Does belief in Moses as the author of the Pentateuch “lead inexorably” to a denial of evolution and an old earth?
What biblical reasons are there to accept the scientific view of the earth as billions of years old?
No. Now how about answering my question?
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It wasn’t rhetorical?
Not at all.
Oversight corrected… I corrected the embedded text and left this TYPO caveat:
[TYPO: I neglected to replace Mike’s ID with my own… my apologies for that oversight.]
But my typo does not relieve you of the problem at hand:
Using your own logic, we should be able to lay claim to Jesus’ corrections to the Old Testament:
- Jesus successfully advanced the scripture saying “we are Gods”;
- We can consume blood, at least if it is blood of a God.
There is the slight problem of Deuteronomy 34:6 and the record of the death and burial of Moses. So you know at least that much wasn’t written by Moses.
And in answer to your original question, I believe Moses was the authoritative source for the Torah but not necessarily the author of the whole written text. Since he was the source there is no problem with Jesus referring to Moses and the Torah in the authoritative sense. I don’t believe Jesus ever said directly that Moses actually wrote the Torah. In that culture the source is what is important not the scribe that wrote it all down. To you perhaps knowing that a scribe wrote the text would make a difference.
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Apparently, ascribing the Torah to Moses does not “lead inexorably” to rejection of evolution and an old earth. I didn’t think so.
Then he couldn’t have been the only author.
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Mike, you’re fudging the Biblical evidence.
You infer a historical timeline. You’re stating that it is implied when only the author can state that as a fact, trying to elide the weakness of your post hoc interpretation.
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This is not accurate. I direct you to Eugenia Scott, an atheist,
So science must be limited to using just natural forces in its explanations.This is sometimes referred to as the principle of methodological materialism in science: we explain the natural world using only matter, energy, and their interactions (materialism). Scientists use only methodological materialism because it is logical, but primarily because it works. We don’t need to use supernatural forces to explain nature, and we get farther in our understanding of nature by relying on natural causes.
Because creationists explain natural phenomena by saying “God performed a miracle,” we tell them that they are not doing science. This is easy to understand. The flip side, though, is that if science is limited by methodological materialism because of our inability to control an omnipotent power’s interference in nature, both “God did it” and “God didn’t do it” fail as scientific statements.
Properly understood, the principle of methodological materialism requires neutrality towards God; we cannot say, wearing our scientist hats, whether God does or does not act. I could say, speaking from the perspective of my personal philosophy, that matter and energy and their interactions (materialism) are not only sufficient to understand the natural world (methodological materialism) but in fact, I believe there is nothing beyond matter and energy. This is the philosophy of materialism, which I, and probably most humanists, hold to. I intentionally added “I believe” when I spoke of my personal philosophy, which is entirely proper. “I believe,” however, is not a phrase that belongs in science.
We philosophical materialists may all be methodological materialists, but the converse isn’t true. Gregor Mendel was a methodological materialist who didn’t accept the philosophy of materialism. I think we make a grave error when we confuse philosophical views derived from science — even those we support — with science itself.
Far from debatable, this are currently the rules enshrined in the legal system. Edwards v. Aguillard - Wikipedia
Science is devoted to formulating and testing naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. It is a process for systematically collecting and recording data about the physical world, then categorizing and studying the collected data in an effort to infer the principles of nature that best explain the observed phenomena.[29] Science is not equipped to evaluate supernatural explanations for our observations; without passing judgment on the truth or falsity of supernatural explanations, science leaves their consideration to the domain of religious faith. Because the scope of scientific inquiry is consciously limited to the search for naturalistic principles, science remains free of religious dogma and is thus an appropriate subject for public-school instruction.
The scientific community has developed a vocabulary to describe the various aspects of the scientist’s work. Although individual scientists are not always careful in their use of that vocabulary, a rigorous set of definitions can help to prevent confusion about what a scientific theory is. It can also provide a firm base on which to discuss the legal issues presented in this case.
The grist for the mill of scientific inquiry is an everincreasing body of observations that give information about underlying “facts.” Facts are the properties of natural phenomena. The scientific method involves the rigorous, methodical testing of principles that might present a naturalistic explanation for those facts. To be a legitimate scientific “hypothesis,” an explanatory principle must be consistent with prior and present observations and must remain subject to continued testing against future observations. An explanatory principle that by its nature cannot be tested is outside the realm of science.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/edwards-v-aguillard/amicus1.html
You can have your personal opinions @T_aquaticus but science does not include God as a causal force and never has. It has been that way for 400 years, and it is now the law of the land in the US too.
The first principle of theists is that God exists - all other considerations follow on from this. If you can provide a test for this principle, than as an atheist you may have a case - but if not, your statements are without any scientifically valid content.
I thought you didn’t accept the documentary hypothesis. Or am I misremembering what you have said before?
To go back to the original point, if the supernatural is said to have some effect on our reality (such as God creating the world in six days) then those effects can certainly be scientifically analyzed and information gained, including information about the supposed supernatural cause.
Thanks for the link, very interesting article. I was most interested to see what preceded your quote, but I was a bit nonplussed.
Logically, if there are omnipotent powers in the universe, it is impossible to hold their effects constant, to “control” them in the scientific sense. An omnipotent power could interfere, or not interfere or interfere but make it look like it’s not interfering — that’s omnipotence for you!
I think this really misses the point. It’s not as if non-onmipotent supernatural entities can be regarded by science, after all.
I think the answer is simpler, and lies in the definition of supernatural entities. They do not have any presence in the observable natural world, and this is the reason they can’t be measured. Science is left with the natural by default. I agree with Taq in the sense that if the definition of God offered by a theist excludes the possibility of scientific measurement, science isn’t excluding it from its purview on its own volition. It would be interesting to see the text of the original document which included the words “impersonal” and “unsupervised”. I believe I would agree with Scott that they shouldn’t be included, but I think it could be fair for example to note that no signs have been found that evolution is either personal or supervised, as they certainly could be.
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Chris, you have written here a sweeping indictment of me. It’s a soft indictment, to be sure, when compared to @Jonathan_Burke’s hard indictment. He is the iron hand; you are the velvet glove. The two of you agree that it’s “the eyeglasses” I insist on continuing to wear that are preventing me from seeing what’s right there in the Bible. To be fair, however, and to better understand the situation, you should admit to yourselves that it would be more accurate to say that it has been my unwillingness to exchange my glasses for yours that has frustrated you. Jonathan has his Revelation Day / Vision Day view and I’ve spoken with him about that. You seem to hold primarily to the Walton view so I’ll deal with it for the remainder of this post. (I know you profess support for all four of the views I listed above, but you mention Walton more than the others so it seems to be primary for you.)
I have tried to convey to you the aspects of Walton’s proposal that I find helpful and distinguish them from the parts of his proposal that I find weak and unconvincing, yet you continue to charaterize me as someone who is unappreciative of cultural differences. I first analyzed Walton’s arguments several years ago, and I have been going back through his material since coming here to see what I may have missed. In going back over his material, I have found him to be, if anything, even less convincing in his main thesis (that Gen 1 is exclusively speaking about functional and not material origins) than I originally thought.
I am not the only one who thinks this way about Walton’s proposal. William Lane Craig is an outspoken advocate for an old earth. He fully accepts the scientific dating of the universe as ~14B years and the earth as ~5B years. And although he does not profess personal belief in evolution, he says belief in it is “fully compatible with Christianity.” Craig has also spoken very disparagingly of YEC’s. Yet Craig says that Walton’s insistence that Gen 1’s focus on functional origins to the exclusion of material origins is “is drawing a false dichotomy which is foreign to these ancient texts.” He calls Walton’s view “bizarre” and says that there is “a deep incoherence in his interpretation.” Therefore, for me to say Walton is unconvincing in his main thesis is not merely the mindless rejection one should expect from a YEC.
I’m going to ask you to be more specific about the assumptions you think I hold which are holding me back, but first let me address the assumptions that you did seem to specify. As I do, please keep in mind that you have assumptions, too. What’s at issue here, therefore, is not that I have assumptions and you don’t. Rather, it’s a question of whether I should exchange my assumptions for yours.
Your assumption is that there are different kinds of history in the OT. My assumption is that there aren’t. I’ve examined my assumption by reviewing in my mind the way Jesus referred to OT events. I cannot see where He speaks of more than one kind of history in the OT. He seems to speak, for example, about Lot’s wife or people in the time of Noah the same way He speaks about people in the time of Elijah or Elisha. If you want me to exchange my assumption about how Jesus viewed history for yours, you need to do more to show me Jesus regarding Gen 1-11 history differently from Gen 12-Malachi 4 history.
I do not for the life of me understand why the subject of genealogies keeps arising in this thread. Until someone can show how a different way of interpreting genealogies can bridge the gap between an earth that is thousands of years old and one that is billions of years old, genealogies are not material to the discussion.
In general, I am in complete agreement with you that “the Scriptures were written for us but not to us” and that the prophets were men of their times. However, my assumption is that “the extent to which God might have accommodated His revelation to the cultural state of the original audience” has much more applicability when the subject is science than it does when the subject is history. And, as I’ve been saying, it’s the Bible’s history versus scientifically-generated history (SGH) that is at issue here - not the Bible versus science. If you want me to exchange my assumption for yours, tell me more about how you assume God had to accommodate His revelation in historical terms. For example, what was it about ancient people that required God to tell them that creation took a very short time when it in fact took a very long time. I’m not asking why Gen 1 and Ex 20:11 and Ex 31:17 don’t have the word “billions” in them; I’m asking why God would make statements about creation’s duration that would seem absolutely silly to an educated 21st-century person.
This appears to me to be Walton’s assumption which you want me to adopt. Again, my assumption is that while I’m appreciative of Walton’s emphasis on the functional view ancients held and, particularly, the temple motif he employs, he fails to show how this would exclude material ontologies. If you want me to let go of my assumption to take hold of yours, you’re going to have to do a better job of justifying this dichotomy than he has.
Does this exhaust the assumptions that you think are holding me back from accepting an old earth and all that goes with it? If not, please tell me the others and I’ll address them as well.
I can’t tell whether you think your stint in Africa enabled you to read the Bible without eyeglasses, or whether you recognize that you exchanged the ones you had for another pair. I’m perfectly willing to admit that your new pair may have fewer smudges and thus enable you to see more clearly, but that’s what you need to show me. It is simply not the case that I’m wearing eyeglasses and that you see 20/20 without any. Therefore, put your assumptions out there alongside mine and let’s see which ones are more faithful to Jesus.
You are not misremembering. I do not accept the documentary hypothesis. Nor did I see in your stated view a dependence on the documentary hypothesis. On the contrary, your statement - “In that culture the source is what is important not the scribe that wrote it all down” - would seem to exclude acceptance of it. Moses would not have been available to direct any scribes living during the Babylonian exile.
For these reasons, I could direct @benkirk to your view as a reflection of my own. If you are amending your view to say that it is dependent on acceptance of the documentary hypothesis, I’d have to say I cannot share it.
I have tried to follow the reasoning behind the voluminous comments regarding the age of the earth, and this is my best effort to an understanding of the issue.
You say that you need biblical teachings that would persuade you on an earth age (say about 4 billion years). I will put to one side the 7 days of creation.
I think all would agree that the bible does not give a clear command such “the age of the earth is X years”. We are left with a question – can we work out an age for the earth based on biblical narratives?
On this question, I see a preference for some figure, so that some may site some verses to support their preference, while others chose alternate verses to support an alternate view.
My own view is that the bible is explicit in showing us that only God determines events and the concept of time to God differs from our understanding. Thus regarding people deciding on dates and ages, we are admonished not to think we have biblical authority for such events – this is especially so when Christians try to work out when Christ would return, but I believe the teaching applies to all matters pertaining to times, ages and biblical based conclusions.
My conclusion is that you will not find biblical basis for an age for the earth, be it 4billion, 4 million, or 4 thousand years.
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Would you say the same thing about the age of the human race - that is, do you similarly think that we cannot find a biblical basis for a timeline of human history in even general terms?
I have no reservations on Adam and Eve as stated in Genesis, nor do I see any scientifically valid argument on this matter. The age of the human race would be approximated at 6-10,000 years based on modelling which is based on recorded history and various artifacts - however the modelling is just that so I am not fussed if these numbers were to vary depending on the model used. However these numbers would vary in the thousands and not by many millions.
I get to an age of the earth in the thousands of years by this sort of thinking…plus six days. (I recognize that there are folks who believe the age of the earth is rightly counted in the billions even if the age of the human race is rightly counted in the thousands. I would only add that it is not the Bible that gets them to billions of years for the earth, and I assume most of them would agree with me. I say this not for purposes of persuasion, but rather for the purpose of explanation.)
Your answer shows me that you think an age of the human race can be legitimately inferred from the Bible even if an age of the earth cannot. This answer seems much more reasonable to me than someone saying that the history in the Bible (including genealogies) provides no way to estimate an age of the human race. Thanks.