But you are. Because you are modern, you think of how snow and hail are produced from a scientific point of view. That is, you think of the behind-the-scene mechanics. It’s clear that the ancients didn’t think in scientific terms. What they thought was going on behind the scenes were spiritual things: angels, demons, etc. That’s why I said you are assuming that they were focused on physical realities (storehouses) behind the physical realities (snow and hail).
What biblical reasons are there to accept the scientific view of the earth as billions of years old?
Time is a finite resource and I have other Bible study priorities.
You continue to infer things I am not saying or implying. My reference to “conservative” and “liberal” was with reference to theology, not politics. Nor have I “portrayed science as mere authoritarian hearsay,” much less “repeatedly” done so.
As to learning Hebrew, I sometimes look at those who learn a little Greek or Hebrew, and wonder what it matters. There is no way you can master a language without a lifetime of study, and at some point you have to trust those who devote their life work to such things. This is true in just about every field, and it is arrogant to think that we can be competent in a field that is highly technical with just a few courses or googles. Certainly it is good to know enough to know who to trust to get it right, but it is impossible to really be competent in an ancient language without a long term of study, and even then there is a great deal that is not known.
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And that’s not the claim that I’m making. What I’m saying is that historical science is based on mathematics and measurement. And mathematics and measurement has a lot of checks and balances built into it to overcome and compensate for the limitations and cognitive biases of human testimony.
By the way, I don’t think that your term “scientifically generated history” is all that accurate. A better way of putting it would be scientifically reconstructed history.
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[quote=“Mike_Gantt, post:275, topic:36256”]
Desirable but not necessary. [/quote]
It would seem to be necessary to make the distinctions you are claiming to make. It clearly would be far superior to your current method.
[quote] Even the New Testament makes clear that the early church relied heavily on the Greek version of the Old Testament.
[/quote]But isn’t Greek a whole lot closer to Hebrew than English is?
Hi Mike, it would appear you have indeed gotten the wrong impression of my position. “Taking precedence over” again implies a hierarchy of sources, but I have tried to convey that I do not view them in a hierarchical fashion. I prefer to let the Bible speak to me on its own terms when I consider its message (for the original audience and for me). Attempts at integration with natural history are of minor importance in such considerations.
Besides, science can only speak to the historical claims of the Bible where both address human history, in particular the human history available to the biblical writers.
Allow me first to remark that “fact versus fiction” is a false dichotomy and I would hope that a nuanced thinker like you would be quick to acknowledge that. Many truths can be conveyed with expressions that are not considered “factual” by many standards. That being said, I believe they viewed it as fact in a way very similar to how they viewed the prophecies of God’s New Creation as fact. In such prophecies, we see the New Creation being described with images of fulfillment based on those things which were familiar to them. For example, in Isaiah 11 we read:
6The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
We see here a true glimpse of a heavenly reality, expressed in earthly terms. Similarly, we see in Genesis 1 a true glimpse of God’s creative activity, expressed in earthly terms like an ordinary working week.
Greetings,
Casper
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I don’t dispute that that’s the attempt. What I am calling for is making the distinction clear. Indeed, some people might prefer SGH for that reason. But to prefer it, they need to know that it’s history produced in a different way.
Science is attempting to “reconstruct” the past, but it is “generating” history to do so - it is not “reconstructing” history. Scientifically-generated history (SGH) is an intentionally non-prejudicial term. The only purpose of the term is to distinguish that to which it applies from history as it has been traditionally understood throughout all human civilization.
From that comment alone, 3x:
"For another, evolution says that “creation” is one long continuous process while the Bible describes it as multiple discrete processes. For yet another, evolution says that every living thing comes from one original living thing while the Bible says that living things had separate, distinguishable ancestors.
“To that I could add in summation that evolution says that the universe has arisen naturally and the Genesis account says it arose supernaturally.”
Your summary is astounding, as evolutionary theory has absolutely nothing to do with how the universe arose.
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How can science – or indeed anything else – generate history? How can you generate events that have already happened? It just doesn’t make sense.
Or are you suggesting that scientists are just making things up?
Science isn’t doing anything of the sort. It is empirically testing historical hypotheses.
The problem being a storehouse is not spiritual. They did have physical storehouses, otherwise known as barns, in those days. Why do you spiritualize them? Angels and demons I agree would be considered a spiritual being. But it is funny how angles are always described as if they were a real person, scary yes but a person. I don’t think wings were ever mentioned though.
Perhaps not for you.
I was using the term as it is colloquially used in media today. My purpose was not pejorative, but rather to emphasize the distinctions between one point of view and the other. In any such succinct comparison, some precision is lost. I certainly wasn’t suggesting by what I wrote there that “evolution is authortarian hearsay.”
Historians generate history by writing it after consultation with human testimony, living and written.
Scientists generate history by writing it based on inference from its scientific observations.
One should be able to believe all history generated by science without objecting to this distinction.
Short answer, the Bible. That is if you accept that the geography is just as accurate as the history.
If you go to the geographical location as defined in the Bible for Sodom you will find the remains of a very large walled city. Problem being Christian archaeologists have used the pottery fragments to date the site and it doesn’t agree with the Biblical genealogies. So which are you going to accept as correct, location or date? Can’t be both. Since this is less than 6,000 years ago your “warning in the mirror” shouldn’t apply.
Hi Mike,
Appreciate your thoughtful response. I have 4 observations:
1) The Bible cannot make claims about natural history without making claims about science.
When the Bible says that Jesus turned water into wine and rose from the dead, such claims are beyond the scrutiny of science. Science can tell you that such events lie outside the boundary of the normal operations of biology and physics, but science actually agrees with the Scriptures on that characterization. After all, the Bible also labels those events as things that occur outside the boundaries of normal operations. It just uses the terminology of signs and miracles.
On the other hand, non-miraculous history is subject to scientific inquiry. Walk into a courtroom any day of the week and you will likely see an impressive display of how science can be used to reconstruct history; it’s called forensics. Submit a cheek swab to 23andme, and they will for a fee use scientific methods to reconstruct your genealogical history. I could multiply these examples if you wish to pursue the matter, but I’m pretty sure you understand the point.
You are claiming that God miraculously created everything a few thousand years ago. That claim in itself is not subject to scientific inquiry. However, assuming that subsequent to creation week* God has governed the universe according to consistently operating natural law (other than miracles), scientific investigation should be able to
- use the operations of those laws to trace back a history, and
- that history should reach a terminus less than 10,000 years ago.
If radioactivity began less than 10,000 years ago, radioactive dating methods should reveal less than 10,000 years of history. If the deposition of ice layers began less than 10,000 years ago, ice layers should go no deeper than 10,000 years. And so forth. This is what I mean when I say that the Bible cannot make claims about natural history without making scientific claims.
Here’s an example of how science illuminates natural history. In 1928, Edwin Hubble used time-lapse observations of the Crab Nebula to establish that it originated as a supernova in approximately 1020 AD, give or take a few decades. It just so happens that Chinese astronomers recorded a supernova in that region of the sky in 1054 AD. Astronomers today take for granted that the Chinese observations and today’s Crab Nebula have their origin in the same event.
Of course, you could choose to deny that science has any ability to illuminate the history of nature. You could instead claim that nothing about natural history is scientifically tractable, even subsequent to the creation week and the flood. You could claim that the true history of events is that God chose to endow everything in the universe with the appearance of billions of years of history.
If you think that Hubble was validly applying science to history, and 23andme is doing good analysis, and forensic testimony is valid in a courtroom, though, I would have difficulty understanding why you would think that it is ultimately invalid for a geologist to use radioactive decay to date a rock formation to an age of billions of years.
2) Scientifically-generated history does not refute properly interpreted Biblical testimony
Science has no means to dispute the supernatural origins of the universe. It is possible to believe in a historic Adam and Eve (@Swamidass does!) and a regional flood (if the Hebrew word eretz is translated as land instead of earth).
This point has already been discussed extensively, but I wanted to put it in summary form for you.
3) Galileo and Kepler argued for a hermeneutic of accommodation
I think you have missed the forest for the trees in reading their classic texts, Mike. You are stating that you can reject the hermeneutic of accommodation without rejecting science, because the Bible makes no scientific statements. However, Galileo and Kepler claimed (quite justifiably, IMO) that the Biblical text does make claims about the shape of the earth and the orbital relationship of the earth and sun–claims that could be investigated and possibly refuted by the scientific method.
They most definitely did not believe that the Bible made no scientific statements. With all due respect, you are misreading them. Instead, they claimed that the Bible’s scientific statements were incidental to the real revelation of the Scriptures, which is God’s heart, purpose and plans for His people. Since the Bible showed us “how to go to heaven,” any statements it made about “how the heavens go” could be set aside as God’s accommodation to a people of a different age and culture.
You have a choice, Mike:
- Agree with the accommodation hermeneutics, or
- Disagree with accommodation,
If you go with the second choice, you have to own not just the apparent history but also the apparent science of the Bible. You must stand with Cardinal Bellarmine against Galileo.
4) You disagree with evolutionary creationists’ making a distinction that you yourself are already making
As far as I can tell, you already set aside aside some aspects of Biblical texts on the principle of accommodation.
- You believe that the geocentric texts have a spiritual content that should be respected, while the scientific content is set aside (accommodated).
- You believe similarly about the flat earth Biblical texts.
Moreover, these accommodations are made on the basis of what we know from science today. It’s not as if you can argue for a spherical earth or a heliocentric solar system from the Bible.
Evolutionary creationists are using the same principle of accommodation that you yourself already use, Mike. We just extend it into the arena of natural history that is tractable to scientific investigation.
I hope those four points help advance the discussion a bit, my brother Mike.
Grace and peace,
Chris Falter
*Perhaps you would wish to state that the period of scientific stability started after the flood. This is a distinction without a difference, as all the scientific evidence indicates the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Whether the 4.5 B years of earth history indicated by science would start after a creation week or after a global flood is basically irrelevant.
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No Mike. Historians and scientists do not generate history. Politicians and policy makers generate history.
Sigh. How on earth did I end up in an Internet argument about what the word “generate” means?!
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Reading multiple translations in your own language will almost certainly give you a better understanding of what the text really means than reading the original language. I am biased of course, but I totally agree with the idea that translations of God’s word are God’s word and God has all along intended his word to be translated and for each of us to encounter God’s truth in our own langauge. Each new translation into each new cultural context brings depth and nuance to our understanding of who God is. See this CT article if you are interested 
: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/april/knowing-what-bible-really-means.html?share=u1Ha8LUIaqjXIK5oR4uGNfs7w23n1AIi
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Would it be helpful if we dropped the history from this? It still strikes me as strange to talk about SGH. The real problem is the dating of events. You would have:
Date as determined by the Bible or Date as determined by science
Short hand would be BD Bible Date or SD science date. Thinking of dates determined by science just seems more natural to me.
Hi r_speir,
Your exhortation, while touching, seems to assume that the translation of the Hebrew in the Scriptures we revere is a trivial affair, completely obvious to anyone who can read a modern English translation.
Have you ever had to live among a people whose language and culture you did not understand? If not, I am not surprised that you are unacquainted with the difficulties of translating concepts from one cultural milieu and language to another. I did have the privilege of serving Christ for about 5 years in West Africa, and I can assure you, the task is far, far from trivial.
It is not impossible, but the translation task requires great care, humility, scholarship, and sensitivity to how subtle differences in worldview can contravene the effort. If,on the other hand, you start with the assumption that these difficulties do not exist, you are pretty much guaranteed to end up with an inaccurate understanding of important messages in the Scripture.
I am doing my best to infer your stance and attitude based on what you have written. If I have misunderstood anything, I invite you to clarify as you see fit.
Grace and peace,
Chris Falter