “made in God’s image” then we should have the smarts and common sense to separate data from myths. Technically, a “myth” is a “story of of beginnings” that infers neither truth nor fictional history. The history of human knowledge has been a time line of our human technical ability to make tools and take measurements.
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Not sure I would put it that way. The way you have it layed out, it is not necessarily mutually exclusive, and also misrepresents gap theory and day-age. It also does not give the best option for someone like you. The options I see are,
- The BIble is ambiguous (or silent) about the age of the earth.
- The Bible is ambiguous about the age of the earth, but one answer (young or old) seems to fit best.
- The Bible is clear about a specific age (young or old)
I think if one believes #3 and the answer is young, then they are pretty much stuck with that view. However, if one thinks #2 and a young earth fits best, they are still free to accept the scientific account. I think that may be the best option for you.
As for gap-theory and day-age, I’m not sure which one is correct. I’m not saying that the Bible clearly teaches these, but that the viability either option makes the teaching of Scripture unclear on the age of the earth. The fact that the two of us come to different view of this after honest study is prima facie evidence that Scripture is unclear here. Given that communicating the age of the earth is not the purpose of Genesis, this is not surprising, and I think that options #1 and #2 are both understandable. #3 is hard to see.
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Checkpoint on the Question (Confirmed)
For expediency’s sake, I will set aside my proposed taxonomy (“Checkpoint on the Question (Proposed)”) and accept yours without question or comment.
I first came to this BioLogos Forum on June 22 asking “Who best reconciles the Bible and Evolution?” Along the way, I launched about a half a dozen other topics, but all related to, and in support of, my original question.
In these discussions, I was finding a lot of engagement but was not making discernible progress toward answering my original question. Most of the responses I was receving were providing scientific arguments and evidence for evolution; I, however, was looking for biblical answers that would either support evolution or at least not prohibit it. I was advised by more than one participant that focusing first on the age of the earth would be a better way of getting to the answer I sought. And so I launched this particular thread on July 15, and have devoted almost all my BioLogos time since then to it.
Your taxonomy makes me question whether narrowing my focus from evolution to the age of the earth has been of any significant value given my interest in biblical rather than scientific reasons. For if the Bible is ambiguous about the age of the earth then I don’t understand the value of focusing on it first. It seems I could have just as easily decided that the Bible was ambiguous about evolution. I’ll have to ponder this and re-think my next step.
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People have been focusing on it because of you, because it’s an issue for you. Because your main issue is that your believe the Bible is unambiguous on the age of the earth and that’s one of your primary reasons for rejecting evolution. Consequently, showing you that it’s wrong to believe the Bible unambiguously tells us the earth is very young, addresses your main issue directly. That’s a biblical reason showing that the Bible doesn’t prohibit evolution, which is exactly what you asked for.
The Bible provides both negative and positive support for evolution, and I think you should address this also.
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A few of your previous posts for context.
I always understood your dilemma as the conflict between the history of the Bible vs. the history of science. That is why I suggested focusing on the age of the earth. If you can come to peace with an old earth evolution would be a piece of cake. Looking for Biblical support or rejection of evolution is like looking for Biblical support or rejection of the germ theory. You are just not going to be able to come up with an answer one way or the other using just the Bible.
Let me suggest a possible way to address your dilemma.
Accept the creation of the earth took 4.5 billion years as indicated by science.
Accept that while Adam was the first human created in the image of God he wasn’t the first homo sapien.
Accept that Eden was a special location on a completed earth where God placed Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were different from the other homo sapiens that were alive at the same time.
Accept that with Adam God’s creation was complete and so He rested.
Then you can use the Bible’s genealogies to date when Adam was created in the image of God and therefore the completion of creation. The only problem is you have to then accept that the description of the creation of the earth was a figurative description and not a literal one. I fear that if you insist on a literal six day creation you are going to remain permanently stuck.
Antoine has a long discussion complete with his interpretation of Genesis to support what I outlined above at A. Suarez’s Treatment on a Pope Formulation for Original Sin’s Transmission I don’t agree with the way he dates Adam and Eve but otherwise he has some good ideas.
New topic for discussion. How long after Adam’s creation did it take him to Fall? Does the Bible say?
Edit to add an additional thought.
What is different between Biblical Genealogies and the genealogy that I do for my family history? Answer, the Biblical Genealogies normally only include the men unless there is a special reason to include a woman. So they look like a chart with one person on top and with just one person at each level below. What does a real genealogical chart look like? Lots and lots of people on the top and slowly ( divide by 2 for each generation) narrowing down to one, me. Of course you can do charts that include aunts and uncles and cousins and then the chart becomes a big waterfall. Why do I say this? Evolution says nothing that would prevent Adam from being a great-great (to the nth degree) grandfather to the entire human race. He just can’t be the single male at the top of the chart. And so in the Biblical sense you can say all mankind has descended from Adam (only the important males included in the genealogies) without requiring that there be no other humans around at the time of Adam.
I believe somewhere around here Joshua S. has written about this.
BTW, I believe the genealogy is done that way because of the One Seed theory of human procreation.
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It’s not that I think I’ve “decided” the Bible is ambiguous about the age of the earth and evolution, it just reads to me as if it is ambiguous. Given the focus of Scripture on Jesus, that is not the least bit surprising.
And yes, if it is ambiguous on the age of the earth, we can wonder if it is ambiguous about evolution. There I point to the text itself, where it says “The land” and “the sea” “give forth” plans and animals of “many kinds.” There is no hebrew word indicating prohibition of reproducing outside of ones kind. One of the best articles of this is: http://www.atsjats.org/publication/view/39 . A good paraphrase of Gen 1 is…
“The land and sea gave forth plants and animals of many kinds.”
Which sounds almost too scientifically accurate for their time. Remember, they did not have the words for billions, genetics, DNA, and evolution. Yet we see here that God did not “poof” things into existence. He called the land and sea, and they answered him by producing plans and animals. That sounds like theistic evolution, in the language of ancient hebrew, to me.
Now, I do not think that this was the author’s intent. So I would not call this the intended teaching of scripture. But with that interpretation so obviously there, it is hard not to see Scripture as ambiguous about evolution.
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I would go further and say that with that interpretation so obviously there, it is hard to see Scripture as anything but harmonious with evolution. The same goes for the very obvious problem of Cain’s wife. Exegetes throughout the ages have wrestled with the extremely clear implication that the text is telling us there were other humans already on the planet, outside the primal family, to whom Cain was not related. This is not a problem which was invented when evolution came along, it was a problem which was recognized as being caused by a particular reading of the text which clearly contradicts with what the Bible actually says; with a different reading, that problem vanishes.
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You are missing @Mike_Gantt’s point. He is conceding you maybe right already. That maybe this was a distraction. No value in rubbing it in.
Hi @Mike_Gantt,
Thanks for hanging out here and for your honest inquiry. I realize I’m quite late to the party, but would like to share some of my own thoughts. I have been reading along and understand that most has already been covered in one way or another, but I decided to join in anyways. I’ll just address the topics as expressed in your OP.
Six days
Now, what helps me is the following. Imagine being a spiritual leader to the people of Israel, who have just escaped from years of slavery under the reign of the pharaoh of Egypt. Imagine it is your task to explain to them who JHWH is and what He did, and why He is different from the pagan gods.
To explain His role as the Creator, you would have to explain how His creative activity differs from that of the pagan gods. The pagan creation stories usually involved gods who fought with each other in a cosmic battle, after which the winner would become the “king” of creation. In contrast, in Genesis 1 we read of JHWH who does not have to lift even a proverbial finger. He just speaks and everything simply happens as He commands. Speech is invoked to explain to finite human beings that God has absolute authority over Creation. For them, the power of the word of a king was equal to his authority (remember Jesus calming the sea by His word? 
). This part also makes clear that all the objects in Creation (e.g., sun, stars, seas) do not have any authority of their own (i.e., are not gods), but simply are creations of God.
Also, this Creation narrative would have to be placed in a context that peasants would understand. What would be a useful motive to employ? I cannot think of anything better than a working week, something that should have been already familiar to the Jews even before the Sabbath was officially installed. This is where the 6+1 days come into the story. This framework helped establish a system of worship for the Jews, in which they reminisce and celebrate God’s creative activity every week. God’s rest is the end of the week, which I will discuss now.
Seventh day
Well as others probably have pointed out, the number seven itself carried special significance for the Jews. It signified completion to them, as does the end of the working week. So yes, there is something “historical” about this seventh day, in the sense that it signifies the completion of God’s establishment of Creation. Again, this is a good way of bringing across God’s creative activity to an Ancient Near-Eastern audience. There are indications in Hebrews 4 that this same rest of God is continuing even today:
9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. 11 Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.
God’s resting “day” is everlasting and we are taken up in His rest as believers. This is an interesting point from the Bible, indicating that the interpretation of those days was not meant to be taken nearly as rigidly as we (with our modern Western mindsets) might be prone to do.
Summary
In summary, I believe there is a powerful two-way relationship between the 6+1 structure of the working week and the 6+1 structure of Genesis 1. I view this as a Spirit-inspired decision by the biblical author. On the one hand, the 6+1 structure of Genesis 1 (with its connection to the working week) helps the common person to understand God’s creative activity with an illustration from daily life. On the other hand, the 6+1 structure of the working week (with its connection to Genesis 1) gave the Jews a practical framework for worship and reverence of God in their daily lives, especially with the focus on the Sabbath as a resting day, celebrating God’s Creation. Given this two-way relationship, I don’t think that the physical duration/chronology of God’s creative acts was the focus of the biblical author or his audience. Instead, the author made the God-inspired choice to connect and ground (or even “incarnate”?) God’s creative acts in something accessible to those who were receiving these Scriptures for the first time. This is comparable to the way the prophets spoke of the New Creation using earthly images, because the actual reality of the New Creation lies beyond our human imagination.
Peace,
Casper
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I don’t see him saying that. I read him as saying “I came here asking about subject A, but people did not answer my question about subject A and instead told me I should talk about subject B, which has turned out to be a waste of time. I don’t understand why I was told to talk about subject B, I might as well have just talked about subject C instead”.
I don’t take as bleak a view of what has happened in our discussion with @Mike_Gantt. It’s not great … but I don’t think it’s quite what you describe in your post.
- Some of us recommended to Mike that he focus on the Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth. There were a few reasons for this:
a. It is frequently reported that Physics and Geology convinced young people that the Bible was wrong about 6 Day creation, and so Evolution was suddenly reasonable.
b. Geology is also a far older discipline than Darwinism… with Christian Geologists being the first one to suggest the Earth is of great age.
c. There is much less mumbo jumbo in Geology than in genome studies. Some pro-Evolutionists are so fixated on Genetic information, they can’t say a word that is meaningful to some YECs. This is not quite so true about Geologists.
Secondly, the emphasis on Geology did have its payoff. Mike was able to say that on the face of it, the Geology information is large, consistent and extremely persuasive. When was the last time you had a a Young Earth Creationist admit anything like this?
And there is where we got stuck. Because Mike wants a Biblical reason to accept Old Earth.
We never would arrived at this point, Jon, if we had focused on some other issue before Geology.
Mike you asked this question “What biblical reasons are there to accept the scientific view of the earth as billions of years old?”, to which there is a simple answer: There are none. In fact, it is precisely the Bible which grants you great confidence and liberty to believe in a young earth if you so choose.
@r_speir and @Mike_Gantt,
And I would add there are no biblical reaons to reject the Firmament or Yahweh’s storehouses of Snow and Hail in orbit around the Earth:
Five detailed verses - - specifically calling Job out for his ignorance - - comapred to Yahweh’s wisdom!
Job 38:19-24
“What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside?
Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? "
“Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years! Have you entered the Storehouses of the Snow or seen the Storehouses of the Hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?”
“What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I think that settles it for me. Forget this crazy Ancient Earth stuff… I’m getting my binoculars out to see if can catch one of those orbiting storehouses !!! We could use a good snow storm here in the states right about now!
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Checkpoint on the Question (Going Forward)
Having reached a point of clarifying the question of the OP and potential answers to it in “Checkpoint on the Question (Confirmed)” above, and having spent the last 24 hours reflecting on what this might mean, I have taken stock of where I stand and identified a way forward for me from this point.
Your discussion software (which is, by the way, very sophisticated and yet very user-friendly; thank you) tells me that I have spent 35 days here and read 1,500 posts. For that effort, what progress have I made? If progress is measured as finding a biblical path to accepting evolution or even an old earth, the answer is none. If, however, progress is to be measured as reaching a conclusion one way or the other on those matters, then the answer is that I have made significant progress, though there is still more work to do.
The obvious implication of what I am saying about progress is that you are failing to convince me of that for which BioLogos stands (copied from the BioLogos home page):
BioLogos invites the church and the world
to see the harmony between science and biblical faith
as we present an evolutionary understanding of God’s creation.
The reason for your failure is the weakness of your biblical arguments. Let me hasten to say here that from your point of view, of course, any failure is my responsibility. That is, many of you would say that you don’t need strong biblical arguments for your position because the scientific evidence is so strong. Others of you will say that you don’t need strong biblical arguments for your position because the Bible is either silent or ambiguous on the subject. In either case, your view is that any failure in this process is due to errors in my thinking combined with my obstinacy. Fair enough - we each have our perspectives. My responsibility is to report to you how things look from my persective, and I assume you will continue to report to me your perspectives. Only as we understand each others’ perspectives can be have a hope of effectively communicating with each other.
While I have been underwhelmed by your biblical rationales, I am not yet ready to conclude the matter. Just because I haven’t yet seen reasonable biblical justification for your position, doesn’t in and of itself mean you don’t have it or that you’re not entitled to it. I’d even be willing to supply you one myself if I can find it. Therefore, I am going to opportunistically pursue various lines of inquiry with you - some of which appear to me now and others of which may arise later - which may include this particular thread but certainly won’t be limited to it.
It appears to me now that I am 50-75% of the way to a conclusion. I do not think it will take another month to close the gap, but researchers cannot always predict when a given thesis will be proven or disproven. However, if at any point along the way you want me to stop engaging here, just ask and I will immediately comply. I am your guest and I only remain here at your sufferance.
One last point. The quickest and easiest way to reconcile evolution (and an old earth) with the Bible is to lower one’s expectation of the Bible. This I am unwilling under any circumstances to do. I am willing to reach a good conscience conviction that the Bible is silent or ambiguous about matters I heretofore thought it to be declared and clear. That would be different, however, from merely capitulating to popular opinion because it was too socially painful or costly for me to stick with conscience in the sight of God. I derive my high view of Scripture from Jesus (John 10:35; Matt 5:17-19; Luke 24:25; and elsewhere). I am bound by love and honor to believe about it whatever He believed about it. If I am to come around to your point of view, I must sense that His view of Scripture is what gets me there.
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Hi Mike, to follow up on that (and on my previous post, would be happy to hear your thoughts on what I wrote there), I have two general points.
Firstly, I think your interactions here will end up being more enjoyable if you don’t measure the worth of your time spent here in terms of becoming convinced or not, but rather in terms of personal interactions and exchange of different perspectives in a spirit of kindness. Most people who come here don’t shift their opinions even an inch. But it is the gracious dialogue and meetings between persons that make it valuable, from where I stand. That might help to take some of the pressure away from you.
Secondly, I think epistemology (figuring out what is “true”) is not nearly as rigid as you seem to be indicating in many of your posts. For me it is never about “choosing the Bible over science” or vice versa. Instead, I want to form a fully integrated picture of the entirety of reality, including Scripture and nature. Of course, different sources have different weights, but they can’t be completely separated either. All sources color our perspective and, conversely, our perspective colors the way we look at our sources. I don’t intend to sound post-modernistic here, but what I mean is that truth-seeking is something holistic. That’s also why I think it is important to consider scientific evidence together with biblical teachings along your journey. Not just the evidence for the old age of the earth, but the entirety of it, including evolutionary history. I know others have advised you to focus on the age of the earth first, but I think a full-scope approach will be more edifying in the long run.
My two cents,
Casper
Edit: I just realized I would like to add a third point. Don’t expect changes in your own perspective on these matters to happen overnight. For many people it has been a journey of years as they moved away from YEC towards accepting Evolutionary Creationism.
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Nice summation!
@Mike_Gantt,
Casper’s words touch on an area which you have been less than enthusiastic discussing:
Namely, that Young Earthers need to acknowledge, at the very least, that even the most Fundamentalist “face value reading” requires linguistically & culturally sensitive exegesis!
Mike, while you throw down the gauntlet that you are obligated to believe what Jesus believed and say what Jesus said, you are implicitly stating that your interpretations will be, by definition, tone deaf regarding culture and time period!
Your plan to tackle the Biblical position on Helio- vs Geo- Centric was a flawed effort in cherry-picking what you wanted to demonstrate as objective … but which incongruously requires/required substantial interpretations on what the ancient Bible writers and readers believed and understood in ancient time.
For centuries, the Rabbis and the solitary pre-Lutheran Church of Europe ( I.e. the Church of Peter’s Rome) were rather vocal about finding ways forward which accepted the Truthfulness of scripture … while avoiding the disturbing religious theater of literallying Denying the reality of what human eyes and ears have accepted for generations as demonstrably real and true.
The fact you once chose Geo-centricity highlights this conundrum perfectly! You might have concluded already that today’s Evangelical community is under no obligation to adopt old and dosproven Western biases (dare we say, superstitions), this is certainly not how it felt to the defenders of the Holy Church one century ago, or even two or three!
So run your time machine to re best of your ability! You are compelled to negotiate the maze in deciding what anti-science perspectives are really just brittle retentions of cultural ‘myth preservation’ vs. which are eternally true planks of the Human world view:
- Jesus literally becomes flesh and blood at Communion.
. - there is a way for the Sun’s movement to stop mid-sky.
. - stars can fall to Earth without destroying our solar system.
. - spitting into mud to make a healing unguent for eyes gone blind is an acceptable, if not admirable, technique.
. - that working on the Sabbath are legitimate grounds for the death penalty.
. - That stoning is a legitimate response to adultery.
. - That Jesus overturned the money tables once (the synoptic gospels vs G. of John) or twice (once at the beginning of his missionary work and again just before his death).
.
- That Job’s discussion of the natural world requires explanations or not.
. - That women really do have to cover their hair (not just the top of their heads) while in church.
.
And, really, countless more obscure points you have this far avoided.
Casper, thanks for your tuppence.
Will do. However, we have family coming in today until the weekend, so my responses to you and others may be slow in coming for a while.
I don’t see the pursuit of one impinging on pursuit of the other. Rather, I think this is a case of Jesus expecting us to walk and chew gum at the same time. His yoke is easy and His burden is light; therefore, if we’re feeling pressure, we’ve stopped serving Him and started serving someone or something else.
Any “rigidity” you sense is, I think, projected rather than present. Your paragraph covers a lot of ground but let me try to state the principles which guide me regarding the matters you seem to raise.
- I see no conflict between the Bible and science; rather, there are conflicts between the history found in the Bible and the history presented by science. It is these conflicts (or perceived conflicts) I’m trying to resolve (or trying to realize are imaginary).
- I want “a fully-integrated picture of the entirety of reality” as much as anyone else. The question is how one achieves that. I think that shows up in the process and cannot all be figured out ahead of time.
- I can’t tell if you are professing a belief in the “God’s two books: nature and the Bible” paradigm, but I don’t use it because it’s problematic - and for multiple reasons. I won’t go into that now, but will if that’s a view you’re pressing.
- By common consent, at least on this site, scientific evidence about evolution and the old earth is unambiguous. Therefore, my lack of focus on it is not driven so much by a weighting criterion but rather because there seems to be no question about what it says. Conversely, according to many at this site, the Bible is ambiguous. Therefore, it makes sense to focus on it.
- As for age of the earth v evolution, I’ve removed my previously self-assigned restraint on age of the earth.
There’s probably more I could say because your paragraph indeed was wide-ranging. I hope that’s enough to calm at least some of your fears that my epistemological approach limits my contact with reality.
May we all think as Paul did: “…whether in a short or long time…” may we arrive at truth. And if we can arrive together, that’s all the better - though probably too much to hope for.
Agreed :). Have a blessed time with your family. I’ll get back to this post with some clarifications that may help our conversation along later on, as time permits.
Mike, you make some excellent points, but just wanted to comment on this particular one. I think we all at times put our expectations on the Bible, and they are frequently not the expectations the Bible presents. We become Pharisees, telling the Bible what it says rather than listening to Jesus explaining to us what it means. We are all guilty of this arrogance, and I have to remind myself daily that walking humbly with God is something I must strive to do.
Have a blessed day!
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